Take Command of Your Addiction, Heal Your Trauma & Shatter Your Vices w/ Dr. Gabor Maté EP 1303

It's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves. It's a question of actually getting to know them. And they all began as coping mechanisms, really. It's when the past starts to loosen its hold over your present. If trauma is a loss of connection to self, then healing is the reconnection.

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 the Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower and a 12.3-inch panoramic display. Two to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live. And with Sirius xm, everydrive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, the sports talk and podcasts that you love right in your vehicle or on the SiriusXM app. Every SiriusXM equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three month trial, so the experience begins the moment you drive. Learn more@kia.com sportage-hybrid Kia Movement that inspires.

This message is brought to you by Apple Card It's a great time to apply for an Apple Card. You'll love earning unlimited daily cash on every purchase. That includes 3% daily cash when you buy the latest iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch at Apple through this special referral offer. When you get a new Apple Card, you can earn bonus daily cash. To qualify, you must apply at Apple Co getdailycash Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch offer may not be available elsewhere. Terms and limitations apply.

The School of Greatness is sponsored by Capital One. Nowadays, most people subscribe to everything music, tv, even dog food. And it rocks. Until you have to manage it all. Which is where Capital One comes in. Capital One credit cardholders can easily track, block or cancel reoccurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app at no additional cost. With one sign in you can manage all your subscriptions all in one place. Learn more at Capital1.comsubscriptions Terms and Conditions apply.

What I read about your stuff, what I see about your content is a lot of people are lost based on trauma and past traumas cause certain addictions or certain behaviors. Yeah, and routines that maybe are some healthy addictions or unhealthy addictions. But it seems to be like a lot of unhealthy addictions.

Can I interrupt right there?

Yes, please.

No such thing as a healthy addiction.

No such thing.

If it's healthy, it's not an addiction. If it's an addiction, it's not healthy. There are passions, there are habits that are healthy, but they're not addictions.

Like working out.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that can be an addiction or it can be healthy. Like eating can be healthy, but you're being addiction. I define addiction as any behavior in which a person finds temporary pleasure or relief and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and cannot give it up. So if you're suffering negative consequences, so it's craving, relief, pleasure in the short term, harm in the long term, inability to give it up. That's what an addiction is. Now, if you have a behavior that's ongoing, but it has no negative consequences, it's not an addiction. It's a passion, it's a pleasure, it's a habit, it's a healthy habit, it's a healthy habit. So for me, it's not an addiction. And also a healthy habit. A person, if it no longer works for them, they can give it up. So for me, there's no healthy addiction.

There's no healthy addiction.

In fact, the word addiction comes from a word for slavery. So there's no healthy slavery.

Interesting. So addiction, what is the root of addiction?

The word.

Yeah.

So in Roman times, an addictus was somebody who's assigned to another person to serve them because they owed them money and they couldn't pay it back.

An addictus.

Yeah, addictus was like an indentured slave who had to work off the debt. So that's what the word actually comes from, is a form of slavery.

So if you're addicted to something, you are a slave to that craving.

Absolutely. You. You have no choice. You can. A slave has no choice. Wow.

And they have no free will, Essentially.

Yeah. And I've had my own addictive behaviors and nothing like the patients that I worked with. But insofar as I had them, literally, even though I was a well paid, middle class, successful doctor, I was not exercising any free choice, really, over my behaviors. No.

When did you. What was the main addiction that you were, you know, tied to and when did you learn.

Yeah.

How to break free of that?

Well, so the. In. In my life, the main addictions have been to work.

To work.

Yeah. Work hard, achieve more and more, patience, more and more, success, more and more. More and more is the essence of addiction. It's always more and more and there's a reason why I developed that addiction. And that was the hardest. That's the hardest one to give up. Then I was addicted for a long time to shopping for classical compact discs. And when I say addicted, I mean, I would spend thousands of dollars a day on CDs. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, really. And I would lie to my wife about it, and I would neglect my patients. And as soon as I left the store, thinking, now I'm complete, my collection is full. Half an hour later, I had to run back. And as I described in my book, an addiction and the realm of hunger goes. I once left a woman in labor, in hospital to go get a symphony. So that's an addiction.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like that. Now, the interesting thing about addiction is that I wasn't using substances.

You weren't smoking or drinking or things like that.

Drugs. But I was looking for a chemical. Hip.

Dopamine.

Dopamine. Yeah. So I was on a dopamine fiend, you might say. And I get it through those particular behaviors. And so that's what my addiction was. How did I give it up? Well, it took a long time. Really? Yeah. A lot of struggle, a lot of, you know. And finally I just realized that the cost was greater than the. In fact, you know, in fact, if I started listening now to all the CDs that I have at home, and they did nothing but listen for the rest of my life.

You wouldn't finish.

I probably wouldn't finish. Wow.

So how long would you say, when did you realize, okay, this is an addiction, this is an unhealthy.

I realized it long before I gave it up.

Like, years? 10 years? Decades?

Years. Years, yeah. Yes.

How long does it normally take for someone when they realize this is unhealthy, this thing I'm doing, this addiction is not good for me until they actually give it up. Is there any data on that?

I couldn't answer that one. I think it's a highly variable and individual issue. It has to do with what resources they have to heal. It has to do with what support they have. It has to do with what cost this habit is exacting on their lives. It has to do also with some belief that there's a part of us that's actually healthy and we can get in touch with it. You know, there has to be a co. Combination of factors, and it's very, very individual also. It also depends, of course, the degree of trauma a person suffered. And addictions are always about, like, you've heard my definition of addiction. And I'm sure if I asked you, like if I asked for talking to a thousand people. Put your hands up. If, according to my definition, you get an addiction, the virtually everybody in the room will put their hands up. Maybe there'll be two liars who came but 998. And then I asked them not what was wrong with the addiction, but what was right about it. What did you get from it? So if I asked you that. So you've had your behaviors. If I asked you. I don't care what it was to. But if I asked you, what did you get from it, what would it be?

You get some type of relief, you get some type of pleasure. You get some type of. Specifically, what do you get from it?

What do you get from it? What did they give you? Temporarily. Whatever it was. I don't even care what it was.

It's a just, you know, you get a. You escape.

Okay. Escape. Right. Yeah.

You're not thinking about the pain or the shame or the insecurity.

So who needs to escape? Me. No, but I mean, what kind of person needs to escape?

Oh, a scared person.

Scared person. Somebody who's imprisoned, isn't it somebody who's not free.

Trapped.

Yeah, somebody's trapped. Exactly. And I know in your book on toxic masculinity, you talk about being trapped. Trapped is the very word you use.

Yes, and I felt trapped most of my childhood.

That's the whole point. So what I'm saying is that addiction is never a choice. And it's not some kind of genetic disease, which. That is total nonsense. What it actually is, is an attempt to solve a problem in your life. In your case, you were trying to solve the problem of being trapped, which is based on your childhood trauma, which you publicly talk about. In my case, the workaholism was about trying to prove to myself that I had the right to exist. That was important.

That you're worthy of love.

That is worthy of love. Exactly. Acceptance and all that. Now, that also came from a childhood experience. So addiction is never like either a disease as such. It can behave like a disease, but it isn't a disease as such. It's also not a choice anybody makes. It's actually an attempt to solve a deep life problem that was imposed on a person by trauma in every case. Wow. Is it.

Is it possible for someone to heal a deep wound on their own? A trauma from decades past they've had an addiction to trying to escape from? Is it possible to do it on your own, or is it really take support someone Someone's a team. What's your thoughts on that?

Well, I think very rarely it is possible for an individual. Maybe they have some deep spiritual experience. Maybe they're out there in nature and all of a sudden they. They're at one with the universe.

They feel presence, they feel connected. Yeah, exactly.

So that can happen. It does happen to some people.

And they just to choose, I'm going to decide not to do this anymore.

They realize they don't need to because they're free.

They fell free.

Interesting. Yeah. Very rare for most of us people, beings that walk this earth. It takes a lot of self awareness. It takes a lot of support, connection, guidance. So I'd say if you're listening and you've got one of these issues where you're addicted to something in the way that Luis and I are just talking about, don't wait for that miraculous moment, get the help, because you have a much better chance that way. Yeah.

So what would you say is the root cause of all addiction then? Is it feeling a wound? Is it feeling trapped by something that's happened in the past?

The being trapped itself is a sign of a wound. So the, in fact, the word trauma means wound. The Greek origin of the word trauma is a wound. So children who are hurt, but they're not supported, seen, accepted and helped, they get trapped in the wound. And being trapped in the wound and being trapped in the behaviors to escape from the wound, that's how the trauma shows up in our lives.

Interesting. And in our culture and our society. You know, I talk about this in my book as well, about how as a young boy growing up in the Midwest in Ohio, I didn't see examples of older men or athletes that I aspired to be, like talking about their emotions or talking about healing or talking about, you know, I had a trauma. Talking about how to, you know, navigate the full range of emotions. It was more you just get made fun of if you cried.

Yeah.

You get picked on and called, you know, things you don't want to be called.

You're.

You're kicked out of the tribe, you're not accepted in the tribe, and you're, you know, boys group growing up.

Yeah.

And so I feel like culturally there's a lot of pain with men and women, obviously, but that it seems to be, is causing a lot of the stress in the world right now. It's just this cultural pain.

Well, if I may be self serving, my new book is called the Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. So just as you say, the Trauma that people are experiencing massively isn't just personal to them. It's also a sign of a culture that's completely out of whack. And when I say out of whack, the things we consider the reason I call the book the Myth of Normal. Because what I'm saying is that the things that are considered normal in society are not at all normal from the point of view of human life and human needs. It's not healthy, it's totally unhealthy. So that the addictions and the diseases and the mental illnesses that people develop are actually normal responses to an abnormal situation. So that whatever addiction you had, or even this mask of rigid masculinity that you tried to adopt for a while until it cracked for you. Right.

Needing to win, needing to be the best. Needing to.

But that was a normal response.

To survive.

To survive, exactly. So that the abnormality wasn't in you, it was in the situation that you're in. That's what I mean by a toxic culture.

Yeah.

And I know again, in your book, you. You talk about these public figures that all of a sudden you realize we're talking about their emotions. Yeah, but that's fairly new. Very.

In the last like five, 10 years.

So these days athletes will talk about their sexual abuse.

This didn't happen until 10 years ago.

Really?

And really more three to five years ago, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so now there's. Why do you feel like people are now starting to open up who are more public figures? Why do you think that's happening?

Well, I think what's happened that the toxicity of the culture. One of my subtitles is toxic culture and it's got so bad. There's a Greek playwright that I quote in my book, he's Aeschylus and he. One of his plays, he said that the way that gods created us human beings, that we have to suffer, suffer into truth. And I think that the degree of suffering. 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 something had to crack open. So I think that's why it's got so bad that it couldn't be hidden anymore.

Why do you think in our modern society with all the medical and scientific advances and all the knowledge out there, that there's so Much chronic pain, though. So much suffering. When we have more information and knowledge and tools than ever before, Actually, we don't.

We have less. What we have is a lot more physiological, physical science, which is great. You know, I mean, if I needed a heart transplant, I'd be very grateful for modern medicine or, you know, if a broken bone or anything. But we've forgotten something that human beings have always known. And, for example, I write about this friend of mine. His name is Louis Mel Madrona, and he's an American physician. He's Lakota background, okay? And he told me that. And he's just like me. He's full of respect for Western medicine. I was trained in it. He was trained in it. We also see what's missing. And he said that in his hij tradition, when somebody got sick, the whole community gathers and thanks the person and says, you're carrying some dysfunction in our whole culture. So your healing is our healing. Wow. So they get that the individual represents the culture and the environment and the family and the community. Now, Western medicine totally forgets that we separate the mind from the body. So often when I speak to groups, I ask people if in the last five years, you've been to a neurologist or an oncologist or a cardiologist or gastroenterologist or a rheumatologist, any kind of an ologist, put your hand up. So people put their hands up. Keep your hands up. If they ask you about stress in your life, trauma in your childhood. Relationships, Relationships, exactly. How you feel about your work, how do you feel about yourself as a human being? Very few hands stay up. And those questions which have to do with, number one, the unity of mind and body, which is only scientific fact, and the inseparableness of one human being from another Western medicine completely ignores, which is contrary to science. It's not only contrary to ancient wisdom, it's also contrary to modern science, because we have tens of thousands of studies to show that you can't separate the mind from the body. Tens of thousands of studies showing how emotions significantly influence the onset of illness, how relationships. Do. You know, there's a wonderful psychiatrist here in la. You may know of him or him, Daniel Siegel. And Dan Siegel talks about what he calls interpersonal neurobiology, which means that our brains are not separate. Something in you will sense the tension in me, and we'll pick up on that. And that'll.

The intuition.

Yeah, that'll change your brain. And I take it a step further. I talk about interpersonal biology so that what happens to people physiologically is very affected. And I'll give you two examples. Yes, but affected by their culture and their family. So we've known for decades that children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to have asthma. The parent stresses affect the physiology of the child.

The breathing.

The breathing, they narrow the air tubes, they cause inflammation. By the way, how do we treat asthma? With stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. You know, we know American black women. The more experiences of racism then you have to endure, the greater the risk for asthma. Really. We know that men who were sexually abused in childhood, the risk of heart disease triples. I could go on. Women who suffer symptoms of PTSD severely, their risk of ovarian cancer doubles.

Why?

Because you can't separate the emotions from the body. It's one unit, scientifically speaking. Not just from the point of view of indigenous wisdom, but modern science. So when I talk, when you say, despite all this knowledge, I'm saying what's missing from the knowledge is wisdom is the wisdom. And not just the wisdom, even the science. That's what's so ironic. So I'm a physician and as doctors, we always talk about evidence based practice. And I say, my God, I only wish we had evidence based practice. Let's look at the evidence.

Right.

You know, what's the evidence for separating the mind from the body? Body. But multiple sclerosis, this mysterious illness. The guy who first described multiple sclerosis was a French neurologist, Jean Martin charcot, in the 19th century. He said that it was a disease caused by grief and long term worry. Since then, there's been multiple studies showing the relationship of stress, trauma and multiple sclerosis. You go to the average neurologist with symptoms of ms, nobody's going to ask you about your trauma, nobody's going to ask you about your stress. And why is that significant? Because if you deal with the trauma and the stress, your multiple sclerosis can actually improve significantly. Wow. So there's a huge gap between the scientific evidence and how we practice medicine and what we call scientific evidence based practice is miraculous. It's amazing, but it's way too narrow.

What about something like arthritis? What is that would you say that's connected to?

Okay, that's been studied as well. So there was a great Canadian physician who actually was one of the founding physicians at Johns Hopkins Medical School. His name is William Osler. He said in 1880 that rheumatoid arthritis is caused by long term worry and stress.

Long term worry and stress, yeah.

Now, since then, in 1890, 1880 or 90. Wow. Yeah. He said this then since then multiple dozens of studies showing a relationship between trauma, stress and rheumatoid arthritis. Do you think the average rheum rheumatologist knows anything about that so that people go to I know people. In my book the Mython Normal, I talk about people with Ms. Or arthritis who once they start recognizing that the flare ups of the disease actually manifest stresses in their lives if they learn how to deal with those stresses. One woman told me that I have beautiful conversations with my rheumatoid arthritis. He said. She says it was my best teacher because when every time it shows up I know that I'm out of alignment with myself.

Yeah the School of Greatness is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. The holidays are such a special time to travel and gather with loved ones. Think about some of your best trips. Those cozy spaces, thoughtful touches and the feeling of being right at home wherever you are. Now imagine getting to provide that same experience for someone else because when you travel, your place is just sitting empty while you're away. Hosting on Airbnb can be a no brainer. And in a season where new experiences creating lasting memories, it's a unique way to help others make their own. And Martha and I both travel a lot, especially with her family in Mexico and mine all over the usa. So we know what it's like to be on the go during the holidays. And from our experience, hosting has always been easy and straightforward. And whether you're traveling often or just once in a while, it can be a simple way to earn a little.

Extra while you're away.

Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host the holidays are here and with them comes all the cheer and the spending. And I think we've all felt the pressure of finding the perfect gift for the perfect price and and those prices are sure giving us a run for our money. You know how it goes. One gift turns into 10, you're trying to stay on budget and before you know it you've spent half a day scrolling, comparing prices and wondering if you should have just gotten everyone gift cards. It can feel a little stressful trying to make it all feel special without breaking the bank. But luckily you can get the holiday savings at Metro with the most wonderful deal of the season. Get one line of 5G for only $25 a month and a five year price guarantee on talk, text and data. The best part is that you can keep the phone you love and keep your number and no activation fees. And that's what I'm talking about. A deal that actually lasts five years locked in. That's peace of mind right there at Metro. Get that more for your money feeling, visit your local store today. $25 a month with autopay $30 your first month guarantee exclusions apply. See site for details. Cold mornings holiday plans this is when you need your wardrobe to just work. Stuff that looks sharp, feels good and you'll actually reach for quints. Makes gifting easy when everything's worth keeping for yourself. By partnering directly with trusted factories that maintain high standards for craftsmanship and ethical practices, Quint cuts out the middlemen and markups. That means premium quality at half the cost of other high end brands. So you can give luxury pieces without the luxury price tag. And it goes beyond their clothes. Quince also has incredible home and bedding options to make your home cozy this season. Martha and I have the European linen duvet cover set from Quince. And let me tell you, the duvet set is so soft and high quality. We highly recommend get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quint.comlewis for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com Lewis free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Lewis you're out of somewhere.

You need to have a conversation with yourself or get back in alignment. It's interesting I was telling you this before off camera. That and then a previous relationship that I was in. Feeling a lot of chest pain and kind of tightness in my throat.

Yeah.

And at one point like I was starting to get like this a rash or some type of flare up like in my like below my belly button.

Yeah.

And I was like what is like I've never had some type of like eczema or skin condition or something. It was like this kind of bright red flare up and I was like do I have a disease? Like what is this? You know, and it's fascinating because I was telling you like the moment after many, many months of therapy and starting to integrate the lessons of healing and really feel it internally, I started to feel this sense of peace inside of me for the first time. I didn't feel trapped for the first time in myself, in my heart and in my body. And almost overnight this flare up was there for months and I was like, oh, maybe I'm having, I had allergy tests And I was like, maybe it's peanuts. I don't know. All these different, like, foods that I'm eating. And I was like, eliminating the foods, and it's still there. It was almost overnight when I felt the peace inside of me. The flare ups went away, and they haven't come back.

And I was like, so if you had come to me that Raj, I.

Would have asked you not, what are you eating?

No, I wouldn't. Well, I might have. Those are good questions. But I also would have asked you, what is your body saying no to? It's rejecting that you're not saying no to.

Oh, my gosh.

You know, now a flare up, if you take that word flare up, which is what you used.

Yeah, it's inflammation. Right. Something's inflamed.

Okay, right. But where else do you use what else flares up? You know what flares up is rage, anger. But you had anger that you weren't expressing.

Right.

Hence your body flares up. Yes. We know that suppressed emotions cause inflammation. So had you come to me, not had you come to me when I was out of medical school, because I wouldn't know anything about this. Nobody teaches you this stuff. But if you come to me more recently, I would have asked you, well, Louis, what is your body saying no to that you're not saying no to? And that happens in two major areas, relationships and work, you know?

Interesting.

And so the body sends us signals. We can learn from it. And now the problem is that you go to the average physician, they're not.

Going to ask those things.

They're just going to try and collude with you to try and get rid of the symptom, not find the root, which is. That's okay. I mean, you don't want to sit there with a rash. It's fine. But also, let's look at the source of it.

Yes.

And the source is always assumed to be something physical. Maybe they'll think of food, maybe they'll think of some toxin. They will not think of your emotions. Even though the mind and the body.

Are inseparable, how much stronger do you think the emotional weight or trauma is than physical toxins in terms of affecting the body?

I can't make that assessment because I don't know what study would even compare the truth. I don't. I don't want to speak right off the cuff, but what I can tell you is that the emotions are really primary in most chronic conditions. And if you deal with them now in this society where there's all these toxins in the environment and junk in the food and all. Who knows?

Yeah, everything. But.

But what I know is that the emotions play a huge role and that that can have a impact on their illness. And the other thing I've. I don't know about you when you write books, but I write books as much for myself as for anybody else.

100%, this show is for me.

Yeah, exactly. So I get to learn a lot when I'm writing. So one of the things I learned when I was writing the Myth of Normal was even how we think about disease. Like, people say I have eczema, or I have depression, or I have rheumatoid arthritis, or I have add. Now, there's an assumption there, isn't there? The assumption is, first of all, is that there's this thing called add, there's this thing called eczema, there's this thing called rheumatoid arthritis, or there's this thing called depression. Then there's an I. And the I has that thing, but that thing has got its own separate, independent nature. But to say that I have this disease makes the assumption that disease got a separate life and nature of its own. It doesn't. What if we saw disease of all kinds, mental or physical or addiction, not as the things in themselves that have their own nature, but as processes that manifest our lives. And if I live my life differently, then I can have an impact on that process. So that process will change. That's exactly actually how it is. So for shorthand language, I understand it's helpful to say I have depression.

How important is the words we choose?

But if we buy into that language, we're actually missing the point because you don't have it. There's no it that's separate from you. And that means that if you change yourself. In fact, there's a friend of mine now, a recent friend, Dr. Jeff Rediger, who's a psychiatrist at Harvard. And last year he wrote a book called Cured the Science of Spontaneous Healing. That was the subtitle. No, he studied people who were terminally ill, documentedly. So they had no prognosis whatsoever. And then they get better.

So they were terminally ill. They were not supposed to survive.

They're not supposed to survive.

Supposed to die in a few years.

Or something, months or a week. I've talked to such people myself, and.

They'Ve cured their disease.

There's a woman called, a psychologist called Kelly Turner, who studied the same thing. She wrote a book called Radical Remission. So all three of us have looked at These people, they did it in a research kind of way. I just did it impressionistically. But I do check out the histories with people's doctors. We all know people who are supposed to have two months to live or six months to live. Either medical treatment has failed or they refuse medical treatment. Then all of a sudden the disease goes away. I think all three of us have found that what makes the biggest difference is that the person changes their relationship to themselves. Wow. And there's always trauma in the background. Now, Jeff and Kelly have documented people, they go on diets, they take supplements, they start meditating, they go into nature. They go into nature, the whole thing.

All those things are great.

Yeah. And I think. But I think Jeff and I agree, and I think Kelly would probably agree as well, that the biggest shift is in one's relationship with oneself. In other words, the life changes, the process changes. Now, I'm not promising everybody who's listening, you can cure yourself. I mean, you know, this is not snake oil. I'm just talking about the importance of recognizing the impact of emotions and one's relationship to oneself on one's physiology. That's what I'm talking about.

There's an external environment and then there's an internal environment, you know, our emotional environment that is connected to our. I'm assuming our nervous system, our heart, our brain, the whole body and everything. And if our emotional environment is sick, then we're probably going to be physically sick as well.

Well, that's what you're. That's what your story actually illustrates, isn't it? As soon as you create an internal environment, your physical issues abate. You know, by the way, speaking of, I just noticed I'm getting too excited here. This is. This is my passion. I mean, I. I just could go on about this forever, but I'm also noticing probably I'm getting a bit too heated here. And you're getting warm. I don't physically so much. I just notice I need to calm down a bit. I don't wanna. I don't wanna talk too fast.

No, I like it. This is exciting for me. Well, I just feel like this is the. What you were just saying.

Yeah.

Emotional repression is a major cause of physical illness. It may not be the only cause, there's other factors. But what we, you know, suppress usually comes to the surface in some way. Is that still correct?

That's the whole point.

And most of us. I'll speak for myself, I wasn't taught, and I think most of us are not taught on how to express the Emotional traumas, the emotional pains, fears, insecurities, shames, guilt, where we're not taught the skills. It's one of the reasons why I started the school of greatness because I was like, I wish I would have learned these skills in school.

Yeah.

You know, most of most people's parents are messed up in some way or have some issues and they aren't taught this. And so we're, you know, I grew up in a household that was very stressful and chaotic and there wasn't stability.

So did my kids, by the way.

Right. And you're like the guy. Right.

But it wasn't the guy then.

You weren't the guy.

Yeah.

So your kids had to had some traumas that they had to face because of you and their parents.

It's not even a matter of skills learning, it's deeper than that because you don't have to teach any one day old baby how to express their emotions, do you? No. If they're sad, lonely, do you hear about it? If they're hungry or uncomfortable, do you hear about it? Of course you do. There's nothing to teach. You have to allow it and you have to give space for it and you have to hear it and respond to it. The problem with most parents is not that they don't teach their kids these skills, is that how they really live their lives? Because of their own traumas and because of the stresses in the society, they actually discourage kids.

Don't cry.

Stop crying.

Yeah, from what's natural?

Suck it up. Well, look, don't do this, don't do that.

Right.

Well, you know, there's a very famous Canadian psychologist, I don't know if he's been on your program, but he says that an angry child should be made to sit by themselves until they come back to normal.

Interesting.

In other words, anger in a two year old is not normal and we have to socialize it out of them. Now there's nothing more natural than an angry 2 year old.

There's nothing more natural than they get frustrated.

You know, they want a cookie, they.

Get a cookie before they don't get what they want.

They want a cookie, you know, they want a cookie before dinner. And if you're a good parent, you're not going to give them a cookie before dinner. Right.

So when does you teach or when does someone learn how to not express anger? Every 10 minutes though.

Well, here's the point. If that 2 year old then starts screaming or throwing a tantrum, getting angry, if you say time out and you're not Going to be with them. Now you're presenting a child with a tragic dilemma. I can have my authentic emotion or I can have my relationship with my parent on whom my life depends. So I can be authentic or I can be attached in a relationship, but I can't have both.

Interesting. Because if I'm not authentic or if I'm. If I'm authentic, then I'm going to be alone.

Exactly.

I'm going to be on timeout or whatever.

And to the child, the timeout is.

Life threatening because you might be alone forever, right?

Yeah. The child doesn't know that, you see? Yeah. So basically you're threatening the child. Threatening the child with depriving them of the greatest need, which is the connection with you. Love. Yeah, the love. Yeah.

Now, but isn't there a point though? If you're a 21 year old man now and you're, you know, screaming every 10 minutes because you don't get the cookie.

But that's not the answer. Right. The answer is. Answer is when they're screaming to pick them up, you're angry at daddy, aren't you? You really wish you had that cookie. Yeah. Oh, I get it. You know, and then the child relaxes and the anger moves through them. You know what they learn that anger is just something that moves through you. You can let go of it. If you don't see the child, don't accept the child's emotion. They're gonna have to repress it, they.

Have to stuff it.

What's another word for stuffing? It's pushing down.

Trap it.

Yeah, well, pushing down. What's another word for pushing down? Depressing. Where does depression come from? It's not this disease. Depression comes from having had to push down your emotions. Literally, you have to push down your emotions. In other words, depression. Why did you have to push down your emotions to stay connected to your parents? In other words, it was a coping mechanism. And what I'm saying is that a lot of illness, whether of the mind or the body or both, comes from coping mechanisms. There are normal coping mechanisms in response to an abnormal situation. It's not normal for a child to be banished from the presence of the parent. If you look at indigenous people, they carry their kids everywhere. The kids are always with the parents. And the, the pilgrims, when they arrived in North America, they're very upset with how the natives reared their children. You know why? Because the indigenous people did not hit their kids.

They didn't hit their kids.

They didn't hit their kids. And the Christians couldn't understand this why.

They didn't, you know, create obedience with them.

Right? Yeah, yeah.

So what do they do?

They nourish them. And when you nourish a child, see, nature has got a natural agenda is that you should grow up to be a self regulated adult in connection with yourself and with other people. That's nature's agenda. It's like nature is an agenda for an acorn to become an oak tree. But an acorn doesn't spontaneously become an oak tree. It has to have the right conditions. So it's not a question of teaching the oak tree, the acorn to be an oak tree. Just give it the nourishment and the sunlight and the earth and irrigation that it needs. Its nature is to become an oak tree. The nature of human beings is to become self regulated, socially responsible creatures. That's how we evolved. Given the right conditions, that will happen. So it's not a question of teaching all these things. Yeah, there's some teaching involved. Mostly it's the question of meeting children's needs, giving them the right conditions and then they will develop self regulation. They learn it because you're self legged. So they're watching you.

You're not reactive and explosive screaming.

You know, you realize, oh, I'm angry, okay, I'm angry. But you're not screaming at the kid, you know. So in the right environment, these traits spontaneously evolve or develop in the human being. So our society is always about how do we teach these skills and those skills. Well, teaching is important, but more important is the child's spontaneous growth given the right environment. And what I'm saying about this toxic culture, we don't give our kids the right environment.

Yeah, I mean, you hear the number, the statistic that 50% of marriages turn into divorce these days. And also probably, I think when I had Esther Perel on, I was like, how many of the 50% that are married are actually happy? It's a very small percentage too.

So I've had a marriage that we've had a lot of unhappiness. We've married 53 years now. 53, yeah. We're very happy together now. You are, but we took a lot of work, a lot of commitment. But here's what I want to say. There's two ways you can tell if a marriage is unhappy. One is you can ask the parents. The other is you can measure the cortisol level of the children.

Oh, wow.

Because the parents stresses affect the physiology of the child.

Oh man. My cortisol must have been off the charts. But I was yeah, all of us children.

Yeah, it probably would have been. And so in this society, and this is not the fault of individual parents, like it begins in the uterus, actually already stresses on the pregnant woman will affect the physiology of the child. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, in this society, so many pregnant women are so stressed. In the States particularly, I'm talking about.

More emotional stress because there's physical stress of like the body's expanding and growing and aches and pains. But the emotional stress, I mean, the.

Emotional stress of having to the nervous system on the job or being in a difficult relationship. In one of the chapters in the book I talk about, it begins with the diary of my wife, who was writing it when she was pregnant with one of our children, about how unhappy she was. And she's talking to the infant saying, please don't take this stress personally. She wrote that and I quoted it in the Myth of Normal. And she knew what I didn't know. And she was unhappy because of our relationship.

She was unhappy because of the relationship.

She was unhappy because of what was going on in her relationship with me.

Being a workaholic doctor, not being there, not being available emotionally.

Exactly. And even blaming her, you know, for how I was feeling, you know, wow. So she's talking to this infant inside her. And that's how I open one of the chapters. So already in the uterus, these stresses starts happening. A lot of evidence for that scientifically. Brain scans, blood work, all kinds of stuff. Then there's labor, which in our society is very often mechanical and emotionally very difficult. And in the United States, 25% of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth. Now, that infant is meant to be with the mother for at least nine months. I would say years, but at least nine months. That infant is abandoned at two weeks. That's how they experience it. Oh, man. Even if they're looked after by someone else but the mother, the infant needs the mother's body.

Yeah, that was. My mom was working pretty, probably pretty fast after each one of us were born. You know, had to go back to work and.

Yeah, and I'm not blaming the women. Right. They have no choice. Yes, I'm saying, but this society puts those stresses on women, it then doesn't support them through the pregnancy. Then it puts a lot. And not only that, we didn't grow up in individual isolated nuclear families, did we? We evolved in small band hunter gatherer groups where people supported each other, where children were with adults all day, where adults collaborated. They had to. Otherwise they wouldn't survive. Right. So that's where our nature actually evolved. So when you get this society which tells you that people are by nature selfish and aggressive and competitive, which isolates mothers in separate homes where the communities are more and more, you know, there's lots of, lots of work done by sociologists and others in the states about how communities are breaking down. There was that book Bullying Alone some years ago, 20 years ago now. But the breakdown of community so that people are not getting support and that means they're stressed and the mothers are.

Doing it all on their own.

Exactly right.

They're also expecting the husband to, you know, work and also be at home as opposed to reaching out to peers or family or friends.

Exactly. So it's a very unnatural culture. And no wonder so many kids are getting diagnosed and with ADHD or oppositional defiant disorder or depression. There's an article in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, maybe a couple of months ago, also in the New York Times, I think, about the rising rate of childhood and adolescent suicides in the U.S. it's mysterious. It's not mysterious. These kids are no longer having their developmental needs met. They feel alone and desperate and scared.

And then drug use is on the rise and addiction and.

That's right. There's nothing mysterious about it. If you look at the cultural setting. It's only mysterious if we think we're dealing with isolated mental health issues or isolated physiological issues. Don't mean see the connections. Nothing mysterious.

Are you ready to finally hit your target nutrient levels every day? Meet Grunes. The daily snack pack of gummies isn't just a multivitamin. It's not just a green gummy. And it's not just a prebiotic. It's all of that rolled into one and then some at a fraction of the price. And they taste great. Here's what makes them stand out. While most multivitamins only cover 7 to 9 vitamins, groons bring together over 20 vitamins and minerals plus more than 60 nutrient dense whole food ingredients. And those ingredients are known to support things like gut health, energy, immunity, recovery, cognition, and even beauty. Because it's in gummy form, your body has an easier time absorbing it. Also, we have packs in our studio and they've been a game changer for everyone in the studio. We've run out so quickly. No powders, no handfuls of pills, just a pack of tasty gummies and a fueling my body with the nutrients it needs. Use Code greatness at Groons Co to save up to 52% off your first order. That's code greatness at Gruns Co for up to 52% off. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, the holidays can feel a lot like balancing family expectations, travel, work and trying to make everything perfect. It's easy to forget to take care of yourself in the middle of it all. I've been there and what I've learned is that when you don't make space to slow down, it's hard to actually enjoy the moments that matter most. That's why Better Help is encouraging you to rewrite your traditions this season by making time for you. Incorporating therapy into your routine can help you pause, reflect, stay grounded during what can be joyful but sometimes hectic or even lonely time of the year. The holidays look different for everyone. Maybe it's baking your great aunt's sweet potato pie or maybe it's starting something new like a quiet night with friends. Therapy can be one of those new traditions too. BetterHelp matches you with a licensed therapist based on your goals and preferences. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch anytime. This December, start a new tradition by taking care of you. Our listeners get 10 off@betterhelp.com Lewis that's betterhelp.com Lewis so what are the main.

I guess, mental health, are they diseases or are they not considered a disease like depression, addhd? What are the main mental health symptoms out in the world right now, would you say?

Yeah, so depression and anxiety are fast growing and, and they're major challenges. More and more kids are being diagnosed with adhd. More and more kids are being diagnosed with something called oppositional defiant disorder, which, what is that? Opposition? That's when a kid is defiant and oppositional and goes against adult values and adult expectations. But we think there's something wrong with the kid. Instead of looking at the context of what makes the kids die, the environment. Now, are these diseases? Well, you can talk about them as diseases to some degree and certainly I've had depression and I've taken medication for it in my 40s and it really made a difference for me. You might call it a disease, but actually that's a shallow way of looking at it because actually what does it go back to? It goes back to being a one year old infant or being a three month old infant. In the book the Myth of Normal, the first chapter has a painting in it. The painting is by my wife, based on a photograph of me and my mother. This is Budapest, Hungary, 1944, and I'm three months of age. And my mother in a photograph is wearing a yellow star that Jews had to wear. My father was away in forced labor and within two months her parents would be killed in Auschwitz. That was my first year of life.

Oh my gosh.

And the look on my face is full of terrorists. I was absorbing my mother's fear and.

My mother's anxiety because she had terror in her face. And you're mimicking and she had it in her body. You're connected to her eating ten times a day.

Exactly.

And you're feeling the stress.

Exactly.

There's probably now no calm in her.

There's no calm there. But she's already so stressed and she's just trying to make sure that we survive. She's not there to really receive my feelings. And then when I'm a year old or 11 months old, she hands me to a complete stranger in the street to save my life because she didn't think where we were staying I would survive for a day and probably I wouldn't have.

Wow.

So I didn't see her for six weeks. Five or six weeks.

And you're one?

I was one then. Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

And now what could I do as a one year old? I could do two things. Or as an infant going through all that. First of all, how do I deal with all that stress? I tune out. I tune out. I become absent minded as an adaptive.

Mechanism, a coping mechanism.

Exactly. 55 years later, I'm diagnosed with ADHD, which is characterized by tuning out. Is it a disease? The heck it's a disease. It started as a coping mechanism. I'm also diagnosed with depression. Why? Because in an environment, I had to push my feelings down in order to not to burden my mother, who was already burdened enough.

Create more peace and warm.

Yeah. So I took that on. So I pushed on my feelings. I depressed my feelings. Then I have this depression. So are they diseases? Well, you can talk about them that way, but I say they began as coping mechanisms. And I'll tell you another story. I'm 78 now, so six, seven years ago, I'm in San Francisco with a therapist and I've taken mushrooms. She works with mushrooms. And I worked with psychedelics. And it's one of the things I write about. But this time I'm the patient, I'm the client. And I'm lying there on the mat under the influence of the psilocybin. And I know exactly who I am. I'm 71 years old. I'm a medical doctor. I'm a Writer. I'm a speaker. I'm married to such, you know, my wife Ray. This is a therapist. So I'm not like hallucinating. I know exactly where I am, but at the same time I'm experiencing myself as a one year old infant.

Oh, my goodness.

And this therapist is my mom. Is my mom. And I start crying and I say, I'm so sorry I've made your life so difficult. Wow. That's my one year old self all of a sudden under the influence speaking up. I took it on that early that I'm responsible now. You talked about, oh my gosh, in our conversation before, you told me about how you were in this relationship and you couldn't leave it even long after you realized it wasn't right for you because you took on the responsibility of how the other person would feel if you would, quote, let them down. I'm telling you, that's your one year old speaking. That you took responsibility for the suffering of your parents and how you mustn't let anybody down because it's your responsibility. We take this stuff on so early without words, actually. They just become ingrained and then we live our lives out of it until something happens, as did for you.

Your body rebelled, you have a breakdown or something happens and you're like, you either keep breaking down or you. Wakes you up and say, okay, why is this happening?

What is.

What is off? What is out of alignment? What is, you know, where am I out of integrity, whatever it might be.

Exactly.

And I feel the challenges. I was like, I want to end this suffering. You know, I've repeated this pattern many times. I'm sick and tired of the suffering. Yeah, I'll do whatever. You know, I think when you, for me, I was like, I've felt enough of this. I don't want it anymore. But it took so much courage to face these things for me. And I know other people have deeper traumas or different traumas, and it just seems so challenging.

A lot of people go there. I would not compare your trauma to anybody else's.

Well, we all have our unique traumas.

Right.

Different experiences that we face. Why is it so challenging for people to face it and start addressing it? I was telling you, you know, I've been doing pretty intensive therapy for about a year and a half now. Every two weeks.

Yeah.

Not because I feel like something's wrong with me anymore. I'm stressed more because I want to maintain a level of peace.

Yeah.

And I want to continue to maintain peace.

Good for you.

So once I realized and Started healing. I didn't say I'm good.

Yeah.

I was like, I want to go to the next level of Exactly. Peace, love, you know, an environment of beauty inside of my emotions. But why is it so hard for so many people to face it and actually speak the shame, guilt, insecurity, you know, imperfection about them?

Well, I think in your own work you've touched upon very accurately on why it's so difficult. For one thing, if you, if you just, just the words that you just use, peace and love and connection. If you had played that to your 20 year old self, how would he have responded?

He'd been like, suck it up. Or he'd been like, what are you talking about? You're fine. Like, yeah, don't be a little worse. Or, you know, just work harder, you know.

Yeah, but where would that have come from?

I mean, just my entire conditioning. Growing up from sports and. Yeah, you know.

Okay, so that, so there's that house, you know, so that's one of the factors, is the conditioning in this culture. Okay. I, I also say it would have come from intense fear. Oh. Because if you'd actually, it's very fearful to look at all that pain inside oneself.

It's terrifying.

Yeah, it's terrifying. So there's intense fear. So there's the conditioning, as you say. Then there's the, the fear. It really is fear, painful, you know. You know, nobody wants to have pain, you know, but that's called growing pains. And the third factor is we all develop this personality now. The personality, we think that's us, but it's not us.

Right.

The personality is the traits that we took on to survive our childhoods, along with some genuine traits. So the personality is kind of an amalgam of childhood coping mechanisms and genuine qualities.

Yeah, some good stuff. But then that's also coping. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I used to be like, I was a fun loving guy. I was like a kind, generous. But then when there was a trigger, like I was angry and, you know.

Yeah.

Defensive and guarded and things like that.

Or you talk about the various masks, the sexual mask or the, or the material mask, the aggressive mask. You know, I, when I started reading a chapter on the sexual mask, you wrote about some guy whose name I forget, but who's sort of the champion picking up women. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes for one split second. But what's that? It's having to prove to himself that he's lovable. Where does that come from? You know, so. But we identify with it. Yes. So we think we're the personality. I'm this sexually attractive guy, or I'm this aggressive guy. I'm this material guy who's gonna make it in the world, you know? And so we think that we are a personality. So it comes from, I say, three sources. One is the conditioning. The other is the fear for the pain. And thirdly, the identification with the personality. We think that's who we are and we don't know who would be without it. All of which is all based on trauma.

Yeah, it's the identity, you know, building this identity that you know. And I talk about how the identity supported you to accomplishing certain things or protecting you from certain things by having this identity. Yeah, but it's also not serving us to hold on to that identity if we want the next level of peace and freedom.

Exactly.

So it's. But it's so hard to kill an identity. It's like you've had this thing for decades maybe, and you've got to let go of this thing.

I wouldn't even talk about killing. I mean, I. In my healing chapters of this book, I talk about, let's make friends with it. Like, for example, by the way, I have to be honest, I said that I wouldn't be in this guy's shoes for a minute. That's not true. Part of me was envying him.

Right.

You know, Even here I'm 78 and married 53 years. But I read about this guy who slept with all these women. Why couldn't I be that guy? You know, I don't want to go there, and I wouldn't. I've long ago chosen not to. But there's still something that. Who doesn't want to be wanted that much?

You know, something with the ego or the desire.

Yeah. Yeah. So. But. But if we didn't kill those parts, but made friends with them, if somebody came to me with that kind of pattern of I'm that sexual guy, but they don't want to, but they realize that it's not. They might feel high for a moment, like any addict will.

It's not fulfilling.

It's not fulfilling. I wouldn't say kill that part of you. I'd say, let's make friends with it. Let's find out what it's really trying to do for you. What it's trying to do for you is trying to make you feel wanted, making you feel valuable, making you feel desirable, making you feel loved, temporarily making you feel powerful. What happened to you that you don't feel lovable, that you don't feel desirable, that you don't feel powerful, you know. In other words, it's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves, it's a question of actually getting to know them. And they all began as coping mechanisms.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

This is actually part one of our interview and part two will be coming.

Out a few weeks from now, so.

Make sure to follow the show to stay updated. 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 and also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now, now it's time to go out there and do something great.

Introducing Fidelity Trader plus the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web and mobile. For faster trades anywhere you go, try the all new Fidelity Trader plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com TraderPlus investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member nyse, SIPC.

Streaming is changing the way we watch live sports and your Internet connection can be the difference between catching the game, winning touchdown as it happens or hearing about it from your neighbor's cheers. That's why Comcast is building the network of the future using cutting edge AI and edge computing technology. We're bringing fans closer to the action in stunning high definition with ultra low latency. It's not just fast, it's game changing. Learn more@comcastcorporation.com sports.