My Therapy Session with Dr. Gabor Maté

[MUSIC] Lemonade. [MUSIC] Thanks for listening to Hussaminhaj doesn't know. Listen to and follow Hussaminhaj doesn't know, add free on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast, Hussaminhaj doesn't know on Amazon Music. Also with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts and audio books, all in the Amazon Music app. Listen to Hussaminhaj doesn't know on Amazon Music. >> I would buy it. >> You would buy it too soon. >> I would buy it other kids. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I would feel threatened and I would bite them. Usually on the forearm or upper arm, where it's kind of fleshy and dohy. I would say, oh, there's some Bobka and then bam. And I'd hit him. Top two teeth, bottom teeth. And I was a bider. I'm 39 years old. I almost never bite people now. >> I'm a relief to hear that. >> Yeah, I haven't bitten my sister in two years. >> That's great. >> At least. >> Congratulations. >> When I first decided to create this podcast, Godbore Mate was at the top of my interview wish list. >> He's the best. He is a best-selling author and a leading voice in rethinking how we approach healing, connecting the dots between addiction, trauma, and childhood. But I honestly don't know if what you're about to watch is an interview or a therapy session on me. I went into this wanting his thoughts on a few big questions, like how people use their past trauma as an excuse to not own their own bullshit. And his assessment on what's unfolding right now in Gaza. But it got very personal very quickly. I mean, he literally diagnoses me with ADD within 29 seconds of this interview. And it just drills deeper and deeper into my soul from there. And look, he's not the first person to call me emotionally immature, but he is the first person to do it to my face on camera. So enjoy. [MUSIC] >> Godbore, I want to start with a question that I think if you were able to answer my friends, family, and colleagues would be so happy to know the answer to this question. Which is, why am I always late? >> Well, let me ask you this question. >> Sure. >> In school. >> Yes. >> Do you have trouble paying attention? >> Correct. >> Okay. Do you tend to lose things? >> Yes. >> Do you find it easy to get this organized? >> 100%. >> Okay. You probably qualify for this diagnosis called attention deficit disorder, which is the topic of my first book, "Scared of Nights" after I was diagnosed with it. And being late is one of the aspects of it. And what it is is a lack of time and maturity. Like, in "Scared of Nights" my book on ADHD, I describe how it's five minutes to eight o'clock. But, and I have to be somewhere to eight. >> Yes. >> But at five, I still think I have an eternity in front of me. >> This has been my problem since I was a child, yes. >> Because your time sense didn't develop early. >> Correct. >> So that's why you're always late. And I can also tell you why your time sense didn't develop early. >> Why so? >> You see, kids don't have a time sense. To a baby, a person moment is eternity. >> Yes. >> You can't say to a boy when you're old, you'll have dinner in five minutes. All they're eating is, there's no dinner. Five minutes is eternity. Time sense has to develop. Your brain has to develop. And for brain development, you need certain conditions. Here's what I can tell you without knowing anything about your specific history. When you, there's two things that are true about you. >> Okay. >> When is your highly sensitive? >> Yes. >> The other is, when you have a small infant even during the pregnancy, your parents are stressed. >> How did you know this? >> Because that's why you're very late. Because you're tuning out and your lack of development of time sense has to do with the stress in your environment. And more genetically sensitive infants are the more they pick up on their parents' stresses. And that actually interferes with the brain development of certain circuits. It's really that simple. It's not a disease that you inherit. It's actually a response of sensitive infants to a stressed environment. >> When I have something important to do, I will immediately find something not important to do. So I'll be like, oh my god, I have to organize this tour right now. Or I'll be like, I saw an Instagram ad about jogging pants. I really need jogging pants. I should probably buy them now. Or I'll get mad at myself and go, you know what, grow a fucking pair and do the hard thing right now. But before you do that hard thing, you should probably go to the bathroom. Why am I procrastinating? >> Well, again, procrastination is another trait associated with the syndrome called ADHD. And typically, we put off things until the very last minute. And then we do this rush to get it done. I never, in university, when I didn't undergraduate training before I went to medical school, I never began NSA until the night before it was due. And I'd be up all night fighting it. Again, it has to do with time sense. And it has to do with lack of motivation. Now things that you highly motivated to do, I thought that you procrastinated right now. >> I'll do it immediately. >> So ADHD is really a question of motivation. And there are certain circuits in the brain to do with motivation. And that has to develop again. Like all circuits, nobody's born with a developed brain. The motivation circuits have to develop. They run on a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is essential for sense of vitality, for curiosity, for seeking. And when you put under high pressure, there's high dopamine levels. And then you get more really motivated. So you're waiting for that dopamine hit before you get down to doing what you need to do. It's a matter of how environment shapes brain physiology. >> Now just to have some polite pushback, do I really have ADD or do I have a childlike sense of wonder? >> Why is there a contradiction? People they actually tend to be more playful, more curious. In some way, the more emotionally alive. And they tend to become comedians. I mean, I've seen about, about 90% of comedians could be diagnosed with ADHD. Because you got this brain that jumps all over the place. Which is the essence of comedy. >> Yes. >> So that just about every comedian I've ever met, I could diagnose within the split second with ADHD. >> I think we have ADD and many of us, unfortunately, have clinical depression as well. That's what gives us a very dark sense of humor. But I want to go down this a little bit with you, which is, I will also be late to things that I care about. And there's a form of even as an adult, I'm 39 years old, I am aware that, oh my God, I'm about to be late. I've been late for dates with my wife. I've been late for pickup of parents or children. There is this, what is underneath this lack of understanding of time or procrastination? I have a theory and I'd love for you to unpack it. I think at the core of it, there's something that I want to do. And as an adult now, I know the path to it will either be painful or humiliating. >> Well, let me put it in a more simple terms if I may. Sure. There's two things going on for you. You know, you can go into this or not. I'm giving you my view, laying down a lie here. >> Sure, sure. >> There's two things going on. You really don't have a good time sense. >> I have a horrible time sense. Look at this, ten minutes left. It's not here yet, so it's not happening yet. So that's what I mentioned before. >> Absolutely. >> The other is you're emotionally immature in the sense that emotionally, you know, you can be intellectually very advanced. It's a law of uneven development. Some aspects of our personalities and our brains can develop highly, but others be under developed. And there's a lack of responsibility there. Like, if you really perceive yourself as responsible and other people's experience mattered to you as much as you don't, you'd be there on time. And I promise you, if I caught you up and set a sun, I have a billion dollars for you. If you get here at five minutes to eight o'clock, you'd be there at six minutes to eight o'clock. >> I'll be there at seven thirty, are you kidding me? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> A billion dollars. >> So because you'd really care. And by the way, I'm the same. All my life I've always been late. To some extent, so I'm not criticizing you or anybody else. But it's like- >> You didn't call me emotionally undeveloped. >> But I'm calling myself emotionally developed in that same sense. >> Okay, great. >> You know, so- >> Appreciate that brother. >> I'm not here to point fingers at anybody. I'm talking about the dynamic of what's underneath it. There's a sudden degree of lack of maturation, you know, which has got its charming aspects to get to be playful and kind of tough, like in a lot of ways. >> But it also leaves you with lack of responsibility. And again, I'm telling you, you're perfectly capable of being on time if you're motivated enough. If I promised you a billion dollars, you'd be there. When you're still pursuing the relationship with your wife and you're deeply in love with her and you're in that romantic phase, we ever late. >> I was still late, yeah. I've always been late. This is why I mean, she's a right or die. And really, yeah, you know, how the state says she should get half. I'm like, she's getting with her. >> Yeah, well, it's a lack of discipline. >> Yeah, you know, and I don't mean- >> And then I hate myself. I actually start to hate myself. >> Well, see that I would talk to you about. Because if I told you, I'd look, I have this issue with being late. Would you call me the Speaker? >> No, but I would say it's okay to hate yourself. >> Why is it okay to hate yourself? >> I don't know. I think it's an Indian thing. I think there's an Indian thing to it, which is- >> Why is that? >> You should be mad at yourself. You should you hate anybody? I mean depends on what they did. Should you hate me family? I shouldn't hate you you're too sweet. Yeah. Why should you hate yourself? I think it's it comes from a place of you keep doing this to yourself man. So you're you're not a serious person. See there's two ways you can approach them. One is you keep doing this. You're not a serious person and you're smart enough to know that you're not supposed to be doing all these judgments. Yeah. So that's one way to approach it is with self judgment. Yeah. And by the way that goes along with ADHD. As somebody once said, I'm sorry is the comments phrasing the ADHD vocabulary? Oh my God. I say sorry all the time. Yeah. Yeah. I let it fly like I really want to read my book scattered minds. Okay. Because I've just gone to myth of normal. I got to go back to the deep cut of scattered minds. Let's start with scattered minds. Good. Let's get it. That was published 26 years ago and two years ago it became a New York Times best seller. But what was it going to say? So you could do that self critical stuff hating. Self judging thing where you get curious. Not why am I doing this but why am I doing this? Yeah. Actually I'm well intentioned. I'm intelligent. I'm capable capable. I care about people. I wonder why I keep doing this. You know and so that self curiosity and self exploration is the alternative. Where did that where did that self curiosity take you on your mystery to finding out why you were late to things? Well look, I began my own first my drone journey of self discovery because my life wasn't working. I was successful physician, newspaper writer, father respected and I was depressed and I was always late and I was disorganized and I had sense that I had a a deep potential that haven't come near to expressing but I had no idea why not. So I had to start asking well what's going on here? What's going on here? And that took me the deeply into the literature of child development and psychological unfoldment. Right. And you talked about this in your work of this changing the frame from what's wrong with you to what happened to you. Exactly. That question in of itself is a bit offensive. Why? What happened to you? Why is that? You can see how that just the framing of that. What happened? Dude, what happened to you? That is kind of offensive. Yeah, but you see the the defensiveness is not in the words it's in the tone. You can say what happened to you? What you could say? Hmm. What did happen to you? Is that the same? No, there's two two two very different tones. So the one is a judgment and a rejection. The other is a is a really inquiry. I'm talking about genuine inquiry and I'm advising anybody who hates themselves that what they need to do is they really want to get to know is not to accuse themselves but to be curious. There's always a reason. And that reason is always rooted in a person's life experience and their multi-generational background. So if behavior is connected to our past and I and I and I do see the intellectual argument in that but aren't some people just assholes? No. We have the distinguish between a lot of people do bad stuff. Yes. A lot of people are cruel or selfish or aggressive, narcissistic, but that's not who they are. The Buddha said 25 and a years ago that with our minds we create the world. So that the minds which we perceive the world, that's the world that we live in. Yeah. So if somebody said the world is a horrible place. Yeah. Where it's doggy dog. Everyone against everybody else. Your friends want your house, they want your wealth, they want your wife and these are your friends. Well, how would that person have to behave? Do you think if that's the world they live in? I mean, I think they would have to behave in a way that's very similar to the way Machiavelli is telling to you'd have to behave selfishly, you'd have to be duplicitous, you'd have to do a lot of aggressive aggressive. You'd have to be grandiose, we just have big so that other people are afraid of you. Yeah. You have to be suspicious. You'd be president of the United States because it was Donald Trump that said, wrote those words in his autobiography. The art of the deal. I quoted the verbatim. Okay. No. A few days ago in a Marshall in DC, I happened to meet his niece, Mary Trump, who is a psychologist and she's in a book on the Trump family where she describes what happened in the Trump family. Donald Trump was not born aggressive, grandiose, selfish, self-aggrandizing, suspicious. He was born in infant, ready for love, needing love, needing acceptance, needing validation. But he was born into a family, we're going to the psychologist niece, Mary Trump, if you read her book, the father, Fred from the senior was a sociopath who treated kids his kids horribly. Her own father, Donald Trump's brother, Fred Jr. became an alcoholic and dragged himself to death by the time he was in his early 40s. Donald adapted to those same circumstances by becoming grandiose, selfish, aggressive, developing these world views that the world is a horrible place. That's the world that he lives in. He couldn't help it. It's really interesting. People accuse him of lying. After time, I don't think he's lying. His chorewriter Tony Schwartz wrote the art of the deal with him. He says that Trump actually has a mind that says it something should be true. It is true. A reality of distortion. Yeah. No, I write a biography of Hitler. Same thing. And Hitler had a horrible childhood. So when you say somebody is an asshole, no, I don't think anybody is that. People be developed certain coping patterns. And I'm not saying it's to excuse anything, but to justify anything. I'm just asking what is the source of the personality and what is the source of the people's behaviors? Those behaviors are just manifestations of life experience. The Evere Papi Dog. Evere Papi Dog. Indians don't really do dogs. But yes, we had a bunny rabbit for a bit and it's shit everywhere and we had to get it out. But my wife loved the rabbit and my kids loved the rabbit. But it was shitting everywhere and I couldn't take it anymore. Okay, fair enough. Anybody who's ever had a puppy dog will tell you how you treat that puppy will determine how that dog's going to be for the rest of his life. You beat them, you starve them or you are capricious towards them. They're going to be suspicious, worried, maybe aggressive, maybe scared. If you go with three, don't you know that what you give them of irrigation sunlight minerals in the soil? That'll determine how that tree will develop. It's the same thing with human beings. Reborn with certain needs, essential needs. And how those needs are frustrated or devastated or met. We're largely determined how we develop. You know, you're a very interesting person, God, or you naturally are incredibly gentle, kind, affable. But even the way you're describing the world is from a very beautiful, curious perspective. At the same time, one of the things I think about now that I'm a father of two, I have a seven year old and I have a five year old. And I think about this lesson that my parents have told me in some words. And I kind of agree with which is I'm not trying to prepare you for the way the world should be. I'm trying to prepare you for the way the world is. And in here in New York City, sometimes you have to be just judgmental. For me, it's three buckets. If I'm on the train, you're one of three buckets. Number one, you're a rider, die. Number two, you're in acquaintance. Number three, you're shady. Well, being alert to the environment and being aware of the realities that you face doesn't have to change your personality and who you are. Explain that. Explain that. Well, those are just normal responses to the situation. If I was, if I hadn't been walking in a ground, there's a lot of snakes, I might have to be very careful of what I put my foot. Yes. That doesn't change who I am. That just means in a certain situation. I have to be alert and aware. That's what you're describing. Being on train and just not touching people. It doesn't have to make you a bad person. By the way, thanks very much for your kind words about me being gentle and so on. You should ask my wife. This always, this always the I present in public and what I'm able to say genuinely. Then there's the degree to which I'm able to manifest that in all my life. I think every afterward of every book should just be written by the family of the author. You're totally right. Let's talk about this big topic when it comes to therapy, which is the fine line between unpacking the trauma of your past versus taking responsibility for your bullshit. There's no versus is the same. See, if I say stuff happened to me, which it did, it happened to me. Therefore, I'm a victim and I can't help it. Then I'm taking those responsibilities. But God, in your book, The Myth of Normal, you wrote about being annoyed at your wife or not picking you up from the airport. And how this pain was rooted in your abandonment as a child during World War II, and you wrote, "There comes a point when Hitler made me do it, won't fly." That's the whole point. So what is the line between personal responsibility of you giving your wife some latitude versus blaming it on what happened to you as a child? I'm honest in the word blame, at all. He's just blamed boards the hell out of me. I just want to know what happened. And if I understand that my sense of abandonment with my wife that shows up in my relationship, which is kind of a tendency of mine, and then my reactive withdrawal and into soloness and distancing, which is my particularly relationship style, is rooted in some deep childhood experience of being given away by my mother and getting the sense of abandonment, that doesn't absolve me of responsibility. It gives me the responsibility of making the distinction that what can I do to liberate myself from the impact of the past, from the past, so I'm not imposing it on my wife and my environment. So knowing the past gives me a sense of responsibility and actually enables me to be in the present. And as his friend and colleague and teacher of my Imperial Levine says, "Tromo represents the tyranny of the past." And the whole point is to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of the past. So that we're not affected, we're not under the influence, we're not dominated by the impact of what happened to us in our formative years. So that recognizing all that is taking responsibility. It's my responsibility to be in the present, but I can do that much better if I understand where those influences came from. So what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to remember the past? Or what you're talking about? Or am I supposed to actually shake the etch a sketch and just be totally present and say that the past doesn't define me. Recently, I'll tell you this interesting story. I'm about to do the show on PBS called Finding Your Roots. And they gave me old photographs of my family. My mother has given me old photographs of my grandparents and my great-grandparents in India. And just looking at the photos, moving me to tears. But this idea, this philosophy of looking at these traumatic events and your trauma doesn't define you. To me, there's an implication or you're implying, "Hey, you have to let that go." I mean, how do you tell the same? I mean, did you go to family through that terrible partition and all the violence of 1947? On both sides, my skinings of Muslims, rapes, Hindus, you know, okay. Well, first of all, trauma is multi-generation. Okay, it's passed on from one generation to the next. Not because we mean to, but because we do. It's just like it's a theme that runs through the generations. And I passed my traumas onto my case. I didn't mean to, but I did. Your parents did. They didn't mean to. Your ADHD is a legacy of trauma. Is it a legacy of stress when you're, you know, no. Formulate your question again, because I really want to answer it. It's an important one. But just don't make sure exactly what you're asking. Yeah. I think what I'm trying to say is, so often, the thing I love about my children, and when I really see my children, or when I'm on stage, and I'm really connected to the audience, I'm actually in the present. Totally. I'm not defined by your Hassan Minhaj. You were born September 23rd, 1985. Yeah. You were born in Sacramento, California. You're from an Indian American Muslim. I am just in this moment in this period of time. I am with Dr. Godborn Mate. The time is 1020. And I am having the time of my life. And I'm not bound by any weight of the past. Okay. There's a part of me that's like, on some level, don't we need to forget the past to move forward, or at least forgive what that was to move forward. So here's I understand what I just heard you say. Yeah. When you're in stage, connecting with an audience, you're in a genuine state of flow. Yeah. Out to go state of flow. Yes. And. And I'm not defined by the worst thing that's happened to me. No, the worst thing that happened to my parents. No, you're totally in the present. Yeah. Totally in the present. Yeah. So you're not defined by the journey of the past at that point. Yeah. Totally. You're open. Now, flows in this thing word, because at that point, you would probably agree, although your personality and your knowledge and your weight and your mind certainly helps you, but there's something flowing through you. Yes. You're not creating it as such. You're the vehicle for creation. Yeah. Would that be accurate? Correct. Okay. It feels like magic. Yeah. Well, it's the same way when I'm in stage and I'm talking to an audience, like I'll be talking to 3500 people here in New York tonight. Believe me, I'll be in the state of flow. Yeah. And I'll be present. Next morning with my wife. Oh, no, don't say it. Don't say it. I might not be in the state of flow. Oh, no. You know, so there's something happens with people that have that sensitivity and that creativity. And that's where art actually comes from. And when there's something greater that moves through you, that's not defined by the past. So that's true. And you know, part of my problem is that I love that state so much. It tends to be a bit addictive to go there. Sure. And not to deal so much with the messy, great, nitty-gritty reality of everyday life, which is a lot more full of stumbles and blockages. Yeah. And just traffic and responsibility. Yeah. And the laundry. And the laundry. Totally bureaucracy. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. But I get it. And that's a gift that you have. But I also want to hold both of us accountable. Here is at what point does character come into play? I'll give you an example. Yeah. You know, you hear this often, specifically with guys and their dads. You know, my dad had a temper. Yeah. You know, he was like a rice cooker that could explode. Many dads had this. And there's two types of children. There are some people that that temper gets retweeted. And there's other kids where like, I will not blow up. I will not be that person. But I feel that Tasmanian devil of dad inside of me. Well, first of all, I was one of those dads. My son Daniel, who my role to met with normal. Yeah. He actually writes in the book that going up with me when that family was like, when the floor wasn't the floor, you never knew when the safety and the security would disappear when the floor would just open up because there would be these emotional explosions. You know. But what do you mean by character? Character means there's a choice you can make to break the cycle. You have your wits about you. You have agency. You know what you're doing. This is why I sometimes go into the self-hatred thing. Come on, man. This is me talking to myself. I'm not talking to anybody. There's something I have had the experience of going to a rage, watching myself going into a rage, knowing that it wasn't right. And I had no power not to go into it at the same time. No. I'm not making excuses. It's my responsibility. And I know the harmful impact on the people around me. But here's what happens. There is a part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, the gray matter right here in the front. And then here's another part here called the orbital frontal cortex, which is next to the eye socket. It's right here. When people go somebody's local. That's what they're pointing at. How they're pointing to this upper right? Yeah. The job of these this part here amongst others is what's called response flexibility. When something happens, I have the flexibility. So my wife doesn't show up but the airport to pick me up. I could respond with rage and you know disappointment in the sense of abandonment. Or I could say, oh, that's disappointing. Too bad. I'll take a taxi home. You know, that's called response flexibility. This part here impulse control when an impulse arises. I don't have to act it out. I could say, oh, I'm feeling anger, but I don't have to act out the anger. Sure. You know, and the impulse regulation. No. In certain people, these circuits don't develop as well as they should number one. Yeah. And number two, at that moment, the deeper emotionally defensive and aggressive circuits of the brain takeover. So when you say somebody's lost it, you know, I just lost it. What did they lose? They lost impulse regulation and response flexibility. Those are trauma effects. But but no, no, no. Here's what I'm going to say. Sure. Sure. That's not an excuse. Yeah. I'm not here to excuse anything. But I'm saying, if you realize that about that, it's your job to go to work, to grow up. And going up, I don't mean it's a moral imperative. I mean, get into therapy, do something to develop these circuits, do something so that you can be a responsible human being. That's totally on me. Yeah. So I can't use the past as an excuse, but I can understand the past to know what I have to overcome. - I think, I think God wore, and I mean this, you know, as someone who's a fan of your work. I think Zoom therapy is overrated, and I know you're a therapist, but it, because it's passive, you need to be active. I'll give you another example. When I was a kid, my cousins will tell you this. - Yeah. - Okay, my cousins and other friends that I went to school with. I was a smaller kid and I would sometimes get bullied. And I would bite. So my cousins have told me this, my sisters told me this when you were little. - You would bite, you said it. - I would bite other kids. - Okay. - Yeah. - I would feel threatened and I would bite them, usually on the forearm or upper arm, or it's kind of fleshy and dohy. I would say, oh, there's some bopka and then bam. And I'd hit him. And I was a bider. I'm 39 years old. - I'm a relief to hear that. - Yeah, I haven't bitten my sister in two years. - Oh, that's great. - At least. - Congratulations. - What I'm trying to say is I made a choice to not bite. At some point, I had to say, I'm not biting. - At a point when you had the maturity to make the choice. - Yes. - Let's talk about that then. What is the age of, come on man, this isn't serious. You're being unserious. You have to grow up. - Well, I totally own what you're saying. You're like, Hassan, you're being emotionally-- - And by the way, let's go back to your biting. - Yeah. - If you're a small kid being bullied. - Yeah. - Can you see her biting might be a told in natural response? - Oh, I totally got why I did it. - Yeah. It's a natural, preventive, defensive response. And it's an expression of your own frustration. - Yeah. - A more interesting question is, when you're bullied, who did you talk to about it? - I had nobody. - It's right? - Nobody. - Right. - Yeah, yeah. - That's where your trauma was. If your kids were bullied, who would you want to talk to? - Hopefully me. - If you found out that your kids were bullied, and they suffered, and they didn't talk to you, how would you explain that? - You asked me the question again, I'm sorry. - I'm asking the question. And I noticed a hard one. And this is typical when people's minds go offline. - Yeah. - It's a painful one. If your kids were bullied, and they suffered humiliation, shame, pain, fear. - Yeah, of course, yeah. - And they did not talk to you about it. How would you explain why my kids are not talking to me? - Oh, I couldn't explain. I'd be very hurt. I'd be sad that they didn't tell me. - Yes, but I'm not asking you how you'd feel. I'm asking you, how would you explain why they're not talking to you? - Probably because on some level, I have not created a channel for them to talk to me, or they're processing. They don't have. - They don't feel safe with you. - Yeah, they don't feel safe. - Yeah, they don't trust you. - Yeah. - What's it like for a kid not to feel safe and trust with the parents? What's it like for a kid? - It must be terrifying. Yeah, it's terrifying. - That was your childhood. - You know my parents listen to this podcast. They're not gonna be happy with this. - Well, your parents did their best. - Yeah. - They did their trauma. I did my best with my kids. I'm telling you, I'm telling you your parents and your parents are probably close to my age, I don't know. But. - Yeah, they're on your age, yeah. - Yeah, their parents of Hassan, you did your best. That was your best because of the traumas that you had undergone. - Sure. - So there's nobody's being blamed here. But what I'm saying is that there was a trauma there for you of not having that safety and security. And when you talk about therapy, it's actually about understanding all that stuff. But not just understanding it, working it through the body so that it doesn't dominate you anymore. - You understand right now though, God bore, there's two major camps here when it comes to parents and forgiving parents. And I'll tell you what the two camps are. And this really is the Democratic and Republican party of parent therapy. Okay, there's two camps. There's number one, and this has been a huge movement. Radical transparency. Talk to your parents at Thanksgiving, tell them how you feel, tell them what happened and bring receipts. And then there's another camp, which is your parents did their best, live and let live. But I have a lot of friends and I did go to therapy. And this is where the therapist did lead me down the wrong path, where she said, unload the clip and just go rat a tap, tap. - Okay. - Dad, you're always late. Dad, you're a psycho, mom, how many times have I told you? The iPad goes here, dad stopped texting me. Hi, this is dad, the whole thing. - Well, look, if you're presenting with two bad choices, then there's gonna be no way out. But that's, I don't see this split into those two camps, one or the other and there's no other reality. - I think radical transparency and demanding me a culpas from a 76 year old with a hip replacement is the equivalent of you pulling out a Tommy gun and shooting up an old man. - My son, Diana, I'm writing a new book. It's called "Hello again, fresh start for parents and adult children." It's got nothing to do with demanding me a culpas. It's got nothing to do with taking a machine gun and shooting some 76 year old, a hip replacement. It's gotta do with each partner, each person understanding their own role in the relationship and their own responsibility in the relationship. Your healing does not depend on blaming your parents. It does depend on understanding what happened to you, but understanding what happened to you doesn't mean blaming your parents. Fact is, you were bullied and there's nobody for you to talk to about it. That's deeply painful and that happened in your family of origin. But I'm not blaming your parents. Your parents did their best. It's for your parents to they choose to, - Yes. - To recognize what happened and to say, "You know what son, that was reality, that was our reality." But your healing doesn't depend on them democ knowling anything. You don't depend on them for your healing. That's totally your responsibility. I don't see this dichotomy. - Really? - Between the two. - You're saying both things can do this at the same time. They did their best. And by their best, then as children, do we owe them some gratitude for doing their best? I mean, that's quite the effort. If you were in the gym and you did your best, your personal best on bench press. You see, I'm not-- - You deserve some credit. - I'm not interested in owing. Owing is like a should that you lay on. So I don't tell anybody what they should do. I'm saying that when somebody recognizes that he has my parents really had issues that prevented them from seeing who I was, from supporting me the way I needed to supported. So here's the thing I will ask you. Are you the same person now that you were 30 years ago? - That's a complicated answer. I would say yes and no. In some ways, people who grew up with me are like you're the same guy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then in other ways, I'm a very different person. - So you've been able to grow? - Yeah, I've been able to grow in just-- - No, the more you able to grow, and the less you affect, the less you are under the effect of the past, the more gratitude will naturally arise. So I'm not saying to anybody, you should be grateful. There's no one me telling anybody how they should feel, but I'm saying that gratitude, I can tell you a quick and capture story, if you like. - If we're not pressed for time, please share the story. - I'm not pressed for time. - Okay, great. - So this story of my own infancy, where I'm 11 months of age, and my mother gives me to a total stranger. - Right, this is during World War II during-- - Second World War, Nazi occupied Hungary, severe vicious anti-Semitism, threat of genocide, and I'm sick and I'm hungry, and my mother just can't keep me alive. So she gives me to a stranger in the street, who takes me to some relatives living on relatively better circumstances, and they look after me. Now, all my life, I've had this deep sense of resentment, of the unfairness of life. Why did this have to happen to me? And I've had a lot of mother anger, because the infant who's given to a stranger, it doesn't matter how, what the motives are, just perceives themselves as being abandoned. There's no other way the infant can see themselves. Deep sense of abandonment that shows a 50 years later in my relationship with my wife. Okay, that said really tragic story on one hand. Or I could look at it this way. Think of the amount of love it would have taken on a part of a 24-year-old mother to give their infant. After her own parents had been killed in Auschwitz, and her husband is a way in force labor, and she doesn't know if he's dead or alive, the husband. And she's got this infant, the infinite love that I've taken on my mother to give me to a stranger, to save my life. The love of the universe that shows up in this Christian woman who takes this Jewish infant and conveys him to these relatives. The love of the universe, that's manifested in these relatives living on the terrible circumstances than to take in a sick baby and to look after me. So I could look up on the same story as one of bitter, unfair cruelty. Or I could say, "Look at all the love that's in it." These days, I'm really aware of the gratitude for all the love. At its core essence, what do people need? Well, it depends. What stage? So here's what children need. Children need unconditional secure attachments, but they're welcomed in the world for exactly who they are, not because they're cute, hardly, uncompliant, or competitive, but because they are, period. With unconditional love, unconditional love. I accept you as is, totally as you are. And there's no amount of kumon or yano or accomplishment. No, it's not going to be with accomplishment. It's going to be with being, you know. And it's interesting. What you're talking about is inalienable human, a human right to love. Exactly. And to be loved. Totally, which is actually a need of the human child just as much as oxygen is. Okay. Secondly, rest. So the child doesn't have to work to make the relationship with the parent work. If your father is an alcoholic, for example, we often children get to be the peacemakers and the family. Yes. Now they have to work to make the relationship work. That's devastating for the child's development. Thirdly, I mentioned human beings are born with this whole set of emotions, this circuitry, anger, fear, seeking, playfulness, lust, fear, grief. Right. The human child has to be able to experience those emotions when life demands it. Yes. And to be able to express them. And to have those emotions understood, accepted, and validated by the parents. Yeah. So these are some of the needs of children. Adults need more. They do need a sense of belonging, a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of value. That has got nothing to do with how successful they are or how pretty they are. Or how much they please or don't please other people. Right. So we do have a sense of belonging, of acceptance, of meaning, of purpose. These are human needs. First, this human needs, you can aggregate all kinds of dysfunctional behaviors. And in the United States right now, for example, there's been this every year in the United States, last few years running, twice as many people a year die of dog overdoses as Americans who died in the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghan wars put together. Wow. So you're talking about the overdose on fentanyl and opioids. And these have been called deaths of despair. And what's happened is that, and this is recognized, I think, on all sides, young men in the States have lost their sense of belonging, purpose and meaning, because the industrial heartland has been hollowed out. And now they have no sense of meaning and purpose. They turn in desperation to drugs, or to radical politics. And so people do need a sense of meaning, purpose, belong, take that away from them. You're going to get all kinds of dysfunction. So these are human needs. Yeah. And every bit on all sides, need a sense of purpose, meaning, and acceptance and belonging. Sometimes we get them from the wrong sources. I want to talk about something that's really interesting about the mind-body connection, but specifically with intuition. People love your work because they go, "Oh my God, Dr. Gabor Mate is saying, "I should trust my God. It's scientifically connected to my head. I should trust my heart." But when do we delineate between your intuition being something that is telling you the right thing, or your intuition is anxiety and self-doubt and self-sabotage? Well, those things are not intuition. Those things are emotional dynamics based on confusion and trauma. But sometimes you have anxiety, re-fluxing your gut. Oh yeah, it shows up in a gut all the time. It comes up here. It shows up in the same area, but it doesn't feel the same. Like, when you have a strong gut feeling about something, there's a kind of a certain knowledge about it, and a certain degree of ease about it. When you're having a strong emotion, there's usually perturbation and tension around it. So I'd say down the body level. You can tell the difference about what you're experiencing inside. So the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Toley, who lives in Vancouver like I do, he says, and I've learned a lot from his work, he says somewhere that emotions are the body's reaction to the mind, where it's gut feelings of the body's reaction to the external environment, so that without gut feelings, animals don't survive, do they? Sure. And human beings evolved in nature. Yeah. And for millions of years, and hundreds of thousands of years, until a blink of an eye go, we all lived in nature. So gut feelings were essential for survival. And they just tell us, is it safe? Is it not safe? Emotions are more complex, and emotions are very much affected by what we believe in our perceptions and our past dynamics. And so they're not the same as gut feelings. So it can be confusing, but when I look at people on this question of gut feelings or emotions, I just direct them back into the body and say, let's suppose the body expands here. If there's a gut feeling, there's going to be a kind of calm knowing about it. If there is a strong emotion, it's going to be tense. That's the big difference. Got it. So when it's self-doubt, self-sabotage, I'm not good at this, I'm not worthy. You know you're going to fuck this up. You know this isn't going to go well. That isn't your gut talking. That's your anxiety. Not at all. That's your anxiety. So even if you feel it in your body, that's something else though. You're always going to feel in your body because emotions are literally physiological things. There's no mind-body separation, you see. It's not possible to have an emotion without your body being involved. What's a tool people can use to determine? What's what what part of their body is talking to them? Because sometimes when I woke up this morning, my lower back was hurting, but that might just be my back telling me I'm old. It could be a number of things. Could be that you have a bad mattress. But that's what I'm saying. How do you determine? This is a key. Well, if something is chronic, it keeps showing up. There's usually something going on. Indistinction mentioned back pain. There used to be a back specialist here in New York. His name was John Sarno. I say R&O. He's no longer alive. He died not that long ago in his 90s. Larry David and a whole lot of other people swear by him because he was a back specialist. And he saved thousands of people from back surgery. Because he pointed out that the chronic back pain was the result, as I would also say, of one result in emotion, particularly repressed anger. And so that muscles tighten and blood supply gets cut off. It's not that the back pain was imagined. But that the source of it wasn't the physical, x-ray findings or mechanical, but repressed emotion. So, some of you with chronic back pain, I'd want to talk to him about what's happening to them emotionally. And Sarno, who's written a number of books and a lot of very famous people swear by him, his point of view was much the same as mine. The difference is he was a back specialist. I was a general physician. So I looked at all manner of illness and all kinds of chronic conditions as related to people's emotional lives. He specifically looked at people's back pain, but it became the same conclusion. So if you had chronic back pain, I'd want to talk to you about what's going on in your life. You're a trauma expert. And one of the things that I think is so interesting is that you not only talk about personal trauma, but you've also been very outspoken about political trauma. When we think about politics and what we're seeing right now, the United States and in the Middle East, how would you diagnose what's happening? The trauma that has happened in the Middle East in that region of the United States and in that region? I've said this publicly before. I went my back till I was 13 years of age. And when I was eight years old or nine, I remember my mother taking me to a psychologist. And a psychologist took a history of my infancy and he childhood. I remember him saying that so I was in the room when he said this to my mother and he said, "Ma'am, if the only problem based on what happened to him as an infant, if the only problem this boy has is that he vets his bed, you'll be very fortunate." How long? No. As my family could tell you, that's not the only problem I have shared. That was the beginning? No. I first visited Gaza in 1992. 1991. And the West Bank. In 2004, there was a study of Gaza and children that appeared in a international psychiatric journal. If anybody thinks that history began October 7, 2023, they need to know this. In 2004, there was a study in the Journal of Psychiatry about Gaza and Children. This is two years before Hamas took power in Gaza. Two and a half percent of those kids had no traumatic symptoms. The large number had severe post-traumatic symptoms. They wet their beds like I did. They were aggressive towards their parents. They had nightmares, depression, anxiety, based on a collective trauma that has been imposed on the Palestinian people in the name of my people, the Jewish people. And then I visited the West Bank in 2022 to do a workshop, a trauma workshop for young women who have been tortured in Israeli prisons. And the mass torture of thousands of Palestinian prisoners has been documented by Israeli physicians for human rights by Bethelam, the Israeli human rights organization. and windization by the United Nations, by outcomes of other international humanitarian organizations. This is all before October 7, 2023. So the Palestinian people, no arguing about Jewish trauma, I mean, my people who are probably traumatized as a whole world knows, as they should know, not just in the Second World War, but of course even before. No, we've transposed that trauma onto the Palestinians. We continue to. And in my adult life, in my conscious life, I've never seen anything as horrible, as what is inflicted on the guards and people right now. And on the Palestinian people, it's almost every day that some Palestinian kid gets killed by Israeli forces, not in Gaza, in the West Bank. It's never reported in the West Impress. So what's happening is a horrible collective traumatization. I recently wrote a forward for a new book by a Palestinian psychiatrist, Dr. Sama Jabar, and she used to be head of psychiatry for Palestine. I wrote a forward for her book, which is coming out very soon. In her book, Dr. Jabar writes, "How do I diagnose and deal with the suicidal depression of an 81-year-old man who comes to me with the suicidal depression because the home that he built with his own hands 20 years ago, not forcing him to demolish with his own hands? What do I do, a given pro-Zak?" So what we're talking about here is an almost unprecedented, massive, traumatized action of a whole people which is cheered on by the West and not even reported on a daily basis. It's the worst thing I've seen in my whole life. It breaks my heart every day. I grew up in Northern California. In the war on terror and in the Sacramento community, there were a lot of Afghani refugees that came and Iraqi refugees that came as a byproduct of the Iraq and Afghanistan war. A lot of those kids were teenagers or even younger than me. They came from deep and deeply traumatic experiences from more. I would oftentimes think to myself, "Where will the trauma and how do we fix this trauma or how do we heal this trauma?" Based on the work that you've done and what you've seen, are you optimistic about the future, what can be done so that this trauma does not continue or the trauma is healed? When I was in Palestine, three years ago, a name of me was a film called "Where the Olive Tree's Weep" that's available online. We're briefly featured during this particular workshop with traumatized women. When I was there three years ago and just to give credit to what credit to do, I was there because of the support of Israeli Jewish psychologists. So there were Israeli Jews who wanted to help the Palestinians and wanted to help this healing work to them. So I'm not making these Jewish verses, most of them were Jewish verses, Palestinian issue, I'm making it a human issue, human beings on both sides. Unfortunately, one side was all the power and has intentions that are nefarious as far as I'm concerned. But I was told that there's no post-traumatic stress disorder here because the trauma is never post, it's ongoing. And it is. That film, that one, the Academy Award, no other land, for best documentary, which shows the daily assaults on the dignity and the possessions and the lives of Palestinians by Israeli settlers and Israeli army in the West Bank. The pubby heard that the Palestinian director was attacked a few weeks ago, lynched basically outside his own home and then arrested by the Israeli army for protecting himself from these settlers. So how do you heal trauma in the midst of the trauma? It's almost impossible. I see. You know, for me, as I want, in my intention, and my prayer is always as an end to suffering. And I have had a very tough time in my spiritual practice to try to reconcile the suffering that one experiences in their own life, but now the information overload that you feel. And so much of adult life and modern adult life is witnessing and making sense of profound injustice and human suffering. And I had this really powerful conversation with my dad and this is why, you know, I know he'll be listening to the podcast because they watch everything. I give them so much credit. They did their best and they gave me everything they possibly could. But my dad said something that was just so beautiful that I that stuck with me and I'd love your take on it is he says, and this is what helps him sleep at night when he watches the news and sees everything that's happening. And he sees the injustices that are happening around the world and many regions around the world. And he says he goes, "Hussell, I notice your generation is obsessed with this idea of justice, of absolute justice." But he says that's going to be impossible in this physical realm. Absolute justice is only possible in the hereafter and the spiritual realm with God. And that helps him go to sleep at night. And I've found some profound truth in that as well. Or how do we even do the Microsoft Excel accounting of all the suffering and trauma that humanity has endured? It's a beautiful statement by your dad, except I can't go there because I don't have a world view that gives me an after life. Okay? So let me give you my secular version. My secular version of it. So this morning I'm reading the Guardian newspaper. It's about you, Korean and young men who enlist for the war to protect their homeland. And this one Ukrainian man says, "Young man says, when somebody kills your brother, don't you want to take revenge? When somebody wants to steal your land, don't you want to fight back?" Now we write out about the Ukrainians, but we don't write out about the Palestinians, even though they're defending their land and they have been. And they've been killed in large numbers for decades now. Profoundly unjust. Now how do we deal with that? Well, there was a great Jewish sage that lived about a hundred years before Jesus. And he said about the task of healing the world. And he said, "The task is not yours to finish, but neither are you fee not to take part in it." In other words, the task of writing this world, of promoting justice, it's a sacred calling that's with us through eternity. And how I make peace with it is not like you're that who bless him believes in his afterlife for things to be okay. The way I deal with it is, while I'm here, am I contributing to that task? It's not yours to finish. It's not going to be done in my lifetime, but it's something I can contribute to, and we can all contribute to it. So that's the idea of it. And even if you suffer through it, will you? Well, it's suffering is the bullet point that I was part of life. So it's a question of how we respond to that suffering. So in that sense, I'm with your dad. He's talking about something in a long term. Well, my dad is, and I give him a lot of credit, which is, human beings are deeply flawed, and the period of times that we live through are incredibly finite. And only God or some higher power, Yahweh, Bhagavan, whatever you want to call it, can really do the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and really give the true justice PNL and serve it. And that's what gives him peace. I get it. And I would also say that to go back to the earlier part of our conversation, when you're on stage, that's what's showing up is something much greater than you are. Sure. That's just flowing through you. This has been a really beautiful conversation. Dr. Gubbormate, you are 81 years old, correct? Yeah. 39 years old. Do you have any final words of wisdom to impart people that are my age, that are in the middle of their life, what the second half looks like and what a meaningful second half of life should be? At your age, you had not yet begun a self-examination that you've already begun. So I congratulate you on that. I would say, look to the inside as much as you look to the outside. So whatever you're responding to, whether it's your son's behavior, or the injustice in the world out there, or whatever challenges you may experience professionally or personally look inward as much as you look outward. And the truth is always going to be inside you if you have the means of finding it. So there's a lot of truth that you carry, let it unfold, but it takes attention. Dr. Gabel Matay, thank you so much for your time. - Well, absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you. - I appreciate you. - Yeah. ♪ Hurry right away ♪ ♪ Don't leave me ♪ ♪ Make your daddy glad ♪ ♪ You have had something ♪ - If you haven't subscribed to Lemon Out of Premium yet, now's the perfect time. Because guess what? You can listen completely ad-free. Plus, you'll unlock exclusive bonus content, like Hallibary on how to be a good partner during menopause, or Mady Hussin on the dumbing down of media. Clips you won't hear anywhere else. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple podcasts or head to lemonautopremium.com to subscribe on any other app. That's lemonautopremium.com. Don't miss out.