70% of the adult population is at least

on one medication. Quarter of women are

on antidepressants. The rate of

childhood is going up. Worldwide,

there's this epidemic of distress. What

can we do about that? So, the first step

would be to Dr. Gabor Maté

Legendary thinker Celebrated speaker and

best-selling author

Highly sought after for his expertise on

addiction, trauma, childhood

development, and stress. People

pleasers, these are the people that tend

to develop diseases. When people don't

know how to say no, the body will say no

for them. That niceness is a repression

of healthy anger, and that repression of

healthy anger has huge implications to

your health. And when you repress your

immune system, you're more likely to

have that immune system turn against

you. People who emotionally repress are

more likely to get cancer. And emotional

repression is one of the impacts of

childhood trauma. We interrupt this film

to tell you we are getting reports that

The people's princess is dead. Harry was

a traumatized child. How he's told about

his mother's death is that it was an

accident, "Your mother didn't make it."

His father touches Harry on the knee and

says, "But it'll be okay." and leaves

the room. This 12-year-old, nobody held

him. And children can be traumatized not

just by terrible things happening to

them, but just by not having their needs

met, by not being seen, not being heard,

not being held. Those are wounding for a

child. But my interview with Prince

Harry, I had a gut feeling all along

that I shouldn't agree to do the

interview. It really got to me. I lost

myself. What happened?

Gabor

There's a question we often ask each

other

in flippant conversations, which we

usually kind of brush away because it's

the convenient thing to do. Yeah. That

question is the question I wanted to

start by asking you, which is

how are you?

Yeah.

Um

So, that question is for me brings up,

you know, two dimensions. One is how am

I at this present moment, which is, you

know, how am I at this moment, you know,

which is all there is.

I'm well. I'm I I feel rather peaceful

inside.

Um

I'm very happy to be here with you.

If you'd asked me 2 days ago, I wouldn't

have said that. I would have said I was

feeling somewhat anxious and uh

and kind of troubled, you know? So, um

as a in the moment answer, I'm well, and

I also know how to

keep well as long as I

stick with what I know. And when I

forget what I know, then I can be very

not well. And

so, the last year since we've met has

been in many ways a tough year for me.

Um also one of deep learning. So,

if the question is how have I been, I'd

say I've been up and down, and I've had

real challenges that I've had to learn

from. How am I right now? I'm really

well, thank you.

2 days ago, if I'd asked you that

question, your answer would have been

anxious and troubled. Yeah. Why?

I gave a talk on Monday night to 2,100

people. And uh I just didn't think I did

my best here in London. And I thought,

"Oh boy, I could have done better. I let

people down." Um I I allowed myself

judgments and self-doubts to really um

dominate my my thinking. And um

you know, as much as I think I'm

uh immune to that kind of self-doubt,

evidently I'm not. Um so, that's what

happened.

When you say um you let it cloud your

thinking, what are the What were the

symptoms of that? So, you you gave a

talk 2 days ago to 2,100 people.

Yeah.

And you didn't feel you did your best.

You went home that night. What was going

on in your head? What are the symptoms

of that

feeling? Um constant um

Mm.

Cyclical

self-criticism of I could have been more

present, I could have been more

grounded,

more attuned with the audience, perhaps.

But, you know, just all these

self-criticisms,

which then are accompanied by certain

feelings in the body, like kind of a a

roiling in my belly and so on. And uh

that's what I went through.

And what was the remedy for that?

Cuz we can all relate. Yeah. Earlier

this year,

um

also feeling in a state of

discombobulation,

uh just a few months ago, I did

something radical. I did a 2-week total

sabbatical from the internet. No cell

phone, no emails, no no checking on

Amazon how my book books are doing, you

know, all this self-referential

uh

uh ego enhancement stuff. And it just

really made a difference. Uh by the end

of 2 weeks, I was a different person.

And so, I'm keeping it up. And one of

the things you learn is you start

noticing

these body states that you're in and the

mental mm

hoops that you jump through, but you

don't identify with them. So,

what's the worst case scenario? I didn't

do the best possible job. Okay, what's

the headline in the newspaper? Human

being fails to do his best on a

particular occasion. What's the big

deal?

You know? So,

it's a matter of observing this all all

this stuff and not identifying with it.

Not letting it take you over

as it tends to.

I was reading something that said

when we

vocalize or share our stress, it moves

it from the emotional center of our

brain to the much more rational center

of our brain, Yeah. where we can kind of

step outside of the video game and hold

the controller, per se. Exactly.

Yeah, it's the um

um midfrontal cortex of our brain um

that has insight and um

um social connection and uh uh

awareness, you know,

which so often goes offline as soon as

some emotion takes over, some anxiety or

anger or

resentment takes over. Uh the midfrontal

cortex tends to go offline. And uh the

more trauma you experience as a child,

the more likely that is to happen, so

that your

insightful

capacities, the executive functions get

taken over by some deeper emotional

dynamics.

And so, um

one of the

benefits to me of meditation is

is it restores that

uh executive function, so that I'm not

taken over or

too long taken over by emotional

dynamics that

just sweep me away.

For 2 weeks this year, you said you went

offline. Yeah. Why?

Sometimes people say to me uh I I wrote

this book that I know that you have on

your desk, When the Body Says No. And

and my contention is when people don't

know how to say no, the body will say it

in the form of illness. And uh

I I can tell you hundreds of times

people have said to me, "Your book has

saved my life." And my response has

always been, "Maybe I should read it

myself." Because the fact is I'm quite

capable of giving advice and dispensing

wisdom that I don't follow myself.

And that was the case. So, I became

quite stressed, and my relationship with

my wife, Rae, became very fraught.

And she said,

"Enough.

Enough of this gap between who you are

there in public and how you are in

private."

So, that was the big incentive for me,

cuz uh

uh

we're coming up to our 54th anniversary,

and on the whole, I'd rather stay

married than not.

Everything else being considered.

But also for myself, I don't really like

I don't want to be that guy anymore who

who can speak

the truth

that a lot of people consider to be a

truth

so articulately,

but not follow it myself. So, I just

don't want to be that person. And that

takes practice. And that's why I get

That's why I take the to take a break

from the internet.

And what was interesting is

I had my cell phone on airplane mode, so

nobody could get through me.

Couple days Couple times a day, I'd

still pick up the cell phone.

And I say, "What are you doing?"

There's nothing on it, cuz you it's on

the internet. But

the compulsion

to try and get some from the outside

to fill some

some gap within. I just kept noticing

it. By the end of 2 weeks, it wasn't so

strong anymore.

Um

so,

I did it because I needed to for the

sake of my own mental health.

An up and down year for you, you said.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Is that Is that the the down you were

talking about?

Well, I remember a conversation my

conversation with you. And I and I think

I remember you telling me that

you had this goal of becoming a

millionaire. When I was younger, yeah.

When I was younger. And then it's when

you achieve that goal

that you realize that

that ain't all there is. That you're

still left very much with your internal

demons.

And that's a very common lesson. I mean,

there's two ways to

to wake up. One is failure, where you

keep asking yourself, you know, but but

but but success is even more because you

think that once you get something,

then you'll be happy, and you know? So,

I thought, "Okay, well, jeez, I could,

you know?" So, this book, The Myth of

Normal, you know, best-seller

internationally and published in 35

languages, I should be happy. No. The

more I got involved with it, the more I

toured with it, the more engaged with

the outside I became, the more miserable

miserable I became inside.

So, the very success of the book and it

allowed to sweep sweep It swept me away,

and I lost myself, you know? So, that

was one thing. And I did this very long,

exhausting tour. I wasn't taking care of

myself. And then there was the

uh my interview with Prince Harry and

all the um

uh fru-fra around it before it and after

it. And I allowed that allowed that to

take me over as well. Really? Yeah,

yeah.

Yeah. I mean,

retrospect, I can see what happened, but

at the time I was too caught up in it to

notice.

You know? So,

what I'm saying is that it doesn't

matter what I know, if I don't pay

attention, rigorous attention, to what's

going on inside, and if I keep looking

to the outside to give me meaning and

give me um validation,

then

I can lose myself.

And that's what happened.

Your interview with Prince Harry,

how did that cause you to lose yourself?

Well, in two ways. One is um

I had a gut feeling all along that I

shouldn't agree to doing it the way they

set it up. Because of the way it was set

up is in order to watch it, people have

to buy a copy of Harry's book.

And I thought this is not fair. 4

million people have already bought the

book. Why can't they watch this

interview? Do they have to buy another

copy? In other words, I believed that

this should be a free public service

on the part of two people who can have a

very interesting conversation. But out

of sheer opportunism, I agreed to it.

So, I didn't follow my gut feeling. So,

I lost myself even in agreeing to the

format. And afterwards, Harry and I both

wanted it released to the public for

free, but the lawyers said you can't do

that because this was advertised as a

one-time-only event, and you could they

could be a class action suit.

So, um

the result was that I agreed to

something that I didn't really like.

Not that I didn't like the idea of

talking with him. I didn't like the idea

of putting this behind a paywall. So, I

lost myself just in agreeing to it.

Number one.

Number two, then there was the

incredible social media and British

media reaction to it that was for the

most part

so negative and so demeaning and so

dismissive and so distorted that I

barely even know how to talk about it. I

thought by this age I would know better,

but you know what? It really got to me.

It really got to me. I mean, uh I can

give you examples, but um

eventually what happened was

that I was really in a

negative state of mind, and

have you read the book The um The Fox,

the Mole, the Horse, and the Boy, and

the and the Horse? I bought it last

week. It's upstairs in my bag.

Wonderful. So, great It's a great little

book great big book, although very few

words in it, mostly just these wonderful

drawings. Charlie Mackesy, um he's

really channeling wisdom in that book,

and the horse is the most grounded of

the four characters of the four friends,

and he's asked,

"What's the most courageous thing you've

ever said?" And the horse says,

"Help."

So, it's so difficult to ask for help,

but I did. You know, in the middle of

all this fru-fra and my upset, and I

called a

friend of mine, a psychiatrist,

um

and I said, "I'm just in a bad state."

And he said, "What's going on for you?"

And I said, "Well, there's all this bad

press and all the

social media distortion of who I am and

my motives." He said, "What is it about

that you bothers you so much?"

And I said, "Not being seen."

Not being seen is one of the needs of

the child.

But he said to me,

"Okay, look, Gabor, when you were an

infant, you not being seen for who you

are as a human being almost cost you

your life."

Which it did.

As soon as he said that, I said, "Yeah."

This isn't about the present.

This is an old, unresolved, not yet

fully resolved wound. Age 79, I'm still

upset at not being seen. I don't care if

people agree with me um or they viewed

my ideas, but I want them to see me and

what I'm actually saying, not some

distorted version created by their own

minds. And And when he said that, "That

not being seen really threatened your

life." I said, "Yeah. That's what's

going on." And then I could relax. I

said, "This is So what what somebody

else says? I don't live in the British

press. I don't live in somebody else's

mind. Here I am,

you know? Let them think and say what

they say. But

it took somebody to wake me up to that.

So, that's what happened.

You said you could share examples of how

it got to you.

Of Yeah.

Well, oh boy, um they called me a stern,

overbearing

merchant of pain.

You know? Uh

At some point in the interview, you

know, when Harry was um And here's the

thing was See, Harry really was a

traumatized child. Um And you can when

you read his book, you you can see why,

you know, he

And people couldn't understand how this

is possible. How could somebody so

privileged,

at the very apex of society, in gilded

palaces, be traumatized? Total

misunderstanding of trauma.

Um it's true.

Uh people have it much tougher in many

ways, but as an infant, as a sensitive

infant, to be born into a

a loveless marriage where the father's

having an affair even before he's born,

where the mother's a troubled, very

sensitive, very creative, warm-hearted,

but

mm very unbalanced young woman. So,

Harry describes in his book

Spare, that he's 12 years old when his

mother's killed.

How he's told about his mother's death

is that his father, then Prince Charles,

comes into his room early in the morning

and says,

"Something terrible happened. There was

an accident. Your mother didn't make

it."

Then there's a few moments of awkward

silence, and finally

Charles touches Harry on the knee and

says, "But it'll be okay." And leaves

the room.

And this is how this 12-year-old was

told.

Nobody held him.

Um Charles himself was only doing what

happened to him

when when Queen Elizabeth went on a

international four- or five-month royal

tour, leaving the five-year-old kid

behind. When she returned to England,

she greeted him by shaking his hand.

And

now

what I said to Harry was that even

animals

hold and touch their kids.

Their infants, mammals, that's what they

do.

Because mother rats, when the baby's

born, they lick their babies.

And the way the mother rat uh

rat licks the baby, this has been shown

in laboratory, influences the brain

development of the child. And those

babies that get the right kind of

licking, it's called grooming, they have

better brains as adults.

Premature infants used to be put in

incubators, and nobody used to touch

them.

Then it was found out that if I just by

stroking their backs 10 minutes a day,

that promotes healthy brain development.

And the great British-American uh

anthropologist Ashley Montagu wrote a

book called Skin: The Human Significance

of Touch.

So, I was saying that touch is

important. You not being held and not

being touched was a deprivation.

And I said, "Mammals,

monkeys, you know what happens when a

baby elephant is born? This is

fascinating.

The mother ele- I read this in the book

called The Evolved Nest, for which I

wrote the preface,

by a wonderful psychologist called

Darcia Narvaez. When a when an infant

element elephant is born,

and the mother goes into labor, all the

other mother elephants stand around in a

circle. When the infant plops on the

ground, they all stroke them with their

trunks.

So, touch and being held is so important

for mammals. And I was saying, "Animals

do journalist, who I don't know what she

was listening to, said, "I said the

royal family treats their kids like

animals."

I said, "No. I wish they had."

So, I mean, the distortion is just

laughable if it wasn't if I hadn't taken

it so personally,

for the reasons I already explained. For

you to take it

so

personally, which led you to call a

psychiatrist, Yeah. a man like you with

the knowledge you have that writes books

about the mind and stress and the body

and all these things,

you must have been in a pretty dark

place. I was in a dark place, and I

wasn't But look,

I'm a human being like the rest, and

what Charlie Mackesy says in

in that book is that the most courageous

thing you can do is ask for help.

Mm. It's true. You know, there's that I

don't know if you remember the Beatles

song Help, I need somebody, and and John

Lennon sings, "When I was younger, so

much younger than today, I didn't need

anybody's help in any way."

But now, those days are gone. I'm much

less self-assured. He's actually saying

that when he was younger, he believed he

didn't need help.

But the reason he believed he didn't

need help, that he has to make it on his

own, cuz he was so traumatized as a

child.

His uh father left him when he was born.

Um his mother left.

He was brought up by an aunt, and Lennon

grows up feeling abandoned, that I can

do this on my own. I don't need anybody.

You know? And uh later on, he realizes,

"I need help."

But as actually, we're all born needing

help. We're all born uh

needing to be understood, to be attuned

to be seen, to have our emotions

received and validated. That's one of

the essential needs of children.

As I make the point in The Myth of

Normal, and children can be traumatized

not just by terrible things happening to

them, but just by not having their needs

met.

By not being seen, not being heard, not

being held, those are wounding for a

child. Which is what the meaning of the

word trauma means. So, you don't need

terrible things to happen.

It's so difficult for people to

understand that.

You know, they they they think for

trauma, you need

horrific events. Well, horrific events

can be very traumatic. But you can wound

people,

sensitive people. The sensitive child or

any child can be hurt

just because the parents are too

stressed and unavailable emotionally to

really see them for who they are.

I've struggled with that in my life,

especially being um

a CEO, I think. I've struggled to ask

for help when I need it.

Because you kind of see yourself as the

helper.

And also, I've struggled with the idea,

maybe I don't know where I got this

story from, that people like me, maybe

because I'm a man,

maybe because I'm um

the head of businesses,

we have to figure it out on our own.

And the cost of repress repressing

how I feel

has become more and more evident over

time. Yeah, how so? Just like I think I

When I was younger, I never experienced

anxiety before. And then as I had more

difficult moments in business where I

tried to solve the problem in my mind

for the first time that like 25, 26, 27,

28, 29, 30 that I experienced like fully

fledged what I'd call anxiety where I

just couldn't get a

thought out of my head and I felt it in

my body. My breath was short, this

constant state of like angst. Yeah. Um

and

and yeah, I just thought I could deal

with it myself. I thought I could think

my way through it. Yeah. Um was that the

hardest the the hardest moment in terms

of your own psychology in your adult

life in recent times?

Let me answer that question in a moment,

but let me ask you a question that

occurs to me, if I may. Yeah, please. Um

it's like with beautiful women,

they sometimes have a really hard time

cuz they can never know

that somebody

want me for who I really am,

or they're just attracted to my physical

features.

So, for somebody who at a young age

becomes quite wealthy and successful,

um

how do you know when somebody's

approaching you?

Are they

approaching you cuz they want something

from you, or because they really care

about you? I mean, that must be a

problem for you, I imagine. 100%.

100%. You never really know or

understand what your relationships are.

Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Huh. So, it it must be

confusing sometimes. It is. And you I

typically fall back onto the

relationships I had before. Yeah. Yeah.

Cuz I can trust those ones. Yeah. So, I

have the same my

best friends, people I spend my time

with on my birthday, there's five, you

know, five people there, are the five

people that were there 10 years ago.

Yeah. Unless, I think,

we get reconnected to our gut feelings,

then our gut feelings will tell us what

is real and what isn't. But the problem

for many of us is that we get

disconnected from our gut feelings very

early in life, like in a

in this room of 2,100 at the Troxy on

Monday night, um I think I asked this

question, I always do it. Uh have you

had the experience of having a strong

gut feeling about something and not

paying attention to it, ignoring it, and

being sorry afterwards?

Mhm. Almost everybody puts their hand

up.

That's a child sign of childhood

wounding.

Because we're born connected to our gut

feelings. No baby is disconnected from

their gut feelings. Something happens to

make us disconnect. What is a gut

feeling?

In it from a physiological perspective,

because gut feeling is used as a word to

describe, you know, an intuition or, you

know,

Well, the real gut feeling is really

happening in the gut.

In the Western way of looking at it, we

tend to look upon the intellect and and

and the intellectual brain as the only

brain that we have, but actually our

brain is a far more complicated um

structure.

And our heart has a nervous system,

which is connected to the brain up here.

And there's a kind of knowing in the

heart. Sometimes people say, "I knew it

in my heart." And they did.

If they're connected.

Gut feelings are what all animals

possess. It warns them of danger or when

it's safe and when it isn't safe. Not in

the brain. Um the gut is connected to

the brain. The the gut sends more

connections to the brain than the brain

sends to the gut.

And the gut has more of the

neurotransmitter serotonin in it than

the brain does.

So that the gut feelings are here to

tell us about what is safe and what

isn't. And when the brain in the gut

and the brain in the heart and the brain

in up here in this in the head are

connected, then we're grounded and

present and very alert and very aware of

what's going on. But when childhood

trauma interferes with those

connections, which it does, then we

start to just work from up here, and we

can think we can figure things just from

up here.

But actually, when you think about human

beings, where did we evolve? We evolved

for millions of years out in nature. How

long does any creature in nature survive

if they don't pay attention to their gut

feelings?

So, to go back to your question about

me,

I used to believe I really used to

believe

into my 40s that I everybody else could

be stressed, but I couldn't be.

And it's like you and your anxiety. Um

I think the reason you

I didn't feel the stress cuz I had

coping mechanisms.

Like working hard

and um

getting people's attention or using my

smarts.

And and

uh having status and all this kind of

stuff, you know?

And then that broke down. I realized I I

could be stressed like everybody else,

but literally, I had to I I had this

belief, and it's almost unbelievable to

me now, that I used to believe that I

couldn't everybody else could be

stressed, but I couldn't be.

That's what I thought.

Yeah.

Your wife, when you went through that

Yeah. dark moment, if I was her, what

would I have observed?

Well, first of all, and I talk about

this in The Myth of Normal, and really

my wife came on stage at the Troxy on

Monday night and talked about this. I

asked her to.

Women have 80% of autoimmune disease in

this society.

So that um

diseases where the immune system attacks

the body happens to women much more than

to men.

Things like rheumatoid arthritis,

systemic lupus, chronic fatigue,

fibromyalgia,

um

inflammatory diseases of the gut,

um

and and so on.

Why?

So,

um

those diseases tend to happen to people

not just according to my own

observation, although it's very much my

own observation when I was working in

family practice and palliative care

before I did addiction medicine, I

noticed that who got sick and who didn't

wasn't accidental.

Um as the subject of my book When the

Body Says No, and then again in The Myth

of Normal, people tended to be

compulsively concerned with the

emotional needs of others rather than

their own,

identified with duty, role, and

responsibility, so they're

they're working the world rather than

their own um

true selves.

They tended to suppress healthy anger.

So, they tended to be very very nice and

peacemakers.

And they tended to believe that they're

responsible for other people feel, and

that they must never they must

disappoint anybody, two fatal beliefs.

So, these are the people that according

to my observation, but according to a

whole lot of research as well that I

didn't even know about, but I've since

found them, elegant research, these are

the people that tend to develop

autoimmune disease. Now, in this

society,

which gender is more acculturated,

programmed to suppress their healthy

anger, to be the peacemakers, to be the

caregivers? Women. This is a function of

a reality that a lot of people deny, but

it's a patriarchal society, but which we

can talk about, but it's not a

conspiracy, it's just how it works. So,

me in my marriage, I expect my wife to

absorb my stresses. And if I'm unhappy,

guess who I blame? And who do I take it

out on? So, she would experience

somebody who's

um can be hostile for no reason and

blaming and

she used to walk on eggshells.

Now, um

thank God, she's not the type to do that

for too long, and at some point she'll

call my bluff.

And then I either wake up or she says,

"Thank you very much, but enough of

this." You know?

And so, she would experience somebody

who's irritable

and

unreasonably blaming

and not taking care of their own needs,

and then expecting her to take care of

them for me.

And um

we both had to grow up. Now, she was

programmed that way as a child.

Her parents had a lot of problems, and

she became the peacemaker and a

caregiver emotionally.

And then she carries that role into her

marriage with me.

And here's where the bad news is of her

people, we always marry somebody at the

same level of emotional development or

trauma resolution as we are.

So, when we met, we were two traumatized

people not even realizing it. And then

we played out our traumas, and I played

it out in the typical male way,

which is to be aggressive and demanding

and resentful

if she wasn't around to mother me.

And um that's what she would have seen.

And this dynamic can still arise

except when it does,

she puts a stop to it right away. And I

have the

grace and the wisdom I now to

understand, yeah, I'm doing it again. In

fact, I haven't done it since then.

Because I just don't want to be that

guy.

You know, but that's what she would have

seen.

And what was going on inside your head?

Were you anxious? Were you depressed?

I was anxious and um

then I want her her soothing. I want her

I how should I say this? Um

There's an interesting sexual dynamic

between men and women.

The men very often

expect the unconsciously expect their

women to mother them.

To give them the mothering that

they didn't fully receive as kids.

And the women take on that role because

they're acculturated in this society to

do that.

But then what happens sexually?

No healthy guy wants to sleep with his

mother. And no healthy woman wants to

sleep with her son.

So, that

the the order and the you know, the the

the passion kind of drains out because

of this unconscious dynamic of women

mothering men and and men men demanding

that they do.

So, then I become frustrated.

And

then who do I blame for that? I blame

her rather than looking at how did I

contribute to how did I have create this

situation?

So, um

all that stuff played out in our

marriage.

And we've had to learn a lot from

what didn't work.

In my relationship when I was most

anxious,

it's also when my relationship nearly

ended. Mhm.

Um with my partner because like you

said, I inadvertently took it out on her

Yeah. because I felt that she should

understand how I'm feeling and basically

adapt to me.

Exactly. And she didn't, and so

there was conflict because I felt like

she was misunderstanding me. Yeah. And

wasn't like acting in the right way to

meet the needs that I had. Like she

couldn't under You know, and and so that

I think I wore her down, and then there

was kind of like as you say that

ultimatum

Yeah. moment where she's basically

saying, "Listen, should I just go?"

Yeah. And what you probably didn't do,

and what I didn't do for a long time, is

just to go to her and say, "You know

what? I'm feeling anxious." Yeah, that

was the That's what happened after. You

know, you know, and I'm feeling

unsettled. And I realize that I have

resentful feelings towards you, you

know?

Instead of owning it, we acted out.

Yeah. And then we Why don't they

understand us? Yeah. And

actually So, what we're actually

demanding is that we can be children

emotionally, and they be the mothers who

without any

effort on our part will understand and

see us.

You know, and this is a strong dynamic

um in men-female relationships. And what

tends to happen is is that men then

Women at some point get to the

if they're healthy enough. Now, if

they're not If they're not strong enough

to assert themselves, you know what

happens? They get sick. Mhm. And uh

I know this is a mouthful, but a lot of

women's cancers and autoimmune diseases

are precisely because of this

self-repression. And I could talk about

that at great length, the physiology of

it. But either that the body will

somehow say no for them. That's why

women are on much more likely to be on

antidepressants cuz they're taking the

medication for both of them.

You know, and so either the woman gets

ill somehow or she asserts herself and

says, "I'm not doing this anymore." At

which point the guy will go seeking a

younger mother who's not yet mature

enough to assert herself.

And this happens all the time in

relationships.

The cost of self-repression, the cost of

sort of emotional repression. I think

everybody is guilty at some point in

their life of repressing their emotions.

I think men Yeah. do it a lot as well. I

mean, if you look at the suicidality

Yeah. in the UK among men, men tend to

act it out on themselves like that,

yeah.

What is the cost of self-repression that

you talked about? The physiological

mechanism of what's going on when we

repress our emotions and how we feel?

It's It's been well studied not just by

me, but others

and documented that repression of

healthy anger

um

disturbs the immune system.

Now, why should that be the case? Now,

healthy anger

is simply

when somebody is intruding on your space

and they won't desist. You say, "You're

in my space. Get out." That's healthy

anger. It's in the moment. When it's

done its job, it's finished with.

It's different from chronic rage, which

is a whole other thing.

Now,

in other words, anger is a boundary

defense.

That's all it is. Animals do it. Ah, get

out of my space.

You know, now

the emotional system in general has the

job

uh the human emotional system

in general has the

role of allowing in what is nurturing

and loving and healthy and welcome and

to keep out what isn't. That's the job

of the emotional system.

Let me ask you a trick question. What's

the job of the immune system?

Okay, I'll answer.

It's to keep out what is unhealthy and

unwelcome and toxic and to let in what

is nurturing and healthy.

So, the immune system is like is can be

called a floating brain.

It has a memory. It has a reactive

capacity.

And um

it

res- allows in nutrients and vitamins

and healthy bacteria and keeps out and

destroys what isn't, toxins and

unhealthy invading organisms and so on.

In other words, the immune system and

the emotional system have exactly the

same role.

That's the first point. The second point

is they're not separate systems.

Physiologically speaking,

the emotional system, the nervous

system, hormonal apparatus, and the

immune system are all one system.

And there's a whole new science when I

say new, 60, 70, 80 years old called

psychoneuroimmunology

that studies the unity. So, it's not

even that all these things are

connected, they're one.

So, therefore, when you're suppressing

one aspect of it, you're also

suppressing the other. So, people that

repress healthy anger, they have

diminished immune activity.

And this has been demonstrated.

So,

so the repression of emotions has a

physiological function. And when you

repress your immune system, you're more

likely to have that immune system turn

against you

or to fail you when it comes to

malignancy.

The immune system like you and I have

cancer cells in our bodies probably

every day cuz na- nature makes mistakes.

That's not a problem. The immune system

recognizes them as

cancer cells don't have on their

surfaces markers

that our normal cells do. So, the immune

system says, "This is a foreigner. It's

an enemy. I'm going to destroy it."

But when you repress your emotions, you

can also undermine your immune system,

and then your immune system will not

recognize the malignancy and not destroy

it. It allows it to

to proliferate.

There was a British surgeon in the 1960s

who operated on Am I talking too much?

No, you know, there's no such thing on

this podcast.

Okay.

Because I just get so passionate about

this stuff.

Uh and the reason I get so passionate

about it is cuz it's so important in

healing. And we as physicians could do

so much more for people if we understood

these scientific facts, but we don't as

a profession. Anyway, there was a day

There was a British um

thoracic surgeon called David Kissen in

the 1960s who noticed what I noticed in

my practice, that um

people emotionally repressed are more

likely to get lung cancer.

Now,

it's true that

most people who get lung cancers are

smokers.

But out of 100 smokers, only about 10 or

15 get lung cancer.

Which doesn't mean that lung smoking

isn't the major contributor to lung

cancer. It is.

But he found that it was those of his

patients that were emotionally repressed

that were likely to get the lung cancer

as a result of the smoking.

And the more repressed they were, the

less smoking they had to do in order to

get lung cancer.

This is This guy noticed this in the

1960s. So, emotional repression has huge

implications physiologically. And

emotional repression

is one of the uh

impacts of childhood trauma.

Why?

The child is born with

some fundamental needs.

One of them, as I've articulated

earlier, is for attachment, for

closeness, proximity,

unconditional loving acceptance by um

caring adults.

Not just the human child,

all mammalian children have that need.

Without that, they don't survive.

So, that's called attachment.

The seeking of closeness and proximity

for the purpose of being taken care of

or to take care of the other. And our

brains are wired for attachment.

We have circuits in our brain

dedicated to the attachment

relationships. And that's so important

all through our lives, but especially

when we're infants and young children.

Now, but we have another need. We've

already talked about it. I just haven't

named it. The other need is for

authenticity. We used to be ourselves,

connected to our bodies and our gut

feelings.

Because again, without access to our gut

feelings, we don't survive.

Uh out there in nature, where we evolved

and where we lived until

15,000 years ago. You know, and so that

authenticity is very important, to be

connected to yourself, so that you know

when you're safe and when you're not. Uh

you know what you want and what you

don't want. You know how to say no when

you don't want something. You know how

to say yes when you do. That's

authenticity. Auto the self, being

ourselves. And

to go back to Harry, his

challenge all his life

was that he wasn't allowed to be

authentic. He had to play a certain role

and fit into a certain set of

expectations of how to be and who to be.

And he could never figure out who am I

really?

You know, in that context. But that's so

general. So many of us face that

challenge of who are we really? Who are

we authentically?

As opposed to what's expected of us.

Now, so we have these two needs.

Attachment on the one hand

authenticity in the other.

Ideally, the two are not in conflict.

Ideally, you can be in a relationship or

I can be in a relationship where we can

be ourselves and be accepted and

connected with.

And that's ideal all our lives.

But what happens to a young child where

if they're authentic, they're not

accepted?

So for example,

um certain psychologists

recommend that angry children should be

uh punished for their anger.

Rather than

their anger being understood as to what

it's all about and the child being

taught different ways to express it.

They just to be punished for it. And by

different ways.

By the way, if you're parent of a

2-year-old and if you don't frustrate

your child, you're probably not doing a

good job cuz your 2-year-old may want a

cookie before dinner. And you say, "No,

cookie before dinner." Uh

I want a cookie, you know. And in a

minute they're throwing a tantrum. Cuz

what do even adults do when they're

frustrated? They throw tantrums.

Children, that's just what they do. They

have no self-regulation yet.

So the 2-year-old gets upset.

Now you punish them.

You give them a message, "You're not

acceptable to me when you're angry. When

you're angry.

You have to be a certain way for me to

accept you.

Or you mustn't be sad. Cheer up.

What's you know, what's wrong with you?

You know?

So when children are given this message

of conditionality,

that you're acceptable to me

only if you behave in ways that I

approve of,

otherwise

the attachment relationship is

threatened,

then a child is faced with this choice,

which is not a choice at all.

Do I stay attached to my parents?

If my parent if my father's an

alcoholic,

and uh

the only way I can find acceptance is by

repressing my emotions and not show my

sadness and my fear,

then do I show my sadness and my fear or

my anger?

Or

do I threaten the relationship? Well,

there's no choice at all. The child will

choose the attachment.

And therefore they give up connection to

themselves.

Which is the essence of trauma. That

disconnection from ourselves, not in my

own words, in the words of other trauma

theorists, um

who I agree with,

the worst aspect of trauma is the

disconnection from ourselves. And we do

that for the sake of making maintaining

attachments. Which means for the rest of

our lives, we'll be afraid to be

ourselves.

Is this what they call people pleasers?

People uh exactly.

So um

Sheryl Crow, the American singer and

musician, um

developed breast cancer.

And she said that since my breast cancer

I've been a different person. Until

then, I was always trying to please

others.

And now, and there was used to be voices

in my head that were always telling me

that I was wrong. I don't listen to them

anymore.

You know, so that uh

people pleasers are the ones who gave

up, not by conscious choice, but as a

matter of survival, their authenticity

in order to stay liked and accepted and

attached with. But then they carried

that on in the rest of their lives.

And they're at risk. I always worry for

the very nice people.

I think this is fascinating. I looked at

the back end of our YouTube channel and

it says that since this channel started,

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of you that watch it frequently haven't

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subscribe button. Do we have a deal? You

always worry for the very nice people.

Yeah. You talk a

a lot about that in When the Body Says

No. Yeah. Why is being nice a potential

risk to one's health?

Well, there's two there's two places to

be very nice from. One is just genuine

human compassion and concern for others,

but you're still grounded in yourself.

That's great.

But a lot of people are very nice

because they afraid not to be.

Because they weren't liked who they

were, they weren't loved for who they

were. Being nice was their way of

gaining the the love and the attention

they needed. Let me tell you a story. In

uh

uh in 1870, there was a Frenchman

neurologist called Jean-Martin Charcot,

who was the first one to describe

multiple sclerosis, which is an

inflammation of the nervous system. Very

debilitating.

And Charcot said

in 1870, without any scientific

research, but just from his own

observation, that this was a

stress-driven disease.

Okay? Now, since then, there's been a

lot of research to show how stress and

trauma potentiate multiple sclerosis.

And that's not even controversial. Not

that any neurologists knows that, they

don't get taught this stuff in medical

school, but the research is there. And I

presented it in in my books. And

in any case,

when I was writing When the Body Says

No,

a group of a self-help group of multiple

sclerosis patients phoned me and said,

"Would you come and talk to us?

Cuz we understand you're working on

stress and and illness."

And I said, "Yeah, sure, I'll come and

talk to you." And there's about 25

people in the group.

This is in Vancouver, Canada. And I gave

them very tentatively apologetically

apologetically, I said, "Look, I don't

know this for sure, but the sense I get

from my work in family practice and

palliative care is that the people that

develop your condition and other

conditions tend to be people to be

pleasers. That they have a they tend to

have difficulty saying no. They tend to

be very nice people."

And I I said, "You know, I'm sorry if

I've offended you. I don't mean to. I'm

just giving you something very

tentative. I haven't done the research

yet. I'm just giving you my

observations." They said, "You just

described us."

And they all said that. And there's a

woman who says in the group who says, "I

don't even know how to say no."

I said, "Terrific. Give me $100 right

now."

She says,

"Well, I don't I don't I don't have $100

with me right now." I said, "It's not a

problem." I said,

"Outside the outside this building

there's an ATM machine. We can go and

after the meeting we can go out, you can

get $100 and give it to me."

She says, "Uh

I'm not comfortable doing that."

I said, "Listen, I'm just trying to get

you to say no to a ridiculous demand by

a perfect stranger to whom you you owe

nothing whatsoever." She said, "I can't

say the word."

Because in childhood,

and by the way, when you have kids,

you're going to find out what the word

no means because at age 1 and 1/2, all

kids start saying no.

They say that long before they say yes.

Why?

Because that no is their boundary

defense of I have to figure out who I

am. I'm not going to accede to your

demands. I need to figure out what I

want. Put your shoes on. No.

And the parents think this is something

wrong. There's nothing wrong. It's

nature individuating the child.

When families punish that, the child

will repress the no and the body will

say in the form of multiple sclerosis,

for example.

Niceness, ALS, amyotrophic lateral

sclerosis or known in Britain as motor

neuron disease.

Um

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with it at

age 21. He was told he'd be dead within

10 2 years. He lived another 55 years.

Doctors don't know everything. You know,

um

but there's been studies on ALS

patients. They're extraordinarily nice.

So, um

there was a from a Cleveland Clinic in

Ohio, a major referral clinic, two

neurologists published a paper at an

international

ALS or motor neuron congress, why are

ALS patients so nice? And what they

described was that when people came to

their

office for diagnosis before they met the

physician,

they had underwent EDX electrodiagnostic

testing of the nerves. And the

technicians who performed the test would

write on the side of the test, "This

person can't have ALS. She's not nice

enough." Or "I'm afraid this person has

ALS. They're too nice. And the

physicians, the neurologist specialist

said, despite the shortness of their

contact with their patients and the

obviously unscientific nature of their

observations, invariably, they turned

out to be right.

And then I called Dr. Wilburn who did

this study and I said, what did the

other staff what did the other

neurologists say

when you presented this? They said, oh,

I said, yeah, we all noticed this. We

just can't explain it. Since then,

there's been a study where they've asked

neurologists about their patients

and the answer is, all their ALS

patients are extraordinarily nice.

Now, what do neurologists don't do

is they don't make the connection that

that we that that that that that

niceness is a repression of healthy

anger and that repression of healthy

anger plays a role in the onset of that

disease.

So, it's not a accidental connection.

So, why do I write very nice people? Cuz

they're putting themselves at risk.

Again, niceness can come from genuine

concern for others,

but that's not

accompanied by an ignoring of yourself.

You also care for yourself. Then you can

be as nice as you want.

But you also know how to say no.

And you also know how to set boundaries.

You don't know how to and you know how

to be angry if you need to be.

But the niceness that comes from

self-repression,

that's the one that hurts.

There's clearly going to be a lot of

very nice people hearing that.

That know they're nice, that know

they're people pleasers, that know

they've experienced in their lives the

consequences of

putting everyone else before themselves.

Yeah. I can It's funny, as you were

talking, I was thinking about the person

that I know who I think is nicest. Yeah.

And that individual is sick all the

time. Yeah. And I just connected that

dot in my head. That I remember making a

joke to her about, oh, you're sick

you're sick a lot, like whatever, you're

sick a lot. And then also thinking, oh

my god, she is probably the nicest.

Nice is an interesting word because that

can be

misconstrued as like, hiya, or like, you

know, Yeah. saying nice things to

someone else, but it's really at a

deeper level.

From what I've observed in that person,

putting everyone else before them. Okay.

Or chronically serving other people's

needs before their own.

Well, so, my contention is, as I said

earlier, when people don't know how to

say no, the body will say no for them in

the form of illness. And for and for a

lot of people with serious illness, the

illness is the wake-up call.

Yeah. And they actually learn. And when

they do, that can make a difference to

the course of their illness. Sometimes,

not always, but I've seen examples of

remarkable healing when people learn to

say no and stop being people pleasers.

And I just only wish

that physicians understood this. So,

when somebody comes to them with chronic

eczema and all these other chronic

conditions, they would not just provide

the physical treatment, but they would

also talk to the person about how much

stress do they taking on. It's very

stressful to take on everybody else's

issues and ignoring your own. It's very

stressful. That stress has a

physiological impact on the body.

How does someone who is a people pleaser

how do they turn that ship around?

Because it's

they'll hear that, but because their

niceness or their people pleasing is so

deep within them and it started so

early,

they're not going to they're not going

to change. Most of them won't change.

Well,

they may change if they get sick. You

know, and if they learn something from

it. I've had a lot of people tell me

that. Um

But it is happens very early. Uh but

it's everybody's second nature, not

their first nature. It's a very

interesting phrase, second nature. It

means that there is a first nature. Now,

no baby is born as a people pleaser.

No baby is lies there no one-day-old

baby lies there thinking,

gosh, um I'm hungry and wet and and and

and lonely, but gosh, mom and dad have

been worked so hard, I better not bother

them.

You know, babies will express their

needs very volubly and very articulately

and very loudly.

That's how we're born. We're meant to be

born that way.

So, that this suppression of that is our

second nature.

And that first nature never goes away.

We can always retrieve it. But you have

to become conscious of it. So, and when

the body says no, I lay out certain

principles of healing. Um in the myth of

normal, I will actually teach this

exercise. Ask yourself this question,

where in your life are you not saying

no?

Where where no wants to be said, but

you're not saying it. Like let me

actually let me give an example.

Let's say I come to London and and and

we're friends and I call you up, hey

Stephen, here I am. Do you want to have

coffee?

Um

but you've been up all night helping a

sick friend.

Or

otherwise, you're just too stressed to

want to meet me right now.

Your desire is to say no.

But what if you suppress that no?

And you say yes for the fear of

displeasing me or disappointing me or

losing my friendship. If I say no, Gabor

won't like me anymore.

What's going to be the impact on you if

you keep behaving that way?

Physically, what's going to be the

impact?

I'm going to be going to be more tired,

more exhausted, probably going to be

more stressed. All that. Yeah. You're

going to be resentful.

Disconnected from Yeah, exactly. You

know, so so it's not a this so

this person, they need to the

I I teach this exercise in the book

about

where am I not saying no?

And

what is my belief behind saying not

saying no? I don't want to upset Gabor

if he's coming to me.

Exactly. And and and I and I depend on

Gabor's liking. Yes. You know. Uh which

means

as a child, you depended on your

parents' liking and you had to suppress

your no's to be liked. Thirdly, where

did I learn this belief that if I say

no, I'm not likable or I'm guilty or I'm

not worthwhile, you know? And the fourth

question is, um

who would I be without that belief?

You know, uh and so if if your friend

does this exercise regularly, believe

me, she can turn it around. But it takes

some practice. Who would I be without

that belief? Yeah. When I

put myself in her shoes or I put myself

in a people pleaser's shoes, I wouldn't

I'm a people pleaser in in certain

environments, but I wouldn't say I'm

generally. Yeah. Um I can imagine

someone would respond to that and say,

well, I'd lose all my friends.

She'd find out who her friends really

were.

Because the real friends would celebrate

it.

They'd say, oh, finally, we're so glad

to see you being yourself.

The friends that were just using her or

relying on her to be their supporter

um unconditionally,

uh will turn away. And I say this to

people,

this contest between attachment and

authenticity can be a painful one,

but you can decide which kind of pain

you want.

As a child, you had no choice.

As an adult, it's true, if you're

authentic, you might lose some

attachment relationships. That's going

to be painful. But which pain would you

rather have? The pain of being authentic

and losing some friendships that were no

friendships at all?

Or the pain of

of of of losing yourself and all its

implications and all its impacts on the

body. So,

um

it it would be difficult for her and

it's true, some relationships that she

has now that would fade away,

but my god, she'd also attract much more

genuine and authentic relationships. And

her true friends would really celebrate

her.

You know, now let me tell you something

that just occurred to me, but forget it.

The there was a

um book written by an Australian nurse

about 12 years ago.

And she this nurse, like I used to work

in palliative care with dying people,

she works with in hospice with dying

people. And these are people who tend to

die of of of malignancy and chronic

illness well before that time.

And she wrote a book called the the the

top five regrets of dying people.

Bronnie Ware.

And uh

you know what the top regret was? That I

wasn't being myself.

That I wasn't true to myself.

I wasn't being authentic. That's the top

regret of dying people. And and the um

the third one was that I didn't express

my feelings for fear of disturbing or or

displeasing others. So, authenticity is

not just a new age concept. It's

actually a central dynamic in staying

healthy human beings.

Oh, one more thing. So, yesterday I was

in Westminster Abbey.

And I was looking at all these

beautifully and articulately worded

monuments

to all these colonialists.

To all the people that oppressed and

murdered

and robbed

and despoiled

native people all over the world.

They're the heroes of the British

Empire.

And I think one of the reasons there's

such a strong pushback against the idea

of trauma in this society

is if you recognize trauma, which exists

not only on the personal individual

level, but very much on the collective

level,

the ruling elites in this country would

have to come to terms with the fact that

their wealth is based on the

traumatization of foreign peoples, which

incidentally

was one of the crimes of Harry. Is that

he pointed that out.

The the that let's face it, the royalty,

the wealth that I was born into

was achieved at the despoilation and

oppression of people around the world.

So, trauma

is not just a personal issue. It's very

much a social and collective and

historical issue. What's the cure?

You know, cuz if we're if we're many of

us are byproducts of generational trauma

and we're seeking different ways to ease

our pain through through the means of

addiction, whether it's pornography or

heroin or alcohol.

Um we can't all afford expensive

therapists.

But we exhibit those self-destructive

behavior patterns maybe every single

day, maybe with social media addictions

or whatever.

What do we do?

Unfortunately, uh the health care

systems around the world have very poor

appreciation of the emotional

contribution to people's

physical or mental ill health.

And most physicians and most

psychiatrists are not trained in it.

Unfortunately, there's a huge um

gap between science and research on the

one hand and medical practice on the

other. It's maddening sometimes to

contemplate it. Um

So, the first step would be to educate

the the caregivers.

Just educate doctors about the actual

science of the mind-body connection and

the impacts of trauma.

Educate them.

So, when you go to a physician with um

say chronic fatigue

or um

inflammation of your joints,

they don't just give you the necessary

medication, which I'm not against, but

they'll also ask you, "What's going on?"

You know? So,

that's the first thing.

Second thing is let's prevent the

problem.

So,

let's support young families to be

really there for their kids.

So that

families don't have to struggle

economically.

And the parents are so stressed.

Um

As I may have mentioned, I've forgotten

now,

when parents are emotionally stressed,

economically stressed, according to a

number of studies, the kids' stress

hormone levels are abnormal.

And that is a harbinger of future

disease.

And so, let's look after young families.

Let's make people feel secure.

Uncertainty, lack of control,

uh lack of information, these are some

of the drivers of physiological stress.

So, let's create a society where there's

a more sense of mutual acceptance and

commonality and and and social support.

You know?

Let teachers be educated that the kids

who are so-called misbehaving are kids

who are actually troubled.

Troubled because of stuff at home and

that the solution is not to exclude them

or to punish them,

but to actually give them emotional

support in the classroom and in the

schools. Let the schools be

the human brain,

according to a Harvard study, develops

um

from before birth. It's an ongoing

process that begins before birth and

continues into adulthood.

The necessary conditions for human brain

development is safe,

uh supportive emotional relationship

with adults.

Let everybody who deals with children,

from social workers to teachers to

daycare workers to kindergarten um

supervisors to to parents, understand

the emotional needs of kids.

And and provide that safety. Uh let the

justice system, so-called, about which

there's very little just,

um

uh

in Canada,

50% of the women in jail are indigenous.

They make up 6% of the population. 50%

of the jail population. You call that

justice? You take the most traumatized

people

who then act out their traumas and then

you punish them for it. So, let the

medical system, let the educational

system, let the legal system understand

child development and trauma.

Now, in terms of the adult, to answer

your question more specifically, so

there's a social answer, Mhm. but then

there's the individual answer.

Yeah, a lot of people can't afford good

therapy. It's true. It's expensive and

and and even if there's a lot of people

who are get therapy but not getting

appropriate therapy.

Well, if you can't afford therapy,

go to the library, read some books.

My own, but not just my own. I could

rattle off five other books you should

read. Read Dick Schwartz's

book on internal family systems called

No Bad Parts. Read Bessel van der Kolk's

book on trauma called The Body Keeps the

Score. Read Peter Levine's book Waking

the Tiger on trauma. Read Oprah

Winfrey's and Bruce Perry's book What

Happened to You? Read Bruce Perry's book

called uh

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.

Um

I mean, have you even read Peter Levine?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, good. Oh, good. Wonderful. I'm glad

to hear that. He's one of my mentors and

friends.

And we often work together. Uh so, this

is and and and all of these books will

have some

advice about how to help yourself,

including my books. Then, there's a lot

of stuff on the internet. So, this

uh the interview that you and I had a

year ago,

I checked this morning, has been seen by

2 and 1/2 million people. I'm sure it's

helped a lot of people. It's a lot that

you can get, just, you know, freely.

Nobody's going to get charged to

you know, on the YouTube. Um

lots of my talks are available. Lots of

talks by other really good people

available. Do that. There's self-help

groups

of all kinds.

Um Is there a risk here? This is what

the the one side of the narrative

sometimes argue that you can kind of

over-traumatize

your life in terms of over-labeling

everything that you do as a trauma. So,

you know, and

I mean, the

that always happens, right? When when

people become

aware of something, they become

over-aware and they start over-labeling

and saying, "That's a trauma response.

That's a trauma response. That's a

trauma response." And they kind of live

with a feeling that they are inherently

broken.

Yeah, but my point is that nobody's

broken.

Um Actually, I talked about our first

nature.

That's always there.

When people recover, it's an interesting

word, recovery. What does it mean to

recover?

When you recover something, what are you

doing?

Going back to You're finding it.

Oh, yeah. Actually, yeah. That's the

definition of the word, isn't it? What

do people find when they recover? They

find their true selves.

That's what they'll tell you. That true

self never went away. Nobody's damaged

goods. Nobody's broken.

To talk about trauma is not to

disempower people, but to empower them.

If I learn that my response to the

British media

and the Harry

issue

was

actually it's nothing to do with the

present moment. It's actually some old

programming.

Oh, okay. Now I can drop it. Are you

glad it happened?

I'm glad that everything happened cuz

everything is learning.

Nothing in this this life is wasted if

you know how to use it properly. And um

so, what I'm saying is that

to under- to to be aware of trauma is

not to lose power, but to gain it

because it's not an excuse. I can't keep

going to my wife and saying, "I'm being

resentful of you and and punishing you

because my mother didn't take good care

of me when I was a baby cuz she was too

stressed."

You know?

I mean, that that that's lack of

responsibility.

But to for me to understand that my

demands on my wife to take care of me

like a mother would of a baby

actually is my trauma response, then I

can drop it. Cuz I'm not a baby anymore.

I don't need

I'm not that helpless. I'm not that

resourceless.

Um I'm not that um

ungrounded. So, that

when you recognize trauma, it's not in

order to use it as an excuse, but to

actually to overcome it.

That's the whole point.

When we talked about the suppression of

our emotions and anger, you used the

word healthy anger. Yeah. When you you

know, cuz there's a there's a risk,

isn't there, when you're

saying that anger can be a positive

thing, that people will then assume that

berating someone behind a counter or a

waitress in a restaurant because they

got one item on your order wrong is

standing up for your boundaries. I've

done it.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

So, healthy anger is in the moment.

And it's just a boundary defense.

It's not outrage. It's you're in my

space, get out.

That's its purpose. That's its only

purpose.

Or to protect something like a You want

to see anger?

Um

Try and tell a mother bear

not to

be close to their

to their cubs, you know? You'll find out

what healthy mother anger is all about,

you know? That's just healthy.

The kind of rage you're talking about,

have you ever had that kind of rage?

Definitely on a spectrum. I've got I've

got So, the reason I struggle with the

answer is because I've got a friend

that's fully shown me what the

that's the extreme side of that is,

where we used to call it the red mist

with him, where he would literally lose

control.