E538 Dr. Gabor Maté
Summary
Dr. Gabor Mate is a physician and author whose works explore such topics as stress, trauma, addiction, developmental psychology, and more. He has a new book called The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.
Transcript
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His works explore such topics like stress, trauma, addiction, developmental psychology,
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He has a new book called The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.
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I'm grateful today to spend time with Dr. Gabor Mate.
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And I found him unusually without bombast and almost tender and very vulnerable and just kind of humble, you know?
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Yeah, I was trying to just talk to him about something that felt pretty normal, you know?
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But he's also expressed interest in you and your brother and...
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Well, look, when you read further in the book, I actually talk about him.
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Yeah, it's like, especially like just as a regular person in the world, you kind of...
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Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of it there.
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I mean, his brother had addiction and even him, I think, trying to learn about addiction,
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I wish I would have stayed in that conversation a little bit more with Donald and tried to
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Not thoughts, but a little bit more explanation about addiction from my own perspective.
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Yeah, well, that would have been an interesting conversation.
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Yeah, just to let him know that it wasn't something his brother...
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Like, it wasn't like his brother just couldn't stop drinking.
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That he had other things inside of him that prevented him from doing that.
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But one of the things that's been tough for me is just you get into certain conversations
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and I'm still learning how to be in conversations sometimes.
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So sometimes it's, you know, you're learning on the stove.
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This is your book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.
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You believe that we are kind of a sick culture.
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Well, so 70% of American adults run at least on one medication.
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The number of children being diagnosed with all manner of dysfunctions, disorders, mental
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health challenges like ADHD, self-cutting, addictions, anxiety, depression, childhood suicide
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So, in the United States, annually, twice as many people die of overdoses as died in the
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The life expectancy, particularly of white men, has gone down due to suicide and drug overdoses.
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I could go on and on forever, but just statistically, there's more and more evidence of illness and
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You know, the fact that that's even just become a common thing in our society is...
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It's heartbreaking for so many and so many people's families.
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Just the residual effect of suicide or overdose.
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Those numbers don't even take into the ripple effect of people losing a loved one.
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I mean, the families that are being devastated.
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And I mean, I used to work with what is North America's most concentrated area of drug use
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We went down on Hastings just to take a drive and see.
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And everybody down there was severely traumatized in childhood.
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And their addictions were all a response to immense emotional pain that they didn't know
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Whereas they only make up 5% of the Canadian population.
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So the more you suffer either socially or individually, the more likely you are to escape in the soothing
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and the relief that drugs or other addictions offer.
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So if you look at American society, you're going to be asking, why are so many people having to escape from reality?
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Some stuff, I have some questions that I even wrote down that are on cards just because I want to make sure that we get the best information that we can for our guests today.
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One of the things that you talk about in the book that's causing a lot of sickness is trauma.
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And then more specifically, unprocessed trauma.
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Help me define those a little bit for our audience.
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So trauma is one of these words that everybody throws around.
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So trauma literally comes from the Greek word for wound or wounding.
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So trauma is a wound, whether it's a physical wound or a psychological wound.
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In this case, we're talking about emotional wounds that haven't healed.
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So trauma is an unhealed wound that you sustain in childhood, but then it stays with you.
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And it directly causes inflammation in the body.
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It affects all your genes function or your chromosomes function.
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It creates all kinds of physiological problems.
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On an emotional level, it instills a lot of pain in you that you try to escape from.
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And one of the ways you try to escape, for example, is through drug use or to other kinds of addictions.
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Or through self-cutting or bulimia or any, you know, pornography or whatever.
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It also makes you suppress, disconnects you from your own emotions.
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Because when a child is being traumatized, it's too painful to connect to themselves.
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And that disconnect then causes all kinds of problems in terms of illness, mental and physical.
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So the impacts of trauma are vast and quite under-recognized.
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And you talk about trauma also as not being seen and known.
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So here we have to understand what are the needs of the human child.
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So everybody understands that the child needs to be physically cared for, cleaned up, fed, and sheltered, and so on.
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Children, according to evolution, also have emotional needs that they're born with.
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One of them is being just accepted and valued for exactly who they are and being seen rather than being forced to be something that the parents want them to be.
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And a lot of parents in this society, not because they don't love their kids, but because they're so stressed, have just a hard time seeing their kids.
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And not because I wasn't devoted, because I didn't love them, just because of my own trauma, I couldn't even see myself.
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It's like, it's funny because I work as a comedian and for like, I grew up in a kind of a traumatic home.
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We had, she had four children and yeah, I feel like she never looked at me.
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I feel like she never kind of put her hands on me.
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I feel like she just, and she didn't know how, I guess, you know, it's okay.
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And how do you, and how do you suppose that affected you?
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I felt like I started, I had to find some way to be seen.
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I had to do something, you know, to get someone to see me because I needed to survive.
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I looked at the biographies of a number of comedians.
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What you're talking about is like a common theme.
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I looked at Robin Williams, who's this brilliant, brilliant comic.
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And one of the reasons he developed his humor was to make his mother laugh as a way of having
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Gilda Radner, who died of a brain cancer, the same thing.
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So that they had the innate talent, but then they used that talent to be seen and valued
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where they should have been valued with or without talent.
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A few years ago, I thought it's like, I'm kind of a late bloomer.
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Like I only realized that, like I go to recovery meetings and stuff like that.
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And I only realized a few years ago, it started to hit me like, did I even want to be a comedian?
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Or did I just, at some early point, develop having to get attention because I need, you
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know, and then, so if that's the case, then who did I really want it?
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What, you know, who would, what would I have been if I didn't do that?
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And not saying that, not saying that I'm not grateful and I don't love being a comedian.
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It's been, it's been a blessing, but, but it's like, if I created that, okay, I have
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to be this thing to, for you to see me, then who created that?
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You know, like who, like, was there a different me that was supposed to be there, but then
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That's the dilemma for so many of us is that as a result of childhood wounding, we have
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to make ourselves into something that the world will accept and value.
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Like, look, in my case, I love having been a physician and that's my calling, but the
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big part of it wasn't just that I wanted to help humanity or heal people, it's also I
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Because as an infant, I got the message that I wasn't.
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And, and so now then, and that creates a kind of an addiction because you have to keep
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proving to yourself how important you are and how valuable you are, but nobody should
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That God chose us or that the energies of the world chose us and said, I'm going to put
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you here like a, with a fine pen, I'm going to put you in the world.
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And, and I did it on purpose and, and the world, it was built to take care of you and to nurture
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And if, and if you actually look at, and this has been studied quite extensively, how it
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didn't indigenous people or tribal peoples close to the land rear their kids, that's
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Like they gave their children a deep sense of acceptance.
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All the paintings you see of a native Americans, they all, somebody's got a kid on them.
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You've never seen a movie about a native American beating his children, I don't think.
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So, I mean, so what you're describing is actually how we evolved and part of the toxicity
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in my view of our culture is we've gone so far away from our nature when it comes to
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And again, not because of lack of parental devotion, but because of so much parental stress.
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My mom couldn't see us because she had other things she had to see first.
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And, you know, and yeah, and not just me, but so many people.
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It's like, yeah, we've created a society or our society has created a way of life where
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now it's like both parents work in so many cases.
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So, and that alone just feels like it just shouldn't be that way.
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Well, if you look at throughout evolution, through millions of years and hundreds of thousands
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of years of human evolution, children were always with their parents.
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Now, if that's not possible in today's society, at least then we have to compensate for it.
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So now when they send them to daycares and schools, it's all about behavior and it's all
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about fitting in, not about accepting the child and nurturing the child innate sense of
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We're wondering whose life am I leading anyway?
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You say like fitting in, it's like, yeah, like you're like your child's not fitting in
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because it's two puzzle pieces or the parents, you know, or the family.
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That's not to say it shouldn't be able to spend time with other children and being and
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But it's the fact that they need to fit in there first.
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And then I think it's probably easier for children to fit in in other places in the world.
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Well, that's but the fitting in happens naturally when you're when you're accepted.
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You know, listen, the schools, I'll tell you something.
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One of the essential needs of all mammals is play.
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It's far more important than academic learning.
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So then the schools, there ought to be a lot more play.
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A lot more freedom for the kids to be themselves.
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And then those kids will be naturally curious and interested in learning.
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But here we try to put the cart before the horse.
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We try and stuff them full of knowledge, skills and behavior or control rather than again promoting the conditions for healthy brain development.
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So the schools actually, they intend well, but they really don't get it when it comes to what do children actually need.
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It's, you know, I wonder sometimes where we did.
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We go completely off the rails in a direction and or a series of directions, you know, that have kind of put us where we are.
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I want to get this statement right, right here.
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Um, why is a trauma event different from other stressful events?
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Like some events could be traumatic for some people.
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What exactly is it about the mind, body, soul that makes the event traumatic or like what is the mechanism?
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So every traumatic event is stressful, but not every stressful event is traumatic.
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So, you invite me on your show and for some reason I don't show up and you had this studio arranged.
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That might stress you, but it doesn't traumatize you.
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So it's traumatic if it leaves you with a wound.
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And if that wound leaves you more constricted and more afraid and more suspicious and less comfortable with yourself, more hostile to other people, less comfortable in the world, then it's traumatic.
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Now, not every stressful event will have that effect, but if it does, then it's traumatic.
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If it makes a wound, that's what makes it traumatic.
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Because a wound is sensitive, even if you think of a wound.
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And well into my 70s or even I'm 80 now, you know.
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And in my 55-year-old marriage with my wife, she might say something or react in some way that touches an old wound.
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And all of a sudden, I'm not this 80-year-old guy.
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I'm this one-year-old kid responding, you know, because that wound is sort of, I'm not giving an excuse here.
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And I'm just saying that that's the challenge, you know.
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So in one sense, a trauma is an open wound that you touch it, oh.
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But then the other thing that happens to wounds is they scar over.
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Now, scar tissue is thick, it's hard, it doesn't grow, it has no nerve vending, so it's insensitive.
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Wow, so you can either get extremely sensitive or very hardened.
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And when you talk about hardened criminals, guess what hardened them?
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And so then the question is, then how do we treat each other in a society where so many of us carry wounds?
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Let's talk a little bit about unprocessed trauma.
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So you talk about emotional isolation as being something that really negatively nurtures unprocessed trauma.
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So once you're hurt as a child, you tend not to trust other people.
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So you could be in the middle of a crowd and be laughing and interacting, but still feel quite alone emotionally.
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You know, and that emotional isolation itself then has effects on your body and on your mind.
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So the people who are lonely, and the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Admiral Vivek Murthy, just issued a paper on loneliness in the United States.
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And loneliness, and there's an epidemic of loneliness.
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People are describing us as lonely in much higher numbers as they did 20, 40 years ago.
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No, loneliness is as much of a risk factor for physiological illness as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
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So loneliness is both a manifestation of trauma and a cause of tremendous stress, which then undermines physiological and mental health.
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So something traumatic happened, it wasn't processed properly, and then now you will feel lonely.
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Because look, if I am always being a nice guy so that you will like me, but inside I'm feeling all these emotions that I'm not sharing with you, that's pretty lonely.
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Even though you might like me because I'm showing you this nice side of myself.
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At least I used to work in palliative care as a doctor looking after dying people.
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In Australia, there was a palliative care nurse who wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People.
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These are people that were dying before that time, like I used to look after, of cancer or chronic neurological illness.
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You know what the top regret of dying people was?
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That they didn't have the courage to be themselves.
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And the third top regret was that they didn't have the courage to express their emotions.
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They pretended to be happy when they were not and so on.
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So the question for the rest of us is do we want to wait until some terminal illness wakes us up?
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Or should we just confront the fact that in so many ways we're afraid to be authentic because we're so afraid of being rejected?
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As adults, can we develop that freedom to be ourselves?
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Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's amazing what your feelings or your heart or your mind will like want you to do sometimes.
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But then this other smoke comes in, this, that feels stronger sometimes.
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And it clouds, it almost clouds that feeling away.
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No, I just wanted to, you said that in the book that if you have a trauma that you can't process, you essentially have the trauma of unprocessed trauma.
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And then if you can't process it, now you have almost a new trauma of unprocessed trauma.
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Well, that's, they have the ongoing wound, which is what trauma means.
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But by definition, none of those options are available to the child.
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So the only way they can survive is to disconnect from themselves.
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And that disconnection that gets wired into the nervous system, into the brain.
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And every time they even think of being themselves, as you just described, they get scared.
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Because being themselves, because had they fought back, had they tried to escape, it would have been worse for them.
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So that disconnection from the self was the only way they survived.
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No, every time as an adult, even think of being authentic, that fear comes up.
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And it may not even come up for them, like in their awake mind.
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It's almost like it comes up at a level where you don't even realize, like, that something's pulling the strings in the distance.
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Well, pulling the strings is exactly the right analogy.
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There's a neurobiologist, neuroscientist, quite well known at Stanford University, Robert Sapolsky,
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who wrote a book recently called Determined, by which he means predetermined.
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He basically says, there's no such thing as free will, because we're so conditioned by our biology, our culture, and our early experiences.
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And he's almost right, because what he's talking about is, as you say, we're pulled by these invisible strings of our unconscious that were programmed into us even before we were born, even in our mother's wombs.
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And so, it's just a lifetime, I find it personally, a lifetime's challenge to cut the strings and to actually be in the present moment as an adult person connected to myself.
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Like, I didn't even know that I, I didn't know that, it might sound crazy, I didn't even, I existed and everything was fine in my life, but I was having trouble, like, building relationships.
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There were just things that I didn't have any real tools to make my life evolve.
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And so, I started to think, well, what is going on here?
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And then, you know, with a lot of therapy and different modalities of therapy, I went more into, like, my past, and I started to see, like, oh, I see.
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It's because of these, you know, these things that have happened, and then I never process them that some of them are still pulling me back.
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And until you did process them, what freedom did you actually have?
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Oh, and yeah, and I was almost a figment of, it's funny people say a figment of your imagination.
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I felt like I was something that my mind or that my soul or whatever had created to best face.
00:27:29.460
Now, do you remember when Pinocchio becomes a real boy and he looks at his puppet self and he says, I was so foolish when I was a puppet.
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So what was the trauma in your life that started you on this journey?
00:30:23.220
Well, what started me on the journey was well into adulthood.
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For a long time, I didn't realize I was traumatized, just like you didn't.
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I just was a puppet on a string in some ways, you know?
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I was a well-respected family doctor, but I was unhappy.
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I felt I had potential that I hadn't even nearly touched, and I had no idea how to get there.
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My marriage had difficulties, a lot of tension.
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And my children were facing their challenges, and in some ways, they were even afraid of me, you know?
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Well, like afraid of your energy, afraid of like...
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Afraid of my sudden outbursts of uncontrolled...
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And my son Daniel, who helped me write The Myth of Normal, he says in the book that the floor was never the floor.
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In other words, when the loving and devoted and playful parents might all of a sudden erupt in one of their dramas,
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and the kids are there watching this hurricane sweep through the house, emotionally speaking.
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Well, that doesn't create a basis of trust or security.
00:31:59.620
It's not because we didn't do our best, you know?
00:32:01.920
So, looking at all that, at some point, I had to start asking, like you had to start asking, well, what's going on here?
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And that's when I started looking at what happened to me as a kid.
00:32:20.040
I've heard you say, I've heard you refer to yourself as a smart child.
00:32:26.200
In communist Hungary, you really have to follow the rules.
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And the teacher, at some point, sent a warning to my parents saying that he better watch it because he agitates his classmates.
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And that does go back to childhood trauma, early childhood trauma.
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When I was eight years old, my mother took me to a psychologist.
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And the psychologist took my history, you know, Jewish infant born under the Nazis, or living my first year under the Nazi occupation.
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And then a separation from my mother for six weeks.
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And she said, he said to my mom, Madam, if the only problem this kid has is that he wets his bed, you're very fortunate.
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Well, I can tell you, that's not the only problem that I had.
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And, but on the other hand, I had all this unseen stuff that erupted later on.
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You don't even know it's there, especially when you're a kid.
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And then later you have to, it's almost like a fire that starts when you're young.
00:33:58.640
And I was like, where the, is all this smoke coming from?
00:34:08.640
Like, imagine starting a fire, but no smoke comes out of it.
00:34:15.560
No, it makes total sense because what happens is, like when you said earlier you were fine, the heck you were fine.
00:34:23.220
And that's because we pushed down all the rage that we never expressed as kids.
00:34:36.260
And we can function in the world in ways that the world can give you an respect and reward.
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I mean, look at, we're talking here in Hollywood.
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Look at all the figures here that were great successes, idols to millions, and they had these miserable in our lives.
00:35:00.680
I mean, it's, and it's, yeah, it's funny that if things, if, if, if it's not, the foundation isn't there, then you'll go find it in the world.
00:35:08.940
And, and, and sometimes what you go find, even though you're just trying to replicate what you didn't get when you were young, it can be detrimental to you.
00:35:20.020
Which is why people get into unhealthy relationships because where did we most want love when we were kids, when we most wanted to be seen, by whom, by the people that couldn't do it.
00:35:35.200
Therefore, we will repeatedly look for people who can't see us and hoping that this time they will.
00:35:44.540
I mean, I have this, I have this thing that came into my head, like I could jump off of a cliff.
00:35:54.960
A mom come home from work, I'm back on the top of that cliff.
00:35:58.800
I would find a way to get, or if I heard like high heels, if I heard a woman's footsteps, I'd find a way to get back up there and, and, and look towards her.
00:36:07.540
Cause I'm just, yeah, it's like, it may sound crazy, but yeah, just like.
00:36:12.740
Like, yeah, it's like, if I can't help, but look, I can't help, but wonder does, is that woman accept me?
00:36:20.900
You know, even with dating and all my relationships, I see it now.
00:36:23.860
It's like, you know, I'm always kind of, I'm all, even, even in just any relationship, I'm just, or any moment, I'm just looking, do you accept me?
00:36:34.920
You know, and unfortunately, it really gets in the way of male, female relationships.
00:36:46.020
Because a lot of us, I mean, myself included in my relationship with my spouse, in some ways, I just wanted to be mothered, you know, not just loved as an adult, but actually mothered on the one hand.
00:37:01.260
On the other hand, I would resent it, you know, because I don't want to be controlled.
00:37:07.400
You know, so it puts the woman into an impossible situation.
00:37:18.880
It's getting better, but it's still, we still, we're, it's getting better.
00:37:25.520
You know, yeah, I, I have trouble committing in a relationship.
00:37:28.300
You know, I did, I did, I did some ayahuasca ceremonies.
00:37:33.220
Well, hey, you haven't read the chapter yet on ayahuasca.
00:37:51.680
I was going to say that when I, when I did a plant medicine retreat, that I realized one
00:37:56.880
of the reasons why I've had trouble getting in relationships is because I'm still waiting
00:38:08.680
I, I, I, I lament some of the feelings from my youth, but I don't, you know, I love my
00:38:15.180
mother and I'm grateful that she did the best that she could.
00:38:19.260
Um, but yeah, I realized like, I can't, there's just a part of me that, that's, it's just
00:38:27.480
still like, I feel like it's like a kid, like standing on a dock, like waiting for a boat
00:38:37.760
Um, and then you try to get someone else to fill it and they don't even know what to
00:38:41.480
And you, and for years, I didn't even know I was trying to get somebody to fill it.
00:38:49.900
And my life was still okay, but just below, right below the surface level of my life,
00:38:59.900
Um, I, I found out about ayahuasca after my book on addiction got published in 2009.
00:39:09.960
And it's about how addiction is not a genetic disease.
00:39:12.900
It's a response to trauma as it affects the brain and, and, and the psyche.
00:39:17.820
But after I published that book, I, I go on book tour and people got asking me, what do
00:39:24.000
you know about addiction and its healing with ayahuasca?
00:39:35.260
I mean, you just spent three years writing the book and you asking me about the one thing
00:39:39.660
And then finally said, somebody said, you know, you could experience this up here in
00:39:44.160
Vancouver because the Peruvian shaman who came up there.
00:39:47.820
So I did the ayahuasca and I experienced pure love for the first time in my life.
00:39:55.280
There's a little baby in the tent whose father had done a plant and the mother was there with
00:40:00.140
the baby and the baby started cooing and wooing and aahing and these tears of love just flowed
00:40:07.120
My heart just opened and I realized how close my heart had been because it was so bruised so
00:40:17.580
And not that I deliberately closed it down, but as a way of protecting it.
00:40:22.580
And that, right away, he said, okay, I can work with this to help people who are addicted.
00:40:40.840
You know, psychedelics is a whole other conversation.
00:40:53.020
But in the right context, with the right guidance, the right preparation, they can really help
00:41:00.580
people open up to parts of themselves that they weren't even aware that they were there.
00:41:08.440
And I hope that the knowledge of that evolves over time.
00:41:12.760
But that can also be scary because some people go and get addicted to that.
00:41:17.460
I've seen it, too, because what people get addicted to is not so much the substances because
00:41:21.560
nobody's going to get addicted to what I was going to do.
00:41:26.980
But what they get addicted to is the heightened experience.
00:41:31.800
And if they don't know how to integrate what they've learned into their lives,
00:41:35.000
then they keep looking for that elevated experience that takes them out of their ordinary self.
00:41:43.160
And so I really think that that's one of the risks of psychedelic use is that you start looking
00:41:50.820
for that elevated, heightened, or deepened experience that's missing from your life where
00:41:56.360
the whole thing is the experience can open the door.
00:42:05.960
Not when you're under the influence of the medicine.
00:42:13.320
That's kind of now we just kind of get a piece of information and then we're like,
00:42:18.200
But we don't take as much time to integrate something in our life.
00:42:22.980
Like that's one thing I've noticed for myself anyway.
00:42:26.120
I don't want to pin on everybody, but I'll notice that sometimes I'll learn something.
00:42:29.320
I'll learn a fact or I'll learn like a way that I've, oh, I know this about me now or
00:42:36.180
But unless I integrate the solution to that or the, um, the information from that, the
00:42:43.140
positive information, instead of just shouting it out that I know it actually integrating
00:42:48.420
it and taking time to integrate it, you know, even taking time.
00:42:51.340
Like if you go to a church sermon or, uh, um, or a, um, mosque sermon or, uh, synagogue
00:42:59.800
sermon, you had Jewish church synagogue sermon, but to, and you can hear a message, right?
00:43:04.560
But then you can just go on about your day, but taking time to integrate a message in
00:43:12.800
I think we used to have a lot more time to do that just because our society wasn't so,
00:43:19.160
Well, I think we are addicted, uh, and particularly I think the United States is addicted to the
00:43:37.920
I know you struggled with work addiction, I think you talked about.
00:43:52.160
I mean, I did good work and I did work that had meaning and made a contribution.
00:44:03.180
But then there's another part of it, which is being driven.
00:44:06.380
I mean, you're being driven, you're not in charge.
00:44:09.980
And I was driven to work because I had to keep proving my importance and that, that people
00:44:20.500
And because I, I got this message early in life that I just wasn't important, you know?
00:44:26.940
The trauma is not, for example, the trauma is not, for example, that my mother gave me
00:44:32.560
to a stranger when I was 11 month old to save my life.
00:44:41.020
The trauma inside me was that I concluded from that, that I wasn't lovable.
00:44:51.040
The other addiction I had, and people often laugh and I can call that an addiction, but
00:44:56.020
really it was, was shopping for classical compact discs.
00:45:02.320
But, but I could drop three, $4,000 a day on them, you know?
00:45:11.240
And no sooner would I leave the store, but I have to run back to get some more.
00:45:15.780
So it wasn't about the having and the enjoying.
00:45:17.580
I mean, I love the music, but it wasn't about that.
00:45:20.240
It was about getting more and more and more and everything enough.
00:45:28.120
I mean, I don't think I mentioned this in this book, but in my book of addiction, I talk
00:45:33.300
about how I left a woman in labor once to go get a compact disc.
00:45:41.220
I think it was a Mozart symphony, but I don't remember anymore.
00:45:43.860
But, so I'm talking about, I'm not talking about my passion.
00:45:51.340
And sometimes people say, well, how can you compare your addictions to your heroin addicted,
00:46:06.060
And when I told my patients in the downtown Eastside who were using the heroin and, you
00:46:12.520
know, and the cocaine and whatever, but, you know, I've got these.
00:46:18.740
And they said, they never said, how can you compare yourself?
00:46:23.120
And they said, hey, doc, you're just like the rest of us, aren't you?
00:46:27.080
And my point is, we are all just like the rest of us.
00:46:35.620
Most people, whether it's drugs, pornography, sex, internet, cell phones.
00:46:53.060
And so, and when I ask people, not what's wrong with your addiction, because that's obvious,
00:47:01.220
Like, for example, I mean, you've had alcohol and drug issues, I've heard you say.
00:47:08.240
I think it just, it gave me a break from how I wanted to feel.
00:47:25.160
But that's because you were really uncomfortable with yourself.
00:47:27.560
And because you had feelings that were painful.
00:47:29.620
So my mantra on addiction, which I mentioned in this book, is don't ask why the addiction,
00:47:37.620
And if you understand why people have pain, don't look at their genes.
00:47:47.060
You say, or I've heard you, in your book, you talk about addiction.
00:47:51.060
If you recognize the harm it's, or I think it might have been in an interview you did,
00:47:55.640
if you recognize the harm it's doing and you keep doing it.
00:47:59.060
So addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and they don't give it up.
00:48:13.580
So pleasure, craving relief in the short term, harm in the long term, refusal and inability to let go of it.
00:48:25.980
Could have to do with any of the things we already mentioned.
00:48:35.700
I had, like, once I saw, like, pornography and stuff like that, it was like, and I could do masturbation or jerking off or whatever people call it.
00:48:46.660
But once I, that was the first way that I realized, oh, I can make myself feel good.
00:48:53.680
And it was, like, the first time that I, like, yeah, I could make myself feel good.
00:48:58.520
And so then it just became, yeah, it became a way that I always, I mean, I would just, but, yeah, I would just, that, if the only way I knew how to make myself really feel good, even though it's just for a moment.
00:49:12.600
Well, listen, should I do something scientific about that?
00:49:17.180
So cocaine addicts and crystal meth addicts, or any stimulant addicts, in fact, all addicts, amongst the things they're looking for is a head of dopamine.
00:49:27.520
Dopamine is the incentive, motivation, chemical in our brain.
00:49:31.860
It's what makes us feel vital and alive and, you know, ready to go.
00:49:45.600
No, because dopamine flows in the brain when we're exploring a novel object or a novel environment, when we're seeking food, when we're seeking a sexual partner.
00:49:59.440
You can take a mouse in a laboratory and put food in front of him, and he's hungry, but he won't eat.
00:50:08.900
Because genetically, you knocked out his dopamine receptors, and he doesn't have the motivation.
00:50:16.300
Now, cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, crystal meth, they literally give you a direct hit of dopamine.
00:50:25.760
When you do a brain scan of some people, they get repeated spikes of dopamine.
00:50:32.400
It's that hit of dopamine that they get in their brains.
00:50:36.360
And all addictions, shopping, I mean, when I went to the record store, it was the dopamine.
00:50:49.160
And, you know, spacing out, absent-mindedness, you know, all this kind of stuff.
00:50:58.600
But when I was in the record store, I was present.
00:51:05.020
Like, I almost remember which records I bought at which store at what time, you know, like.
00:51:20.780
I was hiding the discs on the porch and in the attic so my wife wouldn't call me.
00:51:34.020
You know, which is what you're after with the pornography.
00:51:40.080
And it was the first way that I could interact with a woman where it felt like I could.
00:51:45.660
But it was like, this is the safest, closest I can get to interacting with a woman.
00:52:00.240
But yeah, that dopamine is, it's interesting to hear.
00:52:04.160
So, yeah, no matter what it is, it's the dopamine behind it.
00:52:08.800
Now, and there's another chemical that's involved in many addictions, like the heroin addicts,
00:52:18.140
Those are opiates, which come from the opium plant.
00:52:25.260
Why would an opium plant work in the human brain?
00:52:29.420
We have molecules that receive the opiate molecule.
00:52:32.780
Now, why do we have receptors from a plant that grows in Afghanistan?
00:52:37.680
We have receptors for our own internal opiates.
00:52:50.180
So, those are, our endorphins are our own opiates.
00:52:54.900
Not only we do, plants do, animals do, everybody.
00:52:57.980
Now, the question is, what do the opiates do in the human brain?
00:53:03.620
But, three importantly, they relieve pain, physical and emotional pain.
00:53:11.420
Otherwise, I could smash my hand on this table.
00:53:13.760
Yeah, you jump out of a window and you wouldn't care.
00:53:20.840
Number two, what they do is they give you a sense of pleasure and reward.
00:53:25.040
So, when people go bungee jumping, they get this high level of endorphins.
00:53:33.780
Ah, that's why they keep doing wild stuff like that.
00:53:39.880
The endorphins help to make possible this little thing called love.
00:53:44.820
And, if you not caught the endorphin receptors of little mice in the laboratory,
00:53:50.440
they will not cry for their mothers on separation.
00:53:57.040
So, endorphins connect people to each other, especially parents and children.
00:54:05.160
We're each other's opiates, especially in a healthy parent-child relationship.
00:54:11.040
And, they both have endorphins flowing in their brain when they're looking into each other's eyes.
00:54:15.380
And, if, when I ask heroin addicts, or opiate addicts, a sex trade worker, I asked once,
00:54:26.640
She said, when the first time I did heroin, it felt like a warm, soft hug.
00:54:37.520
And, so many of the addicts, like, a very well-known recovery leader and, you know,
00:54:56.840
And, very forthright about her addictions and also her recovery.
00:55:04.100
Yeah, I've seen her eating lunch in the Palisades before, Pacific Palisades before.
00:55:07.440
But, she told me that what the opiates did for her gave her a sense of warmth in the belly.
00:55:19.060
And, when we didn't have the connections we needed early in life,
00:55:22.020
then we keep looking for that warmth from other sources.
00:55:24.840
So, these people that are addicted to opiates, that's what they're looking for.
00:55:30.960
I want to go back a little bit to trauma and isolation.
00:55:36.500
And, I wanted to ask, what is it about not being emotionally isolated that allows one to process a trauma?
00:55:45.080
So, I did a day-long event here in L.A. just a day before we were recording this.
00:55:56.200
And, I worked with a woman called Kimberly Shannon Murphy, who was one of Hollywood's top stunt women.
00:56:07.020
And, she worked with Cameron Diaz and Uma Thurman and Tom Cruise and all these people.
00:56:15.240
No, she was sexually abused by her grandfather, all throughout her childhood and adolescence.
00:56:37.340
And, had she been able to talk to somebody and say, this is happening to me, please help me, she would not have been traumatized.
00:56:45.740
So, the trauma happens when a child suffers and has nobody to share that suffering with.
00:56:52.400
Whether it's the extreme suffering or sexual abuse, or the milder, you might say, suffering of just not being seen for where you are.
00:57:02.500
So, what happens later on, to ask you a question, when you meet somebody where you feel safe, and now you can express what's happening with you, that's what helps to process the trauma.
00:57:21.520
And, ideally, I mean, I criticize the 12-step groups, not for what they do, because I love what they do, but what they don't do.
00:57:33.900
But, a 12-step group that's properly run will offer you support and safety.
00:57:41.600
So, now you can share yourself and be seen by others.
00:57:45.520
Yeah, I mean, I've gotten even into, like, the intimacy disorder groups, and those are a lot more potent with people talking about their emotional disorders and, like, you know, traumas and things that happen.
00:58:04.320
You know, like, sometimes we talk about trauma, but I don't talk about it from, like, a crybaby place.
00:58:08.260
I like to talk about it from, like, this is important, and it's important to learn about, and I like to share what I learn about from it.
00:58:16.780
But, you know, it's not about people victimizing themselves or trying to present themselves as a victim.
00:58:23.060
It's saying, this is what happened to me, and it's my responsibility to learn from it.
00:58:28.500
And it's my responsibility to grow from it, not to wallow in, oh, look what happened to me, and I can't help it.
00:58:34.900
Oh, I'll tell you this, Mr. Mate, that a thing I realized I was addicted to a few years ago, self-pity.
00:58:44.060
I kept always thinking, man, what's wrong with me?
00:58:50.420
And then I realized that even though it seemed like I was trying to make myself better, the truth was that I was always seeing myself as less than because those things have to both be present at the same time because I can only get better if, you know, I'm never enough.
00:59:11.220
And by never being enough, though, I'm trying to figure this out.
00:59:31.120
Now, human beings have a hard time taking responsibility.
00:59:34.140
I mean, you know, I have a hard time taking responsibility.
00:59:36.980
You know, we all have a hard time taking responsibility.
00:59:40.020
So when you're in that self-pity mode, you're suffering, but you don't have to take responsibility.
00:59:48.540
Yeah, I think, yeah, maybe there was a part of me that wanted to keep it around because it always let there be something wrong with me, too.
01:00:00.800
Like, if I never solve this, if I'm never enough, then there will always be something wrong with me.
01:00:07.520
It makes sense because, again, it takes away the challenge of growth.
01:00:19.940
People go from damn seven inches to seven feet, six and a half, six one or whatever.
01:00:29.860
And so when we don't grow, at least we avoid the growing pains.
01:00:36.480
Yeah, I used to, whenever I used to smoke, I used to be like, part of me didn't want to quit smoking.
01:00:43.460
Because I wanted to have an excuse for why I wasn't doing other things.
01:00:55.420
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01:03:47.740
So trauma fosters a shame-based view of the self.
01:03:51.880
I'd love to talk a little bit about shame, man, because that was a huge part of my life.
01:04:00.260
I felt ashamed of like, yeah, I felt ashamed of how I looked.
01:04:04.700
I felt ashamed of like my ears, my nose, my face, the way I stood.
01:04:10.500
I felt, yeah, I felt ashamed of my family, of my home.
01:04:24.060
But yeah, I just felt a ton of shame, you know.
01:04:26.000
I felt like, I felt like, I think I felt ashamed of who I was at like the first molecule almost.
01:04:34.540
Like the first cell of my, you know, the dirt under the roots.
01:04:39.400
It felt like I just, there was a part of me that felt like I was, me or anything that had to do with me was gross.
01:04:47.160
And I used the word gross because that's, it felt like gross.
01:04:50.740
No, the only thing I'll say is, it's not that you felt you were gross, it's you believed you were.
01:05:08.880
It was like a knot someone had tied a long time ago in the beginning of my time.
01:05:14.020
And in there, in that knot, it was in there somewhere.
01:05:29.580
Well, growing up in Hungary, in Eastern Europe, and I lived there until I was 13, there was a lot of anti-Semitism.
01:05:48.140
That's when your mother gave you to someone else to save you?
01:05:54.380
But even after the war, there was anti-Semitism.
01:06:06.420
So I would kind of, then I was ashamed of my Jewish looks.
01:06:11.280
Oh, so you have to hide or you have to feel like, yeah.
01:06:13.760
Yeah, there's something different about me that isn't quite right.
01:06:17.460
And, you know, there was a lot of anti-Semitism and taunting in the school that I went to, you know, when I look back on it now.
01:06:25.060
So, yeah, and then I developed body shame, you know.
01:06:30.260
I mean, to this day, it's kind of, it's interesting.
01:06:41.480
You know, like this is not big enough or this is too big or whatever, you know.
01:06:58.920
If you saw a little infant that was ashamed of yourself, ashamed of himself, it would break your heart.
01:07:05.980
How infants get shamed is when they're not seen.
01:07:16.020
Well, let's see a child is not seen or worse, is being hurt.
01:07:31.600
Or the child can believe there's something wrong with me.
01:07:35.260
And maybe if I can work hard enough, I can fix it.
01:07:39.220
Now, which belief do you think is more acceptable for the child?
01:07:46.600
So then they develop this deep sense that there's something wrong with us.
01:07:50.380
We just have to work hard enough or look good enough or something.
01:07:54.300
So even that shame, which comes from being cut off from human contact the way we need it,
01:08:06.700
Because it makes us at least think that there's something we can do.
01:08:25.720
When I say narcissists, I don't mean in a pathological sense.
01:08:29.020
I mean in a sense they think it's all about them.
01:08:34.320
So if the parents are happy and connected and there's an atmosphere of loving acceptance and so on,
01:08:43.660
then the child thinks, hey, I must be pretty good.
01:08:49.940
But if the parents are stressed, depressed, traumatized, racially challenged,
01:08:56.800
economically challenged, or such terrible things as the children in Gaza are experiencing right now
01:09:05.820
with the daily bombings and all this kind of stuff, what can they think?
01:09:13.960
Oh, imagine some kid over there in Gaza looking up and there's a bomb,
01:09:17.500
and they think, man, I'm so horrible I deserve to be bombed.
01:09:28.460
There was a study done of children in Palestine 21 years ago.
01:09:35.620
And 95% of those, 95%, this is long before the current horrors, long before October the 7th,
01:09:43.880
95% of those, 5% of those kids showed traumatic symptoms.
01:09:49.440
High percentage with their beds, like you and I did.
01:09:52.780
They expressed aggression towards their parents.
01:10:02.560
Can you imagine what's going to happen to that generation?
01:10:07.580
I mean, it just breaks my heart every day when I think about it.
01:10:10.960
And I know a lot of my fellow Jews don't agree with me,
01:10:17.260
but as a Jewish person, I'm not the only one who feels that way.
01:10:23.360
Well, when you put it in that sense that a kid, imagine a kid like, you know,
01:10:32.340
They just think, man, something's so wrong with me, I deserve to be killed.
01:10:40.340
It depends if the adults are able to hold them and keep them feeling loved.
01:10:52.240
And when I say orphaned, I don't mean just that their parents have died.
01:11:06.680
I mean, it feels like a genocide is going on over there,
01:11:08.720
and you don't know what to do, you know, for me.
01:11:16.060
And I know that there's like more political aspects of it.
01:11:18.800
And we've had different people come on to talk about Israel and Palestine on here.
01:11:22.160
And it was very knowledgeable for a lot of our listeners
01:11:25.180
because you hear about it a lot, but you don't know the history and everything.
01:11:29.560
I went there two and a half years ago to work with Palestinian women tortured in Israeli jails.
01:11:41.440
And who's the black American writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates?
01:11:57.220
In his new book, he says, once you go there and see it, you can't unsee it.
01:12:07.640
I feel like our media doesn't cover it super fairly.
01:12:14.180
I mean, it's heartbreaking anytime something's happening to a child, you know.
01:12:17.340
That should be the one thing that we can all figure out that shouldn't happen.
01:12:21.040
It's also the truth that it's also happening to kids in Israel.
01:12:27.080
And I don't know if this is the time to go into the politics of it.
01:12:32.300
It's not a question of valuing or sort of esteeming one's suffering over another.
01:12:42.220
But the degree and the scale of suffering in Gaza is unprecedented, you know.
01:12:51.840
When my wife walks into a room, I'm 80, I'm typing away, I'm reading a book.
01:13:06.220
If you take a three-month-old who's sitting there, he's lying there, and you go like this,
01:13:13.900
That's built into me because when I was three months of age and throughout my first year,
01:13:22.220
Quite apart from the anti-Semitism and the genocide, there was the war going on.
01:13:27.100
So I'd be thrown into a laundry basket and they'd rush me down to the basement.
01:13:36.000
Or when you see a load of laundry go by, you know.
01:13:39.520
So we can stay with, so what you're saying is it can stay with you that long.
01:13:46.580
It's actually literally locked into your cells and into your chromosomes.
01:13:51.040
I mean, it's heartbreaking for those children on both sides of that.
01:13:53.420
And just anywhere, anytime you think like, and even a kid, when they think like, even in America,
01:13:59.960
it's like, in America, it's like, we're bombing each other.
01:14:05.960
We can't figure out, how can we not figure out a way that we can do, live, all God is
01:14:14.860
asking us to do is be alive and do it without war?
01:14:18.660
That seems, it seems unreal that we can't figure that out, man.
01:14:24.000
Well, that, I mean, the great spiritual teachers have been addressing that insanity for thousands
01:14:35.220
Yeah, but how does shame cause us to lose compassion for ourselves?
01:14:49.820
After my book on addiction came out, In the Realm of Hunger Goes, I got an email, not an email,
01:14:56.760
And he said, I really appreciate your book and showing how trauma causes, is one of the, not,
01:15:07.660
addiction is not the only outcome of trauma, but it's one of the outcomes of trauma, one
01:15:14.400
And he's really appreciate all that, but he says, I can't play my mother, it's my own fault that
01:15:29.300
Because if he actually understood, fully understood, that he was just a baby at some point,
01:15:34.440
needing and wanting to be loved and held and seen and valued just for being a human being,
01:15:42.580
and that didn't happen to him, and that caused so much pain in him that he escaped into
01:15:55.600
But that lack of self-compassion, I see it all the time in my workshops when I do therapy
01:16:03.620
One of my main tasks is to help them to notice, not to criticize them for it, but to help them
01:16:11.880
to be aware of how they lack compassion for themselves.
01:16:14.660
And it's hard to even notice that you're getting in the shame circle, it's so hard to even notice
01:16:26.500
And the self-pity was manifesting itself like, oh, you can figure this out, you know?
01:16:30.940
But by trying to constantly help myself figure it out, all I was doing was focusing on my
01:16:35.520
own being not good enough, which in a way is really just self-pity.
01:16:45.380
I remember the first time somebody said, hey, man, give yourself some grace.
01:16:51.060
Because people find themselves accusing themselves and talking to themselves in ways that they
01:17:05.520
Um, can you notice, um, characteristics or actualities in your life today that you can
01:17:12.780
directly correlate to side effects of childhood trauma?
01:17:25.480
But, but you see, and triggered is an interesting word because we keep using it.
01:17:31.060
Well, it means a reaction that's way out of proportion to the, to the actual stimulus.
01:17:38.820
Now, when you actually look at a, when you, where the, where the metaphor comes from,
01:17:50.740
What makes the trigger work is that there's ammunition and an explosive charge.
01:17:54.440
So, as long as I'm full of explosive charge, which is my unresolved trauma, some of you will
01:18:06.040
My difficulty believing that I was really loved and accepted in my marriage relationship,
01:18:14.460
You know, um, my tendency to blame others for my own reactions rather than taking responsibility.
01:18:31.280
Certainly, the first book I wrote in ADHD is called Scattered Minds.
01:18:36.200
My Scattered Mind is certainly an outcome of early stress, because, I mean, that dissociation,
01:18:42.880
that tuning out, it's just an escape mechanism, you know?
01:18:45.980
So, the way I was unable to see my kids for the beautiful, sensitive creatures that they
01:18:54.120
were, you know, um, in my workaholism, oh, it's shown up, it's shown up in so many ways.
01:19:02.140
You said that not believing that people love us.
01:19:10.220
Why does that, why, why do we sometimes, you'll be in a marriage, in a relationship,
01:19:14.940
and we'll still believe that person, they don't love me, or they, we won't believe their
01:19:21.320
Yeah, we, yeah, we won't believe we're loved, you know, or accepted.
01:19:24.840
Well, Peter Levine, who's one of the great trauma teachers, he talked about trauma being
01:19:37.080
So we're in the present moment, but we're actually reacting to the past.
01:19:43.360
Now, throughout the first year of my life, given our situation, my mother was really stressed,
01:19:53.440
She couldn't give me that calm, attuned, loving attention that I needed.
01:20:01.520
You know, what could be, you know, what could be greater love than for a 24-year-old young woman to give her baby to a total stranger in the street, you know?
01:20:15.420
So the person that ought to be loving me is giving me away.
01:20:20.120
I can only conclude from that that I'm not lovable.
01:20:24.880
Now, once I don't think I'm lovable, I'm not going to believe that anybody actually loves me, no matter what they manifest or what they show me.
01:20:33.600
You know, and then I'm blaming them for my own sense of unlovability.
01:20:41.820
This is unprocessed trauma we're talking about.
01:20:45.420
Yeah, I've almost even thought it, sometimes I thought like, oh, you're dumb for loving me.
01:20:55.680
It's like Garcho Marx said, that I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as a member.
01:21:01.020
Yeah, so anybody would love me, they can't be very bright, can they?
01:21:09.860
You talk also about not parent blaming, which I think is really important.
01:21:20.140
I mean, your story right there about your mother gave you away because it was the, yeah, I mean, imagine the terror, the pain in her of like,
01:21:26.880
the only thing, the most loving thing I can do is put my child somewhere else away from me right now for its own safety.
01:21:34.320
Well, all parents, we're born with a caring instinct, you know, like we're born with certain emotional systems in our brain.
01:21:47.400
Curiosity, seeking, the dopamine circuit is another one.
01:22:02.440
So I don't, I never doubt that parents love their kids, that there's at least an impulse in them to do so.
01:22:08.200
But the love that the parent feels is not that the love that the parent child receives.
01:22:16.360
What the child receives is the quality of the parent's presence.
01:22:27.640
Are they preoccupied, stressed, depressed, traumatized, overworked, whatever?
01:22:31.960
Or any of those conditions, the child does not experience the love in its whole sense.
01:22:42.100
So even though you might know that your mother loved you, and I'm sure she did in her own way, and she did her very best, but she was not able to give you those qualities that you would really in your heart experience as love.
01:22:55.140
You know, and so in this society where, as you said earlier, parents have to go to work just to put bread on the table, and where so many people are economically insecure, with so much stress, so much division, so much angst, so much aggression, so much suspicion, what's it like to be a parent?
01:23:20.440
And don't forget, we didn't evolve in nuclear families.
01:23:25.720
We evolved in groups where kids are around nurturing adults the whole day, including their parents, but not only their parents.
01:23:35.940
So in today's society, parenting has become an almost an impossible task.
01:23:43.120
And I'll even say this, and I'm not trying to excuse anything, because there's no excuse.
01:23:51.720
But if you look at parents who abuse their kids, what happened to them as kids?
01:23:58.920
It's not that they grow up, it's not that they decide, I'm going to abuse my kids.
01:24:05.940
So, I think blame, now, responsibility is one thing, blame is another.
01:24:15.560
I think blame is totally unscientific, it's cruel, and it's totally inappropriate.
01:24:20.260
So, as much as I point out the impact of early experience, there's absolutely no room for blaming parents.
01:24:27.840
And, Theo, what's really interesting to me, is after I wrote my book on addiction, occasionally some strange person will come up to me and say,
01:24:39.420
My child died of an overdose, and I thank you for writing the book.
01:24:43.200
And I always find that a bit startling, because in the book I'm saying that it's childhood experience and trauma that ultimately result in addiction.
01:25:02.840
You know, the question is, in each generation, can we take responsibility so we don't pass it on to the next one?
01:25:15.060
And Robert Sapolsky, the scientist who I quoted, he said, There's just no room for blame.
01:25:24.700
Yeah, it's not, it's not, yeah, you can have, you can have discussions about responsibility and things like that.
01:25:30.140
But, and share, hey, I think you could have been more responsible about this, or seeing something that was somebody's responsibility, but yeah.
01:25:47.440
So it's not a question of telling people, don't be angry.
01:25:49.520
But having anger and owning it is not the same as saying, you did something deliberately that you shouldn't have done, and you should have known better, and you know, you said terrible, you know.
01:26:00.980
So there's anger, healthy anger, necessary anger.
01:26:04.580
And then there's the expectation that people take responsibility.
01:26:16.780
And then there's blame, which is a whole other bag of monkeys.
01:26:22.160
Yeah, we don't, it's a zoo we don't, we don't need to be involved in.
01:26:31.660
Like, is there like shows you like to watch, or a thing you like?
01:26:34.700
Well, sometimes what makes me laugh is my own ridiculousness.
01:26:41.280
I know it's going to be a good day if I find that I'm laughing at myself.
01:26:44.480
Yeah, yeah, well, there's so many, you know, like the little human ego is, I mean, on the one hand, we can be compassionate towards it, but on the other hand, it's so ridiculous.
01:26:59.480
Yeah, yeah, that's one of our, that's one of our saving, it's been 55 years in, in a month, and I tell you, we've laughed so much together at ourselves, at each other.
01:27:19.140
When things are absurd, they make me laugh, you know, they're so out of touch with reality.
01:27:31.480
I'm just trying to just know a little bit more about you.
01:27:41.760
Uh, that, I, I, I, I, I wrote my head off about that one.
01:27:46.460
Um, I don't have such a good memory for that kind of stuff.
01:27:55.780
Um, yeah, do you have a favorite, or, uh, one, or just a fiction book that you like?
01:28:14.080
Um, I just reread, uh, The Brothers Karamazov last year.
01:28:18.720
Um, because it's such a deep, such a deep understanding of the human soul.
01:28:51.520
I think it was Joseph Heller is his first name.
01:28:56.220
Well, it, um, by modern standards, there's some parts of it that are really sexist and misogynist.
01:29:15.480
But it's just reproingly funny about the absurdity of war and, and, and the
01:29:30.940
I, I, I think I had to read it sometime, but maybe in college we had to read it.
01:29:34.540
Did you ever read, um, John Irving, any of his books?
01:29:40.340
I, you know, I started reading that decades ago.
01:29:45.280
His latest book is, it's, I don't even know what it is.
01:29:51.340
You know, recently there was a book that's got a lot of attention, uh, Demon Copperhead
01:29:58.500
by Barbara Kingsolver, and, and she wrote The Poisonwood Bible.
01:30:05.000
But Demon Copperfield, Copperhead is a, is a kind of a modern take on, um, on David Copperfield
01:30:14.060
by Charles Dickens, and it takes place in Appalachia.
01:30:17.800
And I just saw an interviewer with her yesterday, how she goes after, uh, J.D. Vance.
01:30:27.660
And she's saying, buddy, you don't represent us, you know.
01:30:31.360
And, and, and, and Demon Copperhead takes on the hillbilly image of, of Appalachians
01:30:49.740
Maybe I can, maybe after I read the book, I could see if she would want to come and visit.
01:30:53.640
Um, sometimes like I always like feel like I have to explain my intentions.
01:30:59.840
I, there's a part of me that always feels like I'm manipulating somebody.
01:31:12.500
Um, like even if I'm just doing something nice, there's a part of me that's like, oh,
01:31:23.700
And, and, uh, it has to do with the fact that you couldn't be real as a kid.
01:31:34.120
And it's really hard to let go of that, of that sense that I'm still doing it.
01:31:47.120
Who, the part that you could actually, because it's not a feeling, you know, Theo, it's,
01:31:53.920
And a belief can be, you don't argue with feelings, but beliefs you can challenge.
01:32:01.120
Like when you're talking to me now, are we having a genuine conversation?
01:32:06.040
Or is it true that you're actually manipulating me in any way at all?
01:32:14.200
Maybe you can't manipulate me even if you wanted to.
01:32:18.660
So, so that, so that fear of yours is both a lack of compassion towards yourself and a lack of, in a sense,
01:32:34.340
trust in the other person's capacity to look after themselves.
01:32:41.160
I was just talking with my brother yesterday because we had similar childhoods and we're
01:32:44.020
thinking of, well, what are some things that I could think about to talk with him about?
01:32:46.860
And, and we were talking about that, that sometimes we always feel, uh, like there's
01:32:51.820
something where like we're manipulating ourselves or that our ability to manipulate would be so
01:32:56.580
powerful that we wouldn't even know what we're doing, which is pretty crazy too.
01:33:06.240
You know, but, um, so it's not a question that one never does it, but I know when I'm
01:33:13.000
And usually it's because I want something that I don't know how to state directly where
01:33:17.740
I'm afraid that I might not get otherwise, you know, and then I'm afraid to show up with
01:33:24.620
Which would make sense as a child, there was something you wanted that you didn't think
01:33:32.000
Children, children manipulate out of a sense of weakness and, uh, that's pretty much all
01:33:42.060
they can do if otherwise they don't get their needs met.
01:33:44.280
Um, a lot of the, your book that I've read so far, it's about, it's getting to the part
01:33:50.400
where it's like, uh, that Western medicine doesn't always take into context as much that
01:33:56.760
the body and the mind, like us as an entire thing, as our society, as you know, it's almost
01:34:03.380
like, and like if safe, like the whole world and time and culture and everything, we're a
01:34:11.820
car, instead of the doctor looking at the car, they just look at the human, which would
01:34:18.600
And so they're always just working on this one part instead of looking at the whole car,
01:34:23.380
which could also be a cause of why the part isn't doing well.
01:34:28.880
And, um, see what, see, we have to make a distinction here.
01:34:41.460
Nobody ever taught me about the mind-body unity, but physiologically, you can't separate
01:34:48.120
the mind from the body so that our emotional circuits and the immune system and the hormonal
01:34:56.200
apparatus and the nervous system are actually one system.
01:35:02.100
So when things happen emotionally, naturally they have a physiological effect.
01:35:11.520
Children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to have asthma.
01:35:17.040
Children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to have asthma.
01:35:22.180
So they're, the airway is narrow and they get inflamed.
01:35:26.500
Black, there's a study that showed that black American women, the more episodes of racism
01:35:31.740
they experience, the higher the risk of asthma.
01:35:35.180
It's been shown that women with severe PTSD have doubled the risk of ovarian cancer.
01:35:47.080
Adults who experience the loss of an adult child have a higher risk of malignancy of the bone marrow
01:36:00.620
Parents who lost a child have doubled the risk of multiple sclerosis.
01:36:04.840
There are hundreds of studies showing the physiological impact of stress and trauma and loss on the physiology.
01:36:16.640
So manifesting itself in our bodies as a disease or contributing to.
01:36:23.620
Yeah, because cancer, it's like, you know, you say in the book, like, people get cancer.
01:36:28.340
A lot of times you hear, like, the guy got cancer, he died three weeks later, right?
01:36:34.740
And it just, enough had happened, I guess, that it turned over into being.
01:36:40.480
Well, we know that stress, for example, can turn off genes that protect you against cancer
01:36:55.200
And we know that people that repress their healthy anger, they're actually suppressing their immune system.
01:37:04.180
And this stuff has been studied over and over again.
01:37:07.040
And great clinicians have been recognizing this forever.
01:37:11.640
And in 2,400 years ago, Socrates, the Greek philosopher, said that the problem with the doctors of today is that they separate the mind from the body.
01:37:24.300
Now, I can name you any number of great medical pioneers.
01:37:28.220
I mentioned someone in the book who 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 80 years ago, 40 years ago, pointed out that mind and body can't be separated.
01:37:39.340
That, in fact, we are biopsychosocial creatures, which means that our biology is inseparable from our psyche or emotional apparatus and from our social relationships.
01:37:55.060
The problem is medical practice doesn't recognize that oneness.
01:37:58.680
So most of the time, you go to a physician with rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis, for both of which, there's plenty of evidence about the role of trauma and stress, but the doctor's never going to ask you about any of that stuff.
01:38:13.160
They're just going to deal with the physical aspects of it, which they should deal with.
01:38:18.620
But they also need to look at the whole, you know, what happened in this person's life and what's stressing them now, and how can we help with that part of it?
01:38:28.680
You know, so medical practice, as a doctor, I don't know if to be told how miraculously effective the achievements of modern medicine can be.
01:38:40.940
But at the same time, there's a huge piece that we're missing, and that piece is not just intuitive or spiritual woo-hoo.
01:38:51.120
But they don't teach that mind-body-unity science in the medical schools.
01:39:00.420
Now, if you look at indigenous medicine, there's the medicine wheel, which consists of four quadrants.
01:39:11.760
There's the mental, which is our emotions and our thoughts.
01:39:15.620
There's the social, which is our relationships with other people and other creatures.
01:39:21.000
And then there's the spiritual, which is our connection with something greater than just a little ego, however you define that.
01:39:27.920
And health, they say, depends on the balance between those four quadrants.
01:39:36.580
But unfortunately, that science is largely ignored in medical training.
01:39:45.140
Well, especially now, a lot of our medicine has kind of been compromised, or I think our industry has, you know.
01:39:51.160
And I don't know your industry, and I'm not trying to offend it.
01:39:53.720
But it certainly seems like just, you know, it's been, most industries have been a lot of, have been compromised.
01:40:01.100
You know, the fact to have better, you know, balance sheets, then.
01:40:08.140
But look, if you come to me with depression, by the way, that's another diagnosis that I've had.
01:40:15.020
So I've, I've actually taken medication for depression.
01:40:23.320
But if you look at the word depression, what does it actually mean to depress something?
01:40:36.840
Now, why would a person push down their feelings?
01:40:39.740
One of the needs of the child, one of the essential needs of the child, as I pointed out in this book,
01:40:45.680
I don't make this stuff up, I just report it, is to be able to experience all their emotions,
01:40:50.880
anger, grief, fear, panic, love, playfulness, curiosity, lust for life, and just hunger for life.
01:41:05.740
The child doesn't need to express all those emotions when they arise and have that understood,
01:41:13.980
Now, if I'm in an environment where the parents can't do that, you've had guests on this program.
01:41:20.600
I won't mention them by name, who teach that an angry child should be made to sit by themselves
01:41:29.800
A two-year-old kid gets frustrated, they get angry.
01:41:34.780
If you give that kid the message that if you're angry, you can't be with me,
01:41:41.260
Now, am I going to separate myself from the person on whom my life depends, or will I push down my anger?
01:41:51.160
Well, give that message to the kid often enough, what are they going to do?
01:41:58.140
Thirty years later, they're diagnosed with this disease called depression.
01:42:01.680
Now, if you come to me with depression, I might decide that temporarily it might be a good idea for you to be in antidepressants.
01:42:20.560
Let's also look at what made you push down your feelings, what happened to you.
01:42:25.260
Now, prescribing the antidepressant takes me three minutes.
01:42:31.600
Talking with you about what actually happened to you that made you push down your feelings, that takes a long time.
01:42:39.980
And doctors are not even trained to raise that question.
01:42:42.800
So even if, as a physician, I don't have the expertise to deal with that question, at least I could refer you to somebody who does.
01:42:51.300
But no, most of the time, it's just the industrial model.
01:42:55.500
You come in, I've got five minutes with you, here's a prescription, goodbye.
01:43:00.440
Well, that doesn't deal with the underlying problem.
01:43:03.640
It deals with the symptom, which may sometimes be helpful, sometimes it isn't.
01:43:09.080
But whether it's helpful or not, it does not deal with the underlying dynamic.
01:43:18.220
It's just, and it's just where our society is too.
01:43:21.820
We've gone so far down this road and it's just like, how do we, yeah, back in the day, it's like, it seemed like if you were like, maybe this is crazy.
01:43:31.500
But if you were like just a small group around a campfire, you could, you could see if somebody was hurting you.
01:43:54.260
A friend of mine who I quote in the book, he's a part Lakota physician and psychiatrist.
01:44:03.600
And he said in the Lakota tradition, when somebody gets sick, the community says, thank you.
01:44:10.480
Your illness represents some imbalance in our community.
01:44:35.080
And that life is lived in an environment, in a multigenerational family, in a certain culture.
01:44:44.760
Do you think we can start to head more in that direction?
01:44:55.200
Like sometimes I feel like our whole planet just wants to fucking roar.
01:44:59.020
You know, it's like it just like I feel like everybody just wants to go in the yard and just scream at the.
01:45:08.960
It feels like there's just something trapped in us that is.
01:45:39.520
I think there's a deep sense of frustration in this culture.
01:45:43.400
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to be able to take this anymore.
01:45:55.100
I think the level of frustration in our society has increased.
01:46:07.660
I just came back from a three-week, six-country tour of Europe.
01:46:15.620
That sense of frustration, that sense of longing that we talked about, it's so universal these days.
01:46:24.500
Because that's what, yeah, that's what, it feels like this.
01:46:36.120
And this society is absolutely brilliant at creating escapes through mass media, mass sports, consumption, and so on.
01:46:53.120
And this is particularly true of comedians I have found.
01:47:00.580
That's a great point, too, and I have to take that into account.
01:47:03.680
And more sensitive means, sensitive is from the Latin word, sincere, to feel.
01:47:09.140
But some people are genetically born more sensitive.
01:47:13.360
That means when things go wrong, they feel it more than the others.
01:47:17.720
So the same thing can happen externally to different people.
01:47:22.320
But if one of them is more sensitive, they're going to feel it all the more.
01:47:26.840
So it's especially the highly sensitive people who are feeling that scream that you talk about.
01:47:34.120
Yeah, that's a great point, that it, yeah, yeah, that's what, it's just like, I just feel like we've just gone so far off the path of.
01:47:46.700
But if I can say something, your sense that we've gone off the path, what in you knows that?
01:48:04.960
What in you, who in you knows that we've gone off the path?
01:48:14.360
So that, I don't want to create too much doom and gloom here.
01:48:19.920
There is this trueness here that's never been damaged, never been destroyed.
01:48:31.200
And that, yeah, how do we get back to connecting with that sort of thing?
01:48:34.300
Because our society, our culture is not going to do it for us.
01:48:37.600
It doesn't feel like we might have to start with it as individuals.
01:48:43.200
We do begin as individuals, but you probably realize, I mean, just for example, in your AA group, there's a community there.
01:48:50.740
Who have a lot of shared experiences and who are very vulnerably open in sharing their experiences.
01:49:00.860
When you share about yourself, that's a source of support to others.
01:49:04.600
When they share about themselves, that's support for you.
01:49:07.540
So that ultimately, no, we don't have to do it by ourselves.
01:49:10.480
It begins as an individual process, but pretty soon you find that we're not alone.
01:49:17.080
Do you think we can get out of, of this toxic culture?
01:49:21.300
Or do you feel like there's a way out of where we are?
01:49:33.580
You know, I believe that there's an essential goodness there.
01:49:43.740
You know, I think that's, we're endowed with those capacities.
01:49:46.320
And as difficult as things may look, and especially these days with these terrible wars going on and the suffering that we've talked about, I still believe that there's so many examples everywhere I go.
01:50:00.680
I meet such good people, people are trying to make a difference, people are trying to do their little bit or their big bit to reduce the suffering in the world, to speak the truth, to offer some love, compassion to the world.
01:50:31.940
Some people, it's covered over so much that they might never get in touch with it.
01:50:36.420
Most people, I think, are quite capable of getting there once they decide that they want to.
01:50:43.180
Yeah, I think, what scares me, I think, is that in order to be a human being, we have to have the present moment, right?
01:50:57.160
We have to be able to still have, like, the ability to reflect and recognize and think.
01:51:05.620
And our society or our culture has created a lot where we're so many distractions so that if we never even take the time, if we can be distracted enough from being able to really think or feel, feel really probably, starting with feeling, then we'll be trapped forever in a way.
01:51:31.880
Well, it's interesting how you say all these really insightful things, then you keep asking me if it makes sense or not.
01:51:41.500
I can't think and talk sometimes at the same time.
01:52:01.220
The feeling apparatus is present in us before we're even born.
01:52:07.480
The thinking apparatus doesn't start developing until much later on.
01:52:11.820
So, that if there's a scaffolding of healthy feelings, then our thinking will be aligned with reality.
01:52:26.920
We're feeling creatures before we're thinking creatures.
01:52:30.400
So, what you said makes absolute sense from the, even from the evolutionary and physiological point of view.
01:52:36.740
Like, animals feel, but they don't necessarily think.
01:52:42.900
But without thinking, without feeling, they wouldn't survive.
01:52:58.540
It's like, even with like autonomous inventions and technology, I'm like, at a certain point,
01:53:05.400
I don't want any more technology if it's not helping us.
01:53:12.080
Like, you're killing what it means to be me, or not me as a human, but just us.
01:53:20.580
It's just like, you're going to take jobs away.
01:53:22.640
If a guy doesn't have a job, he doesn't have a purpose.
01:53:24.380
Having a job isn't only your purpose, but it's what gives people some sense of purpose.
01:53:32.480
And once you don't feel like you have any of that, then what are you?
01:53:34.960
It's like, we're almost just, I don't understand why our society wants that.
01:53:40.160
Well, first of all, I totally get where you're coming from.
01:53:44.860
Because when we talk about AI, my mind glazes over.
01:53:53.600
I'm much more interested in what happens with human beings.
01:54:05.000
And when you talk about meaning, if you look at the diminishing lifespan of especially white American men, it's that loss of meaning.
01:54:18.980
When they hollowed out the industrial heartland of America and they outsourced all the cheap labor to other countries.
01:54:29.000
Well, you can see that from the profit motive, it makes sense.
01:54:32.640
But from the point of view of human lives, you just deprive people of the sense of meaning, you know?
01:54:40.520
And that sense of meaning, it's a psychologist in front of mind called dislocation, is a major source of distress and a major source of self-harm and addiction.
01:54:54.720
Well, I even think like it used to be, and I say this many times, but like somebody worked in your area and they worked at a factory and they made like a table and they brought it.
01:55:05.620
And you even had one of the tables at your house and you were proud of your dad because he worked there and he made it.
01:55:11.020
And then, but now you have somebody in another country mailing something over here.
01:55:15.580
They don't care about it, that they're making it.
01:55:17.740
Their kids don't know even what they do probably, you know?
01:55:20.960
And it's just, it's just like, where is the victim?
01:55:24.820
I don't understand what level of this we're going to get to that is healthy.
01:55:30.580
Well, I think now what we're talking about here is the good old profit motive because profits don't care about human values, you know?
01:55:40.180
And most companies, that's what they're interested in is what will maximize profits.
01:55:47.180
And if they have to throw a thousand people out of a job in some town, they'll do it.
01:55:56.780
Well, work, I think, is very important to people.
01:56:01.420
I just read a really interesting book, by the way.
01:56:03.460
It's called The Continuum Concept, published 40 years ago or so.
01:56:08.600
This woman goes to the Venezuelan jungle, six weeks away from civilization, and she watches how these Stone Age people bring up their kids.
01:56:20.520
That's the book right there, The Continuum Concept.
01:56:22.760
How they bring up their kids, what they hold them everywhere, like we said.
01:56:27.960
These kids will grow up really happy and comfortable with themselves.
01:56:30.600
But the point I'm making is this tribe, they don't have a word for work.
01:57:15.320
And then also our society, as you're saying, creates so much stress and uncomfort.
01:57:19.320
Because, like, say if you took something that's supposed to be somewhere and you put it somewhere else, it's going to always feel stressed because it's not, like, in its home, right?
01:57:34.860
Because I often say you can study a zebra and you could conclude that the zebra is an animal that mostly lies around all day, gets up a few times to eat or to defecate or something, and then lies down again, walks around a little bit.
01:57:50.840
And it would be true if you observed a zebra in a zoo in a cage.
01:57:54.560
But if you observed a zebra out there on a savannah or wherever she lives, you'd see a totally different creature.
01:58:03.780
And the human beings, in a sense, we put ourselves into a zoo.
01:58:09.560
We're so far away from our natural evolutionary environment.
01:58:13.060
It's not a question, again, of going back to Stone Age, but it's a question of recognizing what we've lost.
01:58:19.080
In a certain sense, we've put ourselves into a zoo, and we're studying ourselves totally out of our elements, and then we're wondering how come things are going so badly.
01:58:34.820
It's almost, and I hate to even laugh at it, but you're saying it's absurd.
01:58:39.240
We're literally living in a theater of the absurd.
01:58:42.060
In your book, you also talk about, like, the history of humanity, that what we call civilization is less than 5% of our existence as a species, right?
01:58:52.980
That for the entire span of the human genus, that it represents less than 1% of that time.
01:59:01.960
We're such a small piece of how long humans have been alive.
01:59:06.040
And we have learned that such groups, a long time ago, held values emphasizing hospitality, sharing, generosity, and reciprocal exchange for the purpose not of personal enrichment, but of connection.
01:59:18.720
These values were intelligent, time-tested guidelines for mutual survival.
01:59:24.220
Yes, there was violence and bad behavior and all the rest.
01:59:28.200
But we knew something about setting the collective context for our humanness to flourish fruitfully.
01:59:37.200
It was a group thing, and people never saw themselves as separate from the environment or from animals.
01:59:44.440
And in British Columbia, excuse me, where I live, the indigenous people used to have a ceremony called a potlatch.
01:59:55.020
And the potlatches, they would invite all these people, neighbors and other tribes and so on, and they'd give things to each other.
02:00:04.700
So it wasn't about getting, it was about giving.
02:00:08.740
When the British colonists arrived, you know what they did?
02:00:13.880
Because they wanted to kill that spirit of communality that the indigenous people thrived on.
02:00:22.860
So they forbade a lot of the practices that gave the indigenous people meaning, including the giving.
02:00:30.760
And until very recently, decades ago, it was outlawed.
02:00:46.800
You know, and because they knew the healing power of the chants.
02:00:52.840
And the chants really connected indigenous people to their traditions.
02:01:02.920
They did it in Canada, of course, parts of Africa.
02:01:09.200
And so that a real effort was made to divorce people from their essential communal drives.
02:01:43.540
No other species has ever had the ability to be untrue to itself.
02:01:47.840
To forsake its own needs, never mind to convince itself that such is the way things ought to be.
02:01:56.780
I still wonder if Mother Nature is mad about, like, if some of the diseases we have now are because of, like, what happened to the indigenous cultures.
02:02:03.780
If some of that just, like, is, like, you know, because Mother Nature remembers, you know?
02:02:08.920
And so it's, like, are we still just suffering the sins of, like, what's happened a long time ago?
02:02:17.100
And the problem is we haven't learned from it yet.
02:02:21.400
Like, actually, I work a lot with indigenous people in Canada.
02:02:25.640
They often invite me to talk about addiction and stress and trauma and so on.
02:02:29.740
Well, some of them, we did a show in Vancouver.
02:02:41.820
But, so I do a lot of that work, but I get so much from it because there's such deep wisdom.
02:02:53.840
Like, even with all their trauma and all the dysfunction, all the addiction and mental illness amongst them,
02:03:01.420
which is strictly a result of colonial trauma, but there's still such gentle wisdom.
02:03:08.920
I remember doing a ceremony with some indigenous friends two years ago, art and nature.
02:03:24.480
And I actually believe that when this society starts getting its head screwed on right,
02:03:32.600
we'll be very humbly willing to learn from the indigenous people.
02:03:35.340
You know, like, yes, civilization has brought many amazing things, not to forget that,
02:03:43.220
but what if we could meld our technological know-how and scientific brilliance with indigenous wisdom?
02:03:58.340
Well, I, that's, you know, that's, I believe that's certainly a possibility.
02:04:04.080
I think that has to be the hope that we take away.
02:04:06.820
Cause if I were ever a leader, I think we would get back to some of the things that were important.
02:04:11.260
You know, you know, one of my favorite times when I was a kid, the power would go out sometimes.
02:04:15.760
And so we'd all have to like, mom would put a couple of candles out.
02:04:18.480
And so we'd all have to be right there together.
02:04:20.980
And it was just like, I don't know, all that mattered was just like, like you could joke and, but it was like, I don't know.
02:04:32.900
You need to know where everybody was, everybody here.
02:04:39.820
When there's disasters, people really come together.
02:04:44.500
They tend to come together to support each other.
02:04:46.600
They'll go out of their way to, to give and to support.
02:04:52.280
You're seeing it with the flooding and stuff in the Southeast right now.
02:04:57.780
I think there's so much to learn from our natives, from, uh, from the indigenous people of the land, you know, just as we learn from animals and all parts of nature.
02:05:06.140
Well, Darshanov, the, the, the scientist, the psychologist that you mentioned, she's written a book called The Evolved Nest.
02:05:13.780
And she's talking about our commonality with other animals and how they rear their, their young and what we could learn from them.
02:05:29.520
Um, Darshanov's done some amazing work on, on the actual needs of human beings.
02:05:39.160
If you ever want to talk to her, I'm happy to connect you.
02:05:47.120
Oh, no, she's a retired professor at the University of Notre Dame.
02:05:59.080
But you should learn about how penguins bring up their kids or wolves.
02:06:07.340
When a mother dies, then wolves who haven't even been pregnant start lactating to feed the young ones.
02:06:17.340
You know, and how, when the baby elephant is born, you know what happens?
02:06:24.380
All the other mothers, you know, they, they stand around, they touch the baby.
02:06:30.140
I mean, there's incredible wisdom in animals as well.
02:06:33.600
And Darshanov and her writing partner, Gay Bradshaw, they really show us the lessons we could actually derive just from watching our animals bring up their young.
02:06:47.620
Is that the best message to take away from your book, do you think?
02:06:50.940
We still have a lot to learn and we need to be humble.
02:06:53.720
We need to realize that for all our achievements and our intellectual brilliance, we've come disconnected from our hearts, from our gut feelings, and that we need to really be curious about what our hearts and our guts are telling us, not just our intellects.
02:07:19.780
Before you go, and thank you so much for your time.
02:07:24.620
There's a part, Rafi, there's a guy in the book, Rafi.
02:07:52.340
But he says we discover who we are from the inside.
02:07:56.040
And Rafi actually played in the White House at the Clinton inauguration.
02:08:04.500
And he's like the children's troubadour of the world.
02:08:13.200
And at some point, some years ago, he wakes up in the middle of the night,
02:08:20.600
and the word child-honoring comes into his head.
02:08:24.120
And he says, what would the world look like if we honored children
02:08:33.600
Now, the thing about his singing for children is it's not condescending.
02:08:39.840
He really plays with kids and really gets them.
02:08:49.180
So he says, whatever the quote was, that we discover who we are from the inside.
02:08:59.340
And he's actually talking about how human beings develop,
02:09:07.680
So already when a mother is stressed, the child really feels that in the uterus.
02:09:14.540
And that interferes with the child's brain development.
02:09:16.600
So that actually we develop our sense from our feelings first.
02:09:23.360
And as I said earlier, then the intellect comes in.
02:09:27.900
But if the emotional circuits are out of balance because of early stress,
02:09:37.260
And our society we have is women, so many mothers have to work.
02:09:42.100
It's like we've just, yeah, we've, we're a little misconstrued.
02:09:46.500
Well, the United States, 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth.
02:09:53.960
And what nature would prefer scientifically and physiologically
02:09:58.960
is for the baby with the mother for at least nine months.
02:10:07.260
Or, if not the mother, but at least with the mother for at least nine months,
02:10:13.560
but ideally well beyond them, but with other nurturing adults.
02:10:19.520
So it's not just caregivers who give you food and.
02:10:23.560
It's the mother, the grandmother, the aunt, the neighbor, the sense of community,
02:10:30.740
How did we get off on such a different tangent then?
02:10:34.180
And if we, if we were, if we were supposed to be in these, these tribes, these groups,
02:10:39.580
these, it's just evolution and there's nothing we can do about it.
02:10:48.740
Which is God, obviously brought all kinds of benefits, but also look at.
02:10:55.200
So again, it's for me, can we value our achievements and our knowledge and try to remember what we've lost?
02:11:08.160
And trying to reconnect with those parts of ourselves that we've kind of got divorced from.
02:11:17.080
And your children just look into them, pour into them what you want out of them, you know?
02:11:23.440
And yes, some, some, you, kids don't know how to feel sometimes.
02:11:27.440
You have to also talk to them about their feelings.
02:11:38.460
It's our job to give them words for their feelings.
02:11:41.520
It's our job to give them words for their feelings.
02:11:44.160
So yeah, if you're a child, if you're not doing that, it's, it's not a judgment and I don't
02:11:49.260
But that's what I could have used when I was young.
02:11:56.560
You're really angry with daddy right now because you wanted a cookie before dinner and daddy
02:12:03.920
So it's, it's not even, we don't have to tell them how to feel.
02:12:25.900
That doesn't mean you're allowed to hate your brother.
02:12:32.240
So, so we, we're not talking about permissive parenting.
02:12:36.180
Um, we're talking about authoritative parenting.
02:12:39.680
Not authoritarian, authoritative, where the child is understood and held and guided and we give
02:12:46.840
them words for them words for their feelings, but we don't ask them to suppress themselves.
02:12:50.520
We may not accept certain behaviors or put limits, but we know how to do that.
02:12:56.520
If the child trusts you and is looking to you, like natives, the indigenous people, like we said
02:13:02.880
earlier, never had to, never hit their kids because the kids trusted the adults for guidance.
02:13:15.580
We learn them like, you know, through a YouTube video or through, we, we learn so, we, I mean,
02:13:20.980
now most people learn about sex through pornography.
02:13:27.180
We need each other to, yeah, we need each other and our, we're create, we're creating
02:13:37.940
And, and, and we're creating more and more that if you have needs, there's something wrong
02:13:44.220
If you have emotional needs, you're a weakling, you know.
02:13:53.740
Um, Dr. Monte, thank you just for putting all this together.
02:14:00.000
You, I mean, you have so many, um, uh, other like, uh, therapists and scientists and philosophers
02:14:09.540
and, uh, doctors and everything you, that you've quoted in here to really put together
02:14:17.060
And it's not all like Debbie Downer stuff either.
02:14:19.960
And, and I don't mean to be, and I don't think we were that much in this conversation.
02:14:22.940
It's just looking at things and saying, Hey, well, let me, let's take us a look at where
02:14:32.240
Actually, it's not just to spread doom and gloom.
02:14:34.920
And, uh, actually the healing part of the book is the longest part of the book.
02:14:52.320
It was 19 weeks on the New York times bestsellers list for a year and a half.
02:14:57.660
It's been published in 41 languages now internationally, and it's been a bestseller in a whole lot of
02:15:05.260
Well, I think also that it's good to know that, uh, enough people are starting to, um,
02:15:11.160
are recognizing some of the same thought, you know, because that in itself, those numbers
02:15:15.500
itself and that prolificness gives is a source of hope.
02:15:19.920
I think, I think what's happening actually is that as society in some ways goes more into
02:15:25.560
crisis, also more and more people are waking up and they're starting to ask questions.
02:15:34.220
Thank you for letting me ask you questions today.
02:15:36.040
Um, thank you for, uh, yeah, just for your time.
02:15:39.920
There's so many of my friends love you and look up to you.
02:15:42.220
I, I had my own therapist was like, he's asking, I'm like, well, you're my therapist,
02:15:48.100
but he was excited that I was getting this and out with you.
02:15:50.520
So, um, yeah, thank you so much for, uh, your commitment to curiosity and thanks for your
02:15:57.040
Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
02:16:08.100
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind.
02:16:12.680
I found I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take.