Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal

[Music]

trauma is not what happened to you it's

what h what what happened inside of you

as a result of what happened to you

physical abuse sexual abuse emotional

abuse of children neglect a parent being

addicted a parent dying a parent being

jailed poverty or racism these are big

traumatic events that can wound kids i

had a wildly traumatic birth i got

rushed to emergency surgery oh gosh and

lost 2 and 1/2 L of blood oh gosh and

they sent Sawyer home with Chris they

kept me in the hospital and by the time

I went home I had severe postpartum

depression she's recently

uh gone into therapy and one of her

visions is a vision that she

has where she's in her crib

and she really wants me to come yeah and

it's my husband and then it's my mother

and then it's my mother-in-law and then

it's my friend Joanie that would sit

with me while Chris went to work and I

never came

that's one of the impacts of trauma is

that a that shame based view of the self

people start blaming themselves that

somehow you invited it or deserved it or

you didn't fight back hard enough the

healing needs to begin with some

compassionate curiosity towards the self

not why but

Why it's a totally different

conversation it makes

me sad that I didn't know this sooner

but I feel very grateful for your work

mhm

hey it's your friend Mel i am so

thrilled that you're here with me it is

always an honor to be able to spend time

together with you if you're brand new

welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast and I

know because you chose to listen to this

episode that you're the type of person

who values your time and you're also

interested in learning about ways that

you can improve your life i love that i

love that you're listening to this

episode and you want to know what else I

love i love that you and I are going to

get to spend time learning from the

extraordinary Dr gabbor Mate dr mate is

a world-renowned physician and

best-selling author whose work dives

deep into childhood development and the

impact of trauma on how it shapes your

mental and physical health over your

lifetime dr mate has completely

transformed how the world sees talks

about and understands trauma and he has

absolutely had that impact on me and

it's been life-changing i promise you

this episode is going to shift the way

you see everything how you show up for

yourself how you connect with the people

you love and why you experience life the

way that you do it's going to help you

understand why coping has become your

default and how you can move toward true

healing i am so excited for both you and

me so please please please help me

welcome the extraordinary Dr gabbor mate

to the Mel Robbins podcast before we

dive in Gabbor I would love to have you

speak directly to the person who's

listening to us and just share with them

what they might expect to experience if

they really take to heart what you're

about to teach us and share with us

today

well a lot of people are facing

challenges um a lot of people are very

hard on themselves a lot of people think

there's something wrong with them uh my

fundamental understanding and what I've

learned is that underneath there's

nothing wrong with anybody that

everything you're dealing with came

along for a reason there were

adaptations or they were responses to

difficult

situations and the more you can

understand where your issues came from

and even when your negative self you and

the shame and the self-loathing and the

self-criticism and the

perfectionism that you experience that

there were actually

responses to some kind of life

experience and that fundamentally there

was and there is nothing wrong with you

and those things can be looked at and

you can understand them and you can um

transform that and really become

yourself who you are that's available to

you it's available to everybody so

nobody's damaged goods i love that no

one is damaged goods

we are going to unpack this uh in this

conversation at length but I think it

might be helpful for someone who is not

familiar with your work if we could go

back sure and can you share if we go all

the way back to your childhood just what

was happening in your life and in

particular how finding your mother's

journal really impacted you and sent you

in a certain direction in terms of your

life's work well so I was born uh 80

years ago uh this year um in Budapest

Hungary January 1944 to Jewish parents

whose um lives

were already impacted by the Second

World War my father was in forced labor

with the Hungarian army a Jewish man had

to go into forced labor when I was born

so he wasn't there when I was

born in um March the German army

occupied Hungary and then the genocide

the holocaust that had obliterated the

Jewish population of Eastern Europe but

not yet that of Hungaries began in our

country and within three months between

March and

June they murdered half a million Jews

including my grandparents and we came

very close to being deported ourselves

my mother and I so I spent the first

year of my life under Nazi occupation uh

with the mother was terrorized and grief

struck didn't know if my father was dead

or alive for most of that year and then

when I was 11 months of age to save my

life mother mother gave me to a complete

stranger Christian woman in the street

and she conveyed me to some relatives

living in relative safety and

hiding um I didn't see her for five or 6

weeks and all this is recorded in the

journal that she kept i I didn't

discover the journal i I always had this

her her

journal but for many years when I tried

to read it I get

dizzy it's almost like sending me knew

that this is too painful for me to

handle so it wasn't until some years ago

when my mother is still alive when I

asked her to actually read the journal

to me so I could really read what

happened

and she wrote in the journal that I'm

writing this cuz if my son if my son

grows up I want him to know what

happened so that's in a nutshell but

those events left a deep imprint in my

nervous system in my body and in in my

psyche um and those traumatic events

created a lot of psychological wounds in

me that took me some years to even

recognize let alone to heal and uh it

wasn't until I was into late adulthood

and or middle age that I really began to

deal with it and to recognize the

subsequent impacts that then I passed on

to my kids without meaning to but just

for the lack of awareness so that's it

in a nutshell well that's a big nutshell

wow so how did those experiences in your

life really start to shape your work

like how did you start doing what you do

today

well before it shaped my work it shaped

me and how I functioned in the world or

how I dysfunctioned in the world in so

many ways so it's it's when I began to

experience challenges in my life um I

was a successful doctor in my early

40s um

respected but depressed and unhappy um I

was married to the love of my life and

we had a very strained conflictual

marriage and my kids had issues and some

ways they were afraid of me cuz I was

very unpredictable

um so all those issues then made me

start looking for some answers so the

work began by having to look at myself

and trying to understand the sources of

my behaviors um and that coincided with

me noticing things as a physician in my

medical practice and that's how I began

to look at childhood development the

impacts of early years um the concept of

trauma and what that represented and its

impacts on adult or childhood mental

health physical illness and so on so

both my personal experience and my

professional work kind of led me in this

direction of exploration

and what have you

learned about how childhood experiences

shape who we become as adults they're

largely

decisive and

um this begins even before birth so

already the emotional states of the

mother while carrying the baby will

affect the child's brain development i

just want to make sure that the person

that's with us in this conversation

really gets this because I didn't first

learn that your emotional state and your

physical state when you're carrying the

child impacts the nervous system and

development of the human being inside

you and it makes sense but but can you

explain more about that because this is

an idea that was brand new to me just a

couple years ago sure but we have to

nail down first is we're not blaming

mothers here they do their best we're

talking about the stress is acting on

the pregnant woman that's no fault of

her own but speaking of stress when

people are stressed they release stress

hormones are dwelling on cortisol when

the mother is stressed in pregnancy

those stress hormones go through the

placenta of the umbilical cord to the

baby that affects the child's nervous

system in his development cortisol has a

huge impact on the development of

important brain circuits you

can look at the heart rate of infants in

the womb as it changes as the mother is

more or less

stressed so these are just physiological

facts so um there was a study done after

911 after

the tragedy of 9 911 women who were

pregnant then

uh and who suffered post-traumatic

stress disorder in the third trimester

of pregnancy as a result of

911 their infants had abnormal stress

hormone levels a year

later now abnormal tester levels have an

impact on brain development and on

physiology on the physiology and

physiological health as well so you can

expect those kids unless something's

done to to correct it to face more

challenges later on and we know that

mothers who are stressed during

pregnancy depressed during during

pregnancy their children are more likely

to have ADHD attention deficit disorder

other mental health challenges so it's

just now what's interesting here is

indigenous people have always known this

i was talking to a a native group in

British Columbia where I live and this

guy comes up to me and says you know doc

in our community when a woman was

pregnant there was a rule that if you're

stressed or upset you were not permitted

to go near them we didn't want your

stress and upset to affect the baby so

this modern science has only confirmed

indigenous wisdom but it's a huge issue

in this country in this culture cuz

people are so stressed for so many

reasons

well it's interesting to listen to you

explain all this because for me

personally your work has impacted both

me and recognizing the way that

childhood experiences

and in vitro experiences when I was

inside my mother's body impacted Sorry

in utero in utero is that what it Okay

see I'm not a medical doctor no in vitro

means in the laboratory oh okay you're

right in in utero exactly yeah so

impacted me when I was inside my mother

developing you know into a baby and then

I think about your work in the context

of me as a stressed out mother

and the state that I was in when I was

carrying any one of our three children

and how that absolutely impacted their

development there's this kind of

conflict that I feel between oh gosh you

know I hurt my kids and I didn't mean to

and also this understanding

that I think this is part of the human

experience on some level well for first

of all when my mother was carrying me I

don't think she even wanted to be

pregnant i mean what Jewish woman really

wanted to be pregnant in the middle of

the Second World War when my when her

husband is in forced labor already in

Udo kids can feel if they're not

wanted i've seen this show up in many

many many, many, ways, now, the, the, the

thing that I would take up with you

is on the one hand there's the awareness

that this is what happened but the way

you formulated that you hurt your kids

no pain flowed through you to your

children but you didn't hurt them you

didn't it's not that you did something

deliberately or consciously to hurt them

it's just that the way it worked is that

trauma is transmitted

transgenerationally but that's not to

blame anybody and it's really important

to remove blame cuz parents feel so

guilty already parents with kids who are

challeng have challenges believe me I've

been one of them there's a tremendous

sense of guilt which is entirely

unwarranted and undeserved and it

doesn't even help so let's just agree

that the trauma does come through us but

we don't do it as such that is

incredibly helpful way to think about it

though when you said that it's pain

moving through you yeah yeah that made

my shoulders drop

how do you define trauma particularly

for somebody

who isn't aware whether or not they've

experienced it um the way I define it is

very straightforward trauma comes from a

Greek word for wound or wounding so

trauma is a wound it's a psychological

wound in this case could be a physical

wound but here we're talking about

psychological wounds the important

distinction to make is that trauma is

not what happened to you it's what h

what happened inside of you as a result

of what happened to you so in my case my

trauma wasn't that my mother gave me to

a stranger the trauma was the wound

which is that I perceive myself as not

wanted i perceive myself as abandoned

who gets abandoned somebody who doesn't

deserve to be loved so then I develop

this sense of not being good enough not

um being lovable enough now that means I

spend much of my life trying to prove

that I'm good that I'm lovable that I am

important which then drives all kinds of

behaviors which then create more

problems but the trauma is not the

event that's the traumatic

um episode but the trauma is the wound

that happens inside you so if I get a

blow head that's not the trauma the

trauma is the concussion that I

developed now in that case it's physical

and I want to kind of hover here because

for a long time I just assumed trauma

was something that happened to people

yeah who were at war or were in a

country that was occupied by you know a

fascist government or country coming in

like your parents were and that you were

i or somebody that was the the victim of

a violent crime i never understood that

experiences that may seem insignificant

on the surface somebody's mood somebody

criticizing you feeling left out that

these are things that can also leave a

mark just like a blow to a head can can

actually leave a concussion and I would

love for you to explain to us what

actually is a psychological wound

because one of the things that I see

happening a lot is people either shame

themselves for being stuck or they say

I'm just too emotional or I should just

get over it and there is something

deeper that you mean when you say it's a

psychological wound so well that self-t

talk that negative selft talk that you

just articulated is itself a

psychological wound

it's a sign of psychological wound it's

a sign of self-rejection which is one of

the deepest impacts of of trauma is that

people traumatized they develop a shame

based view of themselves so they begin

to think that there's something wrong

with them that itself is a wound now

when you talked about seemingly

insignificant things we have to make a

distinction here there are what we call

the big T traumatic events those are

have been well studied physical abuse

sexual abuse emotional abuse of children

neglect a parent being addicted a parent

dying a parent being jailed um violence

in the family um a ranker's divorce a

parent being mentally ill to which we

need to add social factors such as

poverty or racism these are bigt

traumatic events that can wound kids and

we can talk about the ways that hap

happens but you can also wound kids not

by doing bad things to them that you

shouldn't but by not doing the good

things that they need in other words

children have certain needs a human

child is born with certain evolution

determined needs those children whose

needs are not met that way for example

for unconditional loving acceptance and

I'm not talking about the parents love

i'm talking about the capacity of the

parent to unconditionally accept the

child and to see the child what do you

mean when you say unconditional

acceptance because I think most of us

it's revelatory to hear no there's a

biological hardwired need that you have

as a child to feel unconditional

acceptance and safety from the adults

around you and in your environment and

if you do not feel that way it creates a

response inside your body there is a

reaction to that but most of us I think

we even just skip over that fact Gabbor

that there's a fundamental need that a

child has to feel accepted and so what

does that mean if you could unpack it

for us sure children get to experience

and see themselves the way they are seen

by the adults so if a child gets

emotional and they get criticized then

there's think there's something wrong

with their emotions

if a child is very sensitive and they're

told "Don't be so sensitive," they think

there's something wrong with

them if

um a child a young toddler is behaving a

certain way and the parent thinks that

the way to correct this is to punish the

child then the child and the child is

just being a 2-year-old

then the child begins to believe that

there's something wrong with them and

they have to compensate for that by

meeting the parents

expectations so now the acceptance is no

longer unconditional i'll accept you if

you look this way talk this way behave

this way and then all your life you'll

be worried about how do people see you

that's a sign of a childhood wound

because fundamentally uh we need to be

connected to ourselves and and um when

parents don't see us we don't see

ourselves that's just a fact and if you

look at human evolution

um we didn't

evolve under the conditions that kids

are raised now we evolved under

conditions for millions of years

until 15,000 years ago living in small

communities where there were many

adults it takes a village to raise a

child um the kids were always with the

parents there was no separation kids

were carried everywhere they were not

put down to let it let them cry it out

they were just unconditionally accepted

and uh not punished actually not

hit it's a totally different paradigm of

of parenting that's how we evolved which

means that the human child expects to be

treated that

way uncondition you know unconsciously

when those needs are not met kids are

hurt children have another need which is

we're wired to have certain emotions you

know along with other mammals we're

wired to have anger it's anger is

essential for survival fear we're wired

to have fear we're wired to have um

curiosity seeking we're wired to have

um separation

distress so that if the adults not

around we should be upset we should

panic so we cry so the parents come and

get us mhm we're wired for play and

children have this need that when those

emotions arise parents should understand

those emotions and and and not

necessarily do what the kid wants them

to do but to understand the child's

feelings

and when children are denied that kind

of understanding they think there's

something wrong with their emotions then

they start telling themselves I'm too

emotional i'm not good enough uh I'm too

sensitive i am

um not lovable or when children don't

get the attention that they need guess

what they develop and need to be

attractive so they can attract

attention now look at the damage done in

this culture by people thinking that

they need to meet certain standards of

physical

looks and the trouble that people go to

it's all because they were not accepted

just for who they were and not they're

trying to attract attention is there a

human being on the planet that doesn't

have trauma from their childhood i mean

you know cuz I I'm sitting here

listening and it's an interesting

conversation because you listen to it

both from your experience

and I love that you said we're not going

to blame mothers

and pain is moving through people yeah

this is why trauma passes through your

family and through cultures

generationally

and learning about this helps you

understand the responses to your

childhood that helped you survived and

it also helps you feel empowered to take

responsibility that's right to change

those now subconscious responses that

you have yeah so going back to your

question about is there anybody on the

planet yeah but in this culture that

would be the exception because there's

so many features of this culture that

don't meet human needs that human make

human life difficult look the United

States is the richest country in

history, 70%, of, adults, are, at least, on

one medication 40% of adults are at

least on two medications more and more

kids are getting medicated for all kinds

of conditions from ADHD to self- cutting

to to aggression to so-called

oppositionality to

anxiety we can look at this two ways

either human beings are just

innately troubled or there's something

wrong with the environment in which

we're raising our kids and in which

we're trying to striving to doing our

best but we're facing conditions that

are enimical to healthy human

development so in this sense when we

talk about trauma we're talking about

the conditions under which parents have

to function these days if I was

functioning in a laboratory trying to

grow

microorganisms the word is called

culturing we're trying to culture

organisms laboratory culture if in that

laboratory culture a lot of those

microorganisms began to develop

pathologies or die off you have to say

this is a toxic culture well it's the

same thing with human beings so rather

than look at the source of people's

problems strictly within themselves we

have to actually look at the conditions

for any creature in the world whether

it's a plant or animal you have to look

at the conditions under which people are

living and raising kids and trying to

function so that's what I'm doing here

when you think of childhood trauma how

do you identify it well again I

mentioned those 10 conditions the big T

the big T's ones um adding to it poverty

and

racism those things actually affect the

physiology of the body so people who are

traumatized that way they have a much

higher risk for example people who've

had several of those big experiences

that I talked about they have a higher

risk for autoimmune disease high risk

for higher risk for cancer much higher

risk for addiction much higher risk for

mental health problems and so on why

like can you explain for from a medical

reason like in the body this show is has

listeners in 194 countries sure and this

might be the very first time as you're

listening to God birth that you're

actually starting to go wait a minute

everything that he's saying is what I

experienced

or, at least, pieces, of, it, i've, never

considered that this could be trauma

yeah and we've talked about it as a

psychological wound but I think it'd be

really helpful if you also explained how

does this create either programming or

conditioning in your body that starts to

define who you become as an adult and

create behaviors that you never intended

so that happens on both the

physiological and the psychological

level okay on the physiological level

trauma incites inflammation in the body

so people who are severely traumatized

in childhood you can measure the level

of inflammatory particles in their

bloodstream they'll be abnormally high

which makes them more at risk for cancer

more at risk for autoimmune disease more

at risk for depression mental health

problems and so on that's just a

physiological fact trauma can affect the

way uh genes are turned on and off so

genes don't function independently um

there are very few conditions that are

purely genetically determined there are

some, when, one runs, in, my, family

musculardrophe if you inherit the gene

you'll have the disease but that's very

rare relatively but genes are turned on

off by the animal environment so the

wrong genes can be turned on and the and

the right genes can be turned off by

trauma then trauma can disregulate the

body's stress mechanism so people are

secretreting more cortisol and

adrenaline these are the stress hormones

which in the short term are lifesaving

because if I was threatened or you were

we would generate cortisol adrenaline

from an adrenal gland and we would be

stronger and faster and better able to

counter the threat either to escape or

to fight back but in the long term those

same stress hormones thin the bones

create more clotting in the blood narrow

the blood vessels elevate the high blood

pressure elevate the blood pressure you

get hypertension suppress the immune

system put fat on your belly creating

higher risk for heart disease makes you

depressed ulcerate your intestines these

are the stress hormones wow so there's

all that um on the physiological side

and I could say more about it but if you

for example I I mentioned racism so if

you look at the chromosomeal aging of

black people in this country they age

faster than

Caucasians and black is already have

higher blood pressure measurements than

their Caucasian counterparts it's got

nothing to do with genetics it's got to

do with the stress of racism

a black woman in this country the more

episodes of racism they experience the

higher the risk for

asthma children whose parents are

stressed are at higher risk for asthma

this has been known for

decades i could go on a great length

about that so these are some of the

physiological impacts then there are the

emotional impacts

so like in my case being given to a

stranger gives me the sense of not being

wanted not being important then I

develop behaviors where I try and prove

my importance so I become a workaholic

doctor so I drive myself too hard and I

don't pay so much attention to my family

cuz I'm out there trying to prove my

importance in the world now that has

impact on my kids that has an impact on

my marriage so there's these um

behavior emotional impacts which result

in certain behaviors then we can talk

about addictions addictions is a huge

consequence of childhood trauma of all

kinds and there's all kinds of science

behind that so the one more thing if I

may

say when people get the message that

their emotions aren't acceptable to the

adults children will push down their

feelings in order to be accepted and

they'll try to be nice and

cooperative and they'll try to fit in

with other people's expectations which

then means they'll be stressed all the

time which then potentiates all kinds of

illness you know I am sitting here

thinking about ways in

which I can try to

distill down what you're saying because

the information has been so

life-changing for me in my own life to

really accept acknowledge and seek to

understand how childhood

experiences created a traumatic response

inside of me and I want to focus on the

I guess you would call it the smaller T

stuff which is that you have fundamental

needs as a child and when they are not

provided to you that it creates trauma

inside of you and is it fair to say that

another way to think about trauma is

that it's something happening outside of

you that creates this almost like alarm

or bracing in your body it's like it it

kind of flips you into that fight or

flight cuz I have this experience of not

like going back through my childhood and

not like seeing anything that's massive

related to my parents but just having

this sense of constantly being on edge

constantly feeling like you know it's my

job to make everybody happy don't say

the wrong thing this hyper vigilance and

I never knew where it came from yeah

well the child is very sensitive to the

parents emotional states and uh even if

for example you can

uh one of the ways you can tell if a

marriage is troubled is you can ask the

parents or you can measure the child's

stress hormone

levels so the stresses of the parents

are directly rel um affecting the

child's physiology and the child's

psychology so you may not have

articulated and and and and clearly see

what was going on but especially if

you're a sensitive person genetically

and that is genetic sensitivity you'll

feel exactly what's going on and you'll

think it's all about you and then you

also develop the belief that it's your

job to fix it and then when you can't

fix it you have this tremendous sense of

guilt and shame cuz you failed at your

job of making your parents happy which

never should have been the child's job

in the first place

what is a child supposed to do about

what

just as you're growing up it's

interesting because I think so many

people, at least, in, my, life, and, my, lived

experience is that that that's my job to

protect myself to like make everybody

happy to but but you see that's how you

survived because what you needed most of

all is a relationship with your parents

and one of the needs of children that I

haven't mentioned is what we can call

rest which means in order to cuz in that

rest state we can develop and grow and

unfold now rest means the child doesn't

have to work to make the relationship

work with the parent the relationship is

just there there's nothing the child can

do to break the relationship

now in a situation where that's not the

case then the child

necessarily has to work to make the

relationship work because without that

relationship they know they can't

survive so that

adaptation the the hyper vigilance on

your part remember I said in the

beginning that nobody's damaged goods

mhm so that that hyper vigilance on your

part and that belief that it's your job

to make the situation peaceful that's an

adaptation on your part so that's a form

of trauma that's an outcome of trauma

the problem

is that that becomes then wired into

your personality but children don't have

any choice in the matter they have to

adapt to this situation those

adaptations they become wired into their

personalities and that's who they think

they are that's not who they are those

are their adaptations their trauma

showing up in their behavior and in

their emotional functioning one of the

ways that I've seen people really deny

Yeah the existence of trauma inside a

family is between siblings where two

siblings will grow up in the same

household and be like "Well that never

happened." Or "Mom wasn't like that or

you're just being too sensitive." In

your work what have you discovered about

how siblings can grow up in the same

house no siblings grow up in the same

house no siblings have the same parents

no siblings have the same family no

siblings have the same childhood why not

there whole lot of reasons number one

there's the birth order parents don't

relate to the first child the way they

relate to the second child then there's

gender differences parents don't relate

to, I'm, not talking, about, whe, the, parents

love the kids or not i'm talking about

what actually happens the child doesn't

experience the parents love the child

experiences the way the parent shows up

so um number one number two the parents

relationship might be in a different

phase one child and another

um the parents might be in a different

economic

situation the parents lives might be

different um

then each child will evoke a different

response from the parent like with my

three kids or your three kids yeah you

have three children yeah you have two

daughters and a son i have two sons and

a daughter it's not that I loved or we

loved any one of them more than the

other but we responded to them

differently and there's one more factor

which is children are born with

different temperaments which is they

experience the world differently so even

if I could be the same parent to all my

kids which I couldn't be they still have

three different parents because they

would experience me differently

well you know I

I am sitting here

listening again kind of from two places

one as a mother right and one as a human

being who was a daughter who has

recognized that there were lots of small

things that happened and one big thing

that created a tremendous like a

traumatic response inside me sure that

created hypervigilance and anxiety and

probably ADHD and I'm also thinking and

I'm going to share this because I think

it'll be really helpful that I had a

wildly traumatic birth i was two weeks

overdue they had to induce me here in

Boston and my daughter Sawyer who is

sitting outside this studio and yeah

worked on the let them theory book with

me she did not want to come out so it

was 36 hours they had to use a forceps

didn't work they ended up doing a vacuum

extraction and then I tore and I got

rushed to emergency surgery oh gosh and

lost 2 and 12 liters of blood oh gosh

and they sent Sawyer home with Chris

they kept me in the hospital and by the

time I went home my skin was as gray as

a dolphin and I had severe postpartum

depression yeah and the kind gobber

where I could not be alone with her

because I was in such a depressive and

scary state and I was on medications

that made it completely unsafe for me to

breastfeed her i understand and for the

first 10 weeks of her life I was a

zombie on

medication

and oh my god it just like kills me to

think about this and she's recently

uh gone into therapy and has started

doing EMDR

and one of her visions

when they kind of

trace her you know responses to

stressful things in the moment and it

goes all the way back to the first

vision is a vision that she has

where she's in her crib

and she really wants me to come yeah and

it's my husband and then it's my mother

and then it's my mother-in-law and then

it's my friend Joanie that would sit

with me while Chris went to work and I

never came yeah so we went through the

same thing uh with one of our children

and my wife had a severe postbone

depression she couldn't even look at the

kid and

um so let me say a couple of things here

um one is that sometimes birth trauma

happens you know but yours was severe

now birth was created by nature in a

certain way and um during the birth

process there's natural hormones that

are released both in the mother and the

infant it's been called a love cocktail

it's a combination of internal

opiates and

oxytocin and other brain chemicals which

create the bonding between the mother

and the

infant now sometimes medical

intervention is life-saving and

essential but we've medicalized birth so

much that we interfere with it so much

now that we're getting a lot of birth

trauma where it's not necessary i'm not

saying that was the case in your

situation but nevertheless we're doing

it a lot you

know and that interferes with mother and

child bonding number one number two the

child does have this need to stay with

the mother's body for many

months uh because the human child is the

um least developed and the least mature

and the most dependent of any mammal and

the maturation like a horse can run on

the first day of life human beings can't

do that for a year and a half the horse

is a year and a half ahead of us in

terms of brain development that's

because we develop these big

brains these big heads if we waited any

more than 9 months we would never get

born sometimes even now we barely get

born cuz the head is get stuck which is

probably what happened in in your case

mhm which means that the development

that in other animals happens in the

womb in human beings have to happen

outside the womb that's been called

extrostation there's introestation in

the womb and extra gestation outside the

womb now that means the mother's body

the mother's skin the mother's heartbeat

close, to, the, baby, for, many, many many

months so when that doesn't happen in in

the US 25% of women have to go back to

work within two weeks of giving birth

which is a massive abandonment they

don't do it because they want to they

don't they they have to do it for

economic reasons it's a massive

abandonment of children so so there's

the birth trauma and its impacts which

then there's the mother's

depression and that has an impact on the

infant so

people kids whose mothers were depressed

postpartum have a higher risk of

ADHD and we can talk about why that's

the case why is that the case cuz all

three of my children have ADHD

well I I can tell you what I The first

book I ever wrote Scattered Minds was an

ADHD after I was

diagnosed and um we can talk about that

but let me just say it now that's just

the case and we can discuss it

they've done electro and sephiloggrams

on six-month old infants whose mother

was depressed and whose mother was not

depressed you could tell from the eg of

the infant whose mother is depressed and

who is not

not because the depressed mother loves

the child any less or is any iota less

devoted than the non-depressed mother

but because depress depressed mother

can't respond to the infant with the

same smiling u playful attuned

interaction which the child needs for

healthy brain development it's a sacred

thing and and society needs to hold it

sacred now how mothers used to develop

or raise children is in the community

where they gave birth in a community

where, they, were with, doulas, where, um, no

mind you they didn't have the advantages

of modern medicine which again I'm not

dismissing I'm just talking about how we

evolved right and there was such a thing

as aloe mothering other mothers would

come and support the mother when the

mother needed to rest other women would

come and hold the baby

um and mothers are left very much on

their own in the society and that

depression in the mother then affects

the child's brain

development not only

that given that we develop a sense of

ourselves based on how the adults look

at us when the mother or the parents

can't look at the child or they can't

hold the child again the child begins to

feel there's something wrong with them

it feels like there's a million ways for

this to actually happen well there is

and I and I share the story because it's

true i was a completely different mother

when I gave birth to our second child

Kendall just 19 months later

and her birth was different and Chris

and I were different and so I can see

how without any ill intention Yeah you

are a very different parent absolutely

and the child is a very different child

and the child is born with a different

temperament correct so even so they they

experience you differently to start with

you know so how do you like how does

this sort of unresolved trauma from

childhood that I would imagine you know

a lot of us learn about this as an adult

and then we start to recognize that this

is an explanation for a lot of the

patterns of behavior that you don't

really like but you're not quite sure

how to get control of them how does

unresolved trauma impact the way that

you deal with stress as an adult so um

the body's stress regulation apparatus

which is physiological mhm it has to do

with the connection between certain uh

brain centers um down to the adrenal

gland which is the stress gland you

might

say no child is born with stress

regulation infants don't know how to

regulate their stresses well neither do

adults well as you say as you say in

your book most adults are eight years

old if that but I thought that was

pretty generous this might have been

four three or four years old

um well stress like other functions has

to

develop so that when something stressful

happens I know how to face it without

being overwhelmed

and that depends on the development of

these brain circuits and receptors for

brain chemicals

now trauma interferes with the

development of the body's stress

regulation

apparatus so that become adults and we

don't know how to handle stress and then

we seek escape so one of the ways that

people escape from stress is addictive

behaviors you know for example so if you

do if you talk about or talk to addicts

if you I look at my own addictive

behaviors even if I go quote unquote

sober for a

while and then I relapse what usually

happened is that I got stressed and then

I reach for that addictive outlet as a

way of soothing my stress so that's how

it shows up but but physiologically it

shows up by a disregulation of the

body's stress regulation apparatus so

there not just psychological we're

talking physiology and you can you've

done the studies in in laboratory

animals where the way the mother handles

that infant rat pup in the first few

days of life will have an impact on the

adult rat's capacity to handle stress

and if you take the rats by the way

whose mothers don't handle them as well

and you put them with mothers who do

their brains develop normally so it's

not a genetic effect it's what's called

an epigenetic effect it's the

environment acting on the genes which is

why we come back to your original point

no human being is damaged goods no that

the good news is that if you can

recognize that your response to stress

Yeah and traumatic situations and

overwhelming emotional situations

is something that you can identify and

change

that that's what the opportunity is here

in terms of being able to heal and

resolve trauma absolutely and especially

if you begin by recognizing that it's

not your fault there's nothing wrong

with you you know when I think about my

husband who

absolutely experienced trauma by having

a dad that was a workaholic and never

around and narcissistic personality

style and lots of drinking and stress in

the marriage right and his response to

stress is to just shut down the man goes

silent and stoic and in our marriage one

of the, things, that, have, come, up, a, lot

which you can direct line to his

response to his own childhood is he

doesn't really know what his needs are

because they weren't met that's right

and for him it took a long time to call

that trauma from his childhood because

he's like "Well I had food my parents

were there i I know went to school it's

not like they beat me." I know and for

me I am the opposite i'm a reactor like

I'm a human volcano and when I get

disregulated or triggered or upset or

overwhelmed I'm like and I and it's even

though I know this

and I've been working on it and I am a

completely different human being i feel

that way over the last three years

I still erupt

well, join, the, club, and, well well, so, how

do you personally navigate your daily

challenges and when you get overwhelmed

by stress so let me say something about

Chris first if I may yes please when he

says that I wasn't beaten or we weren't

starving I had food and therefore I

wasn't

traumatized here's what I would say to

him so listen Chris let's take one of

your

kids and let's say you were an

alcoholic which means that you came home

in different moods all the time and the

kids didn't couldn't rely on who dad was

going to be for one minute into the next

and your mom was constantly

stressed and you and and and if you were

this way do you think your kids wouldn't

be hurt by

that so just plug your kid into the

situation that you're in you see how and

if one of your kids came to you and said

"Dad I I don't like it that you're

drinking and you're behaving this way or

that way and and you're a workaholic

like I never around." Would you say to

your kid "Well there's food on the table

what are you complaining about?" You

know but I did no that happened in our

house like 15 years ago okay and he felt

bad and I was an oh okay again

more trauma and more pain passing on to

Yeah our kids yeah i'm just saying that

when people look at their own childhoods

they kind of minimize why do we do that

because it was too painful to accept in

the first

place so that people dissociate and they

disconnect from their bodies and their

feelings now you said that he had a hard

time feeling what he feels that that

itself is a trauma impact it's a

protection it's not a

flaw it's not a damage it's an

adaptation if I was hurting you right

now and you couldn't escape and you

couldn't fight back and you couldn't ask

for

help then dissociating and not

experiencing your feelings would be your

only

protection but then it gets wired into

you and then all your life you go

through not knowing what you feel and

not knowing what your needs are so again

it's an adaptation that's what I'm

saying is that nobody's damaged goods

these are just adaptations the

abnormality is not in the individual

it's in the circumstances to which the

individual had to respond that way so

that his response or yours or mine for

that matter were perfectly normal

responses to abnormal circumstances i

say abnormal in a sense circumstances

that did not meet human needs one of the

things that's coming to mind

is thinking back to my own life and the

moment where I first bumped into your

work and I learned that the seemingly

little things created a lasting impact

yeah and that even though I wasn't to

blame for the emotional volatility or

the emotional

shutdown in my parents when I was

growing up that it impacted me it was

real and it was my

responsibility to heal and to decide

whether or not I wanted to do the work

to change the way that it impacted me

cuz it did have a massive impact on my

behaviors constantly feeling on edge

people pleasing anxiety ADHD drinking

too much chasing success as a way to

prove that I was worthy of something and

to make other people happy yes it was

everywhere it honestly just defined how

I ran on default and I remember the

moment though when I started to truly

accept the fact that these were all

indications of trauma and that if I

wanted my life to feel different

that I needed to lean into everything

that you're saying yeah and I felt a lot

of conflict about that moment because I

felt guilty for identifying it that way

because I know my parents were just

doing the best that they did they did

and that there was a lot that I didn't

remember yeah

and I'm wondering if you could just talk

to the person who's listening who is

having that awakening for the first time

where they're really accepting

that some of the behaviors and the

negative selft talk and the anxiety

that this is a result of experiences

that you had as a child where you were

not given the things that you needed mel

there's a lot in what you said okay f

said you you behaved that way by default

there's a difference between default and

fault

okay default you didn't know you were

doing it you didn't know any better you

were just following patterns that were

programmed into you but it's not your

fault okay there's a huge difference

important

distinction number one number

two it's never the child's job to make

the parents happy or to create peace in

the family and a child invariably fails

which instills a huge sense of guilt and

inadequacy for not having fulfilled a

task that never ought to be in yours

never should have been yours in the

first place it's a reversal of roles cuz

whose job it is to hold who emotionally

to create

peace and so when a child is forced into

that

position again as an adaptation to

maintain a relationship with the parents

she's given an impossible task that

she's bound to fail at and bound to feel

shame over it which means that any shame

and guilt that you feel is completely

undeserved when we start to noticing

these patterns we can start asking

ourselves

questions but it depends on how we ask

them so I could say why am I behaving

this

way or is that a question

no it's an indictment it's an indictment

but I said hm I wonder why I'm behaving

that way so we need to begin to develop

that compassionate curiosity towards the

self where we start looking not to why

did I not this indictment as you say but

genuine

curiosity and from that perspective

everything pretty much everything

anybody thinks is wrong with them is

actually begins as an

adaptation or it begins as a failure of

development because the conditions for

development were not adequate

and so then we can

understand now it's not a question of

being

victims that's the last thing we want to

do is to uh foster victim mentality they

did this to me and now I can't help it

no that happened and it's your

responsibility and it's your capacity to

change that now so you have to drop the

victim mode altogether but that doesn't

mean that we don't recognize what

happened m so to say that stuff happened

to you and I get the sense that

something big happened that you haven't

articulated yet but something big

happened to you at some point um to

recognize that is not to say that you're

a victim it's just to say that whatever

happened had certain impacts and

fostered certain adaptations on your

part that made you behave and undermine

your development in certain way oh I'll

share it with you when I was in the

fourth grade I woke up in the middle of

the night on a family vacation and an

older kid was on top of me okay all

right and that had

massive implications on my life when

were we uh I was fourth grade

and I was sound asleep so I was in a

safe space wake up to an older kid on

top of me who was fondling me okay

and in the scheme of things that can

happen it was here I go to dismissing it

you're looking at me you're like "No no

no don't go there." Okay okay but I like

It's almost like I'm shaming myself for

having trauma about this no can I unpack

this for you a little bit sure are you

open to it oh I'm so open to it yeah

okay here's a question I'm going to ask

you okay how did you feel when this

happened

i felt very confused and scared confused

and scared good enough who did you speak

to about it no one

okay now if something like this happened

to one of your

daughters in grade was it grade four

okay if one of these things happened to

um Sawyer or Kendall in grade four and

if they didn't talk to you how would you

explain that

i'd

feel How would I explain it i would

explain it and I'm about to go

intellectual i personally as the mother

would feel heartbroken i understand how

you'd feel but really I'm not asking how

you feel i'm asking how you'd explain it

why wasn't my daughter talking to me

about feeling scared and confused and

violated why because she didn't feel

safe talking to me that's the

trauma the trauma began before that

happened cuz if you had been able to

talk to your parents and they would have

said "This is awful you must feel

terrible come here let me hold you and

let's deal with the situation so the

trauma is not only in what happened is

that you were so alone when it happened

and that aloneeness was yours before

this traumatic event ever occurred as a

matter of fact abusers can tell with

almost laserike accuracy who's defended

and protected and who's not who can be

victimized and who cannot so that your

primary traumatic event was not this

event not that this wasn't traumatic of

course it was hugely traumatic but it

became hugely traumatic cuz you were

alone and that sense of lack of

safety and and and lack of protection

furthermore you may not even have wanted

to bother your parents cuz already

they're already stressed enough already

you were protecting them that's the

primary traumatic situation i've never

looked at it like that yeah do you see

that when I Oh a thousand% and I can

also see when I think about experiences

that friends have shared with me where

they did say something and then there

was denial there's dismissal in or

dismissal or we're not going to tell

anybody or this stays within us or even

if they then go after the person and

confront it it blows up and somehow

you're to blame and so I can see how

That's right and and and of course when

you shove it down you then think you've

done something wrong and that was the

other thing that happened for me is that

I felt like I had done something wrong

that's one of the impacts of trauma is

that the shame based view of the self

people start blaming themselves that

somehow you invited it or deserved it or

you didn't fight back hard enough

or which if you didn't was also self-p

protection

well I think that was one of the

original, moments, that, at least, that, I

remember where I literally left my body

and disassociated which was a defense

yes so again it's an adaptation so

that's what I would say about that

incident it makes perfect sense yeah but

again the problem is in the environment

in in a lack of being held and being

seen so there's nothing and then in your

in your initial impulse when you began a

narrative about how it's not as bad as

what you know right right right would

you say that to your your great

if your daughter comes to you and says

you it's not so bad think of all the

kids that are you know being beaten or

you know so that lack of self-compassion

is one of the ways that trauma shows up

and that's why I'm saying the healing

needs to begin with some compassionate

curiosity towards the self not why but

why it's a totally different

conversation

and then I can also see and take

responsibility and have a lot of

compassion for how my volatility

emotionally

absolutely just pass that on to my

daughters absolutely and so there are

things that happened to them that in the

time they didn't feel comfortable coming

to me yeah yeah because the exact same

thing exactly and you know it it of

course just makes me

it it makes

me sad that I didn't know this sooner

but I feel very grateful for your work

because I know it now

and so do our children and so does my

husband and that knowledge gives you the

the ability to truly address the things

that happened and the response that

happened in your body yeah and how that

has created these default patterns and

this inability to manage stress or

emotion or conflict yeah in a way that

is healthy and that keeps you connected

to yourself instead of constantly

abandoning yourself and feeling

disappointed in yourself and shaming

yourself and so while I can reflect on

that with a lot of sadness and grief

Yeah and regret

i feel more empowered honestly well

that's the whole point about what's

possible that's the whole point is that

we all want to be free but as long as

we're running on default mode and we're

just reacting to stuff there's no

freedom in it we're actually like

puppets on a string and if you remember

Pinocchio you know when he becomes a

real boy he says how silly how foolish I

was, when, I, was a, puppet, where, we're, all

puppets in that sense as long as these

traumatic impacts are running our lives

we're puppets on a string and those

strings are unconscious so it's a whole

thing about becoming really free and

that real freedom looks at depends on

looking at how it was and getting in

touch with our capacity to take

responsibility now you know so what

really the work is for all of us is how

to become free so we can be in the

present moment connected to ourselves

the great trauma psychologist Peter

Lavine says no longer living under the

tyranny of the past

and it's totally available it's totally

possible it is totally possible and it's

possible for you it's possible for your

children it's possible for anybody that

you know and love it's possible for your

parents if they accept the invitation to

look at themselves if they if they

choose it yeah yes what is the first

step is it asking the question like why

like just being curious with a level of

compassion like why am I like this

because if I reflect on your

question that's what happened for me i

started to say to myself it's no longer

tolerable for me to operate like this i

don't want to be this person i don't

want to feel like this i don't want to

feel disconnected from other people i

don't want to have this level of anger

inside me so that's actually the first

step is to recognize one's suffering

rather than taking it for granted which

incidentally is the Buddha's first

teaching is that life is duka like is

life is brings suffering you know and

then the second question is okay

why you know so it does begin with

recognizing the suffering rather than

denying it and running away from it and

there's many ways to run away from our

pain

um through certain behaviors and

addictions and the point is stop running

from your

pain accept that it's there and be

curious about it without blaming

yourself for it so those are the first

steps and then you ask for help i mean

the if help is available the natural

we're born seeking help you've never

you've never met a one-year-old in one

day old infant who doesn't know ask for

help

but let me ask you a question how easy

it has been going back for you to ask

for help

you mean if I think about when I was in

fourth grade um then and and and even

decades later are you are can you ask

for help or is that a pro challenge for

you well I ask for a lot of help now no

I don't mean now i mean I mean I mean

before your transformation absolutely

like like when you just said that Yeah i

had this epiphany

that I've always felt like I got to do

it myself exactly i've always felt like

it's on me i've always felt like I just

I'll just take this on i'll just do this

like which was an adaptation cuz there

was no help available

but you were you know what's interesting

so sorry go ahead is you just said

there's no help available and I felt

this knee-jerk need yeah to protect your

parents yes i

understand because I do know like I I

mean I know my mom well enough to know

that she would have picked up a shovel

and probably clocked the kid into next

week like I Yeah yeah that's not what

you needed your mother to do you needed

your mother to say "Oh gee that's awful

come here let's talk about it." You

weren't born not knowing how to ask for

help you were born with a supreme

capacity to ask for help

i mean as we know any infant knows how

to ask for help so something educates

educates it out of us something compels

us to suppress our capac capacity to

seek help so if the first step is

recognizing our suffering and the second

step is getting curious about it then

the third step is I need some help here

it's beautiful

well it's only the simple truth

it is so simple when you lay it out like

that

and it's also so freeing

one of the things that you write about

that I think is so important that I

would love to have you explain is this

idea that we are naturally wired and

have a fundamental need for joyfulness

playfulness creativity and that we

sacrifice that can you talk more about

that

well so there's

um a book written by a paliative care

nurse in Australia and I used to work in

paliative care and it's called the top

five regrets of dying people and she's

talking to people who died before their

time you know from cancer usually one of

the regrets is is that they worked too

hard they didn't play enough

now playfulness is built into our brains

all mammals play bear cubs play lion

cubs play uh puppies kittens they all

play we're wired for play why because

play is essential for a number of things

one is essential for brain development

it's much more important for brain

development than academic learning i'm

talking about scientifically you know

brain physiologically so play is

important play is also important to form

relationships cuz in play you can kind

of rough house a bit but you're not

actually being

enemies so you're making friends that

way so play is essential with the Pooh

which is one of my all-time favorite

books why is it one of your all-time

favorite books well well it's so playful

and uh but at the very end and I know

you're married to Chris Robbins which is

Christopher Robin you know I mean anyway

there's a passage at the end of the book

W the Pooh where Christopher the the boy

by the way him and his father had a

terrible relationship which is a whole

other issue i'm talking about the real

Christopher Robin um but the fictional

Christopher Robin is now growing up and

he has to go to school which means he

won't be able to play with his animals

anymore and he's trying to explain this

to these animals including Winnie the

Bear and the book ends with this

statement that I'll paraphrase where it

says that they go off walking together

hand in hand and the book ends with "But

whatever they do and wherever they go in

the ent in the enchanted forest a little

boy and his bear will always be playing

together." And that passage as an adult

would bring me to

tears

because as a kid as an infant I wasn't

played with my mother was way too

terrorized and depressed to play with me

and and kids peekab-boo play starts so

early it's essential for our mental

health it's essential for our brain

development so these poor people who

were looking back on their lives and

saying "I wish I had played more." Play

is just essential and I have to say that

one of the things that has kept our

marriage going 55 years now is that we

play so well together and we're just

playing all the time when we're not

fighting which which by the way is long

gone not long gone but gone um so um

play is play is just essential and you

weren't played with so did you play with

your kids it's interesting i have two

brothers they're both intuitively

playful with young kids they just know

how to be with them how to pretend how

to just get into their space i watch

them, and, I, don't, know how, the, hell, they

do it cuz I didn't know how to play with

my kids um not really i I I I kind of

faked it but I I always kept waiting

waiting for them to develop minds that I

could engage with

verbally cuz that on that verbal level

I'm very comfortable on the play level I

wasn't i was rather

stiff i wish I was a grandfather i'm not

yet because I'd learn how to play i'd

let that infant teach me how to play but

no I didn't know how to play i didn't

know how to play

i I really lacked that because it wasn't

given to me when I was small my brothers

had it now they grew up under a very

different circumstances they didn't have

the same parents you know in the way we

talked about it today so they know how

to play i don't But kids I mean well a

very surprising insight for me as I've

been working to resolve

Yeah issues from my past is noticing

that I'm a very warm person oh but I'm

not affectionate uhhuh and it's this

epiphany

of going in more for the hug being more

physical in terms of embracing my kids

mhm and it's something that I definitely

did not receive and I come from a long

line of farmers and hard workers yeah

and pull up your you know big girl

panties and let's move on and that's the

way that my mom is even though she's

warm and amazing and loving but not

physically embracing and so I really

relate to that because it's something as

an adult that I recognize that I truly

want to change and it's takes effort it

takes effort for me to go "Oh I noticed

I'm just standing here i got to put my

arm around." Just gone to five

that's true and then hug somebody um the

um I used to be hug phobic really and I

embraced you when you walked in yeah you

did but I honest to God when people in a

room would start hugging each other I'd

stand there like this and is that a

response it's a response to really not

being held and it's also um a kind of a

protective

shell i don't want to make myself that

vulnerable i don't want to open up

what might be some surprising adult

behaviors that are an indication of

unresolved trauma from your childhood

well sometimes

it's attributes and behaviors that the

world respects you for

so great success can sometimes be an

outcome of childhood trauma cuz you're

working so hard to prove something to

the world like I talked about my own

workism and and you know cuz I had to

prove that I was important now that made

me a very successful respected

physician from the outside and the

inside different story and in my family

a different situation altogether

um people who are very

attractive and who put a lot of effort

into being very attractive the world

admires them but it's very often like I

said before they're trying to attract

the attention they should that should

have been their birthright and they

don't feel good

if they're not attractive and you see

this

uh as people age this desperation to

keep looking

young because um they're not acceptable

the way they are so it sometimes it

shows up in success in what the world

considers success and other ways like

you talked about kind of not being the

kind of person that is open to hugging

or my husband shuts down well my

response to

um a sense

of disruption in my relationship with my

wife is to shut down so I just you know

go sullen and uh non-communicative i

mean I talk about that in the first

chapter of the book this is you know

I I arrive home from a speaking trip

and she texts me that she hasn't lived

home yet to pick me up from the airplane

and I go into a sullen withdrawal stage

because I'm reliving my abandonment

unconsciously but I don't realize it and

when I saw my mother again after that

five or 6 week separation I didn't even

look at her for several days which is

the typical response of the child

because the child's brain says you were

so hurt when you were abandoned that you

will not open yourself up again so your

husband is exhibiting the same thing

that that has been very dominant problem

in my relationship in my marriage is my

tendency to shut down

uh in response to any sense of hurt even

if the hurt has nothing to do with the

present moment but it's a re triggering

of some old wound

you're so amazing what are your parting

words

you know what comes up for me is that

beautiful movie um with Robin Williams

and uh Matt Damon where Goodwill Hunting

goodwill Hunting here in Boston yeah

that's right where the psychologist

Robin Williams grabs this very

dysfunctional

disregulated client paid by Matt Damon

and he says "It's not your

fault." We can only get that that's the

biggest takeaway I would say just get it

it's not your fault but there's reason

for it it can be worked through

well thank you thank you thank you

for being here for sharing all of your

wisdom and your research and for not

only validating Mhm our experience but

giving us three simple things we can do

to reconnect with ourselves and truly

take our power back

you're amazing my pleasure thank you

you're welcome yeah and for you on

YouTube I just wanted to thank you for

watching all the way to the end for

choosing to watch something that is so

important to your happiness to your

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