How To End the Cycle of Generational Trauma w/ Dr. Gabor Mate EP 1319

Now, most people I know who engage in a path of self-exploration and truth, they didn't do it because all of a sudden they just made a decision. They just suffered so much. So the suffering can actually wake you up. And I think to answer your question, this society has got to the point where the suffering is so intense and so widespread that...

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former.

Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

In this episode, we discuss topics that include sexual abuse and trauma that might be triggering to some audiences. Please be advised.

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So when we start to ask ourselves this question that you're asking is what happened to you or when, you know, when did you feel not powerful or, not lovable or not wanted. And let's say we're able to, someone watching or listening is able to assess themselves and actually be present, really reflect on the painful moments of the past, which a lot of people aren't even willing to talk about it to themselves.

Right? That's right.

For 25 years, I had a memory of being sexually abused and thought about it almost every day, like for a moment, you know, it would come, you know, at least weekly, maybe not every day, but it was like, A memory, yeah, that's there. But I never told anyone for 25 years because it was so shameful and I didn't want to be made fun of or all these things. And so someone's able to self-assess and say, okay, I had this pain, this trauma, I felt not powerful or whatever it might be. What's the next step for them once they start to journal about it and be aware of it? And they're like, I really want to heal. What would be that next step in the process?

Well, I mean, it's not that I can prescribe, but it should be for everybody and there's many different ways of working. But one of the things I would address, first of all, is the shame. One of the impacts of trauma is shame, because children are narcissists by nature. When I say narcissist, I don't mean in a pathological negative sense. I mean, they think it's all about them.

The world just revolves around me.

Exactly. So if bad things are happening to me, it must be a must be a bad person. Number one. Number two, I didn't fight back.

I couldn't defend myself.

And so that makes me weak and so I'm ashamed of that. No, actually, when you look at it, they're not fighting back. is nature's coping mechanism. Part of your nervous system just freezes because if you fought back, what would have happened?

Just depends on what age you are.

No, but as a young child. If you fight back against the sexual abuser.

Oh, right.

What would happen to you?

Who knows? I mean, it could have been even worse.

And were you in a position to run? No, no, no.

I was trapped in a bathroom.

So the part of your nervous system that would have you fight or run away gets inactivated.

It's protecting yourself.

You're protecting yourself. And the part of the nervous system that freezes you is just be still and you get through this.

Wait till it passes.

Yeah, that takes over. So it's actually what you're ashamed about is actually the brilliance of your nervous system that protected you.

But you're beating yourself up in retrospect saying, I should have ran, I should have fought back, I should have done this.

Exactly. That's the first point.

Man.

The second point is, if I can ask you, how old were you when this happened to you?

Five.

And how long did it go on for?

It's probably 10-15 minutes, yeah.

No, but it was only one time?

One time.

Okay, who did you speak to about it?

No one.

Okay, now, you don't have kids yet. No. But if you did have a child five years old, and this happened to who would you want them to speak to?

Me.

Yeah. Now, if you found out that this happened to your child and your child never told you, how would you explain that?

How would I explain it to... How.

Would you explain to yourself why my child is not talking to me about this terrible thing that happened?

I would explain it by saying it's something I'm not doing. I'm not creating a safe environment to allow this child to speak up.

And that was your primary trauma.

Yeah.

So the sexual abuse is a secondary trauma. As a matter of fact, the abuser, like you were bullied in school, you said. And the bullies can always sense the vulnerability.

The bullies have like a little weakness in your.

They have a laser like, because here's.

An insecure, weak person, which by the.

Way is speaks to their own trauma.

Right.

But, but, but, but they have a laser like, like the, like the physicians who abuse their their patients, the spiritual leaders who do that to their followers.

They see a weakness.

They laser-like they sense it, and that's who they pick on. And the bullies do the same thing. Now that weakness, as we call it, comes from not having the solid support and protection and confidence and security in your family of origin. So that's the primary trauma. That's the first thing that happens.

Yeah, I mean, that's the case for sure.

So to answer your question, if somebody comes to me with those issues, well, first of all, if somebody realizes those things, I'd say, don't try to do this on your own.

It's so hard.

Talk to somebody.

It's so hard.

Yeah. Well, look, people with addictions, at least they have the 12-step groups where they can actually talk about it. And people ideally will not judge them.

It's a safe space to.

Safe space. Or you might have friends, or you might reach out to a professional, or you might have an intimate partner, that relationship is close enough where you can actually share this. But you have to bring it out of you. By the way, that just reminds me, this is one of the ancient gospels written around the same time as the other gospels, is the Gospel of Thomas. image of Jesus says that what you shall bring out of you will save you. And what you don't bring out of yourself will doom you. He says something like that.

Right, right.

He was a supreme psychologist.

Wow.

And so you got to bring it out.

Yeah, what you suppress becomes more depressed, right?

It's like, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's got to start with that somewhere.

You've got to bring it out. And if someone has, what if they say, well, it wasn't that big of a deal. This thing that happened back in the day, I was a kid, and it only happened a few whether it's sexual abuse or someone screaming at you or you were neglected or put in the corner, you know, I hear that all the time. It wasn't that big of a deal. I hear that all the time. Yeah, we're coming. Okay. I shouldn't be that concerned about it.

It was five.

Who cares?

You know, it was like, yeah, okay, then.

That's a very simple way to answer that.

Then why are we so messed up right now? No, no, no, no, no, not at all. If a five-year-old kid came to you, and you were the uncle. Uncle Lewis, this guy did search and search to me, and. And I'm really scared and hurt. Would you say to them, oh, no big deal.

No.

Think of all the other kids that worse things have happened to. Would you say that? Why wouldn't you say that?

Because I'd want to be there for my nephew and make sure he felt supported and seen and loved.

And what would be the impact if. If you did say that?

I feel like it'd probably affect him for a long time if that was a pattern of. Yeah, that was the response that he got.

But you see, that's what you're saying to yourself.

Right.

When you say that it's no big deal, you're saying to the five-year-old that was hurt, it doesn't matter. In other words, there's no self-compassion there.

Right.

What is, you know, what you would never say to anybody else, you're saying to yourself. And one of the impacts of trauma is. lack of self-compassion. And again, I, if I may mention my book, the Myth of Normal, I talk about that, about how this idea of self-compassion and it, I see it all the time. And so when somebody says to me, no big deal, you know, I say, okay, take any other child in your position, plug them into that situation and tell them it's no big deal. And of course, I wouldn't.

But people do, they do say these things to their kids or to their nephews or nieces. They're saying like, ah, you'll be all right, you know? And I think it's because they don't have the emotional courage to handle the wide range of emotions because they probably suppress the emotions themselves.

I mean, that's the whole point. Right. Is that they're not comfortable with the child's pain.

Someone crying, they're like, I can't handle it.

They can't handle it, yeah.

You know, my daddy used to be like, Stop crying, you know, just stop. There was no like hugging and like, he had a lot of love and affection in other ways, but he couldn't handle the crying and the emotions.

The emotions.

Yeah, the emotions.

Well, one of the, in the book I talk about the essential needs of children, and one of them is that they're given the freedom to feel all their emotions, particularly sadness and grief and pain, also joy and everything else. But I don't know if you're comfortable talking about this, but what do you know about your dad's childhood?

Oh man, yeah, it was messed up too.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this goes on from generation to generation.

Yeah, yeah. And I feel like a lot of people listening or watching this can relate and say, you know, I don't think anyone's like, I had the perfect parents, right? There's some that maybe said, Man, I had a great childhood and my parents did amazing, but I would say probably a majority of people had something where they didn't feel emotionally seen or accepted by their parents or some type of challenge. And they probably would all say, well, yeah, their parents.

Yeah.

You know, had struggle from the war, from this or from the depression, and. And their parents suffered, and it was all about survival. It wasn't about thriving.

Yeah.

So how do we break, I guess, the generational trauma?

Yeah.

And not let it pass down to our children.

So not being seen is a major source of trauma.

Just not being seen in general.

Just not being seen for who you are.

Not being accepted for who you are.

Yeah, expected to be different than who you actually are. It is a major trauma for people in society and it is very common.

Can I ask you a question before you go on to the next thing there about that? this might be a controversial question. But I feel like I want to talk about this because, you know, when I was growing up in the '80s and '90s, I was born in the '83. So growing up in the '80s and '90s in the Midwest, you weren't really, people were still afraid to come out as, you know, gay, right? It wasn't fully accepted. Parents didn't accept their kids when they said, you know, I'm different, I'm gay, or I'm not this, you know, I'm not like you. and I'm, you know, afraid to talk about it because I don't think you're gonna love me and accept me.

Right.

And now more and more people are coming out. That's more, I would say it's more acceptable.

Right.

And, and most of America in some communities, in America and some communities, it's more talked about. And this, you see it in TV and movies.

Yeah.

A lot.

Yeah.

And, but now it's like, okay, what about people changing genders and people transitioning and all these different things, their sexual orientation, their identity and things like that. And I think people are confused, you know, parents are like, well, that's not acceptable, right?

Yeah.

Can we touch talk about that for a little bit to see, you know, sure. Can parent, you know, how can parents accept their kids? And if kids want to start doing surgeries, you know, at a younger age and yeah, change in their gender.

Is.

That a symptom of something, of a depression? Is it natural? What is all this that we can talk about?

So human beings are very complex creatures. With a whole spectrum of orientations in every sense. And so much of it has to do with not genetics so much, but how life acts on those genes. So some people may be male gendered, but maybe hormonally they had different influences acting on the womb or throughout life or whatever, you know? So they don't, identify with those genitalia.

Is that a personality or identity or is that a temperament or is that an actual biological identity?

I can tell you of one young relative that I have very close relative. We knew that it was easy to see as soon as they reached adolescence, they just weren't comfortable with the gender, the female gender that they were assigned with. They hated feminine clothing.

They.

Walked on hunched to hide the breasts. It was not a surprise to any of us that a year or two ago they said, I'm a male. And they chose surgery. Now they walk with their shoulders back and proud of themselves.

Interesting. And now, now is that, and I'm curious from a, I guess, your point of view or your practice, is that a, were they suppressed emotionally more as, as children? Do they have the flourishing environment to be fully seen and express their wide range of emotions, or is that a.

Well, no family is perfect, and I don't want to talk in detail about this family, but they had a very loving parents, really loving grandparents. I witnessed it.

A.

Lot of the qualities that we need for a good life, you know? And like in any family, there are issues.

Of course.

No issues in the family would possibly explain this gender issue. This is much deeper in them. They weren't, you know, no. this was very hard on the parents, of course, when it first became manifest and hard on the grandparents, but everybody came to terms with it. But it was really real and we could see it from adolescence on. It wasn't the culture, it wasn't anybody giving her propaganda, it was just how they were. It wasn't bullies, it wasn't, you know. No, they had good friends.

Yes.

You know, there was no issues like that. So it wasn't trauma.

No, gotcha.

It wasn't trauma. Trauma doesn't cause anybody to change their genders.

Interesting.

Okay, what is traumatic is that you're not accepted for who you perceive yourself to be. Now that can be traumatic, but that's a different story. And in a lot of families, like with a lot of gay men that I've known, they may not even have, even if they've realized their gayness, they suppressed it because of fear.

They didn't feel like they'd be accepted.

Or... Yeah, you know, and that's, now let me tell you a story. I was in a recent tour of Europe, I was telling you, and in Berlin there were showings of this film that features my work, which is entitled the Wisdom of Trauma, which is available to folks online. You don't have to pay any money to see it. You can, but you don't need to. So they were showing it in this theater in Berlin, 500 people, two showings. There's a guy that I'd met online at a webinar whose name is Ben. I can talk about this because he's public. And Ben was a guy in his 20s who was a very athletic young man and then he had an accident a year ago this August. So just about a year ago as we're speaking now, and broke his spine and became paraplegic. And I first met him, he wanted to talk to me from his hospital bed, from Berlin, on his webinar, in front of a thousand people.

He was in the hospital.

He was in the hospital when he talked to me on this webinar. And I just found him to be a spiritually amazing person. Now, Ben, this is Berlin, so he comes to the showing of the film.

This year.

This year, just a month or so ago, in his wheelchair. and he's paraplegic. And I asked him to talk to the group about resilience. So he did. He was eloquent and beautiful. And then stayed for the second showing. I didn't know why he wanted to stay for the second showing. He's already seen the film. But he stays for the second showing at the end. And after the Q a he says, I want to say something. So we give him the mic and he says, I want to tell all these people here, 500 people. that I'm not attracted to members of the opposite sex. I'm more drawn to people of my own sex and I've never told anybody this, he says.

Wow.

And he says, and this is the best compliment I've ever got. He says, and the reason I'm saying this to you now is because with Gabor in the room, I can't be inauthentic.

Wow.

I'm telling you, my heart leapt. Everybody applauded, of course. And then I asked the people in the group, 500 in the audience, anybody here, anybody else here who suppressed important aspects of themselves?

Oh my gosh.

For fear of not being accepted, 500 people put their hands up.

Oh my gosh.

So this gay issue is one aspect of that. It's one manifestation that the people that are really upset about it are people who got parts of themselves that they suppressed. and they can't, they're afraid. That's what I say. Now, let me take it more historically, since you asked. In one of the, in a lot of the Greek plays, there's this famous prophet called Tiresias. He's got the wet breast of a woman. A lot of the ancients recognized that there's wisdom in marrying masculinity with femininity in the same person, because it gives you a more full understanding of the world. so was Teresius was this wise man and Prophet. A lot of indigenous cultures, they have been big gendered people, and they were seen as, I forget, there's actually a word for it that some indigenous people have, but it was like a sign of respect. But these people have something to teach us. So what's happening here is not. So this has been going on forever. Now we have surgery and all that, that. they didn't used to exist, but.

The.

Phenomena of being transgendered and so on, that's been going on forever, as long as human beings have been around. The fact that we have such a problem with it, that has to do with this culture.

Why is there such a problem with it, you think?

Well, partly look at your own work on toxic masculinity. the last thing you want to admit that there's anything feminine about you.

Then you're not a real man or you're not man enough.

But actually these categories masculine and feminine are totally arbitrary. There's nothing in itself feminine about being vulnerable. There's nothing masculine about not being vulnerable. But in this society with these strict gender rules, we assign these things to one gender or the other. In fact, what we want to be is complete people.

No.

Whole. Whole, yeah. Which means that we recognize both aspects of it.

The you and the Yang inside of us, right?

Well, yeah.

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And you know, I, like people tell me that if they watch me present for the last 20 years, that my presentations have really changed, that it's softened somehow, you know, and- Used to be.

More hard or aggressive.

Used to be hard or aggressive and- Intense. Intense and egotistical.

Egotistical, you said?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Know it all. It wasn't just about the truth that I was speaking.

I know the truth.

But it's about the truth that I was speaking.

Yeah, that I discovered.

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's sort of that toxic masculine side. I'm much more at peace now, just like you say, much more at peace. I have much more at peace now than I used to be. So I think this gender issue is largely a cultural one and it's.

Again.

It represents a lot of repression. So the people that are really upset by it are people who are really repressed and traumatized. And I could name some very public spokesperson from that point of view. I will not let them be discovered. They already have been. Let them speak to those who will listen, but they're coming from repression.

You know, and you said not being seen for what, who you are.

Yeah.

Is, you know, one of the main traumas.

Right.

That's exactly right. It's one of the main sources of trauma.

Not being seen or accepted.

Yeah. Because when you're not seen for you are like, for example, in order for them to learn to see themselves, they need to be married. And then they're married when the parent is attuned, when the child, when a parent recognizes and accepts and mirrors back the child's feeling in a context of safety. Then the child says to themselves unconsciously, oh, I can be sad and I can be safe at the same time. I don't have to reject sadness. I can be vulnerable and I can be safe at the same time. I don't have to reject vulnerability. When that mirroring is not there, the child loses the connection with themselves and that loss of connection to ourselves is the biggest trauma there is. That's not my own formulation. That's a formulation of a wonderful mentor of mine, Peter Levine, who's done extensive work on trauma. The biggest loss is the connection to ourselves.

It all makes sense because if we're not able to express a certain emotion because parents weren't present to it or they said, don't do that or give you time out or whatever it was, then you say to yourself and your nervous system, okay, it's not safe to express myself this way. Therefore, in order to stay alive and not get punished or beaten or slapped or yelled at or hurt, I need to not do this, this or this thing.

Or I need to not be this or that.

Yeah, not to be that.

So, I can't be myself. And in this society, I interviewed Jamie Lee Curtis once, just not long ago, and she's in the book as well. She used this very dramatic phrase. She said that in this culture, there's a genocide of authenticity.

Everyone's inauthentic.

Everybody's programmed to be inauthentic. And that, as we've been talking about, that carries its impact on the mind, on the body, on our relationships, on our life satisfaction, and everything else. And so that's really the task. is to become authentic.

-What would you say for every parent or soon to be parent that they should really focus on in creating for their children? What would be the three things that would set them up for more greater success emotionally, financially, spiritually, relationship wise, if they could do these three things for their children?

-Can I say five things?

-Give me five things, please. Every parent should do.

Yeah. So the first thing is, I mentioned the work of Dan Siegel, Daniel Siegel, a psychiatrist here in LA. He has written a book called Parenting from the Inside Out. And it's about how parenting brings out your own stuff. So that deal with your own stuff.

First.

And continue to deal with it as you have children. I guarantee you your kids are going to trigger you. And I didn't realize that as a parent. So I visited my own traumas onto my kids. Because I wasn't working on myself at that time. So do your own work. That's the first thing.

Do your own work.

When you're pregnant or when your partner is pregnant, do your work already. because already the stresses of the husband during the pregnancy will affect that infant in the womb.

The husband stresses will also affect the-.

Yeah, because the mom takes on the stresses of the partner.

Right.

So if you're stressing the mother, you're stressing the child.

Exactly. Wow.

Okay.

So work on yourself. That's the first thing. Okay. Then there are what a great psychologist friend of mine, Gordon Neufeld, and I There is a chapter in this in the book describes as the irreducible needs of children. The irreducible that if you take them away, the child is going to be hurt.

What are those needs?

Okay, first of all, a secure attachment relationship with the parents, where the child feels that he is welcome, she is welcome, they are just welcome to be in the world, in the presence of the parents. not because they're pretty smart, just because they are.

Just because they're alive.

Yeah, this is their life.

Yeah.

That's the first one. The second derivative so needs is what Gordon calls rest, which means that as a child, I don't have to make the relationship work. I don't have to be nice. I don't have to. absorb the stress of my parents. I don't have to take care of the needs of my alcoholic father.

I don't need to create peace for my parents.

I don't have to create peace for my parents. I can rest from the work of making the relationship work. That's the second irreducible need. The third one we've already talked about, that's the freedom to experience all the emotions, joy, grief, sadness, pain, anger. And by the way, if you look at the brain, we have circuits for all this. We have circuits for anger, we have circuits for caring, we have circuits for grief and so on. And we're wired for them. And we have to be allowed that wiring to express itself when the situation calls for it, so that the capacity, the Experience all your emotions, all your emotions, is the third irreducible. The fourth one is free unprogrammed play in nature with multiple playmates of different ages. Not play with a gadget, not play with a computer, not giving a one-year-old a cell phone to occupy them as you're changing their diapers. But actually free creative play and play has no agenda. It doesn't matter who wins or who loses. It's not about winning. No, play is wired into our brains. We have a play circuit. How do we know that? All animals have it, all mammals have it. You have two cats.

Yeah, they play.

They play. Dogs play, bear cubs play. But play is essential for healthy brain development. play is much more important for healthy brain development than intellectual learning. If a child plays, they'll be able to learn intellectually later. So free, creative, spontaneous play. Kids have, now if you look at those four needs, our society denies them all. No wonder we have so many kids in trouble. And by the way, there's another psychologist I spoke to, called Darcia Narvaez and she taught at Notre Dame University and she's researched indigenous societies, aboriginal societies, small band hunter-gatherer groups. Guess what she found? They provided their kids.

All those things. Lots of time to play.

That's out there in nature, you know.

With other kids.

Yeah, all that.

Full range of emotions.

All that stuff. All that stuff. It's interesting. So we've lost, you know, we've kind of We've lost the ball somewhere, you know, in this culture.

Yeah.

I know this culture has many achievements to its credit.

Innovations, achievements, successes. Innovations, successes.

Science and all that. But boy, have we lost it when it comes to what human needs are. And you can hurt people in two ways. Hurt or hurt, hurt.

Hurt.

Well, you can hurt them in many ways.

Hurt them in two ways.

You can traumatize people in two ways. One is to actually do bad things to them that you shouldn't have done. But the other is to deprive them of their needs. And this society does it both ways.

By doing bad things to them.

By doing bad things to you. A lot of kids have bad things done to them in schools, in homes, and so on. A lot of other kids, it's not so much that bad things are done to them, but that the good things that they need, they're deprived of. Those are the needs I just talked about.

Is there a fifth one too, or no?

Well, the fifth one was the parents working on themselves.

First one. Gotcha.

Okay, these are the five.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So the five, if you're a parent or about to be a parent, they do these five things. If you, if you were, if you have kids right now and you ask yourself, am I doing these five things? Start adding them. If you've been neglecting. But the first one is to do the work on yourself first. And I think this is Dr. Shefali. I'm not sure if you know her.

But she's got a conscious parenting. She's incredible. I know her very well.

Yeah. And I think it's this, you know, she talks about doing the work yourself as a, you know, a conscious way to heal so that you can parent in a conscious way as well. Exactly.

Yeah.

We talk the same language. Yes.

I really like her work. So doing that first for yourself and.

That takes courage and, and ongoingly. So it's not a one day and you're done.

I wish I could.

Yeah, it was one day. Just they want, they spend a day working on yourself. You'll be fine. Yeah. No, it's ongoing. It goes until you have kids.

Yeah.

So do the work yourself first. Number two, create the needs for your kids, which is a secure attachment, first off. So people feel secure. The child feels secure that they just exist, not to prove that they're pretty enough or talented enough or smart enough or more advanced than other kids to get love, but just because they exist.

Yeah.

Freedom, the second one would be rest. So rest meaning freedom.

When you're resting, you're not having to work. So not having to work to make the relationship work.

With the parent. Yeah, I got you. The third one is the freedom to express all emotions, your full range of emotions, in a safe environment. And then the last one would be, adding play in nature with multiple playmates without electronics.

Yeah, spontaneous.

Spontaneous.

Creative play. Yeah, creative play.

So ask yourself if you're doing these things.

Yeah. Now, this book, the Myth of Normal, I wrote it with my eldest son, Daniel, who's now 40, about to be 47. He talks in the book about Did.

He have those things? Did he have those things with you?

No, none of my kids had them. None of my children had them. I've made every mistake in the book, literally. I made every mistake in every book I've written.

About what not to do.

About what not to do, yeah. So Daniel talks about, he used to have his recurrent nightmare as a child, or the floor just disappearing. the floor not being the floor, which meant that he never knew when my wife and I would get into one of our really hostile tents exchanges. And he had to sort of absorb and endure all that. But when the parents are in that state, the child does not feel secure. Now, if we lived in a large community, like we used to, where there's uncles and aunts and grandparents around.

You go next door, you hang out.

With your, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have safety somewhere.

Go to the next cave or go to the next tent or something, you know? But we don't.

So you're trapped in your room.

Yeah. So then, when the floor was not the floor.

And.

No, thank God, we've done a lot to heal our relationship. And even writing the book together was a healing exercise, let me tell you. But, you know, going back to his childhood, yeah. So when I point these things out, I'm not pointing fingers at anybody.

I.

It's hard, and I certainly had to learn a lot from the many ways in which I showed up that weren't helpful. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I mean, I couldn't sleep at night for many. Probably until I don't even know. So I was, like, in my late teens or late 20s, probably. I would stay up for hour, hour and a half, kind of just. unable to sleep. Like, I would try to go to bed early. I would go to bed late, and I was just kind of like anxiousness or worry or just.

Yeah.

An inability to fully rest.

Yeah.

Kind of always on this, like, Edge.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, and I never felt that stability with my parents.

Right.

It was like there was always some type of tension.

Yeah.

And.

And it was like every other week there was an explosion of, like, the slamming of doors and the screaming in the kitchen and we're in the living room, like, Yeah. When is the, you know, when's the explosion gonna happen next with our parents?

Was there anybody in your life that you could talk to that there was any kind of a safe haven for you?

No, I was the youngest of four. So my brother was 11 years older and my sisters were four years older than eight years older. So I was, I kind of always felt like I just gotta, you know, figure it out. And I left home at 13. So I begged my parents to send me away. where most kids get sent away for being bad.

Yeah.

I was, I went to a private boarding school.

Okay.

Because I went to a Christian camp one summer.

Yeah.

And I met a bunch of kids that went to this school and I was like, these kids are accepting, these kids are kind, these kids are nice, these kids have joy, they're loving.

Wow.

I was like, I want to be around these kids. It feels safe.

Yes.

Whereas I didn't feel like the school I was at before and kind of the environment at home felt safe.

Yeah.

I was like, I begged them when I got back from this campus, said, please send me here to the school. And they were like, we're not going to send you away. And I was like, every day I was just like, please. And convince them to send me away. I think that was probably, like, the beginning of feeling like, okay, I'm more safe now.

Well, yeah.

Even though I was in a strict dorm environment with, you know.

Yeah.

Wake up and dress code and rules, but it was like, probably something.

Structure. Probably something.

You're welcome to structure. I was like, I thrived. I mean, some things I was resistant to, but I was also like, I felt more safe with the order and the structure, and I was able to develop my mental and emotional skills. And that discipline gave me a skill set too.

Well, you know, absolutely. And going back to our discussion about that anger issue, I'm not saying that parents need to be permissive. Permissiveness is a kind of neglect.

What do you mean permissive?

Permissive where the child is just to do whatever they want and in a rage or whatever, you know, it's not a question of that. It's a question of there has to be structure, there has to be rules and the parents have to set boundaries for their children. And that's what you probably appreciated in that. Yeah. Boarding school.

Because the rules and the boundaries were scary at home. It was like discipline, you know, it was like anger rules.

Exactly. Rather than like rules.

Yeah.

Healthy rules and healthy boundaries where it's like, hey, you know, put me in line if I need to be, but yeah, not screaming at me for my life, you know, type of thing. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. And so when, when, when parents, when there's tension within parents and there's kids around and it's a pattern, whether there's.

Yeah.

A lack of affection, physical affection, a disrespect, whether it's loud or it's just a low-level sense of arguments. What happens then to children if there's that type of bickering, arguing, anger?

Well, first of all, a number of things can happen once the child disconnects, tunes out.

As a coping mechanism.

Then the brain gets wired to tune out. The child pushes down their emotions, as we talked about.

Wow.

Or the child takes on a role. of trying to fix things, being the peacemaker, which is immediately a source of shame because they can never succeed. So right off the bat, they're a failure.

They're a failure because my parents are still... Yeah, exactly. I didn't fix it.

It's my fault.

Oh my gosh.

So much weight on the shoulders. Lots of impacts. This shows up in so many areas. Let me tell you a story. If I told you about a four-year-old girl who was bullied by neighborhood kids, and she runs into the family home to seek protection from the mother. And the mother says, There are no room for cowards in this house. Now you get out there and deal with those kids. How would you view that interaction with the mom?

There's no room for what?

No room for cowards in his house.

Cowards.

Yeah.

Cowards.

The kid comes in the home.

Don't be a coward. Go defend yourself.

As a four-year-old?

Four-year-old little girl.

I would say, How would I view that situation or that home?

How would you view that interaction with the mother?

I would view it as that's how that mother was raised.

Yeah.

And when she's not creating a safe environment for the child.

What's the impact on the child?

Suffering.

Yeah.

Pain. Challenges.

Let me tell you an amazing thing. This story was told on public television in front of millions of people. and nobody thought there was anything wrong with that.

Wow.

This is Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention where she was nominated for presidency. And there was a document about her life narrated by the voice of God, Morgan Freeman. And. And this is described an example of good parenting of this is how my mother helped me become resilient. No, it didn't. This is how the mother taught her to suck it up. and to become hard. And 60 years later, she gets pneumonia during the election campaign. Remember what she did with that? She collapsed in public. She had fever, she was dehydrated, she didn't tell anybody. She sucked it up.

She said, I'm gonna be strong.

I'm gonna be tough. There's no room for cowards in this house. What amazes me is that, and we see this in our politicians all the.

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And.

What amazes me is that this is a story told in front of millions and nobody says, oh, my God, that poor little girl. Everybody says, oh, this is a great example of parenting. That's how the nature would become as a culture. Yes. Because a four-year-old girl who goes to mom for protection is not a coward. She's a four-year-old. What would a little cat do?

Run back to protection.

Run back to mom, you know, run with a little bear. I mean, yeah, yeah, you know, save me. Save me. Exactly.

Help me.

That seeking help from the adults is the most natural urge of the child. But in this culture, we're so glorified sucking it up that a presidential candidate can discuss this in public and nobody even bats an eyelash.

So how do we teach our kids to have the full range of emotions, and come to us for safety and support, but also have the courage to manage challenging times in our life. So that we're not always reliant on our parent when we're 30, but we're also, okay, we can take on challenges.

See, here's the thing, nature is an agenda. Abbe talked about the oak tree before. Nature's end is that you develop will and self-respect, given the right environment. And anybody with will and self-respect will stand up for themselves. You don't have to teach them. You have to just respect them and support them. They will develop that way. If you respect them, they will learn to respect themselves. Nobody who respects themselves will put up.

With, yeah, bullies or being picked on.

Or, you know, or disrespect or anything, you know? They won't, they will say, no, you don't do that to me. To me, you don't do that.

How do you show that to children? How do you respect kids so they feel that and see it?

Well, by all the things, all the ways that we talked about. And, you know, and anger, we have a, circuits in our brain for anger, as I said. There is such a thing as healthy anger, which is very different from uncontrolled rage. Healthy anger simply says, no. I mean, you are in my space, get out.

Right.

Animals have that.

Yeah.

You know, it's like...

The gorilla is just like, you know.

You are in my space, you know? and they're the cats, you know, that's healthy anger. You know, you know, look at a cat with a ambitious looking dog coming near them. Don't even think about it. Forget about it, you know?

Right.

Um, that's healthy anger. What's, we don't have to teach it. It's there. We just allow it.

What's uncontrollable rage?

What's the difference when you uncontrollable is different. And, and so here's the thing. The suppression of healthy anger promotes autoimmune disease and neurological disease.

The suppression of the healthy.

Yeah.

Because anger is a boundary defense. Healthy anger is a boundary defense. Suppressing healthy anger suppresses the immune system because of the mind-body unity. Again, this has been demonstrated. So the mind-body unity says, you suppress healthy anger, you're suppressing your immune system. Your immune system may even turn against you.

Right.

Just like your anger can turn against you. Now, so that's not healthy. Then there's uncontrolled rage, which is also not healthy. In people who rage a lot, they're more prone to have heart disease and strokes and high blood pressure because all the adrenaline and all that. Unhealthy rage is usually because you have suppressed emotions and all of a sudden the pressure cooker just boils over and then it explodes. Spews out, spills out.

Yeah.

And I don't know if you've ever experienced rage. I have.

Of course.

But you know what? Healthy anger is you're in my space, get out. No. Once it's done its job, it's over.

You're creating a barrier or boundary. Yeah.

And it's done its job.

You move on.

Exactly. And the more I raged, the more circuits in my brain got recruited to be even more rageful. So that's the So the healthy anger is in the present moment, border defense. Unhealthy rage is usually based on the past. So when I would rage with my kids, it had nothing to do with my kids. It had to do with being triggered.

That you unresolved trauma.

Exactly.

And until you resolve the trauma, you're going to keep having the symptoms, which for you was rage.

Yeah. And when you speak of that word trigger, people talk about being triggered. You triggered me. It's an interesting word because if you look at the weapon, how big a part of the weapon is the trigger?

Small.

Small. Was there's explosive material, explosive charge, there's ammunition, there's a mechanism to deal out.

There's wires connected, all that kind of stuff.

So if I get triggered, I could blame you and then just rage at you for triggering me, or I could say, What was the explosive charge inside myself? What's the ammunition here? What is that all about? And it's got never to do with the present.

It always has to do with the past.

It always has to do with the past.

Healing the memories of the past, healing those stories.

Yeah.

And is it, you know, sometimes we have a something, a memory of the past, and we could either downgrade the memory or we could elaborate the memory, right? So how do we address the memory?

By allowing the feeling that's associated with it to be present. In other words, by not being caught up with the story, either suppressing the story and diminishing it, or enhancing it and dwelling on it, but by what happens to me, what's in my body when that story comes up for me. And just being with the emotions and accepting the emotions. which is really what should have happened to you as a child, you know? So it's not about the story. It's about what you're experiencing when you're under the influence of that story.

Yes.

That's what I would say.

What's the, what's the biggest, what's the challenge you feel like you're still healing or the, the, maybe the trauma or the stress that is most present for you that you're still healing?

It shows up in my relationship mostly. It shows up in two ways. One of them not so much anymore. Let's say somebody critiques my view of addiction, okay? Now, I'm totally open to being critiqued. I got no problem if they understood what I was saying.

Right.

But if they're critiquing something I don't even understand, I just can't stand not being understood. Right, that can be a trigger.

That's a trigger for you. Not being understood.

Not so much anymore, because I really see that it's about them. Here's what I'm saying. I'm a reasonably good communicator. If you read what I say and if you don't get it, then you have critiqued me for that. Well, you've got a problem here, you know, of perception. That's one. But the big one shows up in my relationship with my wife is if But I'm really letting it go and I've let go of it majorly. Is there any sense of not being wanted?

From your wife.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Any sense of not being wanted, you know, whether it's physically or emotionally, you know. But you know what? Maybe you're finding this, I know you're in a new relationship and I've been in mine now for 53 years. You said you were married 53 years. In a relationship for 53 years. 55 years now, it's been my biggest teacher, I'm sure. And it's my biggest ground of spiritual and personal growth. So if you take away all the therapy I've done, the psychedelic work I've.

Done.

This still has been, which are none of which would I want to do without, but this relationship and both of us wanted to find out the truth of things. I mean, we were as dysfunctional as that relationship was. ultimately we were both committed to the truth and not holding on to our little stories.

What is the truth?

You know who said that? Pontius Pilate said it to Jesus Christ. When Jesus was taken in front of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius, you know, Pilate, he said, he says, well, who are you? Jesus says, I'm here to speak the truth. By the way, I'm not comparing myself to Jesus, nor are you to Pontius Pilate, okay? But Jesus said, I'm here to speak the truth and punch it. What is the truth? And you know what Jesus did with that answer question?

What?

Didn't answer him.

No.

The reason he didn't answer him is because the question comes from the intellect. And the intellect cannot grasp the truth. The intellect can grasp the facts, but not the truth. And for us to grasp the truth, Ever read the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry? Remember what the fox says to the Little Prince? He says, the eyes can, but you cannot see with the eyes, only with the heart. So truth for me goes way beyond the intellect. It has to do with, therefore there's no intellectual answer. That's satisfying. But the truth actually Again, as I write about, we have three brains. We think we have one brain, we have at least three. There's the one up here, then there's the heart, which is our nervous system of its own, and intelligence of its own. And then the gut. The me of the gut. When the three are aligned, then we're in a position to apprehend or appreciate the truth. when they're not, we're not.

Right.

And so there's no simple intellectual answer to what is truth. It's an ex. Truth is not a fact. It's an experience, you know? And I know that sounds mystical, and I'm not a lot of mystical being. I've never had deep mystical experiences. I'm not, you know, you're a doctor. I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor. But, you know, although. as again, as I do write about this, with certain psychedelic experiences, I've kind of glimpsed it, you know? But I know people who've had experiences of truth without psychedelics, just for some spiritual opening happened. Sometimes at a time of deep suffering, actually Judd once said to me that she surrendered to a God she didn't even believe in, in a moment of deep suffering. So the truth can show up in all kinds of ways, but it's not an intellectual experience. that's why I can't answer the question.

Yeah.

How much do you think you suffer on a regular basis?

These days, it's very momentary. And when I revisit circuits of my brain that have long outlived their usefulness, but I don't.

Yeah.

But I really. I would have told you most of my life I've suffered.

Really?

Yeah.

And I'm not saying that as a victim. I mean, it just felt bad and. perceived it as hopeless and myself is somehow irretrievably hurt. You know, that was my self-image even as I was helping other people. I suffered writing this book.

Really?

Yeah, because of what we were talking about earlier, identification. So I took on this big project, this book, 10 years of research. I collected 25,000 scientific articles and reports, hundreds of books, hundreds of people I interviewed. And then I started writing it. And the first chapter was like the worst piece of junk I've ever produced. And I thought, oh my God, I've taken on something way bigger than I can possibly deliver. Now, why did I suffer? that's not suffering. If I take on something that I can't deliver, I just say, okay, I can't do this. That's not suffering. The suffering is, I should do this. The world expects me to do this. If I don't do this, I'm a failure, because I identified with it.

The judgment you have on yourself.

The judgment is that's what the suffering was from. And I identified with it. So, you know, I've written four books now published in 30 languages. This is the fifth one. It doesn't matter how successful the others are. If this one fails, I'm a failure. And not really expose my incompetence to the world. In other words, my mind was, I didn't find myself with the book. And it took me some time to realize, you know, I'm not the book. Let's say I write this book, it doesn't work for whatever reason. I mean, I think it will, but if it doesn't, it doesn't say a thing about me. It's not me. I'm still alive. Earth is still here, the sun is, you know. So, it's that identification that created the suffering for me. And that identification had to do with the childhood sense that had to prove the value of my existence. You know?

So that's... And so all suffering stems from what specifically do you think for us?

Some false belief that we developed about ourselves as a result of what happened to us.

And in the fastest way to end the suffering within ourselves?

Well, it is to recognize that we are suffering, which means what in us recognizes that we are suffering. Something that...

Some awareness or... Consciousness.

Yeah. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So then to follow that awareness, you know, and But the Buddha, you know, it's four noble truths. Life is suffering. Suffering, yeah. Secondly, there is a reason for that suffering, which actually is the attachment, the identification. Thirdly, there's a way out of the suffering. And fourthly, here's the path. You disidentify.

You disidentify with the things that society.

Is Yeah, and that you've attached to and everything and a society is laid on you. So, you know, that's the Buddhist way. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Let go of the identity.

Yeah, yeah, let go of the identity. Exactly. And when he had his enlightenment experience, that's exactly what he found, that he was not his identity, that it wasn't this prince, that it wasn't this ascetic, you know, this hermit, he wasn't any of that. No, I have not had that.

Experience.

But you know what? The funny thing is, as I talk to you about it and I sense your understanding of it, I can only say, yeah, absolutely. That's the truth, isn't it?

Yeah.

I think for, I was telling you before we started that last year, over last year, I've had so much peace in my heart and in my body, and I just. doesn't mean there's not stressful moments and, you know, challenges of business and things that maybe I'm disappointed in or frustrated with.

Exactly.

But I. It doesn't stick with me like it used to.

Yeah.

And I'm so grateful for the continual healing journey that I'm committed to creating and cultivating within myself.

Yeah.

Because I want everyone to feel this peace. I want everyone to feel this inner peace. And again, My mission and intention is to continue to cultivate that and stay with me. And I'm sure every parent will say, Wait till you have kids and see if you have the peace inside of you still. But that'll be the ultimate test, I guess.

Or as Ram Dass said, if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

Exactly. Exactly.

But listen, let me say something. Are you experiencing gratitude all the time? Did you used to experience gratitude?

I did, yes, but I would judge myself still for not doing enough.

Yeah, okay.

Now I'm like, I'm doing enough. I'm not judging myself or comparing myself that I should be doing, I should. I used to use should a lot. This is good, but I should have done it better.

So I mentioned the psychologist Peter Levine, who's a mentor and a friend, and him and I were just working together in Switzerland. And Peter and I were talking a year ago when he said, He's 80 years old now. And he says, he asks himself this question, Am I doing enough? And he says, these days he can say, Yes, have I done enough? He says, Yes, I've done enough. But then he says, there's another question even deeper. He says, Am I enough? And recently when I was working together in Zurich, I said, so Peter, that second question, how are you answering that one? He says, I'm still working on it. Or am I enough?

How do we fully believe that we are enough?

I don't think there's a how. I think it comes. When you've done the work, it comes. And the other thing you said is that your passion for helping others heal and find peace in their lives, as you have found it. I'm telling you, I used to work in Vancouver's downtown east side, which is North America's most concentrated area of drug use. We have more people there in a few square block radius using all kinds of drugs. These people are all terribly traumatized. All the women down there were sexually abused as children. Many of them are Indigenous Canadians, which is a very traumatized segment of the Canadian population, as it is here in the States. But so many of them said to me, Doc, if I ever get over this, if I ever beat this addiction, I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure that other people don't have to suffer as I've suffered. Now, that's what you just said, is that as you've dealt with your own suffering, you're so committed now that others won't suffer, that others can heal from the suffering. What does that say about the true nature of human beings?

We care about others.

And we're here for each other. We're not selfish, competitive, aggressive teachers. That's not our true nature. This is. Now, we may do a good job at it, we may sometimes do it well, sometimes not so well, but our nature wants to express itself.

I have a few final questions for, I feel like I could talk to you for hours, I love this stuff. But when does someone know that they are on a healing journey? What is healing and when do they know they're on it?

I'm talking about chapters of my new book.

That's perfect.

So healing comes from the word wholeness. The Anglo-Saxon origin of the word is whole. So healing is not a matter of curing anything. You can be cured without being healed and you can heal without being cured. Healing is becoming whole. In other words, integrating all the parts. and recognizing all these aspects of yourself that you've loathed and hated and rejected, or you've tried to run away from. So it's becoming whole. It's coming back to your authentic self, which has never went away, but you lost contact with it. If trauma is the loss of connection to self, then healing is the reconnection to self. When do you know in your healing path? When you're asking yourself some of these questions, that's already a sign of healing. Because the people that are not healing, they don't ask themselves these questions.

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When you find that things that used to trigger you don't get you so upset anymore. Or when you do get upset, you get over it much quicker because you realize, oh, here, you know. So really it's when the past starts to loosen its hold over your present.

That's so powerful.

Yeah.

You know, it's. I used to get, I guess, when using the word triggered, I used to get triggered a lot to reacting to.

Yeah.

My big thing was feeling taken advantage of, feeling used, abused, taking advantage.

This is exactly what happened to you.

This is what happened.

Yeah.

And so when little things would happen in the world, like someone cut me off in a car or flipped me off or something, I would like want to go and beat this person up. It was like, it would come over me of like, I need to chase this person down. And I remember being like, man, why is this, you know, I was addicted to that reaction.

Yeah.

That anger feeling of like, you,'re gonna abuse me, I'm going to make sure it doesn't happen, right? rage or whatever it might be, right? And that addiction of that trigger, from what I'm hearing you say, is an enslavement to that traumatic experience. The past has power over you. You don't have control. You are reacting.

I'm gonna ask you a personal question. This is just out of curiosity. so you're a big guy. I mean, if you decide to beat somebody up 95 of the time, you're gonna succeed. Now, I'm 5'7 and, you know, and probably, you know, 134 pounds. Yeah. I can get that kind of rage, too. But I'm in no position to actually.

You might get beat up.

Yeah. Which is probably a good thing.

Yeah.

But what was it like for you? Did. Did you use your size that way?

Oh, my gosh, I did. And this was a big Awakening. I. I remember there's two experiences. I've talked about this before. One time I was driving nearby, it's probably 10 years ago. And I stopped at a stop sign, but then I kind of rolled to take a turn right, and there was a runner coming, and he had to stop because I was rolling. So I went in the crosswalk area slowly, like one mile an hour.

Yeah.

He had to stop and go around the car as opposed to just going through the crosswalk.

Yeah.

And he punched my car and went around and said something to me and then went around.

Right. Yeah.

I literally chased the guy down in my car and like chased him around the block, got out of my car and ran him down until I was like, finally my senses came to me. I go, what am I doing?

Well, you came to yourself.

Thankfully.

Yeah.

But maybe like six months after that, I. I got in a fight on a basketball game. I've talked about this in my books and on my podcast where I got in a physical, like a fist fight, a pretty bad one. And the guy was bigger than me, but I'd played football my whole life. And, you know.

Yeah.

It was almost like when I had this triggering addictive rage moments.

Yeah.

I didn't feel any pain.

Right.

It was like there was so much adrenaline.

Yeah.

There was so much fight in me that it was like, this is life or death feeling. And so I got in a pretty bad fist fight. And afterwards, I remember being like, I saw the guy's face and I go, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just did this. Even though he hit me first, and so it gave me the reason.

The reason, right?

I was like, I would never start it physically, but I would make sure I'd always finish it if I needed to.

Yeah.

And I remember at that point, I was like, my best friend Matt, who's in the other room, who I've known for a long time, he was there with me and he goes, you know, what are you doing? Like later he was like, Louis, something's wrong with you. Like we're playing a basketball game. We're having fun here.

Yeah.

Why are you getting in this fight, this altercation? And that was a big wake up call for me. Like when my best friend when I called me out, he's like, I don't want to hang out with you. Like I've never played basketball with you, Gann, and you gotta figure out why you're reacting to someone talking trash. yeah, we're supposed to have fun here.

Yeah.

What are you so triggered by?

Yeah.

And that was a big wake up call. This is when I started the healing journey. This is when I started going to therapy and emotional intelligence workshops and for the first time opened up about the sexual abuse, which was kind of the first opening of healing. And it's been a 10 year journey of what you said, integrating all the parts. There was one part that I started to integrate and it started to heal certain things, triggers. Yeah, but there were other parts and relationships that I hadn't integrated yet.

Yeah.

From parents, from other things. So, yeah, thankfully that was 10 years ago and I haven't got a fist.

What that story brings up for me is, you had this fit of rage. Mm-.

No.

But I was a loving, fun guy, unless I felt like I was being taken advantage of.

Yeah.

Which is what happened to you as a child. But what else did we talk about having fits? We talked about epileptic In epileptic fits, the brain is in a different state of physiological organization. When you're in that fit of rage, it's almost like an epileptic fit. You're not even there.

You're not conscious.

You're not conscious.

You're like a tiger or like a hunting or something. Yeah, you're like, you have one focus. You don't see anything else.

Which also speaks to a lot of how the criminal justice system system doesn't understand people. Yeah. We don't understand how often the people do the worst things. I'm not saying this to excuse any bad behavior or not to protect society, but how we approach it is these are really traumatized people. And they're not actually, often the worst things they do, they're not even there.

That I'm not aware. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm grateful that I started to, I was aware of it.

Yeah.

Started to, you know, heal and yeah, and now I see things. It's funny because like, it's like a completely different person 10 years ago, right? And then from teenage years and 20s when I'm like, I'll see something and I'll just notice it and smile, you know, kind of, okay, that's just about them.

It's, yeah.

And I'll just, and I, and I'm so connected to it, the vision of my future and my present, but my vision, my values, my intention, my appreciation for life that I'm just like, okay, I'm safe. I can protect the five-year-old who was abused. I'm the adult in the room. I don't need to react because I'm here for that part of myself that didn't feel whole.

At a certain point, you get to realize that life has created me, but now I get to create my life. within limits, I'm not going to live forever. But I get to create how I live my life as long as I'm alive. And that's actually when you're healed, you get to create your life.

You have the creative freedom to dream, to imagine the life you want to create, as opposed to living in survival and stress mode.

By the way, what I don't want to get is to, when I say that, when I hear myself say that, I don't want to get too new agey about it because there's a lot of people under difficult economic or racial or political circumstances where not that they're totally hopeless, but there's a lot of pressures on them externally. So it's not like all you got to do is take it on. We also have to look at the larger political economics social, racial, cultural issues that keep a lot of people- Suppressed. Suppressed, yeah.

There's a lot of political trauma. And how does someone who maybe is living in a stressed environment, whether it be their home or their city or their culture, political, you know, whatever it might be, they're more suppressed than others? How can they support themselves in getting out of a stressed environment so that they can be more of a baseline to have the ability to thrive and flourish emotionally?

You know something as a privileged Caucasian identified male with economic freedom, I'm not in a position to say to somebody, These are larger political questions. Society has to change, and people have to work to change society. It's a question of, at some point it becomes a question of advocacy and activism and joining with others. I don't want to preach to somebody else about that. My job is to what extent is to support and help. but not to provide some kind of.

But if society, let's say society won't change for a period of time for these individuals, for certain individuals who are feeling over stressed, what can they do as an individual? Whether they get support externally or not, what could they start to do? Anything else besides, I mean, we've covered a lot that they can start to do and they get your book, that's for sure.

Well, again, you know, I'm not sure I can fully answer that, but I can give examples. So the New Yorker a couple of years ago, within the last two or three years, had an article about an American black man who was jailed for decades and kept in solitary confinement for decades.

Was this Shaka Sengor?

I don't remember the name. It could be.

I interviewed this guy who was in solitary confinement for decades, Yeah, but maybe the same man.

Yeah.

Wrote a best-selling book and was on Oprah. It might have been the same guy, but go ahead.

All right. Well, my point is that, fair enough, my point is that it didn't let it wasn't destroyed by it.

Right.

He started to heal in the prison.

He found the inner strength somehow. So that it's not for me to tell. I don't know if I could stand it for one day, never mind for four decades or three decades.

I know.

But that just shows you that the strength, the capacity to heal and to hold on to oneself and to find oneself is actually inherent in all of us. So even in that unimaginably horrific, inhumane, cruel and absolutely socially, from a social point of view, despicable way of treating a human being, that person still could hold on to themselves. They suffered.

Right.

But they could hold onto themselves and come out of it with dignity. You know, so that's available to all of us, I believe.

Right.

You know, but again, I'm not saying I can't. I don't even want to begin to imagine how I would handle that situation, but I'm just saying it's possible.

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

I've got a couple final questions for you before I ask them. I want to make sure people get the book because I think this is going to help a lot of people. The myth of normal. They can get it where books are sold or Amazon or on your website.

Or they can't get it from me directly, but- They can go there, there's.

A link to it somewhere.

I don't sell books, but- yeah, yeah.

But if they go to dr.gabormate.com, they can get all the information about where to get it. But this book's going to be extremely powerful. 10 years of research, exploring all these things, bringing it together.

There's a research in 78 years of living.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Personal research. And the scientific research.

Yeah.

And I think this is the type of stuff people need the most, is understanding how to understand their pain, their trauma, their suffering.

Yeah.

And find Solutions.

Yeah.

And reclaim their wholeness.

Yeah.

So they can be in a, in a state of Peace under stress in the world, potentially, and, and find that peace. And I think it's you know, it's something I feel like I want everyone to experience as I've been experiencing it more in the last year and a last 10 years, some of it, but more in the last year and a half internally, like consistent piece.

Yeah.

And it sounds like you've been experiencing for a long time, and I feel like I'm so inspired by your mission, and I've been watching your content for a while now, and I just think we, we need more of these. I guess it's available information to us that we've just forgot or we're not reclaiming.

So, yeah.

But I'm so grateful for you're doing this. So the myth of normal, I want everyone to get a few copies and give it to your friends.

And the subtitle, the trauma, illness and healing in a toxic culture.

Exactly.

Which is what we've been talking about.

We haven't even talked about social media consumption and the iPads and the iPhones and Just being on electronics all day, how that's probably affecting traumatizing us in certain ways.

It's actually distorting the brain development of children.

By being on the iPhone or iPad all day.

It changes their brain surface.

Really?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's right. I talk about that too. It's a huge problem. What I want to say about the question of recognizing trauma is that there's been a sea change in that. like the best selling book in New York Times best seller list is consistently Bessel van der Kolk's.

The body keeps the score.

Incredible. Yeah, yeah. It's not an easy read. No. It's a very, you know, it's eloquent, but it's also technical and scientific and so on. It's been out for like 10 years, right?

Or something.

No, it came out in 2015, I think. Okay. 14, maybe 15, something like that. And, or, and, and this year, another psychiatrist, Bruce Perry, wrote a book with Oprah called what Happened to you. The fact that these books are now.

So many of these books are in the top 10 best sellers.

Yeah, people are waking up.

Yeah.

So I'm just glad to be able to contribute to that.

Of course, yeah. It's very powerful. This is a question I asked everyone at the end called the three truths.

Yeah.

So it's a hypothetical question. Imagine you get to live as long as you want to live and you get to live your life creating what you want, experiencing life in the relationships you want to be in and making the impact you want to have. But it's the last day, eventually. Live as long as you want. For whatever reason, all of your content has to go with you. No one has access to your information. Your books. Hypothetical. So after I'm gone, it's all a lot.

It all goes with you to the next player. Go somewhere else.

But it's. No, we don't have access to it. Okay, go ahead. Hypothetical scenario.

Yeah.

But you got to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things that you know to be true, that you would share with us. And this is all we have to remember your information. What would you say are those three truths for you?

Seek the reality of everything. Don't get seduced by appearances of anything. Second would be, don't be afraid of your pain and don't run away from it. Because that running away is what leads to addictions and the illness and so on. Number three, it's all worth it. It's worth going through all that suffering because this is what life is. It's just worth being alive. A friend of mine in England recently lost a very close friend to suicide. She was just struck by, overwhelmed by grief. She didn't know if she could handle it. And then she's got a favorite forest that she walks in. She told me this like two months ago or a month ago in England. She went to walk in this forest and she just felt this deep grief. Now grief is one of the brain circuits that we have. We have circuits for grief. We have to. She felt the deep grief and she felt the greatest joy at the same time. And I asked her, well, how are the two even compatible? She said, I felt the grief and I felt such joy at the privilege of being alive to feel the grief.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's all worth it.

It's all worth it.

Oh man, I want to acknowledge you, Gabber, for I mean, your journey, I mean, the journey of your relationship and what you've experienced from coming together and staying together and all these different things, the journey from teaching from a place of suffering, because it sounds like for many decades you weren't at peace, but you were trying to help others.

Yeah.

From you, I want to acknowledge you for you creating peace inside of yourself and facing the pain and the trauma fully yourself and being on the healing journey. and for your consistent dedication to creating your work so that people can consume it in a way that resonates with them, from your books to your content, to the videos, to your posts. This is so needed right now, and I think it's gonna be needed for a long time until society and culture starts to heal. So I really acknowledge you for the way you show up, your commitment and your consistency. and dedication to this research.

Well, I can't thank you enough for, first of all, creating this platform, which, by the way, means having done all the work yourself and then having the vision to create this platform and then allowing me to speak from this platform. Of course. Such a privilege and such a joy.

So thank you very much. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome again. Your book, I want people to get it. The myth of normal. Make sure you guys go get a few copies of that right now. I follow you and your website. We'll have everything linked up as well. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

You don't make it easy. You don't make it easy on a guy, do you?

I've got to challenge you.

It's a willingness to find your best qualities and to express them in the world. That's what I see as greatness. And that doesn't have to do with achievement necessarily. It might lead to achievement, whereas actually the willingness and the capacity to find your own best qualities and to manifest them in the world. That's what greatness is. Love it.

Dr. Martin, thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full.

Rundown of today's show with all the important links.

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I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

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