Speaker 1: Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a
Speaker 1: crustacean animal like a crab inside a hard shall, it
Speaker 1: can't grow. It has to mold and make itself very
Speaker 1: vulnerable to be able to grow. A tree doesn't grow
Speaker 1: where it's hard and thick, does it. It goes where
Speaker 1: it's soft and green and vulnerable. The vulnerability is absolutely
Speaker 1: essential for growth, and for vulnerability, you gotta let go
Speaker 1: of those defenses such as being right. Hey everyone, welcome
Speaker 1: back to you on Purpose, the number one health podcast
Speaker 1: in the world. Thanks to each and every one of
Speaker 1: you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
Speaker 1: And I am so excited to be talking to you today.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. My new book, Eight Rules of
Speaker 1: Love is out and I cannot wait to share it
Speaker 1: with you. I am so so excited for you to
Speaker 1: read this book, for you to listen to this book.
Speaker 1: I read the audio book. If you haven't got it already,
Speaker 1: make sure you go to eight Rules of Love dot com.
Speaker 1: It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or
Speaker 1: let go of love. So if you've got friends that
Speaker 1: are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure
Speaker 1: you grab this book, and I'd love to invite you
Speaker 1: to come and see me for my global tour Love Rules.
Speaker 1: Go to j Shedy tour dot com to learn more
Speaker 1: information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to see you this year. Now. I know that if
Speaker 1: you're listening right now, you're here because you want to
Speaker 1: improve your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. I know
Speaker 1: that you're trying to heal from trauma, from stress, from pressure.
Speaker 1: You're trying to heal challenges you experienced early in childhood
Speaker 1: or ones that you're going through today. And it's my job,
Speaker 1: and it's my duty, and it's my honor and joy
Speaker 1: to introduce you to incredible people that I believe have answers,
Speaker 1: have insights, have helpful approaches to navigating the challenges all experience.
Speaker 1: And today's guests is someone I have been so excited
Speaker 1: to speak to you for a long time on on purpose.
Speaker 1: I hope this is not just his only time on
Speaker 1: the show. I hope this starts to become a regular
Speaker 1: guest on the show. I'm talking about none other than
Speaker 1: doctor Gabor Mattei, who's a celebrated speaker and best selling
Speaker 1: author he's highly sought after for his expertise on a
Speaker 1: range of topics such as addiction, stress, and childhood development.
Speaker 1: Doctor Matte has written several best selling books, including the
Speaker 1: award winning in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters
Speaker 1: with Addiction When the Body Says No, The Cost of
Speaker 1: Hidden Stress and Scattered Minds, The Origins and Healing of
Speaker 1: Attention deficit Disorder. Now today we're talking about his new
Speaker 1: book called The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing
Speaker 1: in a Toxic Culture, and we have the link to
Speaker 1: this in the notes. I want you to go and
Speaker 1: order this book right now. It is going to blow
Speaker 1: your mind then of this individual about what we're going
Speaker 1: through as a culture and a society are going to
Speaker 1: be really powerful. So the book is called The Myth
Speaker 1: of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the show, doctor Gabor Matte. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for being here. Well, it's such a pleasure
Speaker 1: to be here. Thank you. I love sitting down with
Speaker 1: people who are deeply immersed and obsessed with ideas and
Speaker 1: observing human behavior. I admire obsession deeply, in admiration deeply,
Speaker 1: and I admire the ability to sit with something for
Speaker 1: a long enough time. But I want to start off
Speaker 1: broad and I want to move in deeper. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a question that me and my friends
Speaker 1: often talk about. I think we hear the word trauma
Speaker 1: more often these days. Yes, it's thrown around sometimes, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's used effectively. Sometimes it's used in conversation around things
Speaker 1: that some people would perceive as small and insignificant. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's used to describe life defining things. In your words,
Speaker 1: how would you describe trauma and why is it so
Speaker 1: misunderstood even though it's so widespread. It's a deep question because,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, trauma is sometimes us somewhat loosely
Speaker 1: and promiscuously to refer to things that are not traumatic.
Speaker 1: So people will have a difficult experience and say I
Speaker 1: was traumatized. No, they weren't. Did you say a difficult experience?
Speaker 1: And there's one of my colleagues points out, all trauma
Speaker 1: is stressful, but not every stress is traumatic, So sometimes
Speaker 1: people use the word to refer to difficult experiences, which
Speaker 1: is not the same as being traumatized. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: where it really matters, which is in the area of
Speaker 1: health that you and I are both concerned in whether
Speaker 1: it's physical or mental health. Trauma is not understood nearly
Speaker 1: enough or use nearly enough, so that to my mind,
Speaker 1: a lot of conditions of mind and body are actually
Speaker 1: very much trauma related without the healing profession, particularly the
Speaker 1: medical profession, actually recognizing it. So trauma, then is it
Speaker 1: comes to the Greek word for wounding. Trauma is a wound.
Speaker 1: It's a psychic wound that leaves a scar. It leaves
Speaker 1: an imprint in your nervous system and your body, in
Speaker 1: your psyche, and then shows up in multiple ways that
Speaker 1: are not helpful to you later on. So it's basic sense,
Speaker 1: trauma is a psychic wound. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the nature of a wound, on the one hand, if
Speaker 1: it's raw and open, it really hurts. So when somebody
Speaker 1: touches the wound that you sustained a long time ago
Speaker 1: but it hasn't healed yet, you will react like you're
Speaker 1: just being tormented all over again. This happens in relationships
Speaker 1: all the time. On the other hand, a wound scar over,
Speaker 1: and the scar tissue has certain features. It's very hard,
Speaker 1: it's rigid, so it's not flexible, so people tend to
Speaker 1: be rigid when the traumati. It also doesn't grow, so
Speaker 1: trauma very often stops emotional growth and development. So no,
Speaker 1: one hand, is very raw and painful. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: it's even lacks sensation because cartishoot doesn't have nerv a
Speaker 1: things in it. But trauma, then, just to finish, is
Speaker 1: not what happened to you. So trauma is not the
Speaker 1: difficult incidents like trauma's not the war. It's not the
Speaker 1: in my case, the Second More War when I was born,
Speaker 1: or what happened to me. Trauma is not the abuse
Speaker 1: that people experienced. Trauma is not the pain that they felt.
Speaker 1: Trauma is the wound that they sustained as a result.
Speaker 1: So the trauma wasn't, for example, the sexual abuse, Trauma
Speaker 1: was the wound that the person sustained as a result
Speaker 1: of it been abused. That's the good news, Jay, because
Speaker 1: if trauma is the wound that be sustained, it can
Speaker 1: be healed at anytime. If trauma is what happened to
Speaker 1: me seventy five years ago or seventy eight years ago,
Speaker 1: it happened, it never not will have happened. You know,
Speaker 1: the partition of India wounded a lot of people, but
Speaker 1: it never would It'll never not have happened. But if
Speaker 1: the wound is what happened to people inside as a
Speaker 1: result that can be healed, that's probably the best differentiated
Speaker 1: that I've heard. And you're right, it is good news
Speaker 1: because it means we can heal it. Exactly, what do
Speaker 1: you think of the biggest Going the opposite way, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a wound, and I want to come back
Speaker 1: to that, but going the opposite way, how would you
Speaker 1: then define healing, because that's another word like trauma that
Speaker 1: is also just everywhere now right self healing, healing from this,
Speaker 1: healing from that. I think healing is such an interesting
Speaker 1: concept in and of itself, which again is rarely defined
Speaker 1: or made clear to us, and from your studies, I
Speaker 1: would love to hear your thoughts in the same way
Speaker 1: as you did for trauma. Is what is healing? Sure?
Speaker 1: So you mentioned to me that you spent some time
Speaker 1: in my homeland of Hungary, where I was born, and
Speaker 1: the Hungarian word for health actually begins with the word
Speaker 1: for wholeness, so health literally means wholeness, and the English
Speaker 1: word for healing and health also come from an aimo
Speaker 1: Saxon origin, meaning wholeness. So for some reason, languages internationally
Speaker 1: have intuited the sense of healing, which is a sense
Speaker 1: of completion and wholeness. Now, what trauma does is it
Speaker 1: disconnects us. It splits us off from our true self
Speaker 1: and disconnectcess for our emotions, even from our bodies. So
Speaker 1: that if that disconnection is the essence of trauma, then
Speaker 1: the healing is that coming together of the self to
Speaker 1: become a whole again. And healing is often used synonymously
Speaker 1: with cure. Fair enough, but strange enough in my view,
Speaker 1: and not just in my view, people can be cured
Speaker 1: from an illness without becoming whole without healing. People sometimes
Speaker 1: also be it could become healed without being cured. So
Speaker 1: in our sense, healing is not the absence of a
Speaker 1: physical illness, but it's the integrity of a person who's
Speaker 1: no longer split up on themselves. I think what we
Speaker 1: find is that trauma is so, as you said, a
Speaker 1: wound that is long lasting. It can often be that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but healing is a process that we want to happen
Speaker 1: now or today or tomorrow. Yeah. I'm intrigued by how
Speaker 1: does time we've always had time will heal, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's it won't, yeah, right, So let's go back to
Speaker 1: the wound and talk about is there any relationship between
Speaker 1: time and wounds or unhealed wounds, and what is that relationship?
Speaker 1: How is that wound being formed internally? As you said,
Speaker 1: trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens
Speaker 1: inside of you. That which is happening inside of you.
Speaker 1: What is happening with that wound over time? When it's left,
Speaker 1: what happens is that it maybe lie dormant for a
Speaker 1: long time, and then something occurs that touches it. It's
Speaker 1: going We talk about people being triggered. For example, something
Speaker 1: touches wound inside you and you react You've just been
Speaker 1: wounded for the first time. And certainly I can tell
Speaker 1: you that's been the case for me, for example, in
Speaker 1: my marriage relationship. Is that the unhealed wounds. You may
Speaker 1: think you've gone past them, but then something will happen
Speaker 1: that touches that wound and you react like you're being
Speaker 1: tormented all over again for the first time. And time
Speaker 1: does not automatical heal. Time maybe scars it over time,
Speaker 1: maybe makes it less available to immediate memory. But should
Speaker 1: something happen to evoke it, it's going to show up
Speaker 1: in its full painful impact until you do some work
Speaker 1: to heal. Time by itself does not heal, not spontaneously,
Speaker 1: not automatically. How do we covered those? Because I feel
Speaker 1: that and maybe this is something to address, it's that
Speaker 1: at least, what I find is that a lot of
Speaker 1: our beliefs that we have about ourselves and about others
Speaker 1: are wired to try and make us feel safe to
Speaker 1: some degree. So I believe, and I'm hypothetically saying this,
Speaker 1: I believe that I am right in my opinion because
Speaker 1: that makes me feel safe and secure. But often to
Speaker 1: unearth a wound, we have to be okay with the
Speaker 1: vulnerability of saying, well, maybe I'm not right. Maybe this
Speaker 1: response is coming from some wound that I gained in
Speaker 1: the past. So, for example, when you were speaking about
Speaker 1: your marriage, you sparked something for me. I found that
Speaker 1: a lot of the love I received when I was
Speaker 1: younger was then followed by guilt. So when I received
Speaker 1: love when I was younger, the idea was if I
Speaker 1: couldn't reciprocate with that level of love, I'd be made
Speaker 1: to feel guilty that I didn't love someone enough, and
Speaker 1: I found that I would repeat that in my own
Speaker 1: relationship with my wife, where I would overlove and if
Speaker 1: she didn't match that level of love, I would then
Speaker 1: make her feel guilty. And it took me years to
Speaker 1: really discover that pattern. And that's just one tiny pattern.
Speaker 1: And whether that's trauma or a difficult experiences a different conversation.
Speaker 1: But the idea that spotting that pattern only came from
Speaker 1: me saying, well, maybe I'm wrong, Maybe me wanting to
Speaker 1: make someone feel guilty is not the right thing. How
Speaker 1: do we assess that? How do we gain the vulnerability
Speaker 1: in safety to create that future stability? Does that make sense? Well,
Speaker 1: it makes absolute sense because vulnerability itself is absolutely essential
Speaker 1: for growth. So vulnerability of the word itself comes from
Speaker 1: the Latin word vulnerary to wound, So vulnerability is our
Speaker 1: capacity to be wounded. Now, the reality is that the
Speaker 1: human beings were all vulnerable from conception until death. But
Speaker 1: when we're hurt in childhood and the vulnerability it's too
Speaker 1: painful to bear. We will try and shut down our vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and for example, by being right. But if I'm right,
Speaker 1: then I'm powerful and I can't be assailed anymore, you know.
Speaker 1: But when we do that, we stop growing. Everything in
Speaker 1: nature grows only where it's vulnerable. So a crustacean animal
Speaker 1: like a crab inside a hard shell, it can't grow.
Speaker 1: It has to mold and make itself very vulnerable to
Speaker 1: be able to grow. A tree doesn't grow where it's
Speaker 1: hard and thick, does it. It goes where it's soft
Speaker 1: and green and vulnerable. So vulnerability is absolutely essential for growth.
Speaker 1: And for vulnerability, you gotta let go of those defenses
Speaker 1: such as being right, that you developed as a child
Speaker 1: in order to protect yourself from the pain. So that's
Speaker 1: why we talk about growing pains, because vulnerability is necessary
Speaker 1: for growth. Without vulnerability is no growth. Wow, that what
Speaker 1: you just said, that's so beautiful. You just said. Vulnerability
Speaker 1: is our capacity to be wounded. Yeah, that's an I mean,
Speaker 1: that's an incredible definition of the word. I think we
Speaker 1: hear so many definitions of vulnerability that vulnerability. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say that again. Everyone write that down. Vulnerability is
Speaker 1: our capacity to be wounded. How do we develop our capacit?
Speaker 1: So actually, let's go back to Childoo, we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that. So if we go to childhood, yeah, what
Speaker 1: are the things happening currently that you perceive? And I
Speaker 1: know you talk about this in your new book, The
Speaker 1: Myth of Normal. By the way, everything we're talking about
Speaker 1: is in this incredible book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma,
Speaker 1: Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. If you don't
Speaker 1: have it, please go and order it. Now, what is
Speaker 1: happening in our childhood in society? I guess when you
Speaker 1: say things are not happening to us, there are still
Speaker 1: environmental impacts that are imprinting the potential for this wound
Speaker 1: to grow. What are some of those things that are
Speaker 1: distorting our development in unhealthy ways in childhood? There are
Speaker 1: two things. One is obvious, like when the children are mistreated, maltreated,
Speaker 1: abused sexually, physically, emotionally, when there's violence in a family
Speaker 1: or a parent there's caught up in addiction, or where
Speaker 1: there's a rancor's divorce and a lot of conflict in
Speaker 1: the home. Children were just wounded the period. But it's
Speaker 1: more insidious and more ubiquitous than that, because children as
Speaker 1: certain basic needs. Now, if we understand human, if you
Speaker 1: want to understand the zebra or a whale, where would
Speaker 1: you study those creatures in a zoo or an aquarium
Speaker 1: or a thein nature. The same with human beings. So
Speaker 1: you have to actually look at what are the evolutionary
Speaker 1: determined needs of human beings as inculcated are instilled in
Speaker 1: us through our evolutionary history, and so we evolved with
Speaker 1: certain needs. They used to be disbelief that children or
Speaker 1: what are called a tabular russ. You know, an empty slate,
Speaker 1: you can just write whatever you want on it, program
Speaker 1: the child in any way you want. That used to
Speaker 1: be the prevailing belief. It's not the true. Children are
Speaker 1: born not only your certain needs, but certain inherent expectations.
Speaker 1: So to give an example, your lungs are an inherent
Speaker 1: expectation for oxygen because they've developed in response to oxygen.
Speaker 1: If there'd be no oxygen in the environment, we'd have
Speaker 1: no lungs. In the same way with the human child,
Speaker 1: it has certain inherent expectations. And you can own kids
Speaker 1: not just by maltreating them, but by not meeting those expectations.
Speaker 1: When I ask the expectation, I don't mean a conscious expectation.
Speaker 1: I mean an expectation inherent in the organism. So children
Speaker 1: need unconditional, loving acceptance, by multiple adult caregivers, which is
Speaker 1: how we evolved in hunter gatherer gros and live that
Speaker 1: way for millions and hundred thousands of years. Children never
Speaker 1: need not to have to work to make the relationship
Speaker 1: with their parents work, so a child children need rest
Speaker 1: from having to struggle to make the relationship functional. So
Speaker 1: they don't have to be pretty or cute, or compliant
Speaker 1: or clever or successful or any of that stuff. They
Speaker 1: just need to be and they don't have to work
Speaker 1: at getting their parents to accept them. That's an essential
Speaker 1: need of the child. When I say essential, I mean
Speaker 1: if it's not met, that'll destroy child development. The third
Speaker 1: need is really crucial, and in our society it's hardly
Speaker 1: ever met, which is the child needs to feed them
Speaker 1: to experience all the emotions that nature has endowed her
Speaker 1: or him a day with. So we have certain brain
Speaker 1: circuits for anger, for love or play or lust or
Speaker 1: seeking curiosity. All these circuits are there for a reason.
Speaker 1: We share them with other animals. We share them with
Speaker 1: bare cups and puppies and little whales, elephant. They need
Speaker 1: to develop because they're there for a reason. Evolution gave
Speaker 1: it to us. In our society, parents are often advised
Speaker 1: and taught to suppress certain emotional experience and a part
Speaker 1: of the child. That's a wound to the child which
Speaker 1: distorts their development and has significant implications for health later on.
Speaker 1: The fourth need fourth essential need is fee play out
Speaker 1: in nature, free play, spontaneous, creative, imaginative play. But that's
Speaker 1: essential for healthy brain development. We share them with other animals.
Speaker 1: Baby elephants play, bear cups play, puppies play, lion cups
Speaker 1: play crucial for play for brain development. We know that
Speaker 1: now in our society we put cognitive development way ahead
Speaker 1: of play and are deprived of children of play by
Speaker 1: giving them gadgets, which deprives them of imagination. So we're
Speaker 1: actually undermining their brain development and their healthy unfolding as
Speaker 1: human beings. So children can be wounded not just by
Speaker 1: bad things happening to them, but by their needs not
Speaker 1: being met and our society when you ask about the
Speaker 1: environmental conditions that undermine health and child development, these amunmental
Speaker 1: conditions are our society or inimical to healthy human unfoldment.
Speaker 1: No wonder we have so many children in trouble with
Speaker 1: anxiety and ADHD and depression, and the rate of childhood
Speaker 1: suicide is going up, and the number of kids being
Speaker 1: medicated with heavy duty medications, multiplicity of medications is going up.
Speaker 1: Why because the conditions for healthy development are less and
Speaker 1: less available to them. Not because parents don't love their kids,
Speaker 1: not because they're not trying to do their best, but
Speaker 1: because of the conditions under which parenting takes place in
Speaker 1: this society. Yeah, just to share some of those stats
Speaker 1: that are in the book that doctor Matte is referring to.
Speaker 1: We have in twenty nineteen more than fifty million Americans,
Speaker 1: over twenty percent of the US adults suffered an episode
Speaker 1: of mental illness. Rates of obesity, along with the multiple
Speaker 1: health risks it possesses, are going up in many countries,
Speaker 1: in in Canada, Australia, and notably the United States, wherever
Speaker 1: thirty percent of the adult population reached the criterial And
Speaker 1: then this part, millions of North American children and the
Speaker 1: youths are being medicated with stimulants, antidepressants, and even antipsychotic
Speaker 1: drugs whose long term effects on the developing brain are
Speaker 1: yet to be established. So you know, you share all
Speaker 1: these insights and research and work. What I'm interested by is,
Speaker 1: let's say a child today is raised in that way.
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating that if you then migrate that
Speaker 1: child into the real world, and for everyone who's listening,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my quotation marks like real world. They walk
Speaker 1: into this conditioned world that we currently have. If we
Speaker 1: almost raised a village of children in a I don't
Speaker 1: know what the right word is, but I guess in
Speaker 1: a more natural way. But then they evolved and had
Speaker 1: to get a job and work in the world, how
Speaker 1: would they function? What would be your take on how
Speaker 1: they would do? I mean, is there any research on
Speaker 1: the or what would be your thoughts about how they
Speaker 1: would deal with the then capitalist society that is drilled
Speaker 1: around results and performance and being beautiful or smart or cute?
Speaker 1: Would how would they react to that? That question, as
Speaker 1: you actually has been studied to some degree, and they
Speaker 1: would not automatically buy into the values. So they may
Speaker 1: need to get a job, but they wouldn't identify themselves
Speaker 1: with the job, and they wouldn't judge themselves based on
Speaker 1: the external values of success. They would also into the
Speaker 1: world with a sense of purpose. And I know you.
Speaker 1: Purpose is very important to you, So a sense of
Speaker 1: purpose can only arise from us differ in touch of
Speaker 1: their real selves. So they would be in the world,
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't be of the world in a sense.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't identify themselves with the values that society would
Speaker 1: push on them. So I think they would struggle, but
Speaker 1: they would do reasonably well, and they'd hold them to
Speaker 1: themselves in the process. They wouldn't live a life that's
Speaker 1: based on what do other people think about me? Am
Speaker 1: I pretty enough? Do they find me attractive? Have I
Speaker 1: collected enough goods and objects to make me feel okay
Speaker 1: about myself? They wouldn't buy into all that. And to
Speaker 1: the extent that this has been studied and it has
Speaker 1: been those people that can be in this society without
Speaker 1: buying into its values tend to be healthier and more
Speaker 1: grounded emotionally. The reason why I love hearing that is
Speaker 1: because it's the first time I've connected these ideas together.
Speaker 1: That when I was born and raised in London, I
Speaker 1: was born and raised with all the usual pursuits. I
Speaker 1: have a good education, a good home, a good financial situation, etc.
Speaker 1: Those are the ways I was raised. And success was
Speaker 1: a big part of my culture. Yeah, and I chased
Speaker 1: the validation of my family and the external surroundings and
Speaker 1: my community and what my aunts and uncles taught to me,
Speaker 1: and when that validation was dissatisfied buying or didn't feel
Speaker 1: like it was actually coming my way. And when I
Speaker 1: was finally introduced to the monks at eighteen, I then
Speaker 1: seeked the validation of the monks, only for them to
Speaker 1: teach me that the issue wasn't who you seek validation from.
Speaker 1: The issue was seeking validation in the first place. And
Speaker 1: so what you just said to me is in three years,
Speaker 1: I got a crash course in what you're saying, where
Speaker 1: we spent more time in nature, we were trained in
Speaker 1: unlearning the behaviors and habits that I developed for twenty
Speaker 1: one years at the time. And then when I came
Speaker 1: back into the world, the way you just described that
Speaker 1: is exactly how I felt like. I almost felt like
Speaker 1: a new person coming back into the same world that
Speaker 1: I left with a completely different approach and a different
Speaker 1: map of how to navigate it. And you're spot on.
Speaker 1: It's still hard. It's not that it's perfect and it's easy,
Speaker 1: and it's not that I've got it right. It's just
Speaker 1: that when I am challenged, I have a toolkit or
Speaker 1: I have some ideas, as you said with purpose. That
Speaker 1: helped me think about the problem differently. You're not governed
Speaker 1: by the same thing. So when I went into the
Speaker 1: world of work, and I just want to give people
Speaker 1: how a practical example of what doctor Matter is saying
Speaker 1: is spot on. When I went into the world of work,
Speaker 1: we were all told that we had to be good
Speaker 1: at a list of like ten things in order to succeed.
Speaker 1: And I looked at that list of ten and I
Speaker 1: was like, I can do one of those things really well,
Speaker 1: and I'm only going to focus on that one because
Speaker 1: these other nine are not my nature, They're not my purpose.
Speaker 1: And it's so strange because that one thing made me
Speaker 1: extremely successful at the company I worked at and then
Speaker 1: has become how I've built my career. And it's so
Speaker 1: true that had I had gone in and done what
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people did, I would have become one
Speaker 1: of people were doing. That really deeply resonates what is
Speaker 1: the difference though with and I can't wait to read
Speaker 1: some of that research on that. I think that's fascinating
Speaker 1: when you have a culture where I think most people
Speaker 1: who read this book today the myth of normal will
Speaker 1: say that they can relate to having trauma, illness and
Speaker 1: trying to be on the path of healing. Especially our
Speaker 1: community here, they are absolutely going to love this book.
Speaker 1: This is exactly why we have this show. But I
Speaker 1: find that we would all agree. I think if I
Speaker 1: asked everyone to put up their hands and say how
Speaker 1: many people feel they experienced to traumatic environment at home,
Speaker 1: I think most people would raise their hands. If I
Speaker 1: asked how many people felt when they were children that
Speaker 1: they had unhealthy relationships with their parents to some degree,
Speaker 1: I think most people will put their hand up. The
Speaker 1: challenge I find is that I really feel what you're
Speaker 1: saying with the book. There's a difference between what you're
Speaker 1: saying and then the other extreme, which is molly cuddling.
Speaker 1: So there's neglect and then there's molly cuddling. And I
Speaker 1: find that as humans, our brains are wired for extremes.
Speaker 1: So if we've seen that being mistreated or neglected is
Speaker 1: really bad for us, we go the opposite way and
Speaker 1: we go, okay, and now I'm going to make sure
Speaker 1: that this kid has like twenty four cushions around it.
Speaker 1: I'd be curious to know. I like to answer that question.
Speaker 1: This is very important one, but I just want to
Speaker 1: know anxiety. What you mean by Molly Carling. What I see,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about people that I know and people
Speaker 1: that will speak to me, is that anyone who had
Speaker 1: a tough childhood are then trying to create a scenario
Speaker 1: for their child where that child experiences no pain. They're
Speaker 1: no longer respond to the child needs. They're coming from
Speaker 1: their own anxieties. Yes, so Molly Carling has got nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the child. It has to do with
Speaker 1: the anxieties or their parents. That kid is going to
Speaker 1: download the anxieties of their parents. So Molly Caudle, kids
Speaker 1: become very anxious and very scared and very ungrounded in themselves.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's not possible to love kids
Speaker 1: too much. In fact, there's a very interesting study where
Speaker 1: they looked at a large number of mothers and their
Speaker 1: infants very few months, and most mothers in this study
Speaker 1: were seen as really good mothers, and some were a
Speaker 1: bit distant and for their own because of their own
Speaker 1: traumas not as available. In a small group, we're seen
Speaker 1: as like super loving in how they doodled over their infants. Okay,
Speaker 1: the thirty years later, they looked at these infants now
Speaker 1: as adults, the ones that were most emotionally grounded and
Speaker 1: healthy were the ones who's received the super loving. So
Speaker 1: there's a difference. You can't love a child too much,
Speaker 1: which you can. So the molly calling that you describe
Speaker 1: is not a child being loved too much. It's a
Speaker 1: child who has to enjoy the anxieties of their parents.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a very famous example in world
Speaker 1: history of someone whose parents wanted to protect him from
Speaker 1: suffering was the Buddha. He never saw death, he never
Speaker 1: saw illness, and never saw old age. Until he goes
Speaker 1: out and sees a dying person, sees a very poor person,
Speaker 1: a very ill person, a very old person. He realized
Speaker 1: that there's suffering in the world. So all the molly
Speaker 1: clodling he received could not ultimately protect him from the
Speaker 1: awareness of pain and mulnability. Although if I talk about
Speaker 1: the Buddha, I also have to say that his own
Speaker 1: trauma is often not talked about because his mother died
Speaker 1: when he was a week old or right after bird
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't she So even they try to protect
Speaker 1: for him, they couldn't, you know. But so anyway, molly
Speaker 1: clodling has got nothing to do with the needs of
Speaker 1: the child. Yeah, that's a great differentiated. It has to
Speaker 1: do with the unmet needs of their parents. And as
Speaker 1: soon as parents project their needs onto the child, then
Speaker 1: longer to see the child as they exist. They see
Speaker 1: their own anxieties, they own their fears and their own fantasies. Naturally,
Speaker 1: that's going to hurt the child. Yeah, that's such a
Speaker 1: great differentiated. That's again, it's a trauma response. It's a
Speaker 1: trauma Yeah, it's a trauma response. Away makes suitcases, bags,
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Speaker 1: How and when should children young adults be exposed to
Speaker 1: pain in order to develop their vulnerability like, as you said,
Speaker 1: the capacity to experience a wound, Like how and when
Speaker 1: do we allow ourselves? How should we What environment is
Speaker 1: required to allow ourselves to experience pain in a healthy
Speaker 1: way or is it just going to come anyway. It's
Speaker 1: the nature of life. But there's no reason to deliberately
Speaker 1: exposed children to pain because they're going to experience it.
Speaker 1: The question is hard if we support them and they
Speaker 1: do you know why, because their puppy is going to die,
Speaker 1: because grandfather is going to die, because some neighborhood friends
Speaker 1: won't want to play with them, because they're not going
Speaker 1: to get the toy they wanted, because some disappointment will happen,
Speaker 1: you know. So pain is inevitable, but it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to become traumatic if the child is supported and experiencing
Speaker 1: the pain and moving past it. So we don't have
Speaker 1: to impose or bring pain into kids' life to train them.
Speaker 1: Life's going to do that. The question is how are
Speaker 1: we to interact with them while they're enduring the pain? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what would you say? Those are Obviously there's the
Speaker 1: love part, which you spoke about. But when when a
Speaker 1: child is going through something like that, let's talk about
Speaker 1: loss because I think that's a big one, right, Like
Speaker 1: whether it's using a parent or losing a puppy as
Speaker 1: you said, or or even if it's not losing a
Speaker 1: parent to death, it's losing a parent into a divorce.
Speaker 1: It's you know, for example, correct, Yeah, it's a grief
Speaker 1: and loss doesn't have to meet the end of life.
Speaker 1: It can be everything exactly what or a loss of
Speaker 1: a country. What are the steps that someone should take
Speaker 1: in order to help guide through anyone through loss, not
Speaker 1: just a child. Well endlessly enough, when I talk about
Speaker 1: these brain circuits that we share with other anim mammals
Speaker 1: for play and for loving and seeking, we also have
Speaker 1: a brain circuit for a panic and grief. Whether we
Speaker 1: have that because life brings loss, and so grief is
Speaker 1: essential for life, because grief is coming to terms with
Speaker 1: the fact that something is gone is not going to
Speaker 1: come back, you know. So I mean a child experiences grief,
Speaker 1: and you know I said that they need The need
Speaker 1: of the child is to be able to experience all
Speaker 1: the emotions. They need to be able to experience their
Speaker 1: grief as well. And it doesn't matter whether from adult
Speaker 1: eyes we see that loss as major or minor. It's
Speaker 1: a question of how is the child experiencing it? And
Speaker 1: for a small child, even what looks like all losses
Speaker 1: can be very painful. Well, then we don't make the
Speaker 1: child wrong for it. We don't say get over it.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong. Think of all the other children who
Speaker 1: are suffing all that kind of relativistic shaming stuff. You say, Oh,
Speaker 1: it really hurts, doesn't it. You really wish Grandpa would
Speaker 1: be here with you, You really wish mom and dad
Speaker 1: weren't leaving each other. It hurts, you know, you just
Speaker 1: validate their emotions. By doing so, you help them accept
Speaker 1: the loss, and you help them move through, and you
Speaker 1: help them learn that they can endure difficulty emotions without
Speaker 1: having to become falling to pieces. So we have a
Speaker 1: circuitry for grief in our brain, for grief in our brains.
Speaker 1: It needs to be allowed to do its work. I
Speaker 1: find that a lot of us today are reflecting on
Speaker 1: that inner child, right, Like that language is again more
Speaker 1: widespread today or is growing the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we have this inner child who has this wood or
Speaker 1: this trauma. What do you find is the difference between
Speaker 1: analyzing and overanalyzing or thinking and overthinking these experiences? And
Speaker 1: how would you define the difference? Because I and I'm
Speaker 1: being very honest and vulnerable because it's the only way
Speaker 1: to have this conversation. Really, like, I often think about
Speaker 1: events in my life that happened that would be considered
Speaker 1: generally as either difficult experiences or as traumatic. Right, they
Speaker 1: could be seen as either or There are some of
Speaker 1: them that I've worked through myself or with people that
Speaker 1: I trust, or with guides, and obviously through my monk
Speaker 1: life there were things that I looked at and worked on.
Speaker 1: There are certain things that I don't feel a need like,
Speaker 1: I don't feel a desire to dive into. The question
Speaker 1: I'm asking is should I dive into them? Or is
Speaker 1: that considered overanalyzing and overthinking? And I ask that for
Speaker 1: everyone else who's listening to this, going gosh, if I
Speaker 1: talk about everything that happened to me, I could be
Speaker 1: there for a while. Yeah, what's your take on that? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, in my world, there's no should Okay,
Speaker 1: there's no there are no shoulds, there's no shoudea. So
Speaker 1: I would never see anybody you should you know, because
Speaker 1: that itself is intrusive. So the question is whether it's
Speaker 1: helpful or not to delve into the past depends on
Speaker 1: what's happening with that individual and if some of the
Speaker 1: in fact effects of trauma, as we said earlier, is
Speaker 1: that the wounds of the past keep showing up in
Speaker 1: the present. So from my point of view, it's not
Speaker 1: so much about delving into the past and dwelling on
Speaker 1: the past, but I'm dealing with how the past there's
Speaker 1: showing up in the present. What a psychologist phenom mine
Speaker 1: Peter Levinco's the tyranney of the past, where the past
Speaker 1: dominates my present reactions. It doesn't matter how many times
Speaker 1: I go back and think about my childhood story. That's
Speaker 1: not going to help me. What I have to deal
Speaker 1: with is what's happening to me right now, at this
Speaker 1: very second, which is a shadow of the past. So
Speaker 1: thinking about it it's not going to be of much help.
Speaker 1: What's going to help is to deal with the emotions
Speaker 1: that are rising now as a result of what happened,
Speaker 1: and how those emotions affect my life in the present moment.
Speaker 1: So it's not about the past, it's about the present. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so's it's really about the choices we have now exactly
Speaker 1: what's available to us now? Yeah, what's available to us now?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like we didn't have a choice in
Speaker 1: the past because we were the too young or exactly
Speaker 1: too incapable of making a choice exactly, But the choices
Speaker 1: that happen right now can transform everything. It is possible
Speaker 1: some people do makes into victims. They kind of identify
Speaker 1: with the victim role. All this stuff happened to me,
Speaker 1: and therefore I cannot do such and such, or I'm
Speaker 1: keeping or I'm hurt and I'll never get over it.
Speaker 1: It's possible to identify with the victim role. It's even
Speaker 1: possible to identify with the survival or I'm a survival. Well,
Speaker 1: now that's not who you are you survive, but who
Speaker 1: you are as much greater than that particular experience, and
Speaker 1: who you always as much, always much greater than then
Speaker 1: you're suffering, you know, And so it is possible for
Speaker 1: some people to identify with the suffering and the past
Speaker 1: to such a degree that they stopped moving forward. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think you've just raised a really important component of
Speaker 1: all of this on a deeper level, is that what
Speaker 1: we identify with right Even earlier, you were talking about
Speaker 1: people who would be raised in this hypothetical village we
Speaker 1: were talking about, but even through research, they won't identify
Speaker 1: with the values of a capitalist society. Yeah, identification. You
Speaker 1: just said people could identify as a victim, They could
Speaker 1: identify as a survivor what is a healthy identification? Then
Speaker 1: there isn't one, right, because if you look at again
Speaker 1: the meaning of words, I just find words fascinating. Same. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Identification comes from a Latin word edam, which means the
Speaker 1: same and fachara to make as soon as I make
Speaker 1: myself the same as something like if identify with my
Speaker 1: role as a doctor, I immediately limit myself. If you
Speaker 1: identify with your experience as a monk, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean not to learn from it or to grow from it,
Speaker 1: but if you identify with it, that's what I am,
Speaker 1: You've now narrowed yourself. So there's no healthy identification. If
Speaker 1: identify myself with a state or a nation, I could
Speaker 1: be loyal to that state or nation. I could love
Speaker 1: that state or a nation or any group. But if
Speaker 1: you identify with it such as you have no independent existence,
Speaker 1: you've limited yourself already. So when you say is there
Speaker 1: a healthy identification? Not really? Isn't the challenge though, that
Speaker 1: we're I think all of us are pursuing some sort
Speaker 1: of identification like that seems to be a massive human need.
Speaker 1: I support this football club, or I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: this band, or I'm a member of the this car club,
Speaker 1: or I go to this shopping grocery store, or like
Speaker 1: I feel like we're all wanting to be members. Like
Speaker 1: that seems to be like a human need of wanting
Speaker 1: to be a member of a community, wanting to identify
Speaker 1: with something. It is a human need to belong. But
Speaker 1: can we belong without identifying to the point that we
Speaker 1: have no independent perspective? You know, you know the words
Speaker 1: can be be authentic and and I talk a lot
Speaker 1: about this tension between authenticity being ourselves and attachment, which
Speaker 1: is belonging. Ideally, we can both be authentic and belong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that kind of nivocation often needs to suffering. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what the Buddhists called attachment, isn't it. And let
Speaker 1: me give you an example. So you mentioned sports team,
Speaker 1: So in the ninth you wouldn't know this, but in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, the Hungarian soccer team was the best
Speaker 1: in the world. We never love that's I didn't. I
Speaker 1: love soccer and I didn't. Oh no, no. We into
Speaker 1: Britain and we beat Britain sixty three in Wembley Stadium
Speaker 1: the first the first time that it was a sorry
Speaker 1: brit fans. Yeah, sorry, but you know, um, and it
Speaker 1: was a huge national holiday in Hungary and small country
Speaker 1: goes to mighty Britain and beats them at their own game,
Speaker 1: you know. And the next year and the whole country
Speaker 1: was joyful and they've still in the great memories of
Speaker 1: my childhood. The next year when the World Championships and
Speaker 1: we're the heavy favorites because we haven't lost four years,
Speaker 1: and we meet the Germans in the final and we
Speaker 1: lose three to two. Yeah, national tragedy. I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: it still hurts. You know. It's just a football game
Speaker 1: played on the pitch by twenty two guys in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. So what you know. But when you when
Speaker 1: this is over identification, yeah, then that itself being suffering
Speaker 1: now you know. Yes, you can support your team. In Vancouver,
Speaker 1: British columber where I live, it's very peaceful place. But
Speaker 1: the Vancouver Connucs, which is a local hockey team, made
Speaker 1: it to the Stanley Cup finals and they lost. There
Speaker 1: were riots in the streets. Why because people are both identified.
Speaker 1: You can enjoy the team and be a sports fan,
Speaker 1: but the identification that your joy or satisfaction depends on
Speaker 1: whether your team loses or wins, well, why it doesn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that answer for many reasons, because I've had
Speaker 1: to go through the grief of letting go of past selves,
Speaker 1: adopting new selves, and then having to realize that none
Speaker 1: of those were me as my identifications. So, as you
Speaker 1: rightly said, when I took off the garbs of a monk,
Speaker 1: when I took off my robes, it was really tough
Speaker 1: because there was a part of my identity, especially at
Speaker 1: a young age, that was attached even to the outer covering,
Speaker 1: and I had to realize that I had extract the
Speaker 1: inner beliefs and leave the outer covering behind and the
Speaker 1: outer name and what that meant. And even in my
Speaker 1: career today, like I've had to let go and even
Speaker 1: now I don't even know how to identify in one
Speaker 1: sense whenever I'm sure I'm sure you feel this to
Speaker 1: some degree in your work as well. It's like whenever
Speaker 1: they say, like, oh, when you're on TV and they
Speaker 1: want to put like your your title, and they'll be like, Jay,
Speaker 1: what's your title? I'm like, I'm more defined by my
Speaker 1: purpose than my profession, Like you know what I what
Speaker 1: I do for people and the service I want to
Speaker 1: offer in the world is far more important to me
Speaker 1: than author or podcaster or form a monk or like
Speaker 1: those things don't really define me. Well, I get that totally,
Speaker 1: I am, But I'm thinking about as you're telling me.
Speaker 1: When you left those monk's robes, we talked about the
Speaker 1: crab with the hard shell. To grow, you have to
Speaker 1: let go the shell at some point. So each of
Speaker 1: those mal things represent the point of growth, but at
Speaker 1: the time it's difficult. So when I love family practice
Speaker 1: to go and work with a highly addicted population in Vancouver,
Speaker 1: and it was a loss of identity for a while,
Speaker 1: I was a bit discerented for a few days because
Speaker 1: all these people, these families that had relied on me
Speaker 1: to be the kind of the lynchpin of their lynchpin
Speaker 1: of their health, and all these people that had come
Speaker 1: to me and trust me and who I would see
Speaker 1: in the office, and all of a sudden I left that.
Speaker 1: Now who am I all of a sudden? So I
Speaker 1: totally understand that now the reality is, but I'm so
Speaker 1: grateful that I did well. Then I got to experience
Speaker 1: in the next realm of work helped to further define
Speaker 1: my purpose in life and taught me so much about
Speaker 1: myself and human beings. But at the time it was difficult.
Speaker 1: Letting go of that identification was difficult, and there was
Speaker 1: really that sense of well, if I'm not that, then
Speaker 1: what am I? This is what happens when we identify
Speaker 1: with rules. Yeah. If anyone's listening and wants to go
Speaker 1: at figuring out what your subconscious answer is, ask one
Speaker 1: of your friends, ask them and they get them to
Speaker 1: ask you, who are you? Yeah, and you're answer that
Speaker 1: question nine episode at the time, when you ask someone
Speaker 1: who are you, they'll say, I'm an a lawyer, I'm
Speaker 1: an accountant, I'm a I'm a brit I'm an American,
Speaker 1: I'm you know. Always the answer is on such a
Speaker 1: material level. Well, as one spiritual teacher said, I think
Speaker 1: unless I'm making this up, but I think you said.
Speaker 1: They said that the problem is not knowing who we are.
Speaker 1: The problem is thinking that you know who we are. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, isn't it that the things that are true
Speaker 1: safety feel unsafe to the mind. Yeah, And I'm intrigued
Speaker 1: by that because you've studied the mind. You studied addiction,
Speaker 1: you studied healing, you study trauma. Why is it that
Speaker 1: we seek certainty and stability when you earlier also said
Speaker 1: that the only time we experience growth is the opposite
Speaker 1: when we're vulnerable. Why is it that we're so addicted
Speaker 1: to things staying the same or things not changing like
Speaker 1: that seems to be a core human addiction. Well, the
Speaker 1: vapist one said to me that it has to do
Speaker 1: with the nature of the mind that you're referring to.
Speaker 1: A therapist one said to me that if your parents
Speaker 1: didn't know to hold you, you developed the mind you
Speaker 1: hold yourself with. So you find safety in this mind
Speaker 1: that you created. And so the human mind, the ordinary
Speaker 1: ego human mind is basically a defensive structure. It's in
Speaker 1: significant ways it's a response to pain. That's not all
Speaker 1: it is, but in significant ways it's a response to pain.
Speaker 1: It's a fate of pain, and it's designed to keep
Speaker 1: you from experiencing pain. So it's worried and it's anxious,
Speaker 1: and it's defensive. So when it comes to change and vulnerability,
Speaker 1: the mind wants to defend against it, and so it
Speaker 1: comes out of fear, which comes out of childhood experience
Speaker 1: where the pain that you had wasn't held and therefore
Speaker 1: you developed these mind structures to keep you from experiencing it.
Speaker 1: And I mean one of them clearly is addiction. And
Speaker 1: you know Keith Richard's the world's most famous former aroonattic
Speaker 1: the Rolling Tone Guitars, said about addiction, for example, his
Speaker 1: hair and use that the contortions you go through just
Speaker 1: not to be yourself for a few hours. Why would
Speaker 1: somebody not want to be themselves? Because it hurts so
Speaker 1: much at some point to be yourself. And then the
Speaker 1: mind comes in tries to protect you on the pain
Speaker 1: of being yourself, with its ideas and its beliefs, and
Speaker 1: its certainties and its endless desires and its artificial needs.
Speaker 1: And it's our faith to let go. If I let go,
Speaker 1: I'll be helped his child again. But the mind larges
Speaker 1: a defensive structure and then often will react that way.
Speaker 1: That defensive structure obviously it sets us up for so much.
Speaker 1: What is happening inside that makes two people react completely
Speaker 1: differently to the same thing. Right, You could have a
Speaker 1: parent that's it, drug addict, and one of the children goes,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna have drugs ever again, because I saw
Speaker 1: what I did to my parents and the other person
Speaker 1: actually imitates the behavior and goes down the same path.
Speaker 1: What have you found or seen that at a young
Speaker 1: age creates that different journey. Well, first thing to say
Speaker 1: is that no two children have the same two parents,
Speaker 1: and no two children have the same childhoods, even though
Speaker 1: they grew up in the same biological a family, because
Speaker 1: first of all, one of them came along at a
Speaker 1: different time, so they had a different set of experiences.
Speaker 1: Does the birth order that affects our children experience the parents?
Speaker 1: Then there's degrees of sensitivities, so some people are born
Speaker 1: more sensitive than others. Sensitive again comes on the Latin
Speaker 1: words sense here to feel. The more sensitive we are,
Speaker 1: and the more we feel given the right environment, nourishing
Speaker 1: support of grounded environment, that sensitive child just becomes an intuitive,
Speaker 1: a creator and artists, an actor, a leader. But in
Speaker 1: an environment where there's pain, that sensitive child suffers more
Speaker 1: pain than a less sensitive one, so we'll have more
Speaker 1: of a reason to escape from the pain. It's not
Speaker 1: so much that he imitates the behavior of the adult,
Speaker 1: is that it takes the same escape root and addictions
Speaker 1: are always, in my view, at least an escape root
Speaker 1: from pain. So it has to do with birth order,
Speaker 1: but found these circumstances degrees of sensitivity. Having said that,
Speaker 1: the other child who doesn't become an addict hasn't necessarily escaped.
Speaker 1: They just may have developed different coping mechanisms. They might
Speaker 1: have become one of these people that are going to
Speaker 1: make a big success in the world of themselves and
Speaker 1: they're never going to fail and they have to be
Speaker 1: the best, and they're going to suffer too. That just
Speaker 1: might suffer in a different way. That sensitivity you're talking
Speaker 1: about is probably one of the biggest questions I get
Speaker 1: asked right now, and I want to ask it to
Speaker 1: you because I feel or experience could offer some real
Speaker 1: light on it. I feel people are experiencing so much
Speaker 1: sensitivity and empathy that they just can't stand the world
Speaker 1: we live in today. There are people like that, and
Speaker 1: and I hear this again and again where it's like
Speaker 1: whether it's the political climate or the economic climate, or
Speaker 1: their family have addictions or friends like everything that you
Speaker 1: talk about in the book, and people feel this can't
Speaker 1: be my home, like this, this is not the place
Speaker 1: I want to live in. And so, just as you
Speaker 1: were saying earlier that someone may have the thought, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be myself or feel like myself for
Speaker 1: a few hours, people say, well, this doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: the world I want to live in. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: met many people who've felt that way, seen that way,
Speaker 1: or maybe even talk that way. Haven't met people, let
Speaker 1: me tell you something worked with you. I had an
Speaker 1: experience with ketamine a few years ago. This is a
Speaker 1: katamine training for others, and I was injected with keremine
Speaker 1: taking me where it was taking me, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I found myself screaming I hate the world.
Speaker 1: That was good that it came out of me. So
Speaker 1: I totally know what you're talking I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: that person, I personally know what you're talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's the thing I think a lot of that
Speaker 1: has to do with At first, of all, the world
Speaker 1: is getting more stressed, it's getting more splited. Everybody sees
Speaker 1: that getting more hostile in a lot of ways, getting
Speaker 1: more less welcoming and more dangerous, more alienating. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, and another hand, we're more and more alone
Speaker 1: with it. Isolation and loneliness are rising. So if people
Speaker 1: experience pain and change and stress or even danger communally,
Speaker 1: it's bearable, but when we're alone with it, it becomes
Speaker 1: less unless bearable. And so one of the major factors
Speaker 1: driving I think the sensitivity that you're describing it is
Speaker 1: just how alone people feel, which is not how we're
Speaker 1: meant to be. So that the capitalist values of aggressive individualist,
Speaker 1: ruthless greed and competition against everybody else that doesn't reflect
Speaker 1: human needs or even human nature, not as we evolved,
Speaker 1: but the world. The more the world gets that way,
Speaker 1: and the more isolated we become, the more vulnerable we
Speaker 1: are to be hurt by the world that we live in.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what people are talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest things for me. I
Speaker 1: was really fortunate that the clients side coach and the
Speaker 1: people that I work with, I got to experience a
Speaker 1: lot of individuals who are vulnerable with me, but they
Speaker 1: experienced being lonely and successful, and lonely success didn't bring happiness.
Speaker 1: And I know that one thing that me and my
Speaker 1: wife are always talking about, especially because we're in a
Speaker 1: country where we don't have any family. We had to
Speaker 1: start from scratch in our friendship, work and everything. I
Speaker 1: heard you say in a podcast of how important families
Speaker 1: do your way. For example, for my wife, it's huge,
Speaker 1: like her personal family is like everything to her, like
Speaker 1: that's her greatest value. But here we had to build
Speaker 1: our family. Yeah, And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: we constantly do is we try and make a concerted
Speaker 1: effort in order to cultivate and curate our community in LA.
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating to me because again, perception comes in
Speaker 1: where most people say to me, well, LA is a
Speaker 1: very shallow place, like LA is a very fake place,
Speaker 1: and also well I found some of my best friends
Speaker 1: here and incredible human beings. How much does that perception
Speaker 1: of a place or a space or a person actually
Speaker 1: also make us more lonely? Because I find sometimes that
Speaker 1: loneliness is created by perception, Like if we're scared of
Speaker 1: being vulnerable with someone, it's hard that someone will be
Speaker 1: vulnerable with us, Right, So what do we need to
Speaker 1: do in order to build deeper relationships for healing and
Speaker 1: in this path that you're suggesting, Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: it occurs to me that longliness is obvious perception. There's
Speaker 1: a difference being alone and being lonely. Alone is just
Speaker 1: a fact, and that we can embrace and make decisions
Speaker 1: about loneliness. It's got an emotional charge to it, and
Speaker 1: that's very much a matter of perception. You can be
Speaker 1: alone and not be lonely, and you can be surrounded
Speaker 1: by all kinds of people and be completely lonely. So
Speaker 1: that conds how open am I, how vulnerable am I
Speaker 1: really really willing to be? What defenses have I erected
Speaker 1: around myself to protect myself that keeps me from really
Speaker 1: contacting other people. But I think we unwittingly generate loneliness.
Speaker 1: There's also something else that happens, and you refer to
Speaker 1: this earlier, you talked about elders. So in our society,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about elders. We talk about the elderly.
Speaker 1: It's not the same. In our society that defines me
Speaker 1: people so much in terms of their economic value. We
Speaker 1: tend to discarde people that are not perceived as having
Speaker 1: economic value, either as producers or consumers. So this society
Speaker 1: generates a lot of loneliness just because it's materialistic values,
Speaker 1: and then other functioning cultures, elders are not only they're respected,
Speaker 1: but they're also they have a purpose. They have the wisdom,
Speaker 1: they have the experience, they have the vision, they have
Speaker 1: let go of a lot of the attachments that youth
Speaker 1: invariably engages with, so they have a lot to offer.
Speaker 1: So loneliness is also created in a society that has
Speaker 1: a very rigid and limited set of values. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love the change in the language again of the elders
Speaker 1: and the elderly, and it's I always go back to
Speaker 1: that time in my life because it gave me so much.
Speaker 1: But growing up around people that were the same age, younger, older, yeah, elder,
Speaker 1: gave you so many different visions of life. And when
Speaker 1: I look back at my childhood or my young adulthood,
Speaker 1: I was constantly surrounded by people that were older than me,
Speaker 1: younger than me, much older than me, and wiser than me,
Speaker 1: and being able to have everyone's vantage point. Yes, created
Speaker 1: a beautiful three sixty degree picture of life. Yes, but
Speaker 1: most of today we're only seeing one degree. If you
Speaker 1: spend time with only people your age, you're getting a
Speaker 1: very limited viewpoint of life, versus if you're spending time
Speaker 1: with a much wider age range, and you tend to
Speaker 1: get a much less mature and rounded the view of life.
Speaker 1: One of the books I helped to write, the Chre
Speaker 1: what it's called hold onto your kids by parents need
Speaker 1: to matter more than peers. And the point made in
Speaker 1: that book is precisely what you just articulated, which is
Speaker 1: that for so many people, their world begins and ends
Speaker 1: with their own age group, which is a developmental disaster
Speaker 1: because again, we've evolved as creatures in touch with multiple
Speaker 1: all people of multiple ages. Then we've spent our time
Speaker 1: around people with multiple ages. When you isolate people by age,
Speaker 1: this culture largely does I mean there's subgoos within subgoos
Speaker 1: within subcultures, within subcultures in a society all based on
Speaker 1: very shallow identification with age. It just limits our development
Speaker 1: and limits our possibilities. And with that development, how do
Speaker 1: you see human nature? Do you see human nature as
Speaker 1: muddied trying to become pure or beginning it pure and
Speaker 1: then getting muddied and then trying to go back. Really,
Speaker 1: how do you see that? Well, we do happen to
Speaker 1: have a chapter on human nature in this book. And
Speaker 1: pondering that same question that Jesus raised, A moor Less
Speaker 1: comes to the conclusion it's not that there's a definable
Speaker 1: human nature, not that you can say, because I mean, look,
Speaker 1: but I was a human being Hitler was a human being.
Speaker 1: One's full of compassion and love and giving, the other's
Speaker 1: full of read and aggression and hatred. They're both human being,
Speaker 1: So how can you talk about it defined human nature? However,
Speaker 1: what I think we can say confidently that is a
Speaker 1: certain human potential based on human needs. If those needs
Speaker 1: are met, development will be healthy and those potential will
Speaker 1: be realized. If those needs are frustrated, which they severely
Speaker 1: were in the case of say, ahead there terribly abused child,
Speaker 1: then what you get is the hatred and the rage
Speaker 1: and the murderous venom that characterized that personality. Now when
Speaker 1: you couple that with political power, you see what happens.
Speaker 1: But that's not human nature. It's just human nature thwarted
Speaker 1: because the needs of that child were not met in
Speaker 1: a society that was committely incapable of meeting people's needs,
Speaker 1: in factfully abused them. So human nature, to me is
Speaker 1: not a given what we have the human potential based
Speaker 1: on human needs. Of these needs are satisfied, we can
Speaker 1: be reasonably confident that people will be connected and generous.
Speaker 1: Most people want to be kind. I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 1: in society when somebody those something selfish or greedy, we
Speaker 1: say that's your human nature. Do we say that when
Speaker 1: somebody is kind or generous? Yeah? Never. The educator Alphi
Speaker 1: Corn points that out. And if you ask most people,
Speaker 1: when did your body feel more at ease when you've
Speaker 1: experience more peace when you've been kind and generous and
Speaker 1: giving authentically, not for not of a sense of duty,
Speaker 1: but because that was just the impulse. Or when you're
Speaker 1: grasping and greedy, when is there more tension and more
Speaker 1: discomfort insight? So that should tell us something about our nature,
Speaker 1: that our nature wants to be aligned with connection and
Speaker 1: generosity and giving, because our bodies will tell us that
Speaker 1: that is so true. That is so true. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is no time in life when you're bitter at
Speaker 1: someone or angry at someone that makes you feel good
Speaker 1: insight like it does. Yeah, gut wise too. I'm not
Speaker 1: just meaning in the heart space, but in all areas
Speaker 1: of your body, the tension, the stress, the holding, the tightening.
Speaker 1: But like we were talking about earlier, society set up
Speaker 1: in a way for false identification and divisive identification, whether
Speaker 1: it be two sets of soccer fans who now hate
Speaker 1: each other or rioting, or whether it be you know,
Speaker 1: political parties or whether it be businesses at war with
Speaker 1: each other. Right, Like, everything's set up in a way
Speaker 1: to get you to identify with something in order for
Speaker 1: you to be against something like that's what naturally ends
Speaker 1: up happening. Even schools like I went to this school,
Speaker 1: you went to that school, We competed. Competition seems to
Speaker 1: be something that has been carefully crafted by capitalist society.
Speaker 1: And then when you see the rise of and by
Speaker 1: the way, I love competition, so health competitions great. So
Speaker 1: I'm not talking bad about competition, but it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see how again it's so hard to compete without identify
Speaker 1: fighting as that being your worth yea, and that requires
Speaker 1: so much mental spiritual strength, in my opinion, to be
Speaker 1: able to differentiate between identification and attachment. Well, it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because let's take the example of sports that you
Speaker 1: just mentioned. What do we call the people who participate
Speaker 1: in the sports? Do we call them players? What do
Speaker 1: we call the process that they're engaging? We call it
Speaker 1: a game, But we don't treat it like players. We
Speaker 1: don't tweat it like a game because real games and
Speaker 1: real play, there's no agenda. There's competition in the process
Speaker 1: and you want to do your best, but in the
Speaker 1: end it doesn't matter. It was just it's for the
Speaker 1: process and for the joy of it. That's genuine play. Well,
Speaker 1: when you think about these multi billion dollars sports industries
Speaker 1: and the strategy and hype that goes into these are
Speaker 1: not players, and these are warriors, almost as if their
Speaker 1: engagements are kind of a battle, and winning and losing
Speaker 1: becomes everything. And like the famous Vince Lombardi, winning is
Speaker 1: not the only thing, is the only thing? Well, that's
Speaker 1: not true, people. That's true for the purposes of playing,
Speaker 1: as long as you recognize that you're only playing, as
Speaker 1: long as you don't confuse the game with life itself.
Speaker 1: But once it becomes a business and becomes cutthroat, that
Speaker 1: confusion is really prevalent and people take it so seriously.
Speaker 1: So many let's think about it, like you have these
Speaker 1: terrible conflicts in the world, like the war in the
Speaker 1: Ukraine right now, the average person, how much time where
Speaker 1: they induced to spend thinking about those large issues, or
Speaker 1: say about climate change that only the blindness of the blind,
Speaker 1: where the wickedest of the wickedest can at this point
Speaker 1: deny as a reality. But how much of our life.
Speaker 1: Do we spend actually pondering and engaging with these larger
Speaker 1: issues compared with analyzing which quarterbacks should have play in
Speaker 1: which quarter of which particularly NFL game. You know, so
Speaker 1: that these so called games and these so called players
Speaker 1: have assumed a far larger importance in their life, in
Speaker 1: our lives, whereas the real things we tend to ignore.
Speaker 1: You've just sparked something for me that I was blown
Speaker 1: away by this experience. I recently went to Rwanda, and
Speaker 1: I went there with Ellen DeGeneres, in collaboration with the
Speaker 1: Dian Fossil Finders, opened up a gorilla sanctuary and a
Speaker 1: conservation center. Yes, and we went there to trek with
Speaker 1: the gorillas, learn about gorillas, learn about Rwanda. And I
Speaker 1: had never been to Rwanda before. I didn't know if
Speaker 1: I would have visited if it wasn't for her. And
Speaker 1: the biggest thing I took away, obviously trekking with gorillas
Speaker 1: and being in nature with a form of life that
Speaker 1: has no interest in us, but we're totally fascinated by
Speaker 1: them was an incredible experience, and I'll talk about that separately,
Speaker 1: but the reason I brought it up here is I
Speaker 1: also took time to go to the Genocide Memorial Museum,
Speaker 1: and it was fascinating for me to learn that it's
Speaker 1: been around twenty years from what I remember. A tenth
Speaker 1: of the population of the country, so like a million
Speaker 1: people of like ten million people who died in the
Speaker 1: genocide were killed in the genocide, and most of the
Speaker 1: people who lived there today it was their parents, it
Speaker 1: was their ancestors that did this just twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: which is not a long time at all. And I
Speaker 1: met some of the survivors. I sat with them in
Speaker 1: the museum. I talked to them, We talked to the locals,
Speaker 1: We talked to people that were helping us with our
Speaker 1: travel and arrangements and the hotels we stayed at. And
Speaker 1: it fascinated me that the people were so healed, like
Speaker 1: there was such a genuine, sincere conversation that they've now
Speaker 1: let go of this two tribe culture. They've let go
Speaker 1: of the names, the identification that they're living by. A
Speaker 1: principal day called Ubuntu. I am because you are I believe,
Speaker 1: or you are because I am. Like that's I'll get
Speaker 1: that right, but Ubuntu is the word that they use,
Speaker 1: and it was so special. I was I was totally
Speaker 1: I'm curious to ask what did you delve into what
Speaker 1: allowed them to do that? They said a lot of
Speaker 1: it came through the leadership. Like they said that that
Speaker 1: was how they were being It's what you're saying, Like
Speaker 1: when you said, like they were asked, you're saying, we
Speaker 1: don't make time to focus on these huge issues because
Speaker 1: we're too busy wondering which player played in which position.
Speaker 1: That they didn't say in that way, but that's what
Speaker 1: they were saying, that our leadership encouraged us to think
Speaker 1: in this way. And I couldn't believe that in twenty years,
Speaker 1: when your parents have probably killed their parents, that you
Speaker 1: were standing next to each other not worrying about the lineage.
Speaker 1: That this culture was set up. And it was the
Speaker 1: Europeans who set up part of that anyway, But I
Speaker 1: just wanted to understand from you, like what does it
Speaker 1: take to get to that level of healing, because that's
Speaker 1: you know, people would say, Okay, well it's a ten
Speaker 1: million population. To me, that's still a humongous win for
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah. I was wondering if you've seen cultures,
Speaker 1: if you've seen even smaller groups or even living through
Speaker 1: the world where you've seen that kind of healing before.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the healing happened in Rwanda. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really encouraged to hear what you describe here. I think
Speaker 1: at the very least of it. The suffering had to
Speaker 1: be acknowledged and had to be heard and fully acknowledged,
Speaker 1: and then the healing can take place. Yeah. Without that,
Speaker 1: it can't, of course, absolutely, which is why it's so
Speaker 1: important to understand Toronto, the suffering has to be acknowledged.
Speaker 1: Now in my country Canada, like when you talked about Rwanda,
Speaker 1: of course, that tribal hatred didn't just arise up from nowhere,
Speaker 1: nor is it necessarily in the nature of those people
Speaker 1: to be like that. A lot of it was the
Speaker 1: legacy of colonism that quite deliberately, and you would know
Speaker 1: something about British colonism quite it quite deliberately said one
Speaker 1: group against another. The legacy of rich was often tremendous
Speaker 1: struggle and hatred and violence. In Canada, as in the
Speaker 1: United States, the legacy of colonism falls more particularly on
Speaker 1: our indigenous people, so that to this day they suffer
Speaker 1: so much. The addiction rate is much here amongst them.
Speaker 1: Fifty percent of the women in jail in my country
Speaker 1: are Indigenous people. They make up five percent of the population. Wow,
Speaker 1: an Indigenous woman like six times the rate or rumor
Speaker 1: to delotritis. They never used to rumor the deditritis prior
Speaker 1: to colonization. There's been some apologies in Canadian history, but
Speaker 1: there's been not sufficient acknowledgement of what actually happened and
Speaker 1: what continues to happen. I'm saying that an essential condition
Speaker 1: for that healing would have to be acknowledgment. So the
Speaker 1: POV came to Canada just maybe weeks ago because the
Speaker 1: church cooperated with the state to abduct children from their homes,
Speaker 1: Indigenous children from their homes for over one hundred years
Speaker 1: into the nineteen nineties, into these residential schools where our
Speaker 1: Native children manola to see their parents, where their culture
Speaker 1: was extirpated. They had pin stuck in their tongue if
Speaker 1: they spoke their tribal language. They were sexually abused, often
Speaker 1: they died, they were physically abused, they were starved. And
Speaker 1: the pope came and apologized, and you know what the
Speaker 1: apology was, I'm so sorry for what some Christians did
Speaker 1: to your people. Well that's he means well as a person.
Speaker 1: But that was an apology uttered by an institution, because
Speaker 1: it wasn't or it should have been uttered by the institution.
Speaker 1: But they said what some Christians wasn't some Christians. It
Speaker 1: was the state and it was the church. And what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that was a good first step, But
Speaker 1: until there's full acknowledgement and we're fully willing to hear
Speaker 1: the suffering of the people that we hurt. And that's
Speaker 1: why in the swelt steps, whether they do, they do
Speaker 1: as moral inventory, how did we hurt somebody? And how
Speaker 1: can we without imposing on them, how can we acknowledge
Speaker 1: if that's appropriate. So I think for healing, whether for
Speaker 1: myself or people that I've heard, there has to be acknowledgment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the of the suffering itself. I think that's the first
Speaker 1: essential stuff. The challenge we have though, right in society
Speaker 1: is that I fully agree with you, but for most
Speaker 1: people we will never get the apology we deserve because again,
Speaker 1: we live in an unhealed environment where people are not
Speaker 1: coming out of the woodwork and saying I'm so sorry
Speaker 1: for what happened, And even if they do, it's a
Speaker 1: bad apology or an incomplete apology. Or a tempercent apology.
Speaker 1: So how do we function in a world where often
Speaker 1: the closure doesn't come from the person who hurts us
Speaker 1: or the person who created the wound, or that we
Speaker 1: receive the wound through and it really comes down to us,
Speaker 1: Like that's true. Yeah, So I work a lot with
Speaker 1: indigenous groups in Canada. When I asked me too, and
Speaker 1: first of all, I often say, well, who the hell
Speaker 1: am I to offer your device? Because in your traditions
Speaker 1: there's so much healing wisdom, so that the best advice
Speaker 1: I can give you the star follow your own traditions.
Speaker 1: But I often say to them as well, don't wait
Speaker 1: for the acknowledgement from the government or from society, because
Speaker 1: it's going to take a long time coming. But you
Speaker 1: need to acknowledge your own suffering. You need to acknowledge
Speaker 1: your own pain. And then there's so many rituals. There's
Speaker 1: so many traditions, the dance and the chanting and the
Speaker 1: drumming and the sweat lodgers and the sun dancing, and
Speaker 1: they're going back to the land and the wisdom circles
Speaker 1: and they and they're sort of justice. There's so much wisdom.
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying to people is acknowledge and suffering,
Speaker 1: but to look to the wisdom within to want to healing,
Speaker 1: and it's there that wisdom to heal is inside cultures,
Speaker 1: in society, people's and inside individuals or so we both
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge to suffering and not get stuck on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then to look for the healing capacity within. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you certainly can't wait for the world to It's nice,
Speaker 1: but you can't wait for it otherwise you're dependent on
Speaker 1: somebody else for your healing. Yeah. And I feel like
Speaker 1: when you're healing, most apologies are dissatisfying, like when you're
Speaker 1: healed or and we'll talk about that what that means.
Speaker 1: But I feel like when you're more along the process
Speaker 1: of healing, you can receive an apology, you can receive
Speaker 1: a vulnerable piece of information from someone who may have
Speaker 1: you are. But when you're when you're in the thick
Speaker 1: of the healing process, I find that validation and apologies
Speaker 1: rarely really feel that good, you know, And I'm saying
Speaker 1: that for myself. I know that when I've worked, when
Speaker 1: I've been in the thick of like working really hard
Speaker 1: in my life or trying to make something happen and
Speaker 1: someone says, yeah, you're doing great. It doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: anything because you almost feel missing. You don't feel fully understood.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. Yeah, and even yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: quite seeing you. Yeah, and you don't feel seen. I
Speaker 1: don't feel seen. They've seen some aspect of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we need to be seen. That's that's a human need.
Speaker 1: There's a psychotherapist here in California. But the eighth eggar
Speaker 1: eg Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I know it is. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I Edith wasn't the same train, probably or quite likely
Speaker 1: on the same train to Arshwurst. My grandparents were, along
Speaker 1: with her family. She's in her nineties now, she describes
Speaker 1: because they came from the same town in southern Slovakia
Speaker 1: and northern Hungary. Her parents were killed in our shoots,
Speaker 1: as were our grandparents. Edith describes in one of her
Speaker 1: books that she goes back to the Burkhoff, which is
Speaker 1: in the Bervet and Alps where Hitler lived, to forgive
Speaker 1: Hitler wow, which is not to say to make it
Speaker 1: okay what he did, but to release him from the
Speaker 1: cage that she kept inside her own heart because that
Speaker 1: limited her. So the forgiveness wasn't. It's okay what you did.
Speaker 1: The forgiveness was I was going to hold this hatred
Speaker 1: and it's regemined in me anymore because it's limiting me,
Speaker 1: you know. So the work really is internal. Where do
Speaker 1: you see the connections between you talked about the you know,
Speaker 1: the practices and the healing of the indigenous people, et cetera.
Speaker 1: How much do you see a connection between spirituality and healing?
Speaker 1: And where has it gone right and where does it
Speaker 1: sometimes go wrong? So, first of all, spirituality is one
Speaker 1: of these words that again gets thrown around, he gets
Speaker 1: thrown around her. Who knows what somebody means when they
Speaker 1: talk about it, Yeah, So we can only talk about
Speaker 1: it in terms of what you mean by it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and what I mean by it. So, yeah, I liked
Speaker 1: what you said that there are ancient traditions, yeah, that
Speaker 1: focus heavily on inner healing. Yeah, and that I'll explain
Speaker 1: my churn. The challenge I see is that often even
Speaker 1: these ancient, timeless traditions have now become externalized and institutionalized,
Speaker 1: so they've lost the purity of the inner healing that's required,
Speaker 1: and they become commodified, correct, right, Yeah, which is what
Speaker 1: will happen in a material society. Yeah. I spend time
Speaker 1: with some Indigenous people earlier this year in a ceremony,
Speaker 1: but I was struck by is a deep, deep, deep
Speaker 1: connection with nature. In fact, even the connection is inadequate
Speaker 1: a word. I'm talking about unity, like they just felt
Speaker 1: so live. They have a blade of grass, and every
Speaker 1: tree and the mountain that overlooked our ceremony and the
Speaker 1: bison that we're in the field. So, for me, spirituality,
Speaker 1: if it means anything at all, it means to connection
Speaker 1: to something larger, which is difficult to define and may
Speaker 1: be different for every person or for every group, but
Speaker 1: it's something beyond the limited confines of both body and
Speaker 1: the egoing mind. Now, I think that's our nature as
Speaker 1: human beings. I can't prove it, but that's my sense,
Speaker 1: and I think and certain when you talk about the
Speaker 1: Indigenous traditions, they talk about the medicine wheel, which is
Speaker 1: the quadrants involve our emotions and our physical bodies, and
Speaker 1: our social relationships and our spiritual cells. And we have
Speaker 1: to be sort of grounded in all four of those
Speaker 1: quadrants to be fully whole. So I think there's something
Speaker 1: in that spirituality that is really essential to us what
Speaker 1: that is. I think each person has to discover for
Speaker 1: themselves if they don't know a tradition that already grounds
Speaker 1: them in it. Yeah. Yeah, you're reminding me of my
Speaker 1: time that I spent with some groups in Hawaii and
Speaker 1: they had a song for the Sun and the sea,
Speaker 1: and they had a beautiful ritual where when a child
Speaker 1: is born, the umbilical cord is placed on the earth
Speaker 1: and then they carve almost like a pattern there to
Speaker 1: remind the child that this is your connection to the earth.
Speaker 1: And I always thought that was such a beautiful ritual.
Speaker 1: I was wondering whether you've seen, or whether you've looked
Speaker 1: at a tool any aspects of reincarnation or past lives
Speaker 1: or trauma across lives, or seen any connections or study
Speaker 1: in that space. I've had people talk to me about
Speaker 1: their experiences. And there's a rabbi im at once who
Speaker 1: told me that in ancient times he was a beast
Speaker 1: in Egypt. Well, it was in no way a lunatic,
Speaker 1: you know, or a psychotic. He was a big, grounded,
Speaker 1: lovely man. You know. He was convinced, my mind doesn't
Speaker 1: go there. I've read something about these traditions you know
Speaker 1: the Tibetan tradition of the Bardo, and you probably do
Speaker 1: know a lot more but I do. But I have
Speaker 1: not personal experienced it, and my mind, as I've experienced
Speaker 1: my mind so far has fund of space for knowing
Speaker 1: what that really means. I understand it intellectually, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing in me resonates with it as far
Speaker 1: as I can recognize. Now. Maybe at some point I
Speaker 1: have some huge awakening, or maybe after I died, there'll
Speaker 1: be a huge joke on me, you know, something you
Speaker 1: didn't believe very well. Here it is. But frankly, right now,
Speaker 1: if you ask me, i'd say, nothing in me goes
Speaker 1: there or even wants to. That's that's my truth. No,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Yeah, no, no, I've I always find
Speaker 1: it fascinating for people who study trauma, especially when we
Speaker 1: when you, as you said that you know, no, no
Speaker 1: child starts at a blank slate. They start with makeup
Speaker 1: to some degree. And so that's why I was intrigued
Speaker 1: but talked about it. It's been it's been so beautiful
Speaker 1: talking to you because I feel like I get to
Speaker 1: ask you questions that I wouldn't often receive. The answers
Speaker 1: and the quality of answers, the depth of answers that
Speaker 1: you can provide. I see you as a true elders,
Speaker 1: a wise person in our society, and I respect you
Speaker 1: a lot for that. And well, thanks so much. I
Speaker 1: can tell you, quite honestly that this is not an
Speaker 1: energy you like I've ever heard before. Thank you so no, well,
Speaker 1: thank you, and I hope this is the first of many,
Speaker 1: and I want to make sure that everyone has been
Speaker 1: listening and watching. I would love for you to order
Speaker 1: a copy right now of The Myth of Normal Trauma,
Speaker 1: Illness and Healing in a toxic culture. We touched on
Speaker 1: subject matter from within the book. We touched on ideas
Speaker 1: from within the book. But as you can see, these
Speaker 1: are my favorite books that you know. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a real deep study book. Please
Speaker 1: go grab a copy. I cannot recommend this more. I
Speaker 1: will be posting from the book as I read more
Speaker 1: deeply through it as well on my Instagram, so if
Speaker 1: you want to see my notes or takeaways then they
Speaker 1: will be there as well. And please please please follow
Speaker 1: doctor Mattey on Instagram as well. We will put the
Speaker 1: links in the show notes, follow him, share all the
Speaker 1: insights that you got from this. If there was something
Speaker 1: that stood out. I mean, there were so many beautiful
Speaker 1: descriptions of words, definitions, clarity between ideas that I think
Speaker 1: have just words that we use every day and we
Speaker 1: don't know what they mean. So if something stood out
Speaker 1: to you, tag me and doctor mate on Instagram, on Twitter,
Speaker 1: on TikTok. Let us know what you've learned and what
Speaker 1: you've taken away, and I promise you that this will
Speaker 1: be a great investment this year, doctor Mate. Is there
Speaker 1: anything that I haven't asked you before? We ask you
Speaker 1: the final five, which are our fast five questions. Is
Speaker 1: there anything you'd like to share that I have given
Speaker 1: you an opportunity to go. I can't think of anything
Speaker 1: that you even us. I love it. Okay, Well, these
Speaker 1: are five questions that have to be answered in one
Speaker 1: word to one sentence maximum, so you have like a
Speaker 1: very tight like almost think of like Twitter. These are
Speaker 1: your final five. The first question is what is the
Speaker 1: best advice you've ever received on healing or trauma? Authenticity? Expand.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you to expand because I want to
Speaker 1: hear now be yourself. You know when I was a
Speaker 1: very confused young man, and I was acting out all
Speaker 1: over the place. I had an and rself as a
Speaker 1: very traumatised person. She was an yce You survivor, and
Speaker 1: she came back weighing eighty pounds. She was an optomologist,
Speaker 1: and she saw me being an authentic and she quoted.
Speaker 1: She sent me this passage from Hamlet, that famous phrase,
Speaker 1: unto yourself, be true, and it follows as night to
Speaker 1: day that then can't be false to any man. So
Speaker 1: be true to yourself without going through the details. That
Speaker 1: poor ant of mind couldn't be twue to herself because
Speaker 1: as a nature of this culture. But that advice has
Speaker 1: always stated with me. Yeah, so authenticity has been a
Speaker 1: major theme in my life. It's amazing. I love that.
Speaker 1: That's a great answer. Okay. Question number two, what's the
Speaker 1: worst advice you've ever heard or received around trauma healing?
Speaker 1: Is it? Okay? If nothing comes up for me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you've never heard any bad advice, that's good. What
Speaker 1: is something that you once valued that you no longer value?
Speaker 1: This is almost true what other people think of me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd be lying if I said, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I can do without it so still there, but I'm
Speaker 1: not attached to it. Yeah. Question number four, how would
Speaker 1: you define your current purpose in life? My purposes that
Speaker 1: people are free be from limitations of culture and also
Speaker 1: the limitations of their own past and of their own minds,
Speaker 1: and also free politically. So my purposes that people are free.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. And fifth and final question, if you could
Speaker 1: create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 1: what would it be? One rule, one rule, one law,
Speaker 1: one principle that everyone in the world had to follow.
Speaker 1: If I was coercing and creating the impression that one
Speaker 1: had to do anything that already would defeat its own purpose,
Speaker 1: because as soon as somebody has to, it's almost like
Speaker 1: just just lean forward for a minute, would you and
Speaker 1: put out your hand? Yeah, what do you do? Push
Speaker 1: on your hands? Resistance usis so as soon as people
Speaker 1: sense that there's they had to, there's going to be
Speaker 1: a resistance. So I want to decline answer and everything.
Speaker 1: That's a great answer. Never had that on the show.
Speaker 1: I love that answer. That's a brilliant answer. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I love I love the way you think the myth
Speaker 1: of normal is out right now. Trauma illness and healing
Speaker 1: in a toxic culture. Doctor Gabor matte Uh, it's been
Speaker 1: an honor. Thank you so much, it's been so much fun,
Speaker 1: and we'll do it again. Absolutely. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you,