← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
Gabor Maté: Five Steps To Stop Scrolling, Bingeing, and Self-Medicating — And Reclaim Your Brain
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Foreign.
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This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey everybody. We're back today with a fascinating and somewhat controversial guest, Dr. Gabor Mate. We're going to talk about his argument that childhood stress is at the root of some very common problems. Specifically two problems that all of us deal with. The first is our addictive tendencies. And this can range from full blown addictions all the way down to everyday addictions like scrolling and overeating. So that's one of the problems we're going to discuss. The other is our scattered minds, our distractibility. And again, there's a spectrum here as well, from diagnosis of ADHD to a sort of garden variety distractibility that I think many of us deal with. Again, Dr. Mate's assertion here is that both of these very common maladies, addictive tendencies and scattered minds, have their roots in childhood stress or trauma. Now, not Everybody agrees with Dr. Mate's assertion here and you will hear me challenge him on this, but I don't spend too much time on the scientific debate because what I really wanted to talk to him about is is how we deal with our addiction prone and scattered minds. And in my view on this score, he very much delivers with lots of practical tools, including a five step recipe that you will hear him walk through in great detail. A little background. Gabor Mate is a retired physician who has worked in a variety of areas including family practice and palliative care. He also worked for over a decade with inner city patients in Vancouver dealing with drug addiction and mental illness. He's written many, many bestselling books, including in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and the Myth of Normal. Real quick, before we dive in, I want to say a word about taking care of your own mind. A lot of people worry that it's self indulgent, especially at a time when it feels like the world is on fire. I, however, strongly believe that training your own mind is a community service because it allows you to respond more effectively to the various emergencies we're all facing in the world and in our own lives. And my team and I have built a new app around this principle, the geopolitical case for getting your shit together. Our mission is to lead you through this process with a growing library of meditations from world class teachers, ad free versions of this very podcast, exclusive livestream events every week, and robust discussion threads that connect you to me, our teachers, our team and one another. If this sounds good to you, head on over to danharris.com and sign up for the app. It'll be free for the first two weeks so you can try before you buy. And if you can't afford it, we'll give it to you for free, no questions asked. Okay, we'll get started with Gabor Mate right after this. 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Just go to LinkedIn.com happier. That's LinkedIn.com happier. Terms and conditions apply. All right, let's talk about your business identity. If you're down to start a business, first thing to say is congratulations. It's a baller move. I've started two businesses. It's incredibly rewarding, also very hard. But you need a business identity. It's everything that makes your business legitimate and professional. I'm talking about public records compliance, your website, email, phone number with Northwest registered Agent, our sponsor today. You don't just form a business. You start with a complete foundation built for privacy, credibility and growth. I can tell you, having learned this the hard way repeatedly, it's so exciting to start a business. But there's also all of this kind of unglamorous work that needs to be done to form your business identity. And you want a good partner. Hence Northwest Registered Agent. They've been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the US with over 1500 corporate guides. Those are real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest does not outsource or resell services. Everything is built and managed in House, which means fewer hands on your data and privacy by default for every customer. Don't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for what you can get from Northwest for free. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com happierfree get more with Northwest registered agent at northwestregisteredagent.com/happier free. Dr. Gabor Mate, welcome back to the show.
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Pleasure, thank you.
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I really appreciate you taking the time okay, let me set an overall frame on this discussion. You have written a lot about how the stuff that happens to us in our childhood, I. E. Childhood trauma can be the source of both our addictive tendencies and our scattered minds in its most extreme form, adhd. I want to both explore this argument and then also get into what we can do about it. So how does that sound as an overall framework here?
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Sounds very necessary is what it sounds like.
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Well, I would agree with you there. Before we get into the sort of what we can do about it, I want to ask some clarifying questions. When you argue that childhood trauma is at the root of addiction and adhd, does that argument scale to the less extreme cases? So instead of full blown addiction, would what happened to me in my childhood explain my tendency to overeat or scroll or binge on Netflix? And similarly with adhd, would your argument about childhood trauma also scale to the fact that we generally have scattered minds even if we don't have a diagnosis?
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Well, so first of all, in my book on adhd, which is the first book that I wrote after I was diagnosed with it myself, I don't even use the word trauma, although I'm accused of saying that trauma is the cause of ADHD. If you read the book, 105,000 words, trauma is mentioned four times and never is the cause. So it's a bit more sophisticated than that. And when it comes to addiction, and you talk about range of addiction, a whole spectrum of it, from a full blown heroin addict to somebody who scrolls the Instagram all the time. And there's a continuum. So human beings are on a spectrum on a continuum. And the whole idea that there's sort of one normal and then there's deviations from the normal is totally false. My most recent book is called the Myth of Normal. So when it comes to addiction, let me begin by giving you a definition, first of all, which I think will help to cover your question. And by the way, as a medical doctor, I worked in North America's most dire and concentrated and desperate area of drug use, which is the downtown east side of Vancouver, British Columbia. We're in a Few square block radius, we have thousands of people ingesting, inhaling, injecting drugs of all kinds and dying and falling sick as a result. And I worked there for 12 years at the same time, when I worked there with these really desperately ill and driven human beings, I could recognize in myself very similar addictive drives. Not to the same extent. So it's a continuum. That's the first point. The second point is I'll give you a definition of an addiction. I don't think it's controversial. So an addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief and pleasure and therefore craves, but then experiences negative consequences as a result of and doesn't give it up despite the harm. So craving pleasure, relief in the short term, that's the first dynamic. The second one is harm. And the third is inability to give it up despite the harm. Now notice that my definition said nothing about drugs. It certainly includes drugs. Could be legal drugs like nicotine or caffeine, Alcohol could also be illegal substances like heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and so on. But could also be Internet scrolling, work, shopping, eating, bulimia, self cutting, extreme sports, pornography, gaming. So the issue is not simply the behavior but one's relationship to it. So for example, you could eat in a non addictive way, or you could be addicted to eating, depending on how you're using it. So as to your question, what I'm saying is it's a whole spectrum. But what the whole spectrum of addiction shares is behaviors that cause temporary relief, cause harm and we don't give it up. And what I'm saying is there's a universal addiction process in the brain and in the psyche that all people addicted share. Doesn't matter what the target of the addiction is. If that makes sense to you. Allow me to ask you a question, if I may. Yes, of course, according to that definition, I'm not going to ask what, but have you ever had an addictive pattern in your life? Because if you ask me, yes, I have. How about you?
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Many of them? Yes.
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Okay, so let me ask you this. Not what's wrong with the addiction, which is obvious, what's right about it, what does it give you in the short term that you want?
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You made a nod at this in your last answer, which is it gives me temporary relief from some sort of afflictive emotion.
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Okay, so it gives you leave for some kind of pain. Yes, that's my whole point. Addictions are not a choice that people are making and it's not a disease that they've inherited it's an attempt to solve the problem of human suffering. And what happens is that the suffering comes first, then the addiction comes along to transcend the suffering. Hence my mantra. Don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And if you want to ask why the pain, yes, that goes back to childhood experiences. Now, childhood experiences can be of different intensity, and people can experience them differently depending on how sensitive they are. So the more sensitive you are, the more things will hurt you. But in the downtown Eastside where I worked for 12 years, I never had a single female patient who had not been sexually abused as a child. And if you look at the large scale studies on substance addicts, that's what it shows, that severe childhood experiences potentiate addictions later on in life. It's not even vaguely controversial, but children can be hurt not just by terrible things happening to them, but also by their needs not being met. And so there's a whole range of experiences that can wound a child, that can lead later, lead somebody to seek relief from the pain. And that's all addictions are. It's an attempt to seek relief from the pain. I've said a mouthful, but that's how I see it.
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No, it's fascinating. And this is a podcast. Mouthfuls are encouraged. So your argument that addiction is a spectrum and at the root of all
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of it is some degree of pain incurred in childhood? Yeah.
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Is that also true for ADHD in the sense that while I personally don't have an ADHD diagnosis, I am definitely prone to being distractible? And so would you say the same thing is true, that there's a range, a continuum of attentional faculties and attentional faculty challenges, and that the same thing is true, that it also. Those challenges have their root in childhood?
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Yes. So I have an ADHD diagnosis. I was diagnosed in my early 50s. That's when I wrote my first book, Scattered Minds, which I wrote it 26 years ago, but even a few months ago, it was a New York Times bestseller. ADHD is another one of these conditions which medical ideology says is an inherited disease. No, it isn't. It runs in families. A couple of my kids were diagnosed. But things can run in families without genetic transmission. So here's what I'm saying. If you take the hallmark of adhd, which is tuning out absentmindedness, it's not a disease. It's actually a coping mechanism. If I were to stress you right now, and you'd have the options of leaving, just hanging up on me or fighting back and saying, no, you can't talk to me that way. But if I were to create stress for you and you couldn't escape and you couldn't change the situation, one way that your brain will deal with it would be to tune out, to dissociate, to protect yourself from the stress. What I'm saying is when genetically highly sensitive infants are living in a highly stressed environment, which is not a question of necessarily the parents being abusive or bad or unloving, but just the parents are stressed themselves, which increasingly is the case in this culture. These kids are stressed and how they cope with it, it's by tuning out. It's a coping mechanism. And when does that happen? When the brain is developing. And so if you look at the brain science or brain development, I could quote you an article from Harvard University. And this is an article published in 2012 from the Harvard center on the Developing Child, which is the world's leading child developmental institution. The article appeared in a major medical journal of pediatrics, which is the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. If I may read you two sentences from this article which summed up decades of brain research, which unfortunately is not taught in the medical schools. So the average doctor has got no clue how the brain actually develops, which is astonishing. Here's what they say. The architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth, continues into adulthood, and establishes either a sturdy or a fragile foundation for all the health, learning, and behavior that follows. So that the architecture of the brain is constructed by a process that begins before birth, which means that already the emotional stresses of the mother when she's pregnant is affecting the brain development of the child. And in my most recent book, the Myth of Normal, there's a chapter on that about how stresses on women in this society, which there's plenty, affect the brain development of infants already in the womb. There's oodles of scientific evidence for that. That's the first sentence. The second sentence is the interactions of genes and experiences literally shapes the circuitry of the developing brain and is critically influenced by the mutual responsiveness of adult child relationships, particularly in the early childhood years. And what they're saying there is that the actual circuitry of the brain is shaped by the environment acting on the genes, how the genes are turned on and off by the environment. And the most important aspect of that environment is the call to the emotional relationship between the child and the nurturing adults. Now, if you have a society like ours which puts so much stress on parents for economic and political and racialized reasons, for reasons of unresolved trauma for reasons of increased isolation, less social support, less community, less cohesion. A lot of parents are really stressed. And these kids who are generically very sensitive, they pick up on the stresses of their parents and that affects how their brain develops, which goes back to addiction as well. So that essential brain circuits that are involved in addiction and or in ADHD have been affected by stresses or in some cases, traumas in early childhood years. It's pure brain science. That's all it is.
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Let me say a few things to the listener, Dr. Mate. Dear listener, you may have heard Dr. Mate refer to the Myth of Normal, his most recent book. I will drop a link in the show notes not only to the Amazon link, if you want to check out that book, but also to the last time Dr. Mate was on the show when we talked about that book in an extensive way. Second thing I want to say to the listener is I'm going to get to Dr. Mate's practical advice soon, but let's just take a minute to talk about this assertion about ADHD and difficulty in childhood. Whether you call it trauma or whatever
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you want to call it, let's call it stress.
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Okay, Stress, sure. You've tangled with lots of folks over this claim, so I want to just note that, but also to ask you, you know, I believe there are some twin and adoption studies where twins one twin stays with one family and the other twin stays with another family. And some of these studies show or seem to indicate that actually there may be a genetic influence here for adhd.
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Yes. And in both my book on adhd, scattered Minds, and in my book on addiction, in the Realm of Hungry Rose, I show how useless those studies are. And I'll tell you why they make an assumption. The assumption is that first of all, identical twin studies are the gold standard because they're the same genes. Right. So if they have the same genes, they should have the same condition, theoretically. Well, the twin studies show that if you take identical twins, separate it at birth, and you bring them in different environments, the concordance, which means the ratio by which if one is diagnosed, so will the other, is about 70%. So if one kid, identical twin, has ADHD, but they're brought up in a different family from the other twins, the other twin will have a 70% chance of having ADHD. Now, what does that tell you? It tells you it can't be genetic because if it was, it should be 100% they have the same genes. So it's that 30% difference that we should be interested in. Number one. Number two, there's a false assumption. The assumption is that these kids were brought up in different environment. But what did I just read you. I just read you an article from Harvard University that says that the brain starts to developing in the womb. So these kids shed nine months in the same womb. And by definition, any woman that's going to give up a baby for adoption is a stressed woman. If she wasn't stressed, a single mom, a poor mom, an abused mom, an addicted mom, a traumatized moment, an unsupported teenage mom, she wouldn't have to give up the baby for adoption. So for nine months, both those twins have the hormones of stress, cortisol and adrenaline affecting their brain development. So share the same environment. They both had the shock of being separated from the biological mother, which is a huge shock to the baby. So to say that they didn't have the same environment is utter scientific nonsense. And there's a whole book been written called the Fallacies of Twin Studies. So those twin studies are simply false flags when it comes to generating information about genetic causation, number one. And number two, even if it was true that there was a 70% inheritance, we can't do anything about people's genes. How about that 30% that isn't genetic? That's what we could work with is the environment.
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Okay, one other question on this score. If ADHD is based in childhood stress, what do we make of the fact that stimulant medications appear to reliably improve symptoms? And those medications aren't going right at the stress, as I understand it.
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Well, now wait a minute. Remember I talk about brain development. No child is born with attention. Every mother one day old. They have no attention span whatsoever. It has to develop. Another feature of ADHD is poor impulse regulation. Believe me, I know that one. My wife could tell you, no child is born with impulse regulation. It has to develop the circuits of motivation and curiosity and seeking. They have to develop. And the chemical that they run on is dopamine. And those dopamine have to develop. As soon as you talk about development, we have to talk about which circumstances will support healthy development and what will not. So yes, the ADHD brain has got poor attention skills, poor impulse regulation and difficult deconcentration. That's biological. But here's the whole point that people miss. I just read you two sentences from Harvard University on brain development. The biology of the brain is shaped by the environment acting on the genes. So it's not surprising environments are stressed or in some cases, traumatic. The brain doesn't develop properly biologically. Same thing happens in addicted people. You bring along a chemical that helps to regulate the biology, you're going to get good results. But the original cause of the biology going awry was the stress or trauma during that period of brain development. If you had a plant in your garden that wasn't growing properly, your first idea wouldn't be that there's something genetically wrong. You'd be asking yourself what conditions are lacking irrigation, sunlight and so on. So that's what we have to look at is what conditions do we need to support healthy biological brain development. So I've taken stimulant medication. They helped me write my first book. When I wrote my last book, I didn't need it anymore. My brain had developed differently. That's the whole point. How do we promote healthy brain development? So that something is biological doesn't mean that it's genetic.
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Coming up, Gabor Mate talks about some practical strategies for dealing with your addictive tendencies and your scattered mind, the practice of compassionate curiosity, and a five step mental framework for breaking unhealthy habits. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Financial stress can affect us more than we know as many of you know, I went through a very stressful separation from my co founders at a meditation app that I'm no longer associated with. Anyway, that whole process was incredibly stressful for me, especially the financial parts of it. And if this is true for me as somebody who's honestly extremely privileged, it's got to be true for so many people. In fact, 88% of Americans reported feeling some form of financial stress at the start of this year. Money worries often bring anxiety, sleep disruption, even depression, and they're one of the leading sources of of conflict for couples. If this is an issue for you, therapy can really help. I know that as I was going through my period of protracted financial anxiety, talking to my therapist was a lifesaver. Therapy can help you unpack your relationship with money, which is crucial to understand and to build healthier coping strategies. Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US they do the initial matching work so you can focus on the therapy goals that you have. They give you a short questionnaire that helps you identify your needs and preferences and they've got more than 12 years of experience and an industry leading match fulfillment rate, which means they typically get it right the first time. And if you're not happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can Help sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com happier that's betterhelp.com happier. This time of year always makes me rethink what's in my closet. Trying to keep fewer things but better ones. Pieces that are well made and easy to wear all the time. That's why I keep coming back to quints. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, the pricing actually makes sense. Quint makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen. And they're insanely soft flow knit activewear fabric. Their men's linen pants and shirts are lightweight, breathable and comfortable. Basically the perfect layer for spring. The pants strike the right balance between laid back and refined so you look put together without trying too hard. I've got one pair of pants from Quint's that I wear just like all the time. These are my go to pants. Black pants. I guess you would call them khakis or chinos. I. I don't know. But they look really good. Or at least I think they look really good on me. I don't know how do I know? But I think they look really good and they're really, really comfortable. I've got a bunch of stuff from Quint. Socks, underwear, T shirts. And the best part is that their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands. How Quint works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Everything is designed to last and make getting dressed easy. Refresh your wardrobe with quints. Go to quince.com happier for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com happier for free shipping and 365 day returns.quints.com happier let's talk about some of your practical advice for dealing with both our addictive tendencies and our scattered minds. My understanding, and I believe this applies both to our addictive tendencies and our scattered minds. My understanding is one of your top line recommendations is something you call compassionate curiosity. Can you describe what that is? Compassionate curiosity? Sure.
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People both with ADHD by the way, and with addiction. And there's a huge link between two of them because very often people's addictions are actually inept attempts to deal with their adhd. Like people that are addicted to stimulants like cocaine and crystal meth or nicotine and caffeine. They're trying to elevate the levels of dopamine in their brain, which is exactly what you get from Ritalin or dexterine. So a lot of addictions are self medications. In one study, 40% of male adult alcoholics met the criteria for ADHD. Why? Because alcohol soothes the hyperactive brain. There's a huge link between addictions and adhd. So both conditions carry a lot of shame, a lot of self blame that's a result of childhood stress or trauma. But people are very hard on themselves. And I've seen this in my work with hundreds of people with ADHD or with addictions. And you know, I shared it myself and they tend to be a self accusation. Why am I doing this? What's wrong with me? Well, if I was talking to you and if I said to you, why are you doing this? What would your emotional response be?
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Fight or flight?
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Exactly. Defensive. What if I said to you, hey, Dan, I'm curious, I wonder why you're doing this. Can we talk about it? What would your response then be?
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Approach state, like openness.
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Yeah, that's the whole point. So if we can have that, develop this compassionate curiosity toward ourselves. My colleague and friend Bruce Perry wrote a book with Oprah called what happened to you? Not what's wrong with you? But you know, what happened to you. So if we can start compassionately asking ourselves, well, how did I become this way? Somebody wrote me an email the other day, they had add. They said I was a hellish child. Nobody is a hellish child. But that means she took on a negative view of herself that her parents had of her who didn't understand her. Nobody's a hellish child. Nobody's a bad child, Nobody's a rotten apple, Nobody's damaged woods. So if we can ask why? What happened? With a sense of curiosity. There's a spiritual teacher who said that only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to face the truth. So we want people is to help them explore what is the truth of their lives. And for that you need compassion. And so I teach self compassion as an essential step towards self awareness. And once you start asking questions compassionately for yourself and for everybody else, then the answer starts coming.
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So take me into a moment where we can think about how to apply this for ourselves. So I've just reached the bottom of a pint of ice cream or I've just finished 90 minutes of scrolling on TikTok when I had a deadline and I'm tempted to go into a shame spiral. If I can channel Gabor Mate, what would be a healthier move?
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Well, four weeks ago or three weeks ago, Gabor Mate deleted Instagram from his cell phone because he was spending too much time scrolling on it. But true, I did that.
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Wait, I have to jump in. I never interrupt my guest, but I just want to tell you, I did the same thing three weeks ago myself. I deleted Instagram.
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Comrades in arms then. So here's the first question. Ask yourself not what's wrong with the addiction, what's right about it? In other words, from this nine minute of scrolling or from this pint of ice cream, what did I get? And the answer is going to be, I got relief. I got relief from some emotional tension, from some emotional pain or some stress. And I'll say, good for you, good for you that you're seeking relief from your stress. Can we find some other ways of doing so without harming yourself? Are you interested in that? So that's the next question. And also, are you interested in exploring where that stress came from? Now, here's the thing about stress. It's a part of life. There's no life without stress. There's no life without pain. That's non negotiable. We're all going to have grief. We're all going to have losses, we're all going to have setbacks, we're going to have failures, we're going to have people not treating us well. Disappointments. That's just a part of being a human being. Ideally, as we develop properly, we learn how to handle those stresses, those setbacks, those disappointments. What happened that I didn't learn how to do that? So that again, calls for compassionate curiosity. And then what support can I get? What conditions in my life can I create where I can relieve my stresses in ways that are not harmful to me? So that's the nutshell response.
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B
So those questions that you just laid out, including what did I get from this pound of ice cream? That seems like a really great reframing in the moment. Are there further steps that I should pursue? Because I'm not quite sure that fully pulls me out of the shame just by reframing it.
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A
Well, it doesn't fully, perhaps. But the next question is, how is it that I'm not able to handle stress differently? Well, what happened to me? So that calls for an inquiry, because stress regulation, which is one of the circuits that's impaired in addiction, is a developmental attribute. No infant knows how to regulate their stresses. You know, infants regulate their stresses. They cry and they're picked up, and their parents regulate their stresses. That's why infants regulate stress. So as Dan Siegel, the psychiatrist, said, infants use the mature circuits of the adult brain to Regulate their own immature circuits. That's assuming that the pants have mature circuits. So nobody's born with stress regulation. Given the right environment, stress regulation, and the circuits of stress regulation, and I'm pointing to them right here, will develop properly. So you can ask, well, what happened to me that my stress regulation circuitry did not develop appropriately? It's not my fault. I'm not here to blame anybody, but what happened to me then? The next question is, actually, you know, what I would say to somebody with the ice cream example. Asking these questions may not stop you next time, but the next time you're stressed and you want to eat ice cream, do it or do it consciously. Say to yourself, I'm stressed right now. I don't know how to alleviate my stress. That's not a skill or a brain circuit that I've developed yet. So I'm going to use the ice cream now, but I'm going to use it very consciously. I'm gonna enjoy each bite of that ice cream, and I'm gonna be conscious. I'm eating ice cream right now to regulate myself. That's called harm reduction. Believe me, if you do that a few times, your tendency to go to ice cream will diminish. And then, you know, you might need to join a group or go to a therapist or engage in some kind of practice to help you regulate yourself. And there's plenty of those. But the point is to do so consciously and compassionate.
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B
When you talk about eating ice cream consciously, I believe you've written about the power in this regard of mindfulness and bare attention.
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A
Yeah, that's right.
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B
Yeah. Say a little bit more about that if you're up for it.
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A
Bare attention is our capacity to be aware of something without any judgment or without any agenda. Just be aware. The reason it's important to develop that capacity is that when you ask yourself, well, what part of me, or who in me can pay bare attention without reaction, without judgment, without agenda? That's your truest, deepest self. If you can observe yourself and your impulses. For example, you might say, I need to eat ice cream right now. Actually, you don't need to eat right now. All you need to do is breathe. You can live without water for a while. You can live without food. You can't live without breath. The only thing you ever need is breath. So it's not true that you need to eat ice cream, but bare attention will tell you, I have this belief that I have to eat ice cream right now. That's already very different. Now you've separated yourself from that impulse. So I recommend exercises to strengthen our capacity for bare attention.
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B
I assume those would include meditation.
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A
Yeah, well, as I said in one of my books, I say this, that I have a very profound relationship with meditation. I think about it every day with my ADD brain. Meditation is like a goon show, you know, if I can sit there for 20 minutes and 30 seconds, I'm actually conscious, I'm doing well. So I do recommend meditation. I also acknowledge that for me and lots of people like me, it's a heck of a job. The Buddhas talk about, or the Hindus ancient talk about the monkey mind. Well, it's a spectrum. Everybody's got a monkey mind. And in this culture, that monkey mind is encouraged by the social media and so many other influences. The ADHD mind is an extreme example of the monkey mind. It's a spectrum. ADHD is like on one end of the spectrum of the monkey mind. And so meditation for me is a real challenge.
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B
I have a lot of sympathy for that. For people like you who either really struggle with meditation or just don't feel like meditating, how can we develop bear attention or mindfulness in other ways?
- [37:37]
A
First of all, feeling like or not feeling like doesn't get you through life very well. If you like getting up in the morning, some mornings you don't, but you're gonna do it because you have to. It's necessary. Do you feel like brushing your teeth? I never feel like brushing my teeth, but I happen to know the consequences of not doing so. So I do it twice a day, you know, flossing my teeth. Who feels like flossing their teeth? You know, so I'm not sure that feeling like it is a way to approach this. Meditation can be approached the same way. Just as teeth brushing is dental hygiene, meditation is mental hygiene. So if we can go to dental hygiene, we can go to mental hygiene as well. So feeling like it doesn't quite cover it. But are there other ways? Yeah, there are other ways. Conscious movement, conscious walking, connecting with nature. There's tremendous unity of oneness, serenity and coherence in nature that can help to create coherence and settling in your own mind. Breath practices which don't take the sitting stillness of meditation, active yoga, not just the physical movements of it, but consciously doing the movements that can make a big difference as well. I'll tell you, for me, swimming is essential. I swim almost every day. And when you're swimming, you're taking deep breaths and you're calming the nervous system. You don't want to talk to me if I haven't swim for two days. So there's all kinds of ways music, not every kind of music, some kind of music is very agitating and sometimes you might want that. But there's also music that can soothe and concentrate and calm. So there's lots of practices.
- [39:25]
B
You have some quite practical strategies for dealing with. I don't know what you might want to call them. Maladaptive habits, difficult urges. You describe them as the four steps plus one. Can you walk us through what those are?
- [39:38]
A
Sure. So these steps, actually I with permission adapted them from the work of psychiatrist at UCLA called Jeffrey Schwartz. And Schwartz wrote a book on ocd, obsessive compulsive disorder, which is similar to addictions in some ways in that you engage in behaviors that are harmful and you can't stop yourself. The difference is the person with OCD does not crave these behaviors, whereas the addictive one does. But you know, a lot of the features are similar. And So I asked Dr. Schwartz, is it okay if I adapt your four steps to dealing with behavior addictions, or more broadly to any self deprecating thought or habit? And he said yes. So here they are with gratitude to Dr. Schwartz. He had four steps. I added a fifth one in step one, it's called relabel. So I already actually referred to that. I talked about this thought, I need to have ice cream. The real label is I don't need to have ice cream right now. I have a thought that I need ice cream right now. So that way it's no longer a reality that I need to. It's just a thought. You create some separation between yourself and the impulse. That's called relabel. Or take a thought like I'm worthless. A lot of people have those thoughts. When you do this exercise, it's not that I'm worthless, it's that I have a thought that I'm worthless. I have a belief that's already a big step forward. So that's called relabel. The second step is called reattribute. In this step, you put the blame exactly where it belongs, which is on your brain. So when you reattribute, you say this thought that I'm worthless, or this thought that I need to have a night scream right now is just my brain sending me a false message. That's all it is, because it's not true. But your brain is programmed with it, programmed with it a long time ago. So just your brain sending you an old message, that's the reattribute. And this is an exercise that people can do once a week or once a day in writing. And if they do that regularly, it makes a big difference to them. That's the second step is re attribute. The third step is refocus. And then refocus step. You just buy yourself some time. So I have this thought that I need to have ice cream right now. This thought is my brain sending me an old message for five minutes. I'm not going to do it for five minutes. I'm going to go for a walk, put on some music, arrange some flowers, make a cup of coffee. But I'm not going to put the attention on the impulse after that. If you want to go and have the ice cream, go have it. It's the same thing. This thought that I'm worthless. It's not true that I'm worthless. It's my brain sending me an old message. Think of all the times that you've been kind, that you've been present, that you've been helpful, where life has meant something to you. Write that down as an antidote to the worthlessness. The fourth step, it's called revalue. But it could also be called re evaluate. In fact, you could call it devalue. Because what has been the actual value of this compulsion of mine to eat ice cream when I'm stressed? The value has been it's put fat on my belly, it's given me diabetes, or it's made me feel ashamed. That's the actual value of it. Write down this thought that I interval ice cream. Here's what it's done to my life. Or this thought that I'm worthless. What's been its actual value made me feel ashamed. I studied it from people, interfered with relationships. Stop me from expressing my truth, stop me from developing myself. That's its actual value. When you're doing these steps, Dr. Schwartz says anticipate and accept. Anticipate that these beliefs or these patterns will come back. Why will they come back? Because you're a human being. So anticipate that they will and accept that that'll happen. But you can keep working on improving your impartial observer, your bare awareness. I added the fifth step, which is called recreate. I just read that to you. Life up till now has created you. You've been acting out of ingrained mechanisms wired into your brain long before you had any choice in the matter. And it's out of those automatic mechanisms and long ago programmed beliefs that you created the life you have now. It's time to recreate to choose a different life. So what kind of life would you like? So write down what kind of life would you create if you could create a life of meaning? A life of connection, a life of purpose, a life of truth, a life of authenticity, life of creativity. Write it down. That doesn't mean you're going to create it immediately, but here you're moving into the position of being a creator of your life rather than just being the effect of the past. So those are the five steps coming up.
- [45:08]
B
Godborg talks about placing blame versus taking responsibility, re parenting practices for your nervous system, and much more. I have a great marriage, but one of the sources of tension in our marriage recently is that we're both competing over my favorite socks from Bombas. Sometimes I see Bianca wearing my Bombas and I get a little annoyed because those are my socks. I earned them by being the host of this show. I'm specifically referring to Bombas sports socks which are super comfortable, very fashionable and designed with sports specific tech for running, cycling, yoga, hiking, you name it. But they make more than just socks, they also make underwear and T shirts, base layers, breathable, flexible, really soft. A full on upgrade from your usual basics. And for every item you purchase, an essential clothing item is donated to somebody facing housing insecurity. One purchased one donated with over 150 million donations and counting. Head on over to bombas.com happier and use the code happier for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com happier with the code happier at checkout. You ever get that dip of energy in the mid afternoon and it just feels like you're just trying to cut through soupy fog in order to get your brain to work. I don't know about you, but I deal with this all the time. Which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Spark. This is a product that gives you energy and mental sharpness without trade offs. Spark Energy plus Focus is your go to pre workout ritual when you need reliable energy to power through a lift, run, ride or class. You can mix it, sip it and get dialed in ready to go. It has 0 grams of sugar and essential vitamins and amino acids for mental focus. I have to be candid and say that I can't use Spark personally because I can't have any caffeine. But one of the most effective and awesome members of my team in my company, my little company Taylor uses Spark and says it is awesome. Get steady controlled pre workout energy with 0 grams of sugar 120 milligrams of caffeine for alertness and concentration, delivering sustained energy. Amino acids and taurine help balance the caffeine without jitters or crashes. Also bold, great tasting flavors you will look forward to drinking. Spark Energy plus Focus is offering 30% off and free shipping. Go to drinkspark.com and use the code HAPPIER at checkout. That's happierdrinkspark.com. So these five steps, just to restate them. Relabel, reattribute, refocus, revalue, recreate. You'll tell me if you think I'm correct about this. They sound to me like a recipe for. For agency over automaticity.
- [48:03]
A
That's the whole point. Thank you for seeing that. And we talk about the A's of healing, and the first one is agency. We all want agency in our lives, and agency means rather being at the effect. Like so much of my behavior, if I look at my past has been the effect of previous events. I didn't have as much agency as I thought I did. And so it's all about gaining agency. And this is an exercise that you can do that'll help you regain or at least gain or develop a sense of agency.
- [48:36]
B
I'd love to hear a little bit more from you about how to actually bring these five steps to bear in the moments we need them. Do you think the smartest use case is to get them into your molecules by turning it into a writing exercise so that when your zombie arm is reaching into the fridge or reaching for your phone, you're kind of trained to be able to handle that urge in a different way?
- [48:59]
A
Yes. Let me ask you a question. Do you play any sports at all?
- [49:03]
B
When I was a kid, I played sports.
- [49:05]
A
Okay, so let's say somebody plays pickleball or somebody plays tennis. When is the time to practice? When you're in the middle of the game or before the game?
- [49:16]
B
Yes.
- [49:17]
A
You better not start practicing. If you're going to play Alcaraz or Djokovic or Nadal or Federer on a tennis court, you better not start practicing when you step on the court. You better practice before. So this is a written exercise to be practiced daily or weekly or as often as you're up to it, so that when you're against the moment, you have something with you. So yes, it's a practice that makes
- [49:42]
B
a ton of sense to me. It is really all based in the word we used at the jumping off point for this practical part of our conversation, which is compassion. It is just this is kind of a warm relationship to yourself that helps you behave in healthier ways.
- [50:00]
A
Yes. The American psychotherapist Carl Rogers called it unconditional positive regard, which means that you accept somebody with all their flaws, however they are what you accept them. And that's what parents need to give their kids. And so when it comes to adhd, for example, rather than trying to control the behaviors of the child or simply to medicate the behaviors of the child as if it was a disease, not that I'm against medications, but what environment can we create in which healthy development can unfold in the family, in the schools, in all the institutions that kids are cared for? And so that compassionate approach to what are the needs of me as an adult or what are the needs of my child? How do I understand the internal dynamics that drive me or that drive my child? How can I create conditions that'll promote healthy development? Those are the essential questions, whether you're dealing with ADHD or addiction or anything else. And that's what my books address as best they can.
- [51:04]
B
Let's talk about parents for a moment. I'm going to ask this question from two angles. One, I as a parent, and I'm sure many other parents, can hear this argument about ADHD and addiction really having its roots in childhood stress and feel like a little defensive. Are you saying, you know, if my kid has X or Y problem, it's because I was a bad parent? That's one aspect I know you're not, but I'll let you explain that in a moment.
- [51:28]
A
Yeah.
- [51:28]
B
Then the second part of the question is I can imagine if I am, and I think this describes everybody. If I have any addiction tendencies or any attentional challenges, I might just blame my parents and not take any responsibility. So can you address both of these canards?
- [51:45]
A
Sure. I'm telling. In each of my books, I explain how it's unscientific, inappropriate, and cruel to blame parents. Look, I was a parent. I passed on some of my traumas to my kids. I never woke up one morning and said, I'm going to screw up my kids. I just couldn't help it. That's who I was. Given what I knew at the time, no parent that I know wakes up and says, I'm going to screw up my child. So there's no blame whatsoever. It's in the nature of stress and trauma that is multi generational. Georgetown University psychiatrist Marie Bowen and Michael Carr called the multi generational emotional family process. And that didn't begin with anybody in particular. So, yes, it's true. Had I been more conscious, more aware, more present, more healed, I Would have been a parent who would have done things differently. But there's no blame there. There's just an understanding of what happened. So forget this idea of blame and forget this idea of guilt. Nobody's guilty and nobody's to be blamed. It's a question of understanding what happened. Let's say you come to me with a 5 year old with ADHD. Which would you rather hear? That your kid's got this genetic disease, there's nothing we can do about it except control his behaviors and maybe medicate him. That'll temporarily help, but in the long term they won't help. That's what the studies show. Or if I said to you, you know, Dan, your child is probably very hypersensitive genetically, which means they pick up a lot on the environment. And if we can create a family environment that's calmer, less stressed, more understanding, your child can develop in healthy ways, what would you rather hear? Which message could you actually work with? And so I don't blame parents, I don't blame myself. I'm just trying to show scientifically how stress, trauma, psychological traits can be passed on through the environment. And the more we can understand it and work with that environment, the more we can promote our healing. And the good news is there's something called neuroplasticity, which is the capacity of the brain to develop new circuits in response to new experiences. To give my personal example, when I wrote Scattered minds, my first book, I took medication. When I wrote my most recent book, the myth of Normal, much more complex, much longer, took much longer to write, much more research. I didn't need medication. My brain is different now because I've created some new conditions. Now, if you got a 5 year old or a 12 year old boy, you got lots of time to work with. So I'm saying to you, no blame but responsibility. Don't take on blame, but take the responsibility of working with the environment to promote healthier pathways.
- [54:41]
B
Okay, so let's talk about the flip side of the question. And it goes right to that word of responsibility. I can imagine some people listening to this conversation could weaponize it in ways that would not work to their benefit. In that they would just go into the mode of blaming their parents for whatever problems they have, as opposed to taking responsibility of themselves. It feels to me like both things can be true. Sometimes our parents screwed us up, but it's also true that this is our life and we have to take responsibility.
- [55:09]
A
Yeah. So here's the deal. My eldest son and I, Daniel, are writing a book Together now called hello again. A Fresh Start for parents and adult Children. It's only a fact that in a lot of families, kids have been hurt. In my family, my children have been hurt. That's just a fact. So a child might have anger about that. That anger is totally legitimate. I've said to my kids, I'm not worried you'll be angry with me. I'm worried you won't be angry enough. I want them to feel the anger. That's healthy. But there's a difference between blame and anger. Anger is a healthy, natural human emotion. Blame is a story that you did this and you did this deliberately and you could have done differently and you're a bad person. That's not true. So people have the right to their anger and in fact, if it's there, I encourage them to experience it because if they suffer down, they're going to get depressed or suffer some physical disease. But that's different from blaming. So if anybody weaponizes my words, they just don't understand what I'm saying. So taking responsibility means to be response able in the present, not to take on blame about the past. But how can I respond to the present needs of myself or my child or my spouse or whoever? How can I respond in a way that'll make a positive difference? That's what responsibility means and parents can acknowledge, yeah, you know what, Had I known better, had I been different, I would have done it differently. That's healthy remorse, but that's not blame. And unfortunately, we live in a society that's addicted to blame. So if there's something wrong, let's find somebody to blame. I don't like that. I don't agree with it. It makes no scientific sense. It makes no psychological sense.
- [57:04]
B
So I think in part what you're saying is it can be helpful for us to ask the question, what happened to us? You know what happened to you. But understanding your past does not absolve you from taking responsibility.
- [57:19]
A
No, it doesn't. If an adult child says, I'm this way because my parents did this to me and I can't be any different, then they're playing victim. I don't promote victimhood because victimhood says I'm helpless. Now, whatever your parents did, it's now your responsibility to do what you can to support yourself, you know, psychologically, emotionally, whatever. So that understanding what happened in the past does not absolve your responsibility unless you want to play the victim, which will keep you stuck. I don't recommend victimhood. So recognizing that, yes, I was hurt and those hurts or those. Either the mistakes or the omissions of my parents have had an impact on me. Recognizing that helps you understand yourself, but then saying it's their fault that I'm not any different and I can't be any different, then you're playing victim. The responsibility is now yours. Even if your parents acknowledged, which some parents do, and I hope many can, they wish they had done things differently. That wouldn't heal you. The responsibility of healing is still on you in the present moment.
- [58:34]
B
Before I let you go, I want to go back to ADHD and what you've learned yourself through painful experience. You know, we talked about the four steps plus one, but are there any other practical tools that you've picked up in learning how to manage your own ADHD that might be worth sharing with the audience?
- [58:52]
A
Well, I mean, I wrote a whole book on the subject, and a lot of it is to help people understand what happened to them and how the brain works and what parents can do in a home environment or schools can do in the school environment to create new conditions for healthy development of children. So that's a big part of what I wrote about. When it comes to adults, mostly what I talk about is reparenting, because your parents are not going to create the conditions for you anymore, but you can. So I do talk about that. I talk about the how to understand the ADHD relationship. If one of the partners is adhd, what do they have to understand? Or if you have adhd, what to understand about how your partner experiences you so you can take some responsibility for that. I talk about meditation. I talk about the various ways to look after yourself. I mean, look, there's no way around it. If you have adhd, you're likely to be addicted to junk food because it's very soothing, it calms the brain. It's designed to be addictive, by the way. Junk food is. You're gonna have to eat properly. You're very hypersensitive by nature. That's your genetics. You're gonna have to protect yourself from harm as best you can. I talked about nature. I talked about various practices, getting help, getting therapy, getting support. All these are ways of reparenting yourself, giving yourself conditions for health development. And, you know, I've been working at that for a long time.
- [60:21]
B
What you're saying reminds me of something, an expression that I've heard from Kristin Neff and Chris Germer, the two leading researchers, pioneers really in self compassion. Yet one of the questions that they recommend people ask themselves all the time is what do I need right now? And that strikes me as in the realm of reparenting.
- [60:41]
A
Exactly. I've talked with Christine and really valuable work. In fact, I had her teach my students one time not long ago.
- [60:49]
B
This has been phenomenal. I'm really, like I said at the beginning, very grateful to you for taking time. I know how busy you are. Will you when you release? Hello again. Would you and your son come back back on the show?
- [60:59]
A
I'd be more than delighted. Thank you. That should be next year sometime. Also I'll mention that on May 12th I'll be giving a free webinar on ADHD, a three hour webinar along with a colleague. And we're going to cover many of this in much more detail. So anybody who's interested, they can look at my Instagram for a notice about that or at my website. But it'll be a totally free online event on adhd.
- [61:23]
B
We'll drop a link to that in the show notes. We'll also drop links to your Instagram and your books and your prior appearance on this show. All things Gabor mate. In the meantime, I just want to say thank you again. Really appreciate it.
- [61:37]
A
Thanks for having me. I'm always grateful for an opportunity to speak about what matters to me. So thank you.
- [61:46]
B
Thank you again to Dr. Gabor mate. Love talking to him. Also, please don't forget to check out our new app 10 with Dan Harris. You can get it@danharris.com There's a free 14 day trial if you want to try before you buy. Finally, thank you so much to all the people who worked so incredibly hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.