This Is Why Modern Therapy Sucks - My Brutal Advice For People Dealing With Trauma | Dr. Gabor Maté

I've heard you talk about like that one of the main problems with society today is that a lot of people who have mental health struggles and they're dealing with trauma and then they might go see somebody who's not trained in trauma they don't have the experience like how can somebody begin to take that path and make sure that they're finding somebody that is trained in that then also that they're able to self-regulate themselves when needed well that's a huge question because unfortunately look I've been through medical training I'm a physician and and uh the average physician never hears any of the stuff I just talked about the average psychiatrist doesn't get any training in trauma not in they learned something about PTSD which is a specific form of trauma but they learn they don't learn about the traumatic basis of depression and anxiety and ADHD and they they learn nothing about it so that it's very difficult to find good help within the medical system now many therapists also don't get any such training there's a lot of therapists that are designed only to change your beliefs and your behaviors but not to address the fundamental reasons for those behaviors so a lot of psychologists trained in CBT cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy a lot of them are not really and I know this believe me I know this they just don't know much about or anything about trauma then they can't help you with the fundamental wound that you're carrying they can help you with the manifestations and that's not that's not useless but they can't help you heal at your core so then there are therapies that are deeper than that there is um body based therapies such as somatic experiencing developed by my friend and teacher Peter Dr Peter LaVine there's sensory mortar Psychotherapy developed by packed Ogden there's EMDR that works for some people there's internal family systems or ifs develop my friend and colleague Dr Richard Schwarz this compassionate inquiry which is based on my work and I train therapists in that method there are others other names I could mention there's Larry heler Lawrence heler and his work and his students so what you have to look for is somebody who's trauma informed and is willing to work with you not just on your behaviors but on your core wounds of which the behaviors are symptoms yeah thanks for bringing that up because like in my own experience I mean I've struggled off and on with my mental health over the years I mean I've told you a bit about my story in our last conversation and you know when I would go there wasn't like a lot of talk about my childhood there was it was just like all right you're having some anxiety cool like here's a pill and then I would just take it and I would just think okay this is going to cure my anxiety and then I would realize like it's not really I'm still getting anxiety I'm still struggling like what's going on with this and it wasn't until I understood like my past and my trauma and how that was all related to what I was experiencing in the present that things were able to change and so let's just say that that somebody has now they found somebody they're comfortable with that's helping them heal their trauma and change their present and their current behaviors and patterns and that sort of thing and then they go down weeks down the road months down the road and they're on the up and up but get triggered or they experience a situation where they're like oh my gosh like I thought I was getting better why is this coming up what's your advice to people who are dealing with triggers when they're on the road to uh recovery from trauma well there's two ways to ask that question that you just raised why is this coming up is that a question what is it actually what is this teaching me no when you say why is this coming up like that that's not a question it's a statement it's a statement that says this shouldn't be happening to me okay now you ain't going to learn anything that way but if you actually ask it hm I wonder why this is coming up now you can learn something if I came to you and said why are you doing this how would that feel to you I probably get defensive and I would just feel like a little ashamed exactly but what if I said H I wonder why you're doing this it would force me to think a little bit and practice the pause and say well I don't know if it would force you but at least it would invite you right right right right yeah now so that's the first point is is how should we ask this question it's a good question but we have to ask it as a question not as a statement of resentment or resistance that's the first point the second point is use the word trigger really great word now if I showed you a rifle with a trigger how big a part of the rifle is the trigger it's very small very small for that trigger to set off anything that what there has to be there has to be a mechanism to deliver ammunition there's to be ammunition there's to be an explosive charge when I get triggered let's say you say something to me and I get triggered what you said was a very small little thing I'm the one who's got the explosive charge and the ammunition you didn't cause me to do that if I didn't have that ammunition explosive charge you could say whatever you want that I just sit here saying hm I wonder why he's saying that you know so triggering is a great opportunity to learn when you get triggered you could either focus on resent and resist the trigger or you could say huh what was I still carrying inside that haven't looked at yet that haven't resolved yet so if you know I used to tell this story you know being married 53 years now my wife and I so let's say 20 years ago um I might ask to sleep with her and she say no you know which is nobody can ever believe that that ever happened but it did used to happen you know and how would I respond I would respond by going to a rage and curling into a fetal position and not even wanting to live okay no the trigger is the no that she said the explosive is my belief that I'm being rejected and Abandoned and not wanted and that I'm an infant and helpless which is what happened to me otherwise if she says no oh I can get curious are you tired or have I done something to turn you off or is there somethingone we can talk about or I can just be disappointed and let go of it and say okay well thanks you know there'll be another day so how I respond is not dependent on the external event it's dependent on what charge I'm carrying so triggers are wonderful times to learn about yourself so if you ask a question not why did I react that way but huh I wonder why I reacted that way now there's a whole lot of learning to be done so that's what I call Compassionate curiosity where we actually curious about ourselves but not in a self- judgmental way but in a compassionate way oh this brought up the pain of rejection obviously I'm still carrying that that wound well let's look at that because it's not happening in the present I'm glad you brought that up and that we have to change the language and how we talk to ourselves during those moments is for me personally I'm extremely hard on myself so that like voice that you were saying like you know like why is this happening or why is it doing this to me like that's something that I've said in my life very very frequently because of the fact that I'm really hard on myself I sometimes when something doesn't go my way or when I get triggered or bothered by something even though I've done a lot of work on myself I'm I'm so hard on myself because I'm like gosh like I'm better than this I know I should be doing better than this so that was really eye opening for me so thanks for sharing that well and you know that voice in your head that tells you all that stuff in this book I actually talk about getting into a relationship with that voice because this is what I call a stupid friend you know because at some point that voice came along when you were quite small see if you were suffering as a kid or things weren't going well there's two assumption the child could make unconsciously one is the world is dangerous my parents don't know how to love me value me I can't trust anybody I'm all alone I'm going to suffer in this world the other belief unconsciously is there's something wrong with me and maybe if I work hard enough I can fix it now which belief is more protective for the child do you think the second one is more protective exactly so it came along as kind of a friend to keep you going it's a friend I say it's a stupid friend the reason I'm joking when I call it stupid but the stupidity comes in because it doesn't learn that you're no longer that child it keeps giving you the same message so my suggestion Doug is next time you hear that voice say hello to it and say thank you you know what cuz ask yourself how old is that voice I mean what how old were you when it first came along I mean I was young because I remember there was this idea that I developed about myself from when I was a child that I wasn't good enough because I wasn't picked for sports teams I got yelled at a lot so give me an age five six seven yeah I mean I would say I was an elementary school I think but let's call him a seven-year-old this voice is a seven-year-old kid telling you a story so say hi to it hello I got it you're still working to make me better in this world but you know what relax kid I can take care of it now you know it it's this just a little immature little friend that's all it is it didn't come along to torment you it came along to actually protect you

Channel: Doug Bopst

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Id: w4zi_3huOdA

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 03 2024