WEBVTT - Gabor Maté on Trauma and the Myth of Normal 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.600 of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.040 show where we talk about all things drugs. But any 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.760 views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media, 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:23.480 Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.400 an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.720 even represent my own and nothing contained in this show 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.680 should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:44.680 any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners, Well, my guest 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.880 today is somebody I'm sure many of you have heard 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:51.640 about because of his best selling books and his insightful 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.160 views about dealing with addiction and is being really traveling 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.440 all around the world talking about this. His name is 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:04.920 gobb Or Matele'tha Hungarian Canadian physician and therapist. He was 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:10.759 born in Nazi occupied Budapest in nineteen forty four, emigrated 0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:13.880 to Canada in nineteen fifty six and grew up and 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.560 it's been much of his life in Vancouver and he's 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.080 been a practicing physician. He worked for like a dozen 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.440 years with Really Down and Our Drug Users in the 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:27.160 downtown East side of Vancouver. But Gabbar and I first 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:31.319 crossed pass about fourteen years or so ago when his 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:35.160 book came out called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:41.360 Close Encounters with Addiction, and that book really put gabb 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:45.080 Or on the map in my world, not just drug policy, 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:47.240 but the broader world of how we deal with psychoactive 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.440 drugs and addiction. And out of that grew he's really 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:55.040 becoming a kind of globe trotting speaker and therapist. Uh 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:57.720 and then at some point getting involved also in ayahuasca. 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.320 I mean, it's just had his fascinating life and most cerently, 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.200 a few months ago he came out with a new 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:07.160 book called The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.720 in a Toxic Culture. So Gabar, you know, it's good 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:13.040 to see you again. Thanks so much for joining me 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.320 and my listeners on Psychoactive. It's great to re connect 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:18.040 with you with anything. That's been a lot of years. 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.760 I know. I mean, I was thinking back to Uh, 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:23.280 I guess it was you must have come to New 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:25.200 York in two thousand eight or nine, called me up 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:27.800 when we had lunch together, and I have to tell you, 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.840 over the years, I've heard so many people who have 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:33.960 been so shaped and influenced and even you know, in 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.200 some respects saved by by your teaching. So I really 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.160 want to get into that, and I want to give 0:02:39.160 --> 0:02:40.760 you a chance to talk about the new book. But 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:42.680 of course for me and the listeners, you know, the 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.560 focus is very much on drugs and addictions. So part 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.560 of what we'll be talking about is really the overlap 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.480 in the connection between those two. So let me just 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.280 start off by asking you. I mean, you had that 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.640 book Hungry Ghosts, and now you have the myth of Normal, 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:00.960 which is not just about a action, but really about 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:05.320 a whole range of physiological you know, maladies and such. 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:10.400 And the common link appears to be your focus on trauma. 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:15.440 So just explain that link and also the evolution from 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:21.000 the Hungry Ghost book to the current one. Sure, So, 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:26.040 what I'm actually arguing is, and and it's not just 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:28.200 a matter of my personal insight, but really a lot 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:33.720 of science that demonstrates this is that the common denominator 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:37.280 in most chronic conditions of mind and body is actually trauma. 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:39.800 And this is what through whether or not we're talking 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:44.920 about addictions. The so named mental illnesses from a d 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:50.640 H data depression to psychosystem bipolar conditions, borderline personality. All 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.800 these diagnoses they have a common threat of trauma, as 0:03:54.840 --> 0:04:02.520 do rumatotritis, multiple scrossism, automan diseases, in general, many malignancies 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.680 as well as do addictions. Of course, I've always argued 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.360 that addictions are rooted in trauma, and so that's the 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:14.480 common thread is trauma. And the reason the book is 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.719 subtitled Traumulence and Healing in the Toxic Culture is because 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.800 I argue that the very conditions of life in modern 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:28.080 day globalized, corporate capitalist society actually traumatized people, They hurt people, 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.719 they wound people, and that diseases of mind and body 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:36.279 in this environment are not abnormal their normal responses to 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:40.440 what is an abnormal culture. M hm m hm. So 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:44.120 you know, at one point, there's a quote that you 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.040 have starting with the chapters by Eric Framm. I mean 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:49.039 you say, the fact that millions of people share the 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.560 same vices does not make these vices virtues. The fact 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:54.120 that they share so many errors does not make the 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.000 errors to be truth. And the fact that millions of 0:04:57.080 --> 0:05:01.000 people share the same forms of mental pathology does not 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:07.679 make these people saying so expand on that. Sure, So 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:11.760 we have this idea that normal equates too healthy and 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:17.359 natural and within a narrow range of of understanding that 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:21.200 is correct. So in medical parlance, we're talking about the 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.520 range of circumstances or parameters within machuman life thrives and 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.920 is sustainable. So there's a normal range of temperature. If 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:32.280 you fall below or go above that, your life is 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.320 at risk. There's a normal range of blood picture that 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.839 equates to what is healthy and natural. Below that or 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:44.080 above that, life is threatened. So normal there means healthy 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.960 and natural. We make any assumption that that would be 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:52.920 used to in society in general is also healthy and natural. 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:57.159 And what froms citation from a book he wrote in 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:00.320 the nineteen forties called the Same Society and I have 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:02.440 to say it in common, is that what is considered 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:06.760 the norm in this culture is actually pathological. So that 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:11.360 for example, the idea, sort of the motivating idea, the 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:17.880 assumption about human nature that we are aggressive, competitive, individualistic creatures, 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.440 that's the norm, that's what sold to us as reality. 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.400 In fact, it's a pathology. It creates a whole lot 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:29.120 of illness. Very specifically, it is normal in this culture 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:32.000 um for parents to be told not to pick up 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:35.120 their kids when they're crying. That's the norm. But it's 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:39.400 completely healthy and unnatural and totally foreign to human evolution, 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:42.880 to indigenous cultures, or for that matter, to any of 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.760 the mammalian relatives. You know, you tell a mother gorilla 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:49.400 not to pick up their baby when they're distressed. You know. 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:52.560 So a lot of the things that are actually pathological, 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.600 and they're shared across the culture, are actually unhealthy and 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:04.080 and and and and unnatural, and they create the disease. Yeah, 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:06.000 I mean, you know, there's one part of me that 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.000 listens to this and say, well, I mean, yes, you 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:11.880 look around what's going on, you know, especially with technology now, 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.840 and you know, the screen dominating more and more people's lives, 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.080 especially young people. Beyond that, and and a whole range 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:22.760 of other things that does in faccine pathological consumerism, materialism, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.280 you know, the crasser elements of dynamic capitalism around the world, 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:28.000 you know, And the other part of me goes, doesn't 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:31.760 that in a way sort of romanticize a past. I mean, 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:35.040 we think about the fact that people's average lifespan has 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.400 gotten so much longer. We think about the frequency with 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:42.360 whish people oftentype die all times people died violently, you know, 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:45.600 as oftentimes a much larger numbers in you know, centuries 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:49.320 past and decades past. We think about the pervasive racism 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.119 and sexism and and stuff that happened in the past. 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:55.280 So is I mean, didn't those prior societies also have 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.240 their own traumatic traumas, even if mothers were better at 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:03.080 nurturing their apies, are not deluded by these directives about 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:05.600 what's the proper way to bring up a kid? Well, 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:07.760 even that's a good question, but it's a question of 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.880 what what baseline are we looking at if we're looking 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:15.559 at our revolutionary origins, what you're saying is not the case, 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:20.040 so that human beings have lived in what we cause 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:23.720 civilization only for about twelve thousand years, twelve to fifteen 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.680 years at the most. Now our own species, Homo sapiens 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.119 we've been on earth for about hundred fifty two hundred 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:35.160 thousand years, and other hominin species, you know, pre modern humans, 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:37.599 but fellow human beings have lived on the earth for 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:41.360 at least half a million year or longer, and evolutionarily speaking, 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.320 hominids have been here for millions of years and so 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:49.480 all that time until twelve thousand and fifteen thoud years ago, 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.079 we lived in small band hunter gatherer roots. That's how 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:57.520 we evolved. That is what a wonderful researcher, our CNRS 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:01.719 from Not to Day University calls our revolution there in niche. Now, 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.600 in that evolutionary's niche, it's not true that we had 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.680 more disease. Um, it's not true that we are more violence. 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:13.960 So in those small groups, people basically lived collaboratively, coaterly. 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.000 They had to. It's not a question of moral superiority, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:19.079 it's a question of that sort of took to survive. 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:23.679 And so in those environments, children were picked up, they 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.400 weren't put down. Um. Children spent their whole their on 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:32.440 the adults. And this has been studied in terms of 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:36.160 those indigenous cultures that have not been totally destroyed by colonialism. 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.600 They tend to be much healthier than we are. Actually, well, 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:41.400 I don't. I mean, I also think about you know, 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.120 even pre colonialism, right, I mean, you have a hundred 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:46.760 graduate groups. But they had to fear about animals coming 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.040 in and eating their parents in the middle of the 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.000 ninth they had to worry about marauding groups. And that's 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:54.920 that I have to say that that's a modern assumption, 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.840 that's not what the research shows. Well, but it does 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:00.360 vary from I mean, even if one looks, for example, 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:02.920 some of the history of Native Americans, you know, before 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.600 even colonization, or you look at you know what I mean, 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:07.559 you had you know, warring tribes, and you had that 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.320 were some others that were sedentary and landed. That the 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.800 same was true elsewhere. Well, what you're saying is true. 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.160 So it depends on what level of civilization we're at. See, 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:21.679 what I'm saying is that once you get larger groupings 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:26.720 and more civilized quote unquote societies, you're going to get 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:28.720 more and more what you're talking about. It's not a 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:32.840 matter of romanticizing anything, and it's soon not a matter 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:35.000 of returning to ways of life that are no longer 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.520 accessible to us. But it is a matter of learning 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.240 what we've lost in the process. So that when the 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:45.280 Christians came to North America, they were appalled by the 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:47.840 parenting practices of the natives. You know why, because the 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.400 natives didn't beat their kids into the into the Christians, 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.520 this was a sin. And yet we know that we 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.680 know that beating kids is actually traumatic for kids. And 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:02.240 these people did not hit their children. And so again 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:04.320 it's not a matter of romanticizing a way of life 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:06.760 or or saying that they were perfect. They were not. 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.720 But we've lost a lot so in in terms of 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:16.320 our civilization, for all our achievements, we've lost certainty, the 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:20.319 attachment relationships that the Indigenous people would have with their 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:23.560 children and with each other. We've lost a sense of 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:28.760 common communality. Um in. In for this book, I spoke 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:34.600 with an American psychiatrist and physician called Lewis mel Madrona. 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.400 And Lewis has written books on book called Coyote Medicine, 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.960 and he's a book called Narrative Medicine and the part 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:45.960 of storytelling and healing, And he's from Lakota background partly. 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:48.840 And he says that in a a court edition and somebody 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:53.839 gets ill, they say to the person, in effect, thank you, 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:57.000 your illness is manifesting some dysfunction in our whole culture, 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:59.559 in the whole society, in the whole community. So you're 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.439 he is our healing. Now, scientifically that is actually the case, 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.160 but Western medicine forgets that we separate the mind from 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.280 the body. And we separate individual from the environment, and 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:15.560 yet that localtota edition scientifically is much more accurate. So so, 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:20.880 for example, UM, an American black woman, the more experiences 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.160 of racism they experience, the higher their risk for asthma. 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:29.000 So there's something about social stress and racist stress that 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:33.040 actually inflames the lungs the airways of the individual. Which 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.920 means is that asthma a disease of an isolated organ 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.280 in a body, or is it representing a social malaise not? 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:42.840 The only scientific way of understanding is that the two 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:47.080 can't be separated. So so I'm saying that there's things 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:52.040 of an indigenous wisdom that for a long time, UM, 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.320 we're dismissed, but which modern science has actually proven we 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:59.280 have a lot to learn by not being certainly by 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:03.120 not being arrogant about our achievements while ignoring all that 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:05.840 we have lost in terms of human connection. Yeah, I'll 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:07.959 tell you, in reading the Myth of Normal these last 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.640 few days, was struck by the amount of evidence that 0:13:11.720 --> 0:13:15.760 you marshaled in terms of the impact of what happens 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:18.560 to us while we're in our mother's wombs and in 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.000 early childhood, in terms of affecting you know everything from 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:25.880 various forms of mental and emotional health to even physical health. 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:27.640 I mean you, but you mentioned, for example at one 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.120 point a sort of semi famous study called the ACE study, 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.320 the Adverse Childhood Experienced the study, and then you dropped 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:36.440 references to hundreds of others, including the one you were 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:38.640 mentioning about the impact of racism. But just tell our 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:41.960 listeners something about that a study and why it was significant, 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:45.600 and what sort of research out there. It's emblematic of well, 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:47.439 let me tell you about these studies, and then I 0:13:47.480 --> 0:13:49.480 also let me tell you a bit of our horror story. 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:55.319 So they studies. They studies stands for adverse Childhood Experiences, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.560 and these studies have been done originally done in California 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.679 and the Kaiser Permanent They Health system. They looked at about, 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.280 I think but seventeen thousand adults and they did a 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.840 question on their childhoods and they identified what they called 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.800 address childhood experiences or a C s. Anybody listening, they 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.880 can go to the web and just download their a 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.280 C questionnaire. And an a C or an adage childhood 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:24.600 experience is say physical sexual promotional abuse. That's three the 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.640 depth of a parent, the parent being addicted, apparently mentally 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.320 all a parent being jailed, a rancors divorce valnce in 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.320 a family, one parent hitting another. So for each of 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:38.680 these adverage Charldter experiences, the risk of addiction goes up. 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:40.680 And used to work with addictions very much, and so 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:44.840 the risk of addiction goes up exponentially. They don't add up, 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:47.640 they multiply. By the time a male child has had 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.280 six of these, his risk of being him an injection 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:56.040 using substance dependent adult is forty greater forty six fold 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:58.680 increase than that of a child. But no such experiences. 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.840 So there's a clear link between these traumatic incidents in 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:07.000 childhood and adult addiction, but not just addiction, also mental 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.720 health issues, autommune disease and so on. So those are 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.800 the a C studies, and they have been published all 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.160 over the world. They've been repeated always with the same 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:20.960 results internationally, and they've been published in major medical journals, 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:25.200 psychological journals. That's the a C studies, crucial studies in 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:31.840 showing the relationship between early trauma adversity and adult illness 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:37.400 of mind and body. That's the nutshell version of it. Now, 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:41.480 the horror story is this five years ago, so by 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:43.920 the way, not just the A C studies, but you 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.800 mentioned all those studies that I collated literally for writing 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:50.840 this book I've over ten years, are brought together twenty 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:54.640 five different articles, many of them many of them research papers, 0:15:54.800 --> 0:16:00.320 scientific publications, medical journal articles about all this stuff. So 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:04.520 there's all this research now that a woman's stresses during pregnancy, 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.200 which is transmitted to the fetus through the umbilical cord 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.400 and the stress hormones of the mother and the nervous 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:15.760 system reactions to the mother, they have an impact on 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:20.560 the infant, but is measurable even in utero by various techniques, 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.920 and which show up in higher propensity to disease and 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:28.360 mental health problems in the child. Later on, and giving 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.160 this talk to an Indigenous group here in Canada some 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.240 years ago, I had a young man come up to 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:35.160 me and says, hey, Doc, you know what you just said. 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:40.640 In our community, when a woman was pregnant and then 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.520 if you were stressed or angry, you were not permitted 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.240 to go near them because we didn't want you passing 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.240 on your stress or anger to the infant. So they 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.360 knew this intuitively, nobody have the signs to show it. 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:57.440 The horror story you know I'm putting in quotation marks 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:00.560 is that was in Norway five years ago you speaking 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:04.480 at an addiction conference. There were two very famous American 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:07.720 speakers there. I will not embarrass them by giving their names, 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:10.760 but one of them is very high up in the 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.800 world of CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, as high up as 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:17.600 you can get. The other is a very well known 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:21.680 American psychiatrist. He edited one of the versions of the 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:27.879 d s M and is published extensively um and quoted 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:30.880 extensive in the national media. Very well known people. Both 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:35.000 of them. We had dinner before the conference and I 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:36.680 said to the one of them, where do you live? 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:40.800 And they mentioned a certain city. I said, oh, you 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:46.120 must know Dr Vincent Felippi. He said, who's that? I said, well, 0:17:46.480 --> 0:17:50.800 I said, Feliti happens to be the lead investigator for 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:55.880 the famous adverse Childer Experiences studies. This leading American psychologist 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.919 and this leading American psychiatrists both said, what are those 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:02.880 They've never heard of them, despite the fact that they're 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.600 being published all of the world in all manner of 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.399 leading scientific and medical publications. That's the horror story, is 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:11.359 that on the one hand, we have all this research 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.760 all this evidence. On the other hand, the leading institutions 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.320 and the leading representatives of the so called healing institutions 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:23.159 and our culture don't even have acquaintance with all that information. 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.080 It's incredible. Okay, well, let me ask you this because 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:28.840 you know, it seems to me in sort of psychotherapy 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.560 and trying to heal, right, that that one of the 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:37.199 kind of overlapping elements, even with the cognitive behavioral therapy folks, right, 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.640 is that part of what's so crucial is changing one's story, 0:18:41.800 --> 0:18:44.640 one's narrative. And I noticed in reading your stuff it's 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.920 also about changing the story. If you change the narrative, 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:50.560 now you're changing the narrative is much more dear, you know, 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:53.880 grounded in trying to process and get out underlying elements 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:58.240 of the trauma, the prenatal trauma, the the childhood trauma. Um. 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.119 But the is it and it is what I'm saying, 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:04.000 right that this change in changing one's story one's narrative 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.399 about one's life is a common element in much of 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.720 what proves to be effective in in psychotherapy and in healing. Imprinciple, 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:15.480 that's true. In practice, it depends on precisely I did 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.440 that goes and with what kind of insights. So yeah, 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.959 so I talked about myself and my own particular infancy 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.840 where you mentioned I was born, or at least I 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:29.159 spent most of my first year under Nazi occupation and 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:33.040 Hungary and under threat of annihilation. My mother and I 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:37.720 and for five weeks were separated. I couldn't wouldn't even 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:39.960 see her as a as a one year eleven month old. 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:43.200 Now what I made that mean? What I mean it 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:45.280 means is that I wasn't lovable, and I wasn't loved, 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.960 and I was being abandoned. I couldn't interpret that no 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:52.919 other way. No. In fact, of course it really happened. 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.439 Was that her giving me to the stranger in the 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.919 streets of Budapest, a place that where I stood right 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:01.879 on the spot just a few weeks ago, actually was 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:05.280 an act of incredible love and courage and self sacrifice. 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.240 You know, imagine the twenty four old woman giving a 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:11.200 baby to a stranger in the street to save his life, 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:14.240 but as an infant, had no other way of understanding 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.080 it but that this is an abandonment, and who gets 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:20.520 abandoned somebody who deserves to be abandoned. So I grew 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:24.919 up with that kind of self concept. Healing does involved, 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.760 in the end, come to terms with the stories that 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:31.200 the trauma imprinted in your brain and in your body. 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:33.960 I just don't think it's as simple as some people 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.399 make it out to be. So I've read by and 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:40.000 Cage's book with great appreciation and her our questions doing 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.600 the work. The four questions that she asked are really 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.960 helpful very often in relationships because what they do is 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:52.240 they they actually invite the person to take responsibility for 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:55.360 their beliefs and their reactions, not to make the other 0:20:55.400 --> 0:21:00.600 person wrong for them. That's really good, But they don't 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:03.520 really deal with the trauma element very much, which is 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.639 how people develop these beliefs in the first place and 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:11.200 and the traumatic imprints that keep them going. So as 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.520 useful as that work is, I find I do find 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:15.919 it lacking in that area. And and so that's and 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:18.720 that's the problem with most of these therapies like CBT 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.159 will change your stories, but mostly the conscious stories that 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:25.800 you already know or that can be listited through conscious questioning. 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:29.080 But a lot of the stories that people carry about themselves, 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:31.439 for example, that I'm not worthy, that I have to 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.040 prove the value of my existence by being a work 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.920 call it doctor. Those are not conscious. I'm not aware 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:40.280 of them. They're automatic because they're imprinted in my unconscious 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:42.959 and so so do A deep therapy has to go 0:21:43.040 --> 0:21:47.280 to what are you carrying that you're not aware of? Which, nevertheless, 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.840 um controls your life in certain In a certain sense, 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:55.720 these dynamics are like uh strings in the hands of 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:58.520 a puppet. Here you know, and and report like puppets 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:02.840 by these unconscious strings until you'll come aware. We'll be 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:20.200 talking more after we hear this. Add is there an 0:22:20.240 --> 0:22:23.119 element to what you're saying it's also Freudian because I 0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:25.000 know it's like in the myth of normal Freud barely 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:28.399 gets to mention um. But is there a commonality with 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:31.639 Freudian psychoanalysis in terms of wanting to go back to 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:33.879 those early stages? And if so, yes, and to what 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:39.200 extent no? Yeah? So so. Freud was a very flawed 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:44.320 genius and both genius and very flawed. And the reason 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:47.080 I don't talk about him much is because fundamentally he 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:52.119 betrayed himself. So his original understanding of mental illness or 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:54.440 what he called neurosis in those days, and this isn't 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:59.159 a paper that he printed in did say that a 0:22:59.160 --> 0:23:01.840 lot of the patients have come to him were sexually abused. 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:07.800 And this, however, didn't fly very well in polite Viennese 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:10.840 middle class society. And if you wanted to be a 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:17.760 successful doctor and celebrated, he'd had to walk that one back. Furthermore, 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:20.240 he hadn't dealt with his own trauma, so it comes 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:22.679 up with all these co com ami theories like the 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:26.680 Oedipus complex and electroc complex, and basically that these these 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:29.920 young women who had reported sexual abuse were in fact 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:36.000 fantasizing about sleeping with their fathers. So he fundamentally made 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:39.360 a good step, and then he raised his own footprints 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:43.440 and developed all these co com ami theories. But what 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:49.000 was significant contribution on his part were, I would say, 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:52.600 to number of basic concepts, but the two fundamental ones 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:56.600 was that so much of what makes us act resides 0:23:56.600 --> 0:24:00.200 in the unconscious, and that that unconscious is shaped early 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:04.240 childhood experiences. That's absolutely true what he made of that 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:07.200 because he couldn't deal with the trauma, he just couldn't. Really, 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:12.000 he couldn't face the trauma. He basically got scared of 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:16.480 his own shadow. And so the psychoanalysis was thrown away off, 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:21.760 of course, and hence you have this phenomenon of people 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:24.959 being therapy and analysis for years and years and years, 0:24:25.760 --> 0:24:28.440 you know, and they're like kind of a Woody Allen 0:24:28.520 --> 0:24:30.439