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Speaker 2: You can be yourself or you can be accepted, but
Speaker 2: not both at the same time. At some point you
Speaker 2: start wondering who the heck are we? Anyway, you know
Speaker 2: him as the best selling author I have a number
Speaker 2: of books for his work on.
Speaker 1: The relationship between addiction and childhood development. Please help me
Speaker 1: welcome doctor Gabor Mate.
Speaker 2: The top regrets of people who die before that time?
Speaker 2: You know what it is that they weren't themselves. They
Speaker 2: spent the whole life time to please others. That's the
Speaker 2: top regret.
Speaker 1: How do we fix broken people? Before we jump into
Speaker 1: this episode, I'd like to invite you to join this
Speaker 1: community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier,
Speaker 1: and more healed. All I want you to do is
Speaker 1: click on the subscribe button. I love your support. It's
Speaker 1: incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go on this journey with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 1: Jay Sheidy, Jay Sheddy see nsy Holy sid Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and
Speaker 1: wellness podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
Speaker 1: one of you that keep coming back every week to
Speaker 1: become happier, healthier and more healed. Now, today's guest is
Speaker 1: someone that you absolutely adore, that you love, that I
Speaker 1: admire so deeply. I feel honored whenever I'm in his presence.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan and follower of his work, and
Speaker 1: I would also like to say that we've been developing
Speaker 1: a little bit of a friendship behind the scenes, which
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful for as well. I'm speaking about the
Speaker 1: one and only Gable Matte, who spent twenty years working
Speaker 1: in family practice and palliative care experience and worked for
Speaker 1: over a decade in Vancouver's downtown East Side with patients
Speaker 1: challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. Gabor is the
Speaker 1: best selling author of five books, including the award winning
Speaker 1: in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Close Encounters with Addiction.
Speaker 1: Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker, highly sought after for
Speaker 1: his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship
Speaker 1: of stress and illness. And Gabo's latest book, The Myth
Speaker 1: of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture,
Speaker 1: remains a best seller globally, and I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: get a copy if you haven't already. If you have
Speaker 1: a copy, grab one for a friend. And really this
Speaker 1: would be my recommendation. Make it your book club pick,
Speaker 1: for your local book club, for your online book club.
Speaker 1: Make it a book that you discuss and share. Please
Speaker 1: welcome back to on Purpose Gabble. Let's say thank you
Speaker 1: for being here. I am fondly remembering not only the
Speaker 1: last interview we had, but the last time we were
Speaker 1: together in Vancouver, when I saw you just before my
Speaker 1: show and we spent a few moments together, and I
Speaker 1: genuinely look forward to seeing you whenever I can, so
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this well.
Speaker 2: It's such a pleasure. And I remember bicycling down to
Speaker 2: your hotel and I wasn't in a great state, and
Speaker 2: we talked and that helped the grant me. And then
Speaker 2: I think it was my idea that we should meditate together,
Speaker 2: and we did and I was just so helpful for me.
Speaker 2: So it's just good to sit with you in any capacity.
Speaker 1: Now. Well, I remember I walked away from last time's
Speaker 1: conversation both times, the first time we recorded and second
Speaker 1: time from that. And I always feel you create tiny
Speaker 1: mini shifts in my mindset through very subtle points you make.
Speaker 1: And it takes someone who's deeply studied their subject, not
Speaker 1: just theoretically but practically to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: So thank you. But let's dive straight in. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you this question. I've been I've had the
Speaker 1: burning desire to ask you this question. So I read
Speaker 1: this quote the other day and it says it's by
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas and the quote goes, it is easier to
Speaker 1: build strong children than fix broken men. And my question was,
Speaker 1: how do we fix broken people?
Speaker 2: There's a wonderful song by Leonard Khne called come Heal
Speaker 2: or come Healing, so it begins, or gather up the brokenness,
Speaker 2: bring it to me now, the fagance of those promises
Speaker 2: you never dared to vow. And then he says, at
Speaker 2: some point, and here's the answer to your question or
Speaker 2: troubledness concealing and undivided love the heart beneath his teaching
Speaker 2: to the broken heart above. So this poet prophet, poet
Speaker 2: visionary thing, we have two hearts. There's the brokenness above
Speaker 2: and the underdighted love that's below, that's underneath. He's saying,
Speaker 2: there's the broken heart above, and then there's a heart
Speaker 2: beneath that teaching the broken heart. So that implied in
Speaker 2: that is that nobody's broken. Then underneath the brokenness there's wholeness.
Speaker 2: So and that's not only Leonard Cohen. Any spiritual teachers
Speaker 2: you know will tell you the same thing. So it's
Speaker 2: not a matter of fixing anything broken, it's it's finding
Speaker 2: the wholeness that's underneath the brokenness. Now, Douglas is totally right.
Speaker 2: Studies have shown that if you get children who suffer
Speaker 2: for the first three years and then things get okay
Speaker 2: for them, they do much worse than those children who
Speaker 2: are well treated and have a good life for three
Speaker 2: years and then everything goes to pieces. The latter group
Speaker 2: does much better because those words are it says the
Speaker 2: child is the father of the man, so that what
Speaker 2: happens early in life shapes our worldview and our sense
Speaker 2: of ourselves. So yes, Douglas is totally right. But ultimately,
Speaker 2: when I look at people, whether they agree with me
Speaker 2: or don't, or whether they are suffering or not, or
Speaker 2: whether they even when they do terrible things, there's a wholeness.
Speaker 2: There's undivided love underneath it isn't there. There's a shore
Speaker 2: right now in Los Angeles by somebody who's in a
Speaker 2: death row prison in Texas and his name's Obi, sentenced
Speaker 2: to death and he's on death row, has been for
Speaker 2: the last twenty years a while these appeals wind their
Speaker 2: slow way through the courts. If he wins the appeal,
Speaker 2: the best think you can hope for is life without parole.
Speaker 2: And he's in love with life. He's had a transformation,
Speaker 2: he's dealt with his addiction, he's dealt with his brokenness.
Speaker 2: He learned meditation. He's an artist, and some of his
Speaker 2: artists being shown in Los Angeles right now. Unfortunately I
Speaker 2: can't go see it because it's only open certain days
Speaker 2: a week and I'm not here. But there's somebody who
Speaker 2: came from a totally broken childhood and found a kind
Speaker 2: of presence. If you saw him, you and I could
Speaker 2: only envy the kind of presence and at least to
Speaker 2: speak for myself, can't speak for the kind of presence
Speaker 2: and the kind of engagement life that he's got in
Speaker 2: the death ro a person, Well, if that can be healed,
Speaker 2: if that brokenness, the wholeness can be under discovered underneath,
Speaker 2: there's not be broken.
Speaker 1: Very well said, I would agree to. At the core,
Speaker 1: at the root of the essence, none of us are broken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and our engagement with that which is broken and imperfect
Speaker 1: often rubs off on us. But what would you say
Speaker 1: the most detrimental experiences that people have in those three
Speaker 1: years that end up creating horrific ripple effects long term.
Speaker 2: Anything that makes them disconnects from themselves, from their true cels,
Speaker 2: from their gut feelings, from their connection to their bodies.
Speaker 2: Anything that deprives them of hope. Now, I remember taking
Speaker 2: part in a retreat once. It's called an enlightenment intensive,
Speaker 2: where you do intensive spiritual work. I won't go into
Speaker 2: the details, but please go into the detail. Well, it's
Speaker 2: it's diads and two people at one time, sitting across
Speaker 2: from each other in the meditation posture, putting a question
Speaker 2: to one another. First, one person ask the other one
Speaker 2: listens and then the search places for four times, and
Speaker 2: then you get a different partner and the question is,
Speaker 2: tell me who you are. The original question comes from
Speaker 2: Ramana Maharshi, who's work, I'm sure you know, one of
Speaker 2: these Indian Rishis and gurus, who just asked everybody, tell
Speaker 2: me who you are. And the idea is that by
Speaker 2: emptying your mind and saying whatever is in your head,
Speaker 2: clearing out the mental space, the direct experience of who
Speaker 2: you are will come to you, a direct experience, not
Speaker 2: a thought, not an emotion, but a direct experience. No,
Speaker 2: I never had the direct experience, and I was embittered
Speaker 2: at the end, and that the very last diad person
Speaker 2: said tell me who you are? And I just started
Speaker 2: shaking and the whole body was tinging, And instead of
Speaker 2: paying attention to that, I plunged into bitterness, and I said,
Speaker 2: is it my fault? They turned off the light in me.
Speaker 2: They killed the light in me so early, so I
Speaker 2: truly believed that the light in me had been killed
Speaker 2: by what had happened to me as an infant. And
Speaker 2: for much of my life even I had to become
Speaker 2: a healer. And even after I became a healer that
Speaker 2: was respected by so many people. I thought I could
Speaker 2: help heal everybody else, but I can't be healed myself.
Speaker 2: So to go back to your question, whatever early experience
Speaker 2: kills you of faith in your own possibilities, that's what's
Speaker 2: so damaging. And for that, it could be evidence or
Speaker 2: experiences of severe abuse. It could also be a very
Speaker 2: sensitive child who the world doesn't see for who they are,
Speaker 2: who the world doesn't permit to express themselves, so they
Speaker 2: shut off from themselves, you know, to be accepted by
Speaker 2: the world. So any early experience that deprives you of yourself,
Speaker 2: and that happens to a lot of us. So trauma
Speaker 2: is a huge specter. But anything that breaks your connection
Speaker 2: to yourself and you and your genuine, not your false
Speaker 2: egoic belief in yourself, but your genuine belief in your wholeness,
Speaker 2: that'll do it, and that happens to a lot of us.
Speaker 1: I've always personally experienced it as the volume of my
Speaker 1: inner voice. Yes, so I found that at different points
Speaker 1: in my life my inner voice was extremely loud and clear,
Speaker 1: and not only could I hear it clearly, but the
Speaker 1: direction was clear. And then I've had moments in my
Speaker 1: life where as you're referencing disconnected from yourself. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: voice is extremely quiet, maybe even non existent, or it's
Speaker 1: screaming out for help.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, the voice of your and yourself is
Speaker 2: very quiet, correct, it can. Well, the Bible talks about
Speaker 2: the small still voice. They actually call it that, a
Speaker 2: small still voice, and it really takes attention to notice
Speaker 2: it because there's so much noise in the world, and
Speaker 2: so much noise in her heads, and there's all these
Speaker 2: other voices that are much louder, you know. The singer
Speaker 2: Sheryl Crowe, she had breast cancer and she said afterwards,
Speaker 2: and this could be and I quote this in The
Speaker 2: Metal Normal and it could be right out of my
Speaker 2: own work. But she doesn't know about me. She just
Speaker 2: came to this awareness because the disease start or something.
Speaker 2: And she said that she always used to be serving
Speaker 2: other people and trying to meet other people's emotional needs,
Speaker 2: and the breast cancer. Now she's actually listening to herself.
Speaker 2: And she says, there used to be these loud voices
Speaker 2: inside myself telling me that whatever I did wasn't right enough.
Speaker 2: She says, now I've still those voices, you know. So
Speaker 2: on the one hand, the voices of self disregard and
Speaker 2: self loathing or self seduction are very loud, and that
Speaker 2: two voice, for most of us is just so quiet,
Speaker 2: so it takes a lot of attention to notice it.
Speaker 1: A lot of what you're saying today, we experience it
Speaker 1: as this idea of people pleasing, shape shifting, mediating, wanting
Speaker 1: to make peace, often in our families, in our friend circle,
Speaker 1: all of which are can be good, noble things, but
Speaker 1: often we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves trying to play
Speaker 1: these different roles. Not only does that seem to be
Speaker 1: stemming from a form of trauma of being disconnected from
Speaker 1: yourself early on, what steps can one take to regain
Speaker 1: one's connection with oneself so that we're not running around
Speaker 1: shape shifting people pleasing, but at the same time have
Speaker 1: genuine connections with others.
Speaker 2: In the book, we talk about the tension between authenticity
Speaker 2: and attachment, and authenticity being connected to our true selves,
Speaker 2: our God feelings, which is necessary. Nature gave us a
Speaker 2: good feelings for good reason and give us the emotions
Speaker 2: for a good reason. Attachment is a need to belong,
Speaker 2: and if it can be authentic and belong, that's ideal.
Speaker 2: So if if you can find relationships. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can be our true selves and be accepted and loved.
Speaker 2: That's ideal, but a lot of our families of origin
Speaker 2: and our parents just couldn't give that to us. They
Speaker 2: had their own limitations. They couldn't see us, so they
Speaker 2: don't traumise like I did as a parent. And so
Speaker 2: kids then get the message that you can be yourself
Speaker 2: or you can be accepted, but not both at the
Speaker 2: same time. At which point, for sure, survival stay, for sure,
Speaker 2: survival's sake, we go with, well, whatever we need to
Speaker 2: do to get accepted, and then we get that message
Speaker 2: reinforced in school and on the playground and with our
Speaker 2: pa years and at our work, and at some point
Speaker 2: start wondering, who the heck are we anyway? And whose
Speaker 2: life am I leading? Anyway? Well, how to get back
Speaker 2: to it? Here's the question prior to your awakening, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure that for your awakening was probably both a
Speaker 2: series of unique events, but also it was a long
Speaker 2: term process. For me, it was mostly process rather than
Speaker 2: distinct experiences. But say, prior to awakening, did you sometimes
Speaker 2: know that you're not being authentic? Because I sure did.
Speaker 2: I didn't know why I was choosing not to be authentic.
Speaker 2: If I wasn't even choosing it, I just wasn't. But
Speaker 2: something you meannew Well, here's the question. Who inside us
Speaker 2: knows only that authentic self that's always there. And so
Speaker 2: I say to people, don't try and look for the
Speaker 2: authentic self. Just notice when you're not authentic. Just notice
Speaker 2: when you're not saying no, when there's a note that
Speaker 2: wants to be said. Just see what you're not saying yes,
Speaker 2: but there's a yes that wants to be said inside you.
Speaker 2: Notice the impact on you when you don't assert your
Speaker 2: true self. How do you feel after its resentful or
Speaker 2: shamed or tired or whatever. So notice the difficulty being
Speaker 2: authentic and ask yourself, well, what is the belief that
Speaker 2: I'm caring that? If I'm authentic, then what? So in
Speaker 2: other words, all that noticing, what does that do? Who's
Speaker 2: the one that's noticing it is the authentic self. So
Speaker 2: just by asking those questions, you're strengthening, you're empowering that
Speaker 2: authentic self. And just going back to that, the heart
Speaker 2: underneath is teaching booken art. Above all that wholeness is
Speaker 2: teaching the disconnection. It's always there.
Speaker 1: I find that in between those two hearts and in
Speaker 1: between those two layers, there's almost a layer of guilt
Speaker 1: and shame. So when we go against our authentic self,
Speaker 1: we do it because we're scared of whether we feel
Speaker 1: guilty or we may feel shame or fear. And if
Speaker 1: we act authentically, we then sometimes feel guilt for acting
Speaker 1: that way because of how it impacts others, or shame
Speaker 1: and fear. So walk me through the construction of fear
Speaker 1: and guilt and shame, which seemed to be such like
Speaker 1: if you thought about the emotions we all experience most
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, I mean, let me ask you that, actually,
Speaker 1: what do you think? What are the emotions that you
Speaker 1: believe people are experiencing most often, most repetitively on a
Speaker 1: daily base says I.
Speaker 2: Was going to give you an easy answer to the
Speaker 2: shame guild fair question, but then you threw a curveball.
Speaker 1: Sorry I went off. I following I'm following my authentic voice.
Speaker 2: No, I love I love curveballs. I just have to
Speaker 2: think about it. So what are the emotions people experience?
Speaker 2: My stuff? And I think anger, rage, and resentment. I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot more of that than we acknowledged,
Speaker 2: not often unacknowledged, experienced but not acknowledged for fear of consequences.
Speaker 2: I think also love, that'd be also enough often afraid
Speaker 2: to acknowledge because it's so vulnerable. And we might see,
Speaker 2: if I want you to love me, but I'm afraid
Speaker 2: to be vulnerable, then I may try to impress you,
Speaker 2: which may be the closest thing I can get, so
Speaker 2: that you'll pay attention to me, you know, so that
Speaker 2: emotions shame, I think is very frequent for a lot
Speaker 2: of people. That has to do with trauma more than
Speaker 2: anything else. Fear is something that people experience a lot,
Speaker 2: much more than they can admit to themselves. Joy people
Speaker 2: are not so afraid of it. Well you know what
Speaker 2: that might be. Joy has been very difficult for me
Speaker 2: in my life, and I think some point of actually
Speaker 2: some part of me used to say, what right do
Speaker 2: I have to feel joy when there's so much suffering
Speaker 2: in the world. Now that's logically a good question, but
Speaker 2: it's a nonsensical question why Because there is a lot
Speaker 2: of suffering in the world and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: joy in the world, and the one doesn't negate the other.
Speaker 2: So for me it was like, what right do I
Speaker 2: have to experience joy when my grandparents died in ashoals.
Speaker 2: I quote this in the Myth of Normal. My friend
Speaker 2: and colleague and teacher Besil Vanderkolck, psychiatrist who wrote the
Speaker 2: book The Body Keeps the Score. He said to me,
Speaker 2: once go or you don't have to drag our shirts
Speaker 2: around with you all the time, which means that you
Speaker 2: don't have to allow not to forget about our shirts,
Speaker 2: but not to let that control your consciousness, which means
Speaker 2: you do have the right to feel joy. You do
Speaker 2: have the right to be happy even as the world suffers,
Speaker 2: not because the world suffers, and not ignoring the suffering
Speaker 2: the world. But there's no contradiction.
Speaker 1: Let's dive into some of those emotions because and I
Speaker 1: love how they were easy answers for you and then
Speaker 1: the curve world. But I think, as you said, fear
Speaker 1: is a repetitive daily emotion thought for so many people,
Speaker 1: a lack of safety emotionally, mentally, physically, on so many levels,
Speaker 1: we feel unsafe. Yeah, how does one process and heal
Speaker 1: through and with fear? Because it seems to be so consistent.
Speaker 2: The way that fear shows up in most people's lives
Speaker 2: is in the form of anxiety. See, we are wired
Speaker 2: for fear. There's a great nurse psychologist died a few
Speaker 2: years ago before his time, doctor Panksep, and he identified
Speaker 2: all these emotional circuits that we share with other mammals,
Speaker 2: and fear was one of them. We have a circuity
Speaker 2: for fear, a good thing. We're not afraid we die
Speaker 2: are there in nature, you know. But that can become anxiety.
Speaker 2: So let me tell you a story. I want to
Speaker 2: show you. There's bracelet that I'm arning.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It is beautiful, and I never thought at everybody wearing
Speaker 2: a bracelet, but I was given this just shortly after
Speaker 2: the time that I met you. And this comes from
Speaker 2: a place called Haida Guai and either Guay's Islands in
Speaker 2: northern British Columbia where I live. There used to be
Speaker 2: known as well. They used to be known as Hideaguai
Speaker 2: them at the British colonization they became known as the
Speaker 2: Queen Charlotte Islands. That's really fun because I was speaking
Speaker 2: in London once actually a couple of months ago, to
Speaker 2: an audience of twenty one hundred Britishers, and I said,
Speaker 2: does anybody in this audience know who the hell Queen
Speaker 2: Charlotte was. Nobody knew. Apparently she was some German princess
Speaker 2: who married King George the Matt King George who was
Speaker 2: King of England when America became independent anyway, so the
Speaker 2: British came, they named it Queen Charlotte Islands. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, these indigenous people, whose ancestors have been living
Speaker 2: there for something like thirteen thousand years, all of a
Speaker 2: sudden they were living on not on high to Go anymore,
Speaker 2: which means land of the people, but they were living
Speaker 2: in Queen Charlotteland. So I was giving a trauma workshop
Speaker 2: there for hider people. That's when they gave me this bracelet.
Speaker 2: And the meaning of the carvings means these words matter.
Speaker 2: At the end of two days, almost at the very
Speaker 2: end of the trauma workshop for the height of people,
Speaker 2: a woman in her seventies at least comes up and
Speaker 2: she said, I used to speak perfect Haida until I
Speaker 2: was five years old, and then I forgot my language.
Speaker 2: And even when I've gone back to school as an
Speaker 2: adult to learn my native language, the words don't stick
Speaker 2: in my brain. And I said, what happened to you, Well,
Speaker 2: what happened to her. She went to the residential school.
Speaker 2: Residential schools over the Indiandous kids were forced to go
Speaker 2: run by the churches mostly, and she dared speak her
Speaker 2: native language, and the teacher took a stick and beat
Speaker 2: her mercilessly in her body and her head and her limbs. Oh,
Speaker 2: native kids. In my own lifetime is when I was
Speaker 2: a teenager in British Columbia, a four year old Indian
Speaker 2: they're not Indian, Indigenous Canadian, a First Nation kid spoke
Speaker 2: their own language. That have a pin stuck in her tongue,
Speaker 2: so they literally as I said to her, look, you're
Speaker 2: losing your language. Was your organism protecting you. It was
Speaker 2: your fear system telling you that if you do that again,
Speaker 2: you know you might not survive. Because she hated herself
Speaker 2: for it. She hated herself, hate herself for the anxiety.
Speaker 2: She hated herself because I was so passive, she said.
Speaker 2: I said that passivity was your organism's only way to
Speaker 2: protect you, because had you fought back, or had you
Speaker 2: asserted your right to speak your language, much worse would
Speaker 2: happened to you. So that fear protected her. But it
Speaker 2: translates into anxiety where it's no longer fear of a
Speaker 2: specific thing, it's just fear of the world. Now the
Speaker 2: rate of anxiety, so we have a system for fear.
Speaker 2: And the greatest danger to a young child is the
Speaker 2: loss of relationship, because without relationship can't survive. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're protected, we're defenseless, we're vulnerable, we'll helpless. So the
Speaker 2: loss of protective adults is the biggest fear that the
Speaker 2: child has. In this society, a lot of parents can't
Speaker 2: be there for their kids the way they need to be,
Speaker 2: the way they want to be because of the stresses economic, social, racial,
Speaker 2: pot goal, whatever they're going through, just the nature of
Speaker 2: the disconnected culture that we live in. Parents are not
Speaker 2: there for the kids the way the children need to be.
Speaker 2: The fear becomes chronic anxiety that we're never safe, and
Speaker 2: now that becomes part of our sense of self. So
Speaker 2: what you say, but this lack of emotional safety, what
Speaker 2: it actually is is that early childhood fear is when
Speaker 2: the child is afraid, they will ask for help, but
Speaker 2: when repeatedly the help is not available and the adults
Speaker 2: don't come because they're too busy to stress to traumatize,
Speaker 2: to be occupied, to downtrodden, or too propagandized by parenting
Speaker 2: experts to ignore their kids' cries. That ty gets the
Speaker 2: message that there's no safety, So that original fear that's
Speaker 2: meant to result in a cry for help not becomes
Speaker 2: chronic anxiety. So fear not dealt with gets ingrained as anxiety.
Speaker 2: It's no longer going but anything specific, it's just being
Speaker 2: in the world is a source of fear, but you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: It almost feels like, as you were saying, that what
Speaker 1: should result in a cry for help externally, yeah, becomes
Speaker 1: a perpetual cry internally without a feeling of being able
Speaker 1: to help yourself exactly.
Speaker 2: You know that Beatles song help Help, I need somebody,
Speaker 2: not just anybody, and John Nnen sings, and he was
Speaker 2: a very traumatized child, as you know, whose father left
Speaker 2: him when he was born, and whose mother abandoned him
Speaker 2: a few years later. And then he sings in his song,
Speaker 2: when I was younger, so much younger than today, I
Speaker 2: never needed anybody's helping anyway. But now those days are gone.
Speaker 2: I'm not so self assured. So I opened the door,
Speaker 2: you know, please help me. No that's not the way
Speaker 2: it was. When he was younger, so much younger than today.
Speaker 2: He needed everybody's help in every way, but because the
Speaker 2: help wasn't available, he had to shut himself down and
Speaker 2: make himself so like a self created, self sufficient person.
Speaker 2: Only later on as they realized, you know what, I
Speaker 2: actually do need help. But he was never that person
Speaker 2: who didn't need He just believed they didn't need help.
Speaker 2: Why did believe that as an adaptation because the help
Speaker 2: wasn't there. So so many of us. One of the
Speaker 2: biggest things that people are faith to do is to
Speaker 2: ask for help when I get workshops, and I myself
Speaker 2: as my automatic reaction when somebody offers help, Oh no,
Speaker 2: it's okay, I'm fine, even though the help would be
Speaker 2: very welcome.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you find that? Because I feel
Speaker 1: so many people today have someone in their life who's
Speaker 1: closed off from help. It might be a partner, it
Speaker 1: might be a child, it might be a parent. We
Speaker 1: all have someone in our life who, in our limited
Speaker 1: capacity but a little bit of awakening, we can notice
Speaker 1: that someone is really closed and won't receive help. How
Speaker 1: do you help someone who is rejecting help or not
Speaker 1: accepting that they may need it because of the position
Speaker 1: they've experienced based on what you just said.
Speaker 2: I myself used to believe I was one of these people.
Speaker 2: I actually used to believe. Can you believe this? I
Speaker 2: used to believe that every bils could be stressed, but
Speaker 2: I couldn't be. I used to feel like that too,
Speaker 2: that I can help. I can help everybody, but I
Speaker 2: don't need help myself, you know. Yeah, So how do
Speaker 2: you help something that you help them by accepting them
Speaker 2: That's what it is for them right now, and not
Speaker 2: trying to push your help on them, because when you
Speaker 2: try and push up, you're just going to get resistance.
Speaker 2: So you if you can handle it, you can be
Speaker 2: around them and be open, but not insist or try
Speaker 2: and improve to them that they need help. Life will
Speaker 2: teach them. When I meditate these days, I do the
Speaker 2: Compassion meditation, which says, you know that may I face
Speaker 2: and overcome all of life's inevitable setbacks and challenges and
Speaker 2: failures with patients understanding strength and determination, and may I
Speaker 2: rise above them with compassion and morality and integrity and
Speaker 2: wisdom and mindfulness. If we can stare on people compassionately
Speaker 2: without trying to prove to them that they need something
Speaker 2: that they don't believe they need. Then at some point
Speaker 2: life will being a challenge that may prove to them that, yeah,
Speaker 2: they need help. And if you're still around open, then
Speaker 2: they'll reach out to you if you try and convince them,
Speaker 2: bring them over, prove it to them, force it on them.
Speaker 2: And I believe I've done that. I've done it with
Speaker 2: my own family, I've done it with others. You just
Speaker 2: invade resistance. So the best way to help people is
Speaker 2: not to help unless the help is invited.
Speaker 1: And that's almost what most of us don't want to
Speaker 1: hear because we want to again, going back to our
Speaker 1: earlier point, we want to fix and solve and make
Speaker 1: everything nice and perfect right now. Yeah, And I guess
Speaker 1: that is also a form of trauma. There's something there
Speaker 1: as to why we want that.
Speaker 2: And when I write about people who are prone for
Speaker 2: chronic illness, it's often people like autoimmune disease, for example.
Speaker 2: It's often and this is not just finding. Other researchers
Speaker 2: have found this as well, that there are people who
Speaker 2: tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively
Speaker 2: consumed with the emotional needs of others. And they tend
Speaker 2: to believe that in a metanormal I quote an obituary
Speaker 2: and obituaries are really interesting to me because they often
Speaker 2: highlight as laudable qualities the very things that I think
Speaker 2: contributed to a person's death.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a book written by an Australian nurse
Speaker 2: twelve years ago now called The Top Five Regrets of
Speaker 2: Dying People. And she, like I used to work in
Speaker 2: pallid of care, working with dying people, as you mentioned
Speaker 2: in the introduction, and for seven years I was the
Speaker 2: medical coordinator of Big palliad of Care and the Dying
Speaker 2: People at Vancouver Hospital. And this nurse, also a poet
Speaker 2: of care health worker, wrote book the Top five Regret,
Speaker 2: the top regrets of people who died before that time.
Speaker 2: You know what it is that they weren't themselves, That
Speaker 2: they spent a whole life trying to please others. That's
Speaker 2: the top regret. Now, this this obituary, you have to
Speaker 2: believe that I'm not making us up. This is a
Speaker 2: physician in Canada with that age seventy two of cancer,
Speaker 2: and the obituary says Sydney and his mother had an
Speaker 2: incredibly special relationship a bomb that was apparent in all
Speaker 2: aspects of their lives until her death. As a married
Speaker 2: man with young children, Sydney would have dinner with his
Speaker 2: parents every day. Then he would go home as his wife,
Speaker 2: Roslyn and their three children waited for him with another,
Speaker 2: yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy. Not wanting
Speaker 2: to disappoint either woman in his life, Sydney kept eating
Speaker 2: two dinners a day for years until gradual Waitkane began
Speaker 2: to raise suspicions. This man suffered from two fatal beliefs.
Speaker 2: And when I say fatal, I mean fatal. One is
Speaker 2: that he was responsible for other people feel and the
Speaker 2: other is that he was never disappointing anybody. Now, so
Speaker 2: many of us go through life like that. You know, no, actually,
Speaker 2: I'm not responsible for how you feel. I'm responsible for
Speaker 2: how I act, for how I speak, what I do,
Speaker 2: and what I say. I'm not responsible for how you feel.
Speaker 2: In response, when you were in Vancouver and you contacted me,
Speaker 2: and if I hadn't feel like seeing you, but I
Speaker 2: hadn't slept all night, say because I was up with
Speaker 2: some other duty or looking after somebody, and if I
Speaker 2: had said yes and still come, make you for coffee
Speaker 2: because I had fear of disappointing you, and because I
Speaker 2: didn't want you to feel disappointed. What would that have
Speaker 2: meant for me? It would have meant for me more fatigue,
Speaker 2: and probably I would have resented the hell out of you,
Speaker 2: even though I was pretending to be that. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, thank God and you. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: if I said no, if I was authentic and I said, look, Jerry,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm so glad you're in town, but I
Speaker 2: was up all night, I just you know, now, if
Speaker 2: he had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me,
Speaker 2: that's not on me. That's your interpretation of my behavior.
Speaker 2: Nothing do with me. I just said what was true
Speaker 2: for me. So but that fear of disappointment. Had I
Speaker 2: been afraid to disappoint you because I don't want to
Speaker 2: lose your friendship, and I don't want to lose your friendship.
Speaker 2: But if I believe that, if I'm authentic, I'm going
Speaker 2: to lose Jay's friendship. That's going to keep me in authentic.
Speaker 2: And you never know me, and even when you like me,
Speaker 2: there's still going to be a fear in me. What
Speaker 2: if he really knew me, you know, so it doesn't
Speaker 2: even work. But we're we're so afraid of disappointing others.
Speaker 1: And then one day I may feel we have an
Speaker 1: authentic friendship because I can notice that you're not being
Speaker 1: fully yourself. Yeah, and then then I can even feel
Speaker 1: that way you can let me down even by trying
Speaker 1: to be everything I wanted you to be. That's what
Speaker 1: I find so fascinating in life, is that you can
Speaker 1: let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they
Speaker 1: wanted you to be.
Speaker 2: Well, exactly, Well, go back to the example of coffee.
Speaker 2: If I said to you, Jay, I'm sorry I can't
Speaker 2: do today, which honors you more. If I believe that
Speaker 2: you're so we can vulnerable that you can't handle or no,
Speaker 2: or if I honor you by telling you the truth,
Speaker 2: which shows you more respect.
Speaker 1: Definitely there, so that.
Speaker 2: I can be everything you want to be and still
Speaker 2: not honor you.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, it's fascinating how we can be so opposite
Speaker 1: in our perceptions and viewpoints. Yeah, And a big part
Speaker 1: of that comes also. We talked about fear, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about guilt because.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, guilt, guilt. We don't want to say about guilt.
Speaker 1: No, well, I want to hear from you about guilt.
Speaker 1: But when I think of guilt, I think it's such
Speaker 1: a strong driver for so many actions in the world today.
Speaker 1: It is we're guilty of something in the past, and
Speaker 1: therefore we do something strange in the future of the
Speaker 1: present that we wouldn't have done. We feel guilty right now,
Speaker 1: and that makes us say something that we don't mean,
Speaker 1: or something that we exactly. How do we untrap ourselves
Speaker 1: from the trappings of guilt?
Speaker 2: Great, Let me tell you a story so you know.
Speaker 2: In the Bible, the Naild Testament, Moses is a Hebrew
Speaker 2: boy born at a time when the Pharaohs soothsayers declare
Speaker 2: that some Hebrew male born or his time will rise
Speaker 2: up and challenge the pharaoh. So they decide to kill
Speaker 2: all the Hebrew newborns by throwing him into the Nile River.
Speaker 2: But Moses's mother rather than throws the boy into the river,
Speaker 2: but in a ricker basket, and so Moses flows down
Speaker 2: the river and he gets plucked out of the water
Speaker 2: by the pharaoh's daughter, who adopts him. So this Hebrew
Speaker 2: infant is adopted into the royal court feel like a
Speaker 2: prince that's why Walt Disney could make a film called
Speaker 2: Prince of Egypt. You know, all this happened just so
Speaker 2: Walt Disney could make a film. In any case, there's
Speaker 2: an extra biblical legend. It's not in the Bible, but
Speaker 2: it's an ancient legend. You think, what the heck is
Speaker 2: this guy talking about? It just asked them about guilt
Speaker 2: and he's talking about No.
Speaker 1: I love this. This is my favorite type of ansense,
Speaker 1: is when I'm curious and I'm following because I don't
Speaker 1: know where.
Speaker 2: You're going, Okay, but believe It'm not going to come
Speaker 2: back to believe.
Speaker 1: I believe, I trust you.
Speaker 2: So the legend is that Moses is a toddler and
Speaker 2: the pair soothsayers divine that he might be a danger,
Speaker 2: which eventually he proves to be, so they decide to
Speaker 2: put him to a test. They put in front of
Speaker 2: him too sparkling objects. I don't know if you remember, but
Speaker 2: in the Bible, Moses is the speech impediment and it's
Speaker 2: his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him.
Speaker 2: How does he get the speech impediment? Well, the pharaoh
Speaker 2: soothsayers say, well, this point needs to be examined. And
Speaker 2: they decide to put him to a test, and they
Speaker 2: put in front of him two sparkling objects. One of
Speaker 2: them is a royal diamond of Egypt and the other is
Speaker 2: a sparkling member of glowing member of coal. Now, if
Speaker 2: Moses reaches for the royal diamond, it means he's got
Speaker 2: oil ambition and he needs to be killed. So there
Speaker 2: is this little toddler delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects,
Speaker 2: and his hand starts moving towards the diamond, at which point,
Speaker 2: standing behind him is Gabrielle. Gabrielle, which is the Hebrew
Speaker 2: version of my name Gabor, by the way, and grabs
Speaker 2: his hand and takes it away from the diamond and
Speaker 2: puts it to the coal. Now, Moses, finishing the motion
Speaker 2: that kids will do, picks up the coal, puts it
Speaker 2: to his mouth and burns his lips. And that's how
Speaker 2: he develops suspicion impediment. Now here's my question to you,
Speaker 2: is the angel Moses's friend or enemy?
Speaker 1: He's trying to be a friend, but.
Speaker 2: But he heard him had to hurt him to save
Speaker 2: his life. Right, he's a friend guilt is that kind
Speaker 2: of a friend? Okay, Guilt comes on in early childhood,
Speaker 2: not because you did anything wrong, but because your sense
Speaker 2: that whatever you did displeased your parents and you can't
Speaker 2: afford to do that. So there needs to be an
Speaker 2: internal mechanism that keeps you close to your parents. That says,
Speaker 2: for example, if you're authentic and you're sure your anger,
Speaker 2: you won't be accepted. The better will be an internal
Speaker 2: mechanism to keep you on track. So guilt comes along
Speaker 2: as this friend that says, no, take your hand away
Speaker 2: from where you want to put it. You have to
Speaker 2: stifle your real desires. So guild comes along to maintain
Speaker 2: a relationship, not because you did anything wrong, because the
Speaker 2: two year old, three year old they can't do anything
Speaker 2: wrong by definition. That may those things that are not good,
Speaker 2: and they need to be taught not to do it.
Speaker 2: But it's not wrong. There's no guilt there. There's no
Speaker 2: I'm going to do something evil here, you know. So
Speaker 2: guilt is totally not appropriate, and there's ways of teaching
Speaker 2: children without guilt. But guilt comes along to keep you
Speaker 2: in mind. Now is that you're friend or your enemy.
Speaker 2: It's your friend, but it's hurting you. The problem with
Speaker 2: these early friends and I call them sometime. People don't
Speaker 2: like this word, but I say call them stupid friends.
Speaker 2: The stupid that comes in the fact they don't realize
Speaker 2: that you're an adult. You can make your own decisions
Speaker 2: now and look after yourself. You don't need to be
Speaker 2: controlled by their advice that was meant for a two
Speaker 2: year old. So that's where they they're just not educable.
Speaker 2: So when I say to people these days now, most
Speaker 2: people who feel guilty when they act a little bit
Speaker 2: on their own behalf. I say to them, for God's sakes,
Speaker 2: have a party. Celebrate I've done something for myself. You
Speaker 2: call your friends, you know, have a celebration that you
Speaker 2: were so quote unquote selfish, Like Sheryl Crow said, all
Speaker 2: these voices that always told her that she has to
Speaker 2: ignore herself and serve others. Now she doesn't listen to
Speaker 2: them anymore. That's the guilt. So you know, recognize the
Speaker 2: guilt and say hello to it, thank it. Now. Is
Speaker 2: there such a thing as health remorse? Yeah. If I
Speaker 2: promise to meet you for coffee and I don't show
Speaker 2: up because I find something more pleasurable to do, I
Speaker 2: should feel some remorse. So remorse is about specific that's
Speaker 2: healthy remorse. You know, if I break my word, if
Speaker 2: I hurt somebody where I you know, I should feel remorse.
Speaker 2: But that's not a long term thing. It's not the
Speaker 2: chronic guilt that you're talking about. That's not something what
Speaker 2: would happened a long time ago and now it limits
Speaker 2: me or controls me. It's a healthy remorse for some
Speaker 2: specific thing that's different from guilt. Guilt is this old
Speaker 2: friend that's along outlived their usefulness.
Speaker 1: And the challenge is that we still treat it like
Speaker 1: a today friend exactly. It's almost like we're so scared
Speaker 1: of breaking that dependence as well. We thinking, well, I
Speaker 1: feel guilty that I'm not around, so I'll stay around
Speaker 1: this individual, this group of people, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: But there's a part of me that wants to depend
Speaker 1: on them as well, and I don't want to break
Speaker 1: free completely as well, because I don't even know what
Speaker 1: that looks like. Like you're saying, like, as an adult,
Speaker 1: you can take care of yourself, you can walk your
Speaker 1: own path, but you're actually scared of doing that, and
Speaker 1: so you accept the pain of guilt because it allows
Speaker 1: for dependence.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good point that I often say to
Speaker 2: people you're going to have pain one way to the other. Yes,
Speaker 2: which pain would you like? Because sometimes in life there's
Speaker 2: no pain for your options. You can have the pain
Speaker 2: of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted, or
Speaker 2: you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and
Speaker 2: not being accepted. You can have pain one way the other.
Speaker 2: Now I have my own bias that the pain of
Speaker 2: not being ourselves ultimately it is about far the greater
Speaker 2: and the more chronic pain, and that the pain, the
Speaker 2: short term pain of being ourselves brings liberation and genuine independence,
Speaker 2: which means I can have genuinely independent the relationships with
Speaker 2: other people who are willing to accept me as independent.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: But in the short term, which pain do you want?
Speaker 2: There's no pain for you options.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. That you reminded me of this beautiful
Speaker 1: idea that Tikna Han shares, that there's familiar pain and
Speaker 1: unfamiliar pain, and these are our two choices and the challenges.
Speaker 1: We're so scared of unfamiliar pain that we would rather
Speaker 1: choose familiar pain and go through the same pain because
Speaker 1: we know how it's going to feel exactly, and we think,
Speaker 1: or at least I'm aware at least I am conscious
Speaker 1: of how bad it can get exactly. But hearing you
Speaker 1: speak being independent or being dependent both as pain, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the pain of dependence far out weighs the pain
Speaker 1: of independence.
Speaker 2: Well, just put a bit of a nuance in there, ultimately,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, technadon also talk about inter being.
Speaker 2: How we all in there are so in a certain
Speaker 2: sense we do depend on each other, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's okay. The question is to be dependent in each
Speaker 2: other authentically or inauthentically. The fact that I'm independent doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that I'm not going to reach out for help
Speaker 2: or that I won't offer it, But it does mean
Speaker 2: that I will be honest with you, and I won't
Speaker 2: pretend to be somebody else that I'm not so that
Speaker 2: you will accept me. You know. So there's anything interesting
Speaker 2: word difference between two phrases that sound very familiar. One
Speaker 2: it's called individualism, and it's it's called individuation. Now, rugget.
Speaker 2: In individualisms, I don't need anybody, and you know, me
Speaker 2: against the world. And this is the North American capitalist ideal,
Speaker 2: you know. Well, human beings never would have evolved. It
Speaker 2: would been those rugged individualists, the rugged individus wouldn't last
Speaker 2: more than one generation. But individuated means that we can
Speaker 2: be ourselves, truly ourselves in genuine relationship with others, not
Speaker 2: rugged individualists. I mean, the most boring people are rugged
Speaker 2: individualists because they all look the same, you know. So
Speaker 2: you can be individuated and be truly yourself and still
Speaker 2: belong and still vulnerably desire human contact, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can agree more. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of rhetoric around we don't care what anyone else thinks
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter, and you just do your own thing.
Speaker 1: And it's almost that's almost a bitter response as well,
Speaker 1: because we do have to care what people think. If
Speaker 1: we lived in a world where you didn't care what
Speaker 1: anyone thought, yeah, it wouldn't be that healthy because we
Speaker 1: would do all sorts of obscene, horrific things.
Speaker 2: I trace it differently.
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued, Yeah, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't care what anybody thinks, but I do
Speaker 2: care what I do and how it affects other people,
Speaker 2: you know. So there's another spiritual teacher, Gunner Rotana. He
Speaker 2: wrote a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I've
Speaker 2: just been working through recently, and he's talking about a
Speaker 2: higher morality that comes from being true to yourself as
Speaker 2: any touch and he says, well, you don't need rules
Speaker 2: anymore because it's like Saint Augustine said, love and do
Speaker 2: it You're will. So if you actually love the world,
Speaker 2: you don't have to give yourself rules because that love
Speaker 2: will dictate it how you like towards other people, I
Speaker 2: can't worry about what other people think. Look, if I
Speaker 2: worry about other people think, I would not have written
Speaker 2: any of my books because each of my books challenged
Speaker 2: the reigning orthodoxy, insane medicine, you know, or whether it's
Speaker 2: or under tention, devastated, or stress and disease or addictions.
Speaker 2: And if I'm write a book, I'm saying something that
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that I invented it, but that I've
Speaker 2: come to understand and fervently believe and want to communicate.
Speaker 2: But I can't worry about what other people think. Or
Speaker 2: when I make a political statement, I'm responsible for what
Speaker 2: I say, how I say it, but not what other
Speaker 2: people think about it. But that doesn't mean that I
Speaker 2: ignore other people's experience. So as long as my intention
Speaker 2: is purely to speak a truth, and I do so
Speaker 2: with integrity. I can't worry about what other people think.
Speaker 2: I can't. But that doesn't mean I'm going to go
Speaker 2: around just doing terrible things because I don't care what
Speaker 2: you think as long as I convinced that what I do.
Speaker 2: If I've done that kind of inventory, and I haven't always,
Speaker 2: but if I do an inventory, But well, what is
Speaker 2: my intention here?
Speaker 1: Is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma?
Speaker 2: What do you mean bierarchy?
Speaker 1: I feel like people feel like, well, this trauma is
Speaker 1: worse than this trauma, and this trauma is better than
Speaker 1: this one. We often hear about that as a conversation.
Speaker 1: Is that accurate?
Speaker 2: So one could say so because if you look at
Speaker 2: a child who says sexually abused as opposed to a
Speaker 2: child whose parents just can't honor and accept and validate
Speaker 2: their emotions, Well, my god, you're talking about two different
Speaker 2: set of experiences, so that there's certainly horrific things happen
Speaker 2: to some people to wound them, and other people suffer
Speaker 2: wounds in a very different way. But the question is
Speaker 2: is it useful to make that distinction. It's one thing
Speaker 2: to recognize it, but let's say, let's say you're my
Speaker 2: four year old. You come to me and you say
Speaker 2: that I'm afraid of so and so, and I say,
Speaker 2: snap out of it. Only cards are afraid and to
Speaker 2: get out of here and take care of yourself. And
Speaker 2: then you went to your mom. I said, I tried
Speaker 2: to talk to daddy. But you know, would it be
Speaker 2: helpful for your meta to say, oh, snap out of it.
Speaker 2: Think all the kids that are being sexually abused, Think
Speaker 2: all the starving kids, think all the kids that are
Speaker 2: being bombed. What are you complaining about? Would that be helpful?
Speaker 2: So that it's not a helpful game to play, I
Speaker 2: don't compare people's traumas. Traumas simply means a wound, and
Speaker 2: people are wounded in all kinds of ways. When I
Speaker 2: try to help people, the least helpful thing I can
Speaker 2: do is to tell them that somebody else's trauma is
Speaker 2: much worse than mine, much worse than yours. So objectively, yes,
Speaker 2: practically it's not a helpful distinction. People are wounded, and
Speaker 2: you have to tend to the wound whatever it is.
Speaker 2: You know, if you came to me with a cut
Speaker 2: on your arm, and he asked me to stitch it up.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be helpful for me to tell you that, oh,
Speaker 2: what are you worried about? There's people with broken irons
Speaker 2: out there or people broken So no, it's not a
Speaker 2: helpful thing to engage in, even though there's truth in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's really fascinating every time I speak to you,
Speaker 1: girl boy, is that there's such nuance subtlety. And there's
Speaker 1: a quote that I want to share with you to
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on. I want to bring it up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this quote is from f Scott Fitzgerald, Okay, who
Speaker 1: famously wrote the test of a first rate intelligence is
Speaker 1: the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at
Speaker 1: the same time and still retain the ability to function.
Speaker 1: One should, for example, be able to see that things
Speaker 1: are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So that's brilliant. And what Fitzgerald is talking about
Speaker 2: there is what it's called integrative intelligence. And integrative intelligence
Speaker 2: is when you can say, on the one hand, on
Speaker 2: the hand, both things can be true, and I need
Speaker 2: to somehow come to some conclusion about them without rejecting
Speaker 2: the one truth or the other. Now, little kids are
Speaker 2: totally incapable of integrative intelligence. So a three year will
Speaker 2: either say I hate you, daddy or I love you daddy.
Speaker 2: But they can't say I love you daddy, but I'm
Speaker 2: very angry with you, which is really what's going on.
Speaker 2: It's either a love or hate. So integrative thinking is
Speaker 2: a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional naturation. A lot
Speaker 2: of people are completely incapable of it. It's one or
Speaker 2: the other. You talked about the the deadness of the
Speaker 2: heart and the moral apathy, and all my life since
Speaker 2: I've been conscious of the horrors, including and beginning with
Speaker 2: the Holocaust that nearly killed me and killed my grandparents,
Speaker 2: nearly killed my parents and I. When I became conscious
Speaker 2: of that at age eleven, what happened was that my
Speaker 2: parents had a book on a high shelf they didn't
Speaker 2: want me to read. And when I was eleven, I
Speaker 2: climbed up on a chair and it was a book
Speaker 2: called The Scourge of the Swastika, and it was about
Speaker 2: it was the first book about the Nancy horrors. And
Speaker 2: I saw photographs and I read the story, and for
Speaker 2: years jay afterwards, literally every day in my head would
Speaker 2: be busy. I'd spin say, how is this possible. How
Speaker 2: is the heart not broken every day? I'm asking you
Speaker 2: now because I'm wrestling with this question. I suppose I
Speaker 2: have an intellectual answer, or more a point maybe along
Speaker 2: the lines of fish what Schell says, how can her
Speaker 2: heart be broken and not be broken at the same time?
Speaker 2: Because I think both are necessary.
Speaker 1: And I find everything all across the world that occurs.
Speaker 1: I feel like people's hearts are broken, but they break
Speaker 1: an ache for different things. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because just to repeat those last two lines, one should,
Speaker 1: for example, be able to see that things are hopeless,
Speaker 1: yet be determined to make them otherwise. And you know
Speaker 1: what you're saying. It's how I was trained in the
Speaker 1: monastery as well. The goal was always how can you
Speaker 1: be a helper? How can you be a server? How
Speaker 1: can you be useful? How can you help heal? Like
Speaker 1: that's what you look for in moments of tragedy, whatever
Speaker 1: they may be. And I just think that not much
Speaker 1: unites us on the heart level as equals across the world.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's many things that we look to
Speaker 1: globally as the human race, as we were once referred
Speaker 1: to a call to that creates a sense of connectivity
Speaker 1: and there's genuine fear that makes us feel well, if
Speaker 1: my break my heart breaks for this, then what if
Speaker 1: what will happen to my heart?
Speaker 2: That the grief might be too much to bear?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Or not? That I mean more so that well,
Speaker 1: if my heart breaks for this event, some part of
Speaker 1: it is yes, there's too much to think about, for sure,
Speaker 1: it's overwhelming. And then the other side is, well, if
Speaker 1: it breaks for this, then is it allowed to break
Speaker 1: for that as well? You know, this idea of holding
Speaker 1: two opposing ideas seems to be such a need in
Speaker 1: the world, like just generally, like even the belief of
Speaker 1: I have to work on my health, that I'm happy,
Speaker 1: I'm alive, Like these are two opposing ideas, Like we're
Speaker 1: not looking at it from I'm unhealthy or I'm healthy.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what's interesting there is that when I
Speaker 2: was working palliative care, sometimes people would say to me,
Speaker 2: and this is amazing, I don't recommend it, but they'd
Speaker 2: say they'd be dying, they actually be dying. They'd have
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks left. They say, Dog, I don't
Speaker 2: explain this exactly. But this disease is the best thing
Speaker 2: that have happened to me. I don't wish it on anybody.
Speaker 2: But what were they talking about? Now? There's a guy
Speaker 2: according the mythal normal who wrote a book called Blessed
Speaker 2: with a Brain tumor. Blessed with a brain tumor. You're
Speaker 2: Australian guy who was dying. Was a brain tumor, they'd
Speaker 2: have surgery, did accept treatment. He also had a spiritual transformation,
Speaker 2: has lived longer than his prognosis. I don't know what
Speaker 2: his current status is, but we're a book called Blessed
Speaker 2: with the Brain Tumor. And by the way, he developed
Speaker 2: a brain tumor that is acted the same spot that
Speaker 2: used to point at with an imaginary gun to shoot
Speaker 2: himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide.
Speaker 2: I said, what do you mean Blessed with the brain tumor?
Speaker 2: And he said, well, knowing that I'm going to die,
Speaker 2: but that I might means that every moment is precious.
Speaker 2: He says. That means I'm when I'm talking to you
Speaker 2: or anybody else, I'm fully aware that this may be
Speaker 2: the last conversation we'll ever have. That means that every
Speaker 2: moment is absolutely precious. I've never been so engaged with life,
Speaker 2: and that's what people meant. And so that even the disease,
Speaker 2: that war was going to take the lives, they'd say,
Speaker 2: And why because the disease taught them to be authentic
Speaker 2: for the first time in their lives, and they found
Speaker 2: out that was much more precious than anything else. No,
Speaker 2: that's not a bargain i'd recommend to anything. I'm just
Speaker 2: telling you that I've witnessed it, and it's quite astonishing
Speaker 2: how many people do find authenticity. To go back to
Speaker 2: our previous theme, they value that over anything else, over
Speaker 2: even longevity. Now most of us would probably run the
Speaker 2: other way. Again, I'm not recommending it. I'm just saying
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's always those opposing ideas, that feeling of
Speaker 1: I'm good and I want to be better. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a good husband or a good dad, or a good mom,
Speaker 1: or I'm a good whatever. At the same time, I'm
Speaker 1: not good enough, like you know whatever. It may be.
Speaker 1: Not that that's negative, but the idea of I know
Speaker 1: I can do more and I want to do more.
Speaker 1: So they said, you need for this dichotomy almost to
Speaker 1: be held well, is there, Well, the ability to hold
Speaker 1: those two opposing ideas is needed, right, Like, because you don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to live in a world where I
Speaker 1: think I'm perfectly healthy, everything's amazing, because then I may
Speaker 1: miss certain challenges. And I also don't want to live
Speaker 1: in the other world of oh my god, like everything's
Speaker 1: falling apart and I'm dying every second of the day.
Speaker 2: But what if we just looked at it in the
Speaker 2: unitary way, Then it's a matter of growth that I'm
Speaker 2: not as fully grown as I might be. But there's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong. Yes, yes, so you know I'll be eighty.
Speaker 2: You know, let me talk about you say eighty eighty. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know it's a big number.
Speaker 1: You're doing great, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Well do the numbers. I was born in forty four.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I always forget. Yeah, I forget when I'm with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's this expression. I've been thinking about this recently,
Speaker 2: this expression growing older. So we could just say being
Speaker 2: older or becoming older or getting older, but we say
Speaker 2: growing older. That's an interesting phrase, isn't it, Because actually,
Speaker 2: as we get older, we shrink. So what are we
Speaker 2: talking about growing older? Well, because growth being an emotional
Speaker 2: spiritual process that continues that can continue forever. So for me,
Speaker 2: it's not a matter of I'm good, but I can
Speaker 2: be better. It's a question of can I continue to grow?
Speaker 2: Not what there's anything wrong now, but can I continue
Speaker 2: to grow? Which is really the essence of life. As
Speaker 2: long as there's life, there's growth, isn't there? You know?
Speaker 2: And the growth maybe at some point purely physical, At
Speaker 2: some point physically there might even be contraction, But spiritual
Speaker 2: and emotionally they can always be growth. So it's rather
Speaker 2: than a dichotomy, it's more like a unitary process.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate that. I do feel that. What is
Speaker 1: You just sparked something for me. You were giving this example.
Speaker 1: The story just told about how the gentleman, when he
Speaker 1: thought he was going to commit suicide, he would hold
Speaker 1: his almost like a gun to his head. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's the place he developed the trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tumor.
Speaker 1: How does trauma intercept the body in that way like this?
Speaker 1: That feels such like a physical example of that.
Speaker 2: I can give you other examples.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I was working in palliative care, I was looking
Speaker 2: after a young woman. She was thirty eight with als
Speaker 2: AMT traffic light as crosses, which is a disease, and
Speaker 2: the nervous system you basically get paralyzed. The muscles that
Speaker 2: or the nerves that activate your muscles just die their
Speaker 2: hard and that's what's closest means. So they they become
Speaker 2: rigid and they become unable to move. This woman, she
Speaker 2: was a dancer, beautiful woman, and we talked a lot
Speaker 2: in her last weeks. She told me that all her
Speaker 2: life she used to have this dream of being buried alive.
Speaker 2: Boxton unable to be unable to move. She was a
Speaker 2: dancer and she began to notice that on the dance
Speaker 2: floor she couldn't execute the movements anymore. Something was wrong.
Speaker 2: So she was diagnosed at ALS and she went to
Speaker 2: the office of the ALS Society and on the wall
Speaker 2: there was a poster that said having ALS is like
Speaker 2: being buried alive.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The cellist Jacquelin Duprey was a great classic British classical cellist,
Speaker 2: died in her forties. She was a big international rocket
Speaker 2: star in the classical music world. She died of MSS
Speaker 2: multiple scrosses. She couldn't move anymore by that By the
Speaker 2: time she was in the lily twenties, she couldn't play
Speaker 2: the cellum anymore. When she was eight years old, she
Speaker 2: said to her sister, He'll don't tell her mommy this,
Speaker 2: but when I go up, I won't be able to
Speaker 2: move or walk. Now, all of these people, these three people,
Speaker 2: the guy with the brain tumor, the woman with the
Speaker 2: LS jacking, the prey, they've been deeply traumatized in childhood.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go into how, but they had been.
Speaker 2: That woman's dreamed that she couldn't move or walk was
Speaker 2: literally an expression over emotional experience in her family of origin.
Speaker 2: In her deathbed, nobody came to see her from her family.
Speaker 2: She was all alone, like she had been all her life.
Speaker 2: She couldn't be herself. She couldn't speak, or move or
Speaker 2: get enough air to be herself. So that dream was
Speaker 2: metaphoric to start with, then became a physical reality. Now,
Speaker 2: how does the metaphor does or how does the emotion?
Speaker 2: How does the trauma translate into physical reality? That has
Speaker 2: to do with the scientific little secret. Don't tell any
Speaker 2: doctors this because might not know what to do with it.
Speaker 2: But well some of them don't. They're not taught in
Speaker 2: medical school. Mind and body are unseparable. Our emotions, our
Speaker 2: nervous system, our emotional system, in our brains and our bodies,
Speaker 2: our nervous system, our horomonal apparatus, and our immune system
Speaker 2: are actually one system, all serving survival and growth and reproduction,
Speaker 2: and so they're not separate. Even to say that they're
Speaker 2: connected it is a bit false because it's one yes, yes, no,
Speaker 2: Which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant
Speaker 2: impact on the nervous system, on the god, on the heart,
Speaker 2: on an immune system, and on hormones. Just obviously, so
Speaker 2: without going into the mechanisms of how trauma effects, but
Speaker 2: trauma can affect genetic functioning, our chromosomes function, chroma can
Speaker 2: effect our immune system. Actually, for example, study that I
Speaker 2: callte women with severe post traumatic stress disorder have doubled
Speaker 2: the risk of ovarian cancer, according to a Harvard study
Speaker 2: a few years ago. Well, but that means that the
Speaker 2: severe emotions endured by the woman with PTSD can declare
Speaker 2: themselves in a form of malignancy because they affect the
Speaker 2: immune system and the molded the symptoms, the lesser risk
Speaker 2: of avarian cancer. So mind and body being one unit, obviously,
Speaker 2: our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can show
Speaker 2: up in our physiology, which is why autoimmune diseases are
Speaker 2: much more common amongst racialized women, both in Canada and
Speaker 2: the US, because they hurt a lot more as women
Speaker 2: and as racialized people. So it's just all one thing.
Speaker 2: And again, is that a new finding or is that
Speaker 2: something or is that an ancient wisdom? And it's both.
Speaker 2: It is both modern science not taught in medical schools
Speaker 2: for reasons that are interesting but rather distressing, and it's
Speaker 2: ancient wisdom as well. It's all one.
Speaker 1: And with that approach, I mean, we can't minimize the
Speaker 1: number of steps and the uniqueness of those, but the
Speaker 1: hope is that people can work medically and mentally to
Speaker 1: be able to release that trauma.
Speaker 2: I have photographs on my on my cellphone, on my
Speaker 2: computer of a woman that I met five years ago.
Speaker 2: I gave it talk in London on this subject of
Speaker 2: mind body unity and how stress and trauma can lead
Speaker 2: to autommune disease and the automn diseases where the immune
Speaker 2: system attacks the body itself, and this woman sent me
Speaker 2: photographs a year ago now. When I met her, she'd
Speaker 2: been diagnosed with autiomn disease called systemic loopus, which has
Speaker 2: got a typical presentation of what's called the butterfly rash.
Speaker 2: So her face is red like here like the wings
Speaker 2: of butterfly, with the body of the butterfly as a
Speaker 2: red rash over and it's called the butterfly rash. It's
Speaker 2: typical of that disease. And she sent me a picture
Speaker 2: of her fingers. When she was diagnosed, they were like
Speaker 2: yellow as wax because the blood supply had been constricted.
Speaker 2: She was told that you got this disease. We don't
Speaker 2: know what causes it, can't cure it. Probably it'll get
Speaker 2: worse and you'll be on medication first of your life.
Speaker 2: I could saying these photographs, you could actually show them
Speaker 2: because she's given me permission. She sent me a pictures
Speaker 2: of ear ago faced at the beautiful pink as anything,
Speaker 2: no rash, fingers are as pink as mine, yours, No medication,
Speaker 2: no treatment. She just dealt with the emotional part of
Speaker 2: it all her life. She had suppressed herself, just along
Speaker 2: the lines I've been talking about. She dealt with her trauma.
Speaker 2: She's become fully authentically and vigorously herself the disease is gone,
Speaker 2: doctors would say. Of some doctors said, well, that's just
Speaker 2: an anecdote. Yeah, it's an anecdote, but happen to be
Speaker 2: a tool anatgot. I pay attention to anadlos. Not only
Speaker 2: that this has been studied systematically by others, and there
Speaker 2: are people who once they deal with the emotional side
Speaker 2: of things and take charge of their lives, they recover
Speaker 2: from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless. And
Speaker 2: if you just look at the example of Stephen Hawking,
Speaker 2: the great physicist, who was diagnosed with ALS at age twenty,
Speaker 2: he lived another fifty five years. Now the disease progressed,
Speaker 2: but he outlived this prognosis by a good half a century. Folks,
Speaker 2: I hate to tell you this be doctors don't know everything,
Speaker 2: and especially we don't fully understand. I should say as
Speaker 2: a profession the wonder's workings of mind and body and
Speaker 2: the spirit and how they all interact. So when you
Speaker 2: look at the indigenous healing practices, like the North American
Speaker 2: natives that got this medicine, will four cardrance, which is
Speaker 2: the physical and the mental, which means also the emotional
Speaker 2: and the social and the spiritual and those four quads
Speaker 2: have to be imbalanced for us to be healthy. No,
Speaker 2: they didn't have the science we do, and they didn't
Speaker 2: have the amazing achievements of Western medicine, which are truly miraculous,
Speaker 2: but they did have a wisdom that if only we
Speaker 2: adopted then combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine. Boy,
Speaker 2: what a health system you could possibly have, you know.
Speaker 1: That's definitely there. Yeah, what you're helping try and build
Speaker 1: for the future, and all of our platforms are dedicated
Speaker 1: to that. Hopefully we can get to a place for
Speaker 1: that integrative, holistic viewpoint.
Speaker 2: And there are more and more physicians practicing that way.
Speaker 2: You know, there are people functional medicine and integrated medicine,
Speaker 2: not as holistic as I like them to be, but
Speaker 2: far more realistic than mainstream medicine. And these are medically
Speaker 2: twained physicians like I was. So there's not like some
Speaker 2: fly by night alternative weird orccult. I mean, these are
Speaker 2: just doctors who, like myself, at some point, came to
Speaker 2: terms with the limitations of their education and needed to
Speaker 2: infuse some more ancient wisdom into how they practice the
Speaker 2: arts of healing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, I'd love to end with I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you what your wish, your prayer, your hope,
Speaker 1: however you'd like to word it. For humanity is right
Speaker 1: now today, at this time. If there's some words that
Speaker 1: come from your heart.
Speaker 2: If you could just wake up to our possibilities. You
Speaker 2: know that, you know the famous story of the body
Speaker 2: where he's walking along the road and somebody sees them
Speaker 2: with this vadiant face and confident gait, and he says,
Speaker 2: who are you a god? And the Boddy says, no,
Speaker 2: I'm awake. And if only we could be awake to
Speaker 2: our possibilities, like in every conflict, on the deepest human level,
Speaker 2: it's so unnecessary. We could actually be a human race together.
Speaker 2: It could be that we don't have to hurt ourselves,
Speaker 2: we don't have to hurt others, we don't have to
Speaker 2: take from them, demand from them. We could be this
Speaker 2: is actually possible for all of us. Since that is
Speaker 2: possible for all of us as individuals and for all
Speaker 2: of us as creatures, let's just wake up to our possibilities.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. Gebele, thank you so much again for your time,
Speaker 1: your energy, your presence, and everyone who's been listening or
Speaker 1: watching at home. If you don't already, please do grab
Speaker 1: a copy of the book Myth of Normal because our
Speaker 1: first and second conversations were very different, and I guide
Speaker 1: you towards the book for the deeper resources, the step
Speaker 1: by step guide. It's what I try and avoid doing
Speaker 1: in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes,
Speaker 1: or oversimplifying what Gable's beautiful work does in his deep books,
Speaker 1: because I believe he and everyone else would want you
Speaker 1: to take those steps. So I wish you all the
Speaker 1: best in your journey of trauma, illness and healing. And Gabor,
Speaker 1: I thank you for your work and your contributions today
Speaker 1: as well and forever to humanity.
Speaker 2: Well, it's always so peaceful to be with you, and
Speaker 2: believe me, these days I enjoy you know it's of peace.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much, Thank you, so much, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Speaker 1: Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
Speaker 1: heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Speaker 2: Everything in nature goes only where it's vulnerable, So a
Speaker 2: tree doesn't grow over it's hard and thick does it.
Speaker 2: It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.