Kind: captions
Language: en
you have this idea what that what is
normal
is also healthy and natural
and i'm saying that in this culture the
norm is neither healthy nor is it
natural in fact a norm i think is making
us sick
[Music]
gabor mate welcome back to the show nice
to be back again thank you dude so good
to have you uh as we were talking about
before we started roll rolling your book
a is incredible but b is very unnerving
in the picture that it paints because it
feels so accurate
it's a big book in terms of what it's
taking on so i want to start at the
beginning
explain to people when you say the myth
of normal what do you mean and then
after that we'll get into what a toxic
culture is
i mean a number two things
we have this idea what that what is
normal
is also healthy and natural
and i'm saying that in this culture the
norm is neither healthy nor is it
natural in fact a norm i think is making
us sick
number one number two
we talk about illnesses and
of body and mind as abnormalities i'm
saying that illness in this society
given the conditions
is a normal response to an abnormal
circumstance
so that's what i mean by the myth of
normal okay so
the obviously you go into great detail
about this in the book and i remember at
one point stopping and taking the note
like wait a second basically everything
that we think of like you're saying is
sort of
a normal result of aging or
oh this is you know just some people
have this kind of response and it is
what it is it's just natural um it's all
coming back to trauma and it's all
coming back to childhood trauma and um a
specific idea that we'll get to in a
minute but i want to push a little bit
on that idea so
what
why
is what we see in terms of things that
we would categorize as mental health
issues or
overly stressed lives or all of the
myriad things that we think of like
rheumatoid arthritis one of the examples
that you give
how is that an adaptive response
well
the rheumatoid arthritis
is not a not adaptive response in itself
is the outcome of an adaptive response
so when you talk to people and i've
interviewed many or you look at the
research literature on who gets
rheumatoid arthritis it's people who are
super conscientious
um they have what's called
hypo autonomous self-sufficiency in
other words they don't ask for help they
looked after the emotional needs of
others rather than carrying their own
caring for their own they tend to
suppress their healthy anger
and
they really try to fit in and not make
waves
and these people
that's an adaptation this is how they
adapted to their childhood
they grew up in families where they were
not accepted seen for they were they
might have been traumatized
the adaptation was to make themselves
to suppress their authentic emotions and
to try and fit in with other people's
expectations and to meet other people's
needs that's the adaptation but that
adaptation puts tremendous stress on the
person and that stress causes the
illness so one of those things that the
illness is the outcome of an adaptation
okay so let's talk about that adaptation
so yeah
i think a lot about the human mind as
having directives there are things that
we have been hardwired to do over
millions of years of evolution through
even you know sort of the non-human part
of our evolutionary tree up through
where we are now and so these directives
get implanted and it seems like your
thesis is largely about the way that
as a child we go okay this is what our
environment is i don't have a secure
attachment style maybe my parents aren't
paying attention to me
but what is the directive is the
directive to
get along
is the directive to fit in like what is
the core directive that causes this to
become pathological the core directive
is twofold
one is we have to attach we have to be
long
we have to connect
but the other directive is that we have
to do so while maintaining our own
autonomy our own authenticity
auto means the self
so that means we have to be in touch
with our gut feelings and our emotions
and to be true to them
and so what we need is relationships in
which can be true to ourselves that's
the directive
as soon as the directive changes by
because of this is what we're wired for
for example authenticity being in touch
with the gut feeling out there in the
wild there's a hunter-gatherer how long
do you survive if you're not in touch
with your gut feelings
so that's an essential thing
but what if you grew up in a home
where your honest emotions are not
accepted by your parents let's say your
parents have read jordan peterson's book
12 rules for life where he actually says
that an angry child should be made to
sit by themselves till they come back to
normal
or that parents should be able to hit
their kids in order to get them to
comply
now
if a child
experiences healthy and normal anger of
a two-year-old but the message he gets
that if you're angry you will not be
accepted by us
in fact you'll be excluded you'll be
given a timeout it won't even be with
you
until you come back to quote unquote
normal
then the child will
adaptively
repress their anger so as to maintain
their relationship with their parents
so they give up their authenticity for
the sake of the attachment
that giving of the attachment suppresses
not just the emotions but because the
emotions are physiologically connected
to immune system in fact they're part
and parcel of the same apparatus when
you suppress your emotions you're
suppressing your immune system as well
now you're asking why are we seeing a
rise of autoimmune disease in this
society which we are
and as globalization spreads we're
seeing more auto immune disease around
the world is because people are more and
more having to suppress themselves to
fit in with the false expectations of a
society
so that's the link
all right i'm gonna see if i can hold
all this my head because this is one of
the the most interesting core elements
of the book is this collision between
authenticity and attachment yes used a
incredible analogy
that
really hit me hard and that's you said
the lung is not the
response to an expectation of oxygen the
lung is the expectation of oxygen like
it it is the manifestation of that yeah
if there's no if there was no oxygen
we'd have no lungs
our lungs evolved as an expectation for
oxygen which makes total sense to me
yeah and
if the and i'm paraphrasing here but i
think i'm pretty close that the human is
the expectation of attachment absolutely
so that we
we exist only in relation to having that
attachment well how long would a baby
survive without attachment it wouldn't
yeah so the infant is an expectation
but not just for physicals physical
attachment
but also for emotional
attachment
of a nurturing and unconditional kind
we're an expectation for that
we're that's how we evolved as a species
the the baby gorilla
is an expectation to be loved nurtured
held and fed and protected
by the
mother gorilla
now
have you ever seen the mother gorilla
who ignores their babies cries
can you even imagine one have you seen a
mother cry a cat that ignores the
the little infant kittens meow
infant is an expectation for
unconditional acceptance
we tell parents to ignore their babies
crying
we tell parents to separate from their
kids if the kids behave in a way that
they don't like
we tell parents to deny children's
natural need to play out there in nature
so
human beings are expect we evolved as
you say
as hominins over the last couple of
million years
and as a species the human
you know the homo sapiens we evolved as
expectations for certain conditions the
lesser society meets those conditions
the more toxic it becomes
to the developmental needs and therefore
healthy growth of the human being
okay so
let's walk through that so yeah what do
you do because you talk about needing to
set boundaries and you're you mentioned
look i'm a parent and at the end of the
day i do have to set boundaries so
how do we set a boundary without and
i'll quote i think it was plato or
aristotle that said this the only
impossible job is raising children one
of the reasons that i did not have kids
is because i
my sister and i were raised in the house
the same house by the same parents and
we
reacted very differently to that well
first of all you're not brought up in
the same home by the same parents that's
interesting why why do you say that
because uh
the
the parent that the child experiences
is the parent the way they show up for
that particular child
your parents did not show up the same
way for a female child as for a male
child even if they tried to they
couldn't have because they're programmed
culturally not to
secondly you were different ages
you came along at different stages of
their parent relationship to one another
or their cell phone or their
relationship to themselves did not have
the same parents you did not grow up in
the same house
number one number two you might have
different sensibilities that is for sure
one of you may be temporarily more or
less sensitive than the other so that
means even if your parents could have
been the same which they couldn't have
been but even if they could have been
the same to both of you you would have
experienced them
differently okay so knowing that level
of complexity yeah
how how do you do this well like it it
seems so my mother disciplined me both
physically so i was spanked
and well this is sort of interrupted no
please
discipline you is one way to put it
hits you is another way to put it yeah
you know so
uh which that word doesn't ring weird to
me but i know given your area of
expertise that it does for you and
that's what i'm trying to figure out so
how do we set a boundary
with without the child feeling that
there are conditions around the love
because reading that in your book the
and again i don't have kids so nobody
needs to panic
but
um
unconditional love to me at an
intellectual level anyway doesn't seem
to break just because you're told to sit
on the stairs or be isolated
well you see the
the love that the child experiences
see i don't doubt that your mother loved
you
but the love that the child experiences
is not what the parent feels
it's what the child gets from the parent
now
if you're told that if you're angry you
need to be on your own what message are
you getting you're getting the message
that only under certain emotions are you
only when certain emotions are present
are you acceptable to the parent
the child the child will not experience
that as love but that
um so i will say this this is purely
anecdotal and it's just me and i don't
want to get lost in that yeah but um
i remember i even as a kid i would say
that
my mom i sometimes get very angry at my
mom but i never doubt that she loves me
no i i i i nor should you doubt that she
loved you because she loved you
but that doesn't mean that your
experience the love is unconditional you
wouldn't have any idea you had nothing
to compare it to
that's the only love you'd ever known so
how do you set a boundary without
breaking the sentence
so that's the question of who's setting
the boundary you see let's say a parent
with uh no no but here's what i mean
with children who are
naturally lovingly connected to their
parents
how you set a boundary is you say don't
do that
with a parent
that the child
is not totally unconditionally connected
you have to use more and more force
so when you talk about setting
boundaries yes you can't let a kid i
live in vancouver british columbia it's
not
alaska but we get pretty cold there it
gets pretty cold in the wintertime a
one-year-old doesn't get a choice about
do i get to go outside naked into the
winter in vancouver no choice it's not a
democracy no you don't go outside naked
but i do that
a child who's wanted to attach to the
parent warmly will naturally follow the
parent's advice you see
um
your mother hit you
aboriginal people uh
hunter-gatherer people don't hit their
kids when
when the
caucasians or the europeans the
christians arrived in north america they
were appalled at the parenting practices
of the natives because they didn't hit
their kids
and yet those kids were far more
confident
and capable than the caucasian kids so
that
you can set boundaries through just love
through relationship through example
it doesn't have to involve force and
certainly does not have to include
physical force
is there so that is one of the things
that that doesn't ring true to me no i
haven't studied it so who knows so maybe
this is just because i've grown up in
the system where it's sort of broken
already from the jump but is there
anywhere where that experiment is being
run today where we could see that
because
kids seem impulsive and their brains
aren't developed and they just seem like
little messes that need things like like
for instance a kid that throws a tantrum
because you won't let them go outside
into the snow so so why can't they throw
a tantrum that's they're expressing
their anger
no yeah let's say but but but
what were you saying before because i
want to go back to it just before we
talked about the tantrum oh yeah kids
are impulsive
um
[Music]
here's the thing
children want to belong to the parent
they want to connect to their parent
there's a natural
range of attachment behaviors that the
kid will go through
under healthy circumstances one of them
first of all is they want to be
physically near you they want to be held
by you in fact aboriginal people
carry their kids everywhere they go
that's what they do
gorillas
carry their kids everywhere they go
spontaneously
number one number two the child wants to
emulate you they want to be like you
that's a natural attachment drive
so if you show up as a loving nurturing
parental figure the parent the kid will
naturally want to
emulate you and copy you number three
the child will want to be good for you
without any coercion whatsoever
and uh
again i'm telling you
uh
hunter-gatherer groups have been studied
extensively
extensively for how they parent and
those even books are being written now
about trying to learn the lessons that
they teach about how to parent why
because we've lost our parenting
instincts you're talking like an adult
without parenting instincts
and that's not a criticism
i'm just saying that
when you're tweeted like the way you
tweeted
some ways i was tweeted i talk in the
book about it look
let me just jump back a little bit
it's this is in the book
i'm two weeks old
i'm still in the hospital with my mother
and
she she writes her diary
my poor little son my heart breaks for
you
because you've been crying for the last
hour and a half
to be fed
but i don't feed you because i promised
the doctor that i only feed you on
schedule
now what's happening to me
this woman loves me
my mother desperately loved me
i know that in so many ways
but she's not listening to her own
parenting instincts
her heart is breaking but she's letting
me cry by myself because she promised
some stupid doctor that should only feed
me on schedule what message i'm getting
am i getting the message that i'm being
loved
or is it too recalled i'm getting the
message that my needs don't matter
and they don't care about how i feel
which message am i getting
yes she totally loved me
but she wasn't listening to your own
parenting instincts
and that is traumatic for the child
and it's confusing
because she loves me
yes she doesn't even feed me when i'm
hungry
well that's really confusing and it's
traumatizing
and we're telling this to parents all
the time in this society as a physician
i used to tell parents to behave that
way i regret that
but i did so what i'm talking about is a
culture that has lost contact with the
parenting instinct
or
take the example of
do you remember dr spock is that yeah so
dr spock was the world's painting expert
for decades
and he talked about how you deal with
kids
you put them to sleep you put them to
bed and you walk out quietly and you
close the door and you don't go back in
because you don't give in to the tyranny
of the infant
he said the tyranny of the infant
the infant has an attachment drive that
says i need to be held by mommy or daddy
the child is crying
to express that attachment need because
physically that's how they can attach
it's phys
they can't emotionally connect as a as a
month old they can connect if you hold
them if they see you if they hear you
what message are you giving to the kid
when you don't pick them up when they're
crying
that their feelings don't matter that
they don't matter
that's the message you're giving you may
love them
but you're still giving them a very
negative message
and so that
you may know
on some level that your parent loves you
because they feed you they hug you that
whatever
but at the same time
these people that love you are deeply
hurting you
that's traumatic
aboriginal peoples don't do that kind of
stuff in under normal circumstances they
just don't do it
do they have a right of passage moment
where so
let me do it again sorry
the spanking business yep
there's been studies recently published
in the american journal
during the american medical
association's pediatrics
publication
the kids were spent
experience as much trauma as kids were
more severely abused
that's what the findings are in the long
term
certain interrupt but
not at all
this topic is a incredibly meaningful
for anybody considering having kids
raising kids yeah um and certainly even
for me somebody that doesn't have kids
nor plan to have kids it's it is
the the thesis of your book is so big
and so powerful
that it
what it does though is it okay so i've
grown up in a culture this your
hypothesis i've grown up in a culture
that is fundamentally sick yeah is
stopping um parent many many things the
book is way bigger than uh just
parenting we just happen to be on that
right now but um so it's created sort of
parents that are detached from their
parental instincts that's right and so
they're constantly making these mistakes
but it feels normal right so i grew up
in it to the the fish is the last one to
recognize what water is yeah
and so i can't even see that there could
be another way of doing this right but
because of that
when i look at this i think
once you're in the cycle how do you
break out of it because a you can't be
an infant forever even you know gorillas
at some point like th the child is
distance from the parents needs to be
either they break away themselves or
they get pushed away or their parents
may die also very possible yeah and
in
the cultures that i have unintentionally
encountered rights of passage rituals
because i'm interested in rights of
passage
there's this moment but i don't so the
one i'll talk to specifically because i
remember it so vividly is in um
the long walk to freedom nelson
mandela's book he talks about how
i think it was your 14th birthday you're
with the woman and your mother yeah and
then you are ceremoniously removed from
her
physically like they come and grab you
and take you away at what age uh i think
it was 14. okay and they take you away
and then there is this they cover you in
mud and then you are actually i think
before you get covered in mud i'm
getting the order wrong here but anyway
they sit you down buck naked in front of
the whole tribe with a very sharp rock
they cut your foreskin off and they make
you yell a warrior prayer yeah and then
they cover you in mud and then another
young woman comes in after some time
washes the mud off your body i mean it's
this whole thing and before reading your
work i was like that's so rad like this
rite of passage that's dope you're
taking the child away from the mother is
that
is that a necessary moment or is that
all part of this like just sort of crazy
detachment from what we should be doing
so i think it's a mix of both um
let's just step back a little bit um
nature has a natural agenda for every
human being like when you plant an acorn
what's nature's agenda for that acorn
grow into a tree go out to be an oak
tree so nature is the same agenda for
human beings to grow to be independent
self-mastered
collective connected beings that's
nature's agenda this is how we evolved
that means if you meet the right
developmental conditions that kid will
grow up to be an independent person not
because you push them away
but because that's nature's agenda
because the parents are gonna die at
some point or another so at some point
or another that
infant has to be an independent adult
that's nature's agenda we don't have to
make that happen that happens
spontaneously
so long as the conditions are right now
if you plant that acorn into dry ground
with no irrigation and no sunlight ain't
gonna be any oak tree
not because the
acorn doesn't have that capacity but
because the conditions weren't right
same with human beings so i'm saying
what is up my friend tom bill you here
and i have a big question to ask you how
would you rate your level of personal
discipline on a scale of 1 to 10 if your
answer is anything less than a 10 i've
got something cool for you and let me
tell you right now discipline by its
very nature means compelling yourself to
do difficult things that are stressful
boring which is what kills most people
or possibly scary or even painful now
here is the thing achieving huge goals
and stretching to reach your potential
requires you to do those challenging
stressful things and to stick with them
even when it gets boring and it will get
boring building your levels of personal
discipline is not easy but let me tell
you it pays off in fact i will tell you
you're never going to achieve anything
meaningful unless you develop discipline
all right i've just released a class
from impact theory university called how
to build ironclad discipline that
teaches you the process of building
yourself up in this area so that you can
push yourself to do the hard things that
greatness is going to require of you
right click the link on the screen
register for this class right now and
let's get to work i will see you inside
this workshop from impact theory
university until then my friends be
legendary peace out
if the conditions are right
that independence will happen anyway now
it's true
societies have developed rituals of
passage so there's a jewish bar mitzvah
ceremony which happens at age 13.
you know
um
there's a vision quest that that that
indigenous people will lead you know but
those ritual rites of passages or those
passages of rich
rites of passage rituals
are conducted by adults
to
welcome the child into the adult
community
in
their our general original environments
which is small band hunter or groups
there wasn't circumcision
in fact i quote an expert on aboriginal
indigenous or
hunter-gatherer groups dr donna cion
arves of notre dame university
who says that circumcision wasn't a part
of that kind of practice so that
circumcision came along later with with
with more settled tribes and agriculture
and so on so once you get away from the
hunter-gatherer
milieu
we're getting more and more or less and
less natural
so what mandela is describing then is a
combination
of a healthy rite of passage if we're
recognizing your adulthood now we're
honoring you welcoming you to the
community of adults but there was also
an element of barbarism in it where
you're deliberately hurting a child for
which there's no reason whatsoever
whether it's a male child or it's a
female child and we know to what degree
female children in some areas of the
world are hurt by the rituals of
circumcision the male children are hurt
as well
not to the same degree as the females
but those are already
post
hunter-gatherer
additions
so yes
rite of passage beautiful why is it
necessary to hurt somebody
it's not
hiding in there and i'm so curious i'm
so glad that i get to ask you directly
hiding in there is a
sounds like to me a vision of humanity
that is just loving and wonderful
and that our natural state is um
we would grow into the oak tree
that doesn't
that isn't my same base assumption but
you very much have an expertise that i
lack so
does your world view require that belief
about humans to be not purely good but
certainly default good
no nobody's default good we've always
said problems as human beings because
we're flawed beings you know
but it's a question again of um
what develops under what conditions
you know and uh
the more our needs are met
the more
like for example
in this society the belief very much is
that were competitive aggressive
even hostile selfish creatures
that's not how most of that's not how
humanity developed we could never have
developed if that's the way we were
we could only have developed if they
were nurturing and communal communal
support
and connection
and so if you look at all kinds of
cultures that are so-called um
primitive
so-called primitive
giving and receiving and connection are
values
and people gain wealth by giving not by
gathering and taking from others
so wealth is defined as a set of social
connections rather than a set of
physical possessions
in canada
[Music]
in the northwest
pacific northwest they used to have the
pot latch
and the potlatch were do you know what
apartheid says yeah yeah so it's an
event where
people gather
and they give gifts
which is how they gather wealth of
connections
that's a very different sense of wealth
than gathering everything onto myself by
taking it away from everybody else
one of the first thing that the
colonialists did
is they forbade their rituals and the
spiritual ways of the indigenous people
including the potlatch
because it
threatened the qualist
acquisitive ethic
so we went against
thousands of years of tradition
in order to
force people
into a cultural mindset that suited the
purpose of colonialism that's what
happened
okay so going back to the idea of um
it doesn't require humans to be perfect
we're an imperfect creature
so
if we are imperfect and
do you agree with uh i think it was um
soulja nitsan who said that the
evil runs through or the line between
good and evil runs through the heart of
every man
which rings true to me does that ring
true to you
i would say that the potential
for both runs through every person
hitler was a human being
as i say this in the book
jesus was a human being
at least let's agree that in his earthly
manifestation whether you're a
christian he was a human being
even jesus was tempted wasn't he
you know he's in the desert is tempted
by power and ego and
acquisition
the buddha
in the buddha story he's tempted
by lust and by greed and by aggression
and
egotism
so yes the potential for
for for that kind of egotistical
self-regard which turns out to be evil
that is ultimate expression
is is that that strain is in us so is
the strain for
compassion like the buddha
infinite love like jesus
humility like moses that's all within us
as well the question is which conditions
promote which
in his development the buddhist talks
about seeds
of which seeds in our minds are planted
and which get watered and which don't
so
yes i agree that the potentials are
there
and in an embryo everything is there
but the question is what gets nourished
and what gets suppressed
and i'm saying that in this society
it's the worst of us
that gets nourished
and the best of us that gets suppressed
all right so let's
define those what
uh i would assume that loving attachment
unconditionally loving attachment
certainly towards your children
that's part of the best of us yeah what
are some other attributes of the best
and then we'll move on to some of the
worst
so
let's talk about children and now let's
talk about people in general so
children's needs are
unconditional loving acceptance
from everyone or just their parents for
their parents or well ideally from the
community but certainly they're
nurturing caregivers whoever they are
and their meant to me wasn't just a
parent by the way
we're never meant to be parented in
nuclear families okay it's pure that's a
modern thing
so unconditional living acceptance rest
from having to work to make the
relationship work
say that again rest from having to work
to make the relationship work in other
words the child should not have to be
mold themselves into anything to make
the relationship work with their parents
they shouldn't have to work they
shouldn't have to be good nice pretty to
make the relationship work
they shouldn't have to take care of the
parents emotional needs to make the
relationship work
like people that have to work to make
their to meet their parents emotional
needs end up in deep trouble as adults
very often physically ill
you go into tremendous detail in the
book about that
so
children
should be able to allow to feel all
their emotions
and i mentioned play before those are
the needs of the child
as human beings more generally we need a
sense of connection
a sense of meaning
a sense of belonging
a sense of transcendence so that there's
something we're part of something
greater than just our legal egoic
concerns
these are all the needs of human beings
to the extent that they're met we thrive
to the extent that they're not met we
shrivel
and there's lots of shriveled people in
positions of great power in this society
no doubt
okay so
what are
what are the
as we're creating this soil that we're
going to nurture things in yeah
how do things start to go awry and how
do we
begin to prep the soil for something
better
well
we've covered that to some degree so
things will begin to go awry
when we lose contact with our pending
instincts
and we'll and we is it just that like is
this would you um
speaking from experience very broad but
if you were going to really like bring
it down is this
largely an echo of a parenting system
that has become dysfunctional
it's
it's a society that's become
humanly dysfunctional that transmits its
expectations
through the parents
and that actually begins before birth
because already the
the more stressed and troubled the
parents are
that has a physiological impact on the
child's brain development
so i'm just talking pure science here so
mothers who are stressed and depressed
their infants in the womb were already
getting those messages hormonally and
through
nerve conduction and so on so that you
can actually
monitor the heart rates of mothers who
are stressed and those heart rates will
be different than the heart rates of
infants whose mothers are not stressed
in the book you talk about the uh the
crazy ice storm
ends up showing up in the epigenetic
markers of kids if you don't mind walk
us through that it's pretty crazy
well it's only that um
in the laboratory they have shown that
the more you stress um
parent animals the more troubled and
stressed the kids will be
so in quebec there was an ice storm
some years ago
and
the parents underwent great the mothers
underwent great stress
and
you know
it was really cold there was no heating
a lot of stuff wasn't working
um
those mothers who experienced that
stress their children were shown to have
more troubles later on
behaviorally and learning
wise and and in other ways as well
so again the stresses of the parent
translate into the physiology of the
child there's a there's a study that i
quoted in the book about
they looked at
um
marriages that were
stressed and you could
there's two ways you could tell how
stressed the marriage was one is you
could ask the parents
and they could they would talk about it
the other way is you could marry you
could measure the
urinary stress hormone levels of their
children wow and the parental conflict
was reflected in elevated stress hormone
levels in the urine of the children the
elevated stress hormone levels in the
urine means that the immune system
itself is under assault
and that has an implication for health
later on
we know for example that the more
stressed parents are the greater the
risk of asthma for their children
and that the degree of stress on the
parents is correlated with the amount of
medication the kid will need for their
asthma
amongst other studies lots of such
studies so in other words there's a
correlation between the emotional
environment that we grew up in
and our physiology
yeah i mean that's really the core
thrust of the book is hey all these
things that you think are maybe just old
age or
um
bad diet they're actually related to
trauma or even disease in fact one of
the ones you talk about that was the
most eye opening was als yeah which you
know i would think of as a genetic
disease bummer horrible roll of the dice
but walk people through the the um
there is a predictable personality trait
of people with als that i was like well
so um first of all there's nothing
genetic about als nobody's ever shown i
mean there might be some rare examples
of als genetically into this but those
would be a
tiny infinitely small minority
so genes don't have much to do with most
chronic illnesses
there are some illnesses that are
genetic there's one that runs in my
family my mother and my aunt had it
muscular dystrophy
gradually they became weaker and weaker
already when i was a child my mother
couldn't lift her arm up
and
in the end she was not immobile at all
and so if you get that gene you're going
to get the disease
but those diseases are very very rare
about one in ten thousand most chronic
illnesses have very little or no genetic
basis to it
so for example there's a breast cancer
gene
but out of 100 women with breast cancer
only seven will have the gene and out of
100 women with the gene not all of them
will get the cancer
so
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in many cases even if these genes are
implicated
it's in it's the interaction of genes
and environment
now in als it's you know
the the als personality which i noticed
in palliative care when i was a
palliative care physician also in the
literature are people that repress their
healthy anger are emotionally very rigid
and they don't ask for help from anybody
um
and usually that's based on childhood
trauma
and logarithmic was like that the
ultimate you define
trauma in you you go to very careful
links in the book to make sure that
people understand trauma isn't always
getting hit with a bat or
uh being sexually abused like there's a
range that can be wildly impactful well
let's take
uh
lou gehrig
after whom the name the disease is named
in north america
his father was an alcoholic
and lou gehrig
was one of these very nice guys that
took care of his mother emotionally he
had to that's what happens in the home
of an alcoholic very often the child
becomes the caregiver
now he was such a nice guy
that you know he the the the record that
he set for
uh consecutive games played
that stood for so many many many decades
why did he set that record because even
if he was sick he would play
because he's too dutiful to his
teammates
to take himself out of a game
is that a healthy thing or not it's not
healthy
on the other hand
when there was a young rookie on the on
the yankees who got sick and he couldn't
play and the manager was very upset with
this kid
gerry says what are you talking about
he's sick he can't play took the rookie
to his own home where he lived with his
mother
his mother put the kid to bed the rookie
nursed him and luger slept on the couch
so that kind of self-sacrificing
self-negating
emotionally repressed really nice person
is the person which is typical of the
als personality and there's been a whole
lot of studies on that
that show that you know these are the
people that get als it's just that the
doctors don't make the link between that
personality pattern and the ls that's
just basically swallowing your anger
swelling your healthy anger directly
yeah sorry swallowing your healthy anger
is directly causative
to als
i think it's a major contributor you
never see it
you never see it and you never see the
healthy anger in anybody with als and
you always see this
hyper conscientious hyper autonomous
self-sufficiency that no i don't need
any help
now
and when you talk to neurologists
which has been done in studies
they always describe their patients as
extraordinary nice als patients
extraordinarily nice why they're so nice
because they repress their healthy
aggression
it's just that the neurologists don't
make the link between that and the
disease
i'm saying that that plays a major role
because that repression of emotions
again the emotions are not separable
from our physiology
the nervous system and the immune system
and hormonal apparatus and the god and
the heart they're all one system
when something happens in one area
something happens in the other area as
well look the analogy in the book is
this
think of a person with a big beach ball
trying to push a beach ball under the
water
that takes a lot of effort
now
have you ever been angry
of course okay
now when you're angry it's not just an
emotional state in your head it's a
whole body is
now
how much energy would it take to
suppress that energy to suppress that
anger can you imagine so that you don't
even feel it
but not feeling your anger was an
adaptation to your childhood
where the anger wasn't permitted
so
that emotional physiological effort of
repressing anger takes a toll
on the nervous system and an immune
system
it's a major role in disease
i'm saying yeah it pays a major
contribution
yeah this is where the book really
starts to get into some fascinating
territory as you go through all these
different diseases and you start talking
about okay repressing anger uh you go
into the god is it the natural killer t
cells end up uh being suppressed because
you're putting so much energy away from
your immune system your immune system
can't keep up and so there's all kinds
of things like cancer that are afflicted
there was one thing
you said like back in the 1800s or early
1900s there was a doctor that was like
oh whenever you see somebody with heart
disease they have this type of
personality
and you even talk about in the book the
type c you said it's not a personality
type but that there are traits yeah that
people with type c
have that end up being sort of pro
disease
personality traits yeah what are some of
those traits
well before i answer that let me go back
to something let's talk about healthy
anger for a minute if you could okay
um
[Music]
then i'll illustrate these traits okay
what is healthy anger
why are we given healthy anger so
there's a
there's a system in our brain for anger
not just for us
mammals
what is it there for
is there to protect our boundaries
somebody to invade your space
physically or in the case of human
beings emotionally you should say no
stay out
that's the rule of healthy anger
now you're frust if you are repressed
that healthy anger
what would happen to you to me in life
people would be just trespassing all
over me all the time
because i had no boundaries so healthy
anger is a boundary defense is that
clear
okay
healthy anger is a boundary defense it
just says it seems like one of its uses
i'll be honest i don't know that i'd say
it's it's only use but i don't know
healthy anger that's its only use that's
his major use just boundary protection
that's just measure that's why it came
along animals have it you're in my
how space you extending that to loved
ones so now if you encroach upon a loved
one well if your loved one
intrudes your space emotionally no i
mean if somebody else is intruding on my
loved ones oh yeah dad too yeah yeah oh
yeah yeah you or your loved ones
anything you cherish
absolutely for sure
so that's healthy anger so the role of
anger is to set a boundary between
what's nourishing
uh you know to to let in a lot of
healthy anger is to keep up what's
dangerous and unwelcome right
what's the role of the emotional system
in general
is to let in what's healthy and
nurturing
and to keep what was dangerous and
unwelcome
is that fair enough seems good
what's the rule of the immune system
same exactly it's the same the role of
the immune system is to keep what was
dangerous and toxic
along with nourishing and healthy
the immune system and then and the
emotional system
are not separate systems
they're part and parcel of the same
apparatus
they're unified
when you suppress the emotions
you're also suppressing the immune
system when you say when you when you
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when you don't know how to defend your
emotional boundaries that also
weakens your immune boundaries
physiologically
it's that simple
or if you repress the anger that anger
doesn't go away
it doesn't evaporate into the heavens it
turns against you
in the form of depression or
self-loathing and so on
in the same way the immune system turns
against you and now you have autoimmune
disease
and so the traits
that were identified with
chronic illness
most chronic illness like cancers or
immune disease are emotional
self-suppression
inability to experience healthy anger
desire to please others to fit in to be
acceptable to be nice
to be ignoring of your own needs these
are the traits that are over and over
and again identified in the literature
whether with multiple sclerosis
or rheumatoid arthritis or with cancer
now these are not
the real per these are not the real
person these are adaptive traits in
response to the childhood environment
but they take a heavy toll
or take another
so-called illness and by the way the
case i'm making is that what we call
illness is actually response to life so
take a
take depression
this so-called
biological disease of the brain
what does it mean to depress something
try to push it down to push it down
what gets pushed and what's got pushed
on in depression
well i can tell you i've been depressed
what gets pushed on depression is your
natural emotions everything is flat
and nothing matters nothing has any
meaning
and that starts with people pushing them
down
that's that's the word that's what the
world means it means to push it down it
starts in childhood with people people
having to push down their emotions why
do they have to push their emotions to
fit in with other people's expectations
so and i don't know the literature on
this at all so there often times then
the depression will just sort of creep
in slowly i always
assumed it was tied to something being
stuck in um
a bad relationship uh death in the
family loss of a job that there would be
some sort of triggering event well the
okay fair enough
if you're in a bad relationship the
healthy response is not depression
but to deal with the
challenges in their retirement in their
relationship either by work they're now
out or by leaving their relationship
depression is not necessary outcome
the response to the death of a close one
of a close one is not depression it's
grief
grief is the healthy response we have a
system in our brain for grief by the way
so grief becomes depression when you're
not allowing yourself to grieve
but you don't know how to grieve
properly yeah and you don't know a lot
of grief properly because your emotions
were suppressed as a child
and
so yeah we have uh
these healthy systems but they get
their activity gets deformed through our
natural expectations
okay so
to stay with depression for a minute so
you're pushing all this stuff down it
starts in early childhood you're trying
to fit in you want unconditional love
you're not getting it so you have this
directive for attachment and so you
begin to oh i see what i can do if i if
i don't yell scream if i'm not
expressing frustration
if i'm the caretaker or whatever that
situation demands then i'll as well so
now i've learned this adaptive response
to suppress my emotions
and over time it begins to
numb me i would assume i have not been
depressed so but uh so
you're beginning to be numbed but now
something it gets starts to be very
extreme and you
what i have heard depression explained
as is just like
the skies are permanently gray you will
never see joy again and so
what what is breaking in that that like
the beach ball analogy i like right i'm
pushing something under the water but if
i stop pushing it will pop back up and
so if that thing or my emotions is when
you're treating depression let's say
non-pharmacologically
is it the release of the pressure on
those emotions to let them finally come
up yeah so the so the the difference
between the pushing the
beach ball down is that i'm doing it
consciously and deliberately
but the repression of emotions that a
child um engages in is not conscious is
not deliberate it's an automatic
response it's unconscious therefore the
child can't just that go like that
and then as you say it numbs and then
becomes overall a depression now the by
the way i'm not against pharmacological
treatment
i've taken antidepressants they have
helped me so i'm not here to advocate
against them
i could talk about their misuse but in
principle sometimes they're helpful and
occasionally they're life-saving
and much of the time they're over
prescribed for way too long and we're
not dealing with the real issues because
the pharmacology deals with the symptom
but it doesn't deal with the underlying
problem so yes the healing of depression
and i talk you know the last
the the final part the longest part of
the book really is unhealing is you have
to
[Music]
reconnect to yourself so you can feel
your emotions that's the treatment of
depression talk to me about reconnecting
how do you reconnect what is that
process
well
first of all you recognize that you're
disconnected
and you notice how that disconnect shows
up
you know in so many areas of your life
uh in your on the job or in the uh
in your personal relationships for
example or in your relationship to
yourself so you have to become aware and
this is where
i talk about
disease whether it's physical or
so-called mental um
as teacher
not that i recommend the illness as a
way of learning to anybody
it's that's not my fault but if it
happens but if it happens it can
actually teach you
and you can ask yourself what i've been
pushing down
and what are the stories why do i push
it down
oh
i pushed on my emotions
because i've learned
i have the belief that if i'm angry i'm
a bad person
well is that really true
is a person experiences anger really a
bad person
um
i learned that if i push down my needs
then people will love me
do i really really do i really want to
be loved
at the expense of disconnecting from
myself
as a child i had no choice
because i had to be loved or connected
with otherwise i wouldn't have survived
is it still like that
so
basically it's a graduate isn't it
though sorry isn't it like isn't in fact
this is my overarching question and
somebody that has helped so many people
through therapy you probably have the
answer or an insight but
as we become adults yeah
you don't have like other than your
parents should you be lucky enough that
they're still alive but
man out in the outside world peop people
do want you to act a certain way and if
you don't they're not going to be around
you like i'll just be honest if
somebody's throwing a tantrum as an
adult i don't have time for that but an
adult doesn't do a tantrum
are you sure yeah like i have seen
adults throw what i don't have an adult
version you've seen
you have children in that old body just
throw tantrums interesting okay go on
you know so the the adult who throws a
tantrum
he's a
traumatized child
who has not developed self-regulation
i'm not talking about repression of self
but regulation
so for example help me differentiate so
for example i throw up at the airline
counter
and uh
they've um
overbooked the airplane okay
my healthy response is
disappointment and some degree of anger
i'd say this is not right that you did
this
i want you to redress it
you do something about it please
throwing a tantrum
yelling at the poor clerk behind the
counter who had nothing to do with
creating the problem who's just trying
to do her job and trying to help me as
best she can
is that that's not a mature adult
that's a child
whose
midfielder cortex or self-regulation has
gone offline and his emotional circuits
have taken over believe me i've been an
adult child very often in my life as my
wife could tell me tell you so
that's not an adult
okay so then the process there goes back
to connect to yourself figure out why
you're repressing this yeah let go of
those things that are keeping it down
find a way to
be able to regulate yourself so that
they're sort of contextually
sensical so that we're not in unhealthy
anger territory
um
okay interesting so trauma is um
is an imprint
that makes you react to the present like
you're still a child essentially i mean
that's a very narrow definition of
trauma that's one of his essential
aspects
and that the important thing that you
said earlier is it's automatic it's
automatic it's unveiled it's automatic
and it's um
and actually when you look at the brain
scans of deeply traumatized people
the prefrontal cortex is totally asleep
and the emotional circuits you know
they're
the the the primitive emotional
responses are active
this is why
so many of so much of the jail
population are traumatized people that's
why end up in jail
but instead of
dealing with their trauma and helping
them
develop which they could under the right
circumstances
become
adult people
self-regulated the jails just make it
worse
by the way by the way they torment
people and the way they traumatize
people even further so when i talk about
a trauma for society informed society
what if we actually understood trauma
what if you just actually understood it
you have huge implications for medical
school for medical uh health delivery
what if when you went to the doctor
with your depression you weren't just
told you got this biological disease of
the brain here's a pill
but they actually said what happened to
you as a child
one of th