Dr. Gabor Mate: Your Pain Is a Normal Response To An Abnormal World

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Self-Conscious with Chrissy Teigen
Episode: Dr. Gabor Mate: Your Pain Is a Normal Response To An Abnormal World
Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Chrissy Teigen
Guest: Dr. Gabor Maté

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth and vulnerable conversation between Chrissy Teigen and renowned author and physician Dr. Gabor Maté, centering on Dr. Maté’s influential ideas about trauma, addiction, and the often toxic expectations of modern society. They explore “the myth of normal,” the root causes of addiction, the nature of trauma, generational patterns, and how to move toward healing as individuals and families. Chrissy shares her personal experiences with addiction and childhood trauma, with Dr. Maté guiding her through moments of introspection and self-compassion.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The “Myth of Normal” (02:14–04:15)

• Main Idea:
  Dr. Maté explains that what societies consider “normal” is frequently neither healthy nor natural.
• Key Insights:
  • There's a clinical sense of "normal" (healthy, natural range) vs. a social sense (what we're accustomed to).
  • Practices like spanking children were once normalized, though never healthy.
  • Many who are labeled "abnormal" (addicts, mentally ill) are simply displaying very normal responses to abnormal, harmful circumstances.
  • “The myth of normal is when we confuse what we’re used to with what is healthy and natural.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (03:24)

2. Addiction as Adaptive, Not Defining (04:15–06:11)

• Main Idea:
  Addiction is a coping mechanism, not a person’s identity.
• Key Insights:
  • The term “addict” describes a pattern of behavior, not a human’s essence.
  • All addictions, from substances to behaviors, serve to numb pain or distress.
  • Choice of addiction is affected by both what one seeks to suppress and what’s accessible.
  • “Nobody is an addict. I have behaved in addictive ways. ...That’s not who we are.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (05:02)

3. Chrissy’s Personal Story & The Roots of Shame (06:17–10:17)

• Chrissy’s Vulnerability:
  • Recounts periods of cocaine and opioid use, differentiating public struggles (alcohol) from concealed ones (opioids).
  • Expresses the burden of becoming “the person that had everything” in public discourse (abuse, addiction, etc.).
• Dr. Maté’s Guidance:
  • Invites Chrissy to slow down and explore her present emotions (shame at hiding addiction).
  • Reveals that “the shame came before you even behaved in those ways”—rooted in earlier trauma, not later actions.
  • “There’s a double standard that you judge yourself harsher than you judge other people. ...That itself is a sign of trauma.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (09:07)

4. Compassion and Parenting Cycles (10:28–12:22)

• Key Concepts:
  • Difficulty offering oneself compassion often stems from not having received it as a child.
  • This is not the individual’s fault but a function of unmet childhood needs, a wound rather than a failing.
  • Chrissy reflects on the compassion she wishes to give her own children, realizing she cannot blame herself for what she didn’t receive.

5. Defining Trauma (12:42–14:02)

• Dr. Maté’s Definition:
  • Trauma is not the event but “the wound that hasn’t healed.”
  • Trauma is the internal impact—the persistent pain or the defenses one adopts.
  • Unhealed trauma lives in our triggers, defenses, and emotional patterns.
  • “Trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (12:47)

6. The Experience of Not Being Seen or Believed (14:13–16:36)

• Chrissy’s Story:
  • Shares about disclosing sexual abuse and feeling nothing changed, accentuating feelings of not being seen or validated.
• Dr. Maté’s Insight:
  • Links Chrissy’s present lack of self-belief and self-validation to this wound—reiterating that self-doubt is not failure but consequence.

7. Emotional Numbing and Survival Mechanisms (15:46–16:36)

• Key Points:
  • Emotional numbness is a self-protective adaptation against overwhelming pain.
  • It’s possible to re-access and feel those blocked emotions through therapy and support.
  • Chrissy expresses fears about not recalling memories accurately—Dr. Maté emphasizes that the absence of memory is often itself a sign of overwhelming pain.

8. Explicit vs. Implicit Memory and Behavioral Clues (18:36–22:17)

• Dr. Maté’s Explanation:
  • Not remembering childhood can mean “either nothing happened or too much happened.”
  • There are implicit (emotional) memories that guide feelings and behaviors even when events can’t be recalled.
  • Indicators like chronic bed-wetting or attention issues (shared by both Chrissy and Dr. Maté) often trace back to early environmental stress.

9. The Importance of Being Seen (24:36–26:24)

• Insight:
  • Parental love is not always equivalent to being truly seen and emotionally safe.
  • Chrissy shares her close bond with her mother, but acknowledges she “was loved, but [was] not seen.”
  • “Not being seen is traumatic.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (25:02)

10. Motherhood, Blame, & Generational Patterns (26:29–29:54)

• Discussion:
  • Explores why mothers play such a foundational emotional role, and why blame is unhelpful—the real focus should be understanding and breaking transgenerational cycles.
  • Mutual recognition: parents do their best, but unhealed wounds can persist.

11. Accepting That Children May Need to Talk About Us in Therapy (29:54–31:24)

• Dr. Maté’s Perspective:
  • It can be healthy for children to process their feelings—even anger—about parents.
  • Validates that parents often feel anxious about being discussed, but what's important is their children’s understanding and self-awareness.

12. Intergenerational Healing & Validation (31:10–32:06)

• Key Takeaway:
  • By working on oneself as a parent, one gives children a crucial gift.
  • Chrissy reflects that if her mother had shown self-awareness, it would have validated her as a child.
  • “You’re already giving your kids something that you never got.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (32:01)

13. Family Healing and Cultural Barriers (32:06–35:53)

• Barriers:
  • Chrissy raises the challenge of initiating difficult conversations in families unused to such openness—feeling responsibility for her mother’s healing, not just her own.
• Dr. Maté’s Response:
  • Emphasizes self-focus: “As long as you keep putting on the focus on your mother’s healing, you’re neglecting yourself.”
  • Introduces the term “codependent”—parent-child roles sometimes reversed under trauma.
  • Reassures Chrissy that true healing is always possible, and she’s far ahead in her journey.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• The Myth of Normal and Collective Wounds:
  • “People that we think are abnormal, actually very normal people responding to abnormal circumstances.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (03:50)
• Addiction as a Response to Pain:
  • “Addictions represent always a desperate attempt to escape from human pain, some kind of suffering.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (05:00)
• On Shame and Self-Compassion:
  • “Do you notice that you’re harder on yourself than you’re on somebody else?...that itself is a sign of trauma.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (09:00)
• On Not Remembering Childhood:
  • “If you don’t remember, there are two possibilities. Either nothing happened or too much happened.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (18:43)
• On Parenting and Generational Healing:
  • “You’re giving your kids something that you never got.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (32:01)
• On the Futility of Blame:
  • “Blame is just useless. ...Can we understand things without blaming?” — Dr. Gabor Maté (29:26)
• On Agency and Boundaries:
  • “Between the stimulus and the response, there’s a gap. And in that gap is our freedom to choose our response.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (Rollo May, quoted, 39:23)
• On Parental Codependence:
  • “The codependent...every time you try and talk about them, they start thinking about the other person.” — Dr. Gabor Maté (34:15)

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Toolkit: Dr. Gabor Maté’s Four (Five) A’s of Healing (36:47–44:05)

1. Authenticity

   • Being true to oneself; not sacrificing identity for acceptance
   • “The biggest trauma is that disconnection from ourselves in order to be acceptable to the world.”

2. Agency

   • The power to make choices in one’s own life, not just react automatically

3. Anger

   • Allowing healthy anger as a boundary-setting tool (“No, stop it, this far and no further”); suppression of anger can lead to depression and illness

4. Acceptance

   • Recognizing and being with reality as it is—not approving, but acknowledging the facts of one’s life

5. Awareness (added at the end)

   • Staying open to one’s own feelings, reactions, and truth; not self-consciousness, but self-awareness

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Defining the Myth of Normal: 02:14–04:15
• Addiction and Language: 04:15–06:11
• Chrissy’s Shame and Personal Story: 06:17–10:17
• Defining Trauma: 12:42–14:02
• Memory and Childhood Experiences: 18:36–22:17
• Being Seen vs. Unseen by Parents: 24:36–26:24
• Breaking Generational Patterns: 29:54–32:06
• Dr. Maté’s 5 A’s of Healing: 36:47–44:05

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Conclusion

This episode offers an honest, compassionate, and enlightening dialogue on trauma, addiction, self-judgment, and the path to authentic healing. Dr. Gabor Maté’s presence, empathy, and lived wisdom provide both comfort and challenge, while Chrissy Teigen’s vulnerability makes the exploration deeply relatable. The episode closes with practical tools for healing as Dr. Maté introduces his “four A’s”—authenticity, agency, anger, and acceptance (plus awareness)—leaving listeners with both insight and hope.

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Transcript

[A]

You're listening to Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, an Audible original podcast. Join me as we explore the cutting edge of health, wellness, and personal growth with the world's leading experts and thinkers. From inspiring stories to actionable insights, our conversations aim to help you lead a healthier, happier, and more productive life. Let's face it, the way we live is not normal. How could it be? The constant hustle, the pressure to succeed, the endless distractions, the quiet ways we cut off parts of ourselves just to get by. All of it, argues Dr. Gabor Mate, adds up to a culture that makes us sick. In his groundbreaking audiobook, the Myth of Normal, Dr. Gabor argues that the illnesses, addictions, and mental health struggles so many of us face aren't personal failures or genetic destiny. They're the natural response to living in a society that rewards disconnection, emotional suppression, and performance over authenticity. Trauma, in his view, is not only the result of catastrophic events, but also the quieter wounds of neglect, shame, and disconnection that live on in both body and mind. And when we repress emotions in order to survive, the body keeps score through autoimmune disease, inflammation, depression, anxiety, even cancer. In our conversation, Dr. Gabor explains how shame so often precedes the behaviors we later condemn in ourselves, why addiction is best understood as an attempt to soothe unbearable pain, and why healing requires more than medical treatment. It demands a return to authenticity, compassion, and community. Dr. Gabor Mate, welcome to Self Conscious. You were popping up on my timeline for so long, and I noticed that every time you said something, I would have a physical reaction to the words you were saying. Even now I'm shaky because I feel it on the visceral level. So thank you so much for being here today on Self Conscious.

[B]

It's very kind of you to say all this. I'm glad my work speaks to you.

[A]

For people that don't know your work, what do you mean by the myth of normal?

[B]

As a doctor, I'm trained to know that health is possible within a certain range of conditions. For example, there's a normal body temperature. If it's your temperature is within that range, you're okay. But if it's too high or too low, you're at risk. Or a normal range of blood pressure or a normal range of blood acidity. So what is normal is what is healthy and natural. But there's another way that we use the word normal where we anything that we used to, we call it normal. So there's a lot of things in this society that we think are normal that Are neither healthy or natural. For example, it used to be normal to spank kids. That was never healthy or natural, but it was the norm. So what I mean is that the myth of normal is when we confuse what we used to, what we're accustomed to, with what is healthy and natural. I'm saying there's a lot of practices in this society. The way we relate to each other, the way we think about ourselves, the way we understand human nature, the way we treat kids, the. That we think is normal but is actually neither healthy or natural. That's one meaning. The other meaning is we call people who are of the expected way to be, we call them abnormal. Oh, so that people who are sick, mentally ill, or addicted, we call them abnormal? I'm saying no. Their behaviors, their patterns are normal responses to abnormal circumstances. So if somebody's addicted, the abnormality is not in them. It's in the situation that the addiction arose in response to. So the myth of normal means A, that a lot of things that we think are normal are not healthy or natural. And secondly, people that we think are abnormal, actually very normal people responding to abnormal circumstances.

[A]

I see this going back and forth a lot on social media. Some people are okay calling themselves an addict, and some people really, really do not like that term at all. How do you feel about that term in general?

[B]

To say that somebody has got an addiction describes something about their lives and how they function, but it doesn't define who they are. So when somebody says so and so is an addict, they're describing how that person is functioning at that moment, but it doesn't reflect who they actually are. Nobody is an addict. So, for example, for me, addictions represent always a desperate attempt to escape from human pain, Some kind of suffering. So if we said about somebody that so and so is drinking a lot or using drugs as a way of escaping pain, which is true, that's accurate. But to say that they are an addict, that's not who they are. That doesn't define their essence. So I don't like the word addict as a summation of a human being. Nobody is an addict. I have behaved in addictive ways. You have been very public about the way you behave in addictive ways. But I'm not an addict and you're not an addict. That's not who we are.

[A]

I've always wondered this. Do you think people pick their poison based on what they're trying to suppress or what they feel? Or do you think that we pick what we pick based on what's accessible.

[B]

And what's around all addictions, whether they're to drugs. Substances like nicotine or caffeine or alcohol or crystal meth or heroin or fentanyl, whatever they are, they're all attempts to escape from pain, but in fact, they all have a kind of a numbing effect. It also depends on what's available. So I think it's a combination of both.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I mean, alcohol in this culture is not just available. It's also kind of glamorized.

[A]

I lived my 20s doing cocaine three nights a week.

[B]

You were doing the pottery of cocaine or the crack. What were you doing?

[A]

Just snorting coke. I had a boyfriend who was in the nightlife industry in Los Angeles. I was 19 or 20. And then after, I basically couldn't get ahold of cocaine easy enough. And also, it just became more taboo. Like, I just really stopped myself from going out as much. But then after cocaine, which for me, I kind of associate with times in my life that were super fun, and I wasn't the kind of person that would do it all day or, like, I would never describe myself as addicted because it was such a party drug. What made me know that I was an addict was not even the alcohol, which is probably what everybody thinks, because that's what I was so open about. I was really open about my alcohol use and my sobriety journey. That turned into like, oh, can I have a drink again? But what I ended up hiding for a solid year or so from. Sorry. From my family and friends and everybody was this really intense opioid addiction. Even talking about this, I talked to my husband and I talked to my team and stuff and was like, oh, God, is this just gonna be, like, another thing that I had? Cause, you know, the stories come out, and they're like, oh, Chrissy comes out about her alcoholism, and then that becomes a story. And then if I say that I was sexually abused, that becomes another story, and I didn't want to be the person that had everything.

[B]

Hold on a second. Can I slow you down a bit?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

First of all, if I may, can I ask you, what are you experiencing right now at this very moment?

[A]

Shame.

[B]

Okay. What are you ashamed of?

[A]

That I hid it from people. And at the time, I'm very open about it. Within my circle, everyone that knows me, I love them to death because everyone that they knew.

[B]

Hold on a sec. Yeah, let's just slow it down. What if I told you that at some point or another in my life, I had an addictive behavior, which I did, and I lied about it? I hid It. Which is true. Would you tell me that, Gabo, you should be ashamed of yourself?

[A]

No.

[B]

How come you wouldn't tell me that?

[A]

I wouldn't help anyone any of the things that I tell myself.

[B]

Do you notice that you're harder on yourself than you're on somebody else?

[A]

Of course. Yeah.

[B]

So there's a double standard that you judge yourself harsher than you judge other people. Is that right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But that itself is a sign of trauma. So that the shame that you have is not because you behaved in certain ways. The shame came before you even behaved in those ways. So when you tell me that you're sexually abused and you say that's just another story. If somebody else came to you and said I was sexually abused and that really hurt me, would you say to them that's just another story?

[A]

No. But I'm very hyper aware of what people say about me. And I just know that it's going to come across like I can connect with anything and everything because I have been there.

[B]

Yeah, but I'm getting that part. You're very sensitive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. That's your nature. There's nothing wrong with that. But the self judgment. That's what I'm talking about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm saying that there's a lack of compassion there for yourself. The idea of compassion for others that you're not offering to yourself.

[A]

But I've never received that kind of compassion from anybody really ever.

[B]

That's the whole point. Yeah. That's why you don't know how to give it to yourself. Now. Is that your fault?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Okay. You have children, right? You have four children. I think. I think you have four children. Is that right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. What do you want to give them in this life?

[A]

I want confidence.

[B]

What do you want to give them?

[A]

Oh, God.

[B]

Not what do you want them to have. What do you want to give them? Try a few things. How about acceptance?

[A]

Oh, absolutely. Yes.

[B]

Understanding?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Compassion?

[A]

Yes. Yes. Those are things I can give. Yes. I often think about it in the other way.

[B]

Validation. Yeah. All right. If you didn't give it to them, would you blame them for that?

[A]

No.

[B]

But you're blaming yourself for not having. Got it. I'm suggesting that you have difficulty giving compassion to yourself because at some point you were just that little kid that your children are that didn't get the validation, that did not get the acceptance, that did not get the compassion, that did not get the understanding. That's all you were.

[A]

There's.

[B]

So that's what happened. Because it'll Never be that you were not sexually abused. It happened. But if trauma is the wound that you sustained, the shame that you feel, that can heal. Right now.

[A]

Can you define trauma for us?

[B]

Sure. So trauma is very simple. It comes from a Greek word for wounding. Trauma is a wound. Obviously, we can be wounded physically or we can be wounded emotionally, psychologically. So trauma is a wound that hasn't healed. So that's the first point. Second point is, therefore, trauma is not what happened to you. Trauma is what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you. So I got a blow on the head. That's not the trauma. That's the traumatic event. The trauma is the concussion that I have. So the trauma is the consequence of what happened inside me. So trauma is an unhealed wound. And the thing with unhealed wounds is, first of all, every time somebody touches it, it really hurts. So we all have these trigger points, these sensitive points. They point to places that haven't healed pain that hasn't healed. Or we develop defenses against the trauma. So one defense against the pain I can develop is to do drugs. Another way that I can defend against the trauma of not being loved is I can be very nice and please people all the time so that they'll love me.

[A]

That's me.

[B]

It actually affects our brain development, our personal development, how we feel about ourselves, how we see the world.

[A]

I remember hearing you say it wasn't the trauma itself, it was what happened as a result of it. And I think in this certain conversation you had said it was like, were you believed when you talked about it? That is the wound for me is that I did end up opening up about it and nothing really happened. It wasn't a big deal to anybody.

[B]

Well, what do you mean? Who did you speak to?

[A]

I spoke to a school counselor and friends of the friend. And I think I ended up telling my dad, but not until 10 years later.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. Save a wound around not being seen and not being validated. Right. That's your wound.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But let me ask you this. All throughout our conversation, there's a kind of a theme where you don't believe yourself and you don't validate yourself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you notice that?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But what if you saw yourself and validate yourself? What if you didn't doubt yourself?

[A]

I don't know how to get there. It's like, so not within me. I can't imagine ever. Like, I receive that and I hear it, but it just isn't in me. I don't even know how I feel on A daily basis. I've talked about this before. I have a feelings app. I don't know how I feel. If my doctor is like, how does that make you feel? Or my therapist, how does that make you feel? Nothing. I feel nothing.

[B]

Okay? I used to be exactly the same way. Honest to God, I used to be exactly the same way. You could ask me what I thought about something. I could tell you super articulately what I thought. But if they said to you, what are you feeling? I say, what are you talking about? No, but here's what I can tell you from what I know now. That's just how you protected yourself. You were sexually abused. The feelings were so painful that the way you survived was not to feel. That's not who you are. That's just your self defense. And I'm also telling you with the proper therapy, you can break through that like that. So it doesn't have to stay like that.

[A]

Since I don't recall so much or I'm so scared of misremembering. I've done emdr and I've been to like, rehab centers, trauma centers. And sometimes I'm scared to talk because I don't know if it's the truth. Maybe I haven't come to terms with the fact that I should feel a certain way about those days and years, because I do know that right now I am am a good person because of it. I really enjoy how empathetic I am and how loving and how affectionate. And I love the way that I talk to my kids now. And I wouldn't be that way without having all that happen to me.

[B]

You don't know that that's true. Actually. What actually happens is kids that receive really good, loving parenting. Not just kids, let me tell you. Rats. Rat. Mothers who lick their babies in a loving way. Their babies grow up to be loving mothers.

[A]

Okay, I never thought about that before, honestly.

[B]

No, it's true. I know that you've learned a lot through your trauma and you're grateful for that learning. And trauma can be a great teacher. I don't recommend it, but it can be a wonderful teacher. Yeah, but it's not the only way to learn.

[A]

There are so many different little things that happened. I know you talk about trauma and capital T trauma and the lowercase T trauma. And I'm very good at blocking out a lot of my childhood and the year before and the year after something. A big part of why I don't offer myself a lot of compassion is because I don't remember those times. And sometimes I actually believe that maybe, like, my mind is rewriting history or something.

[B]

Okay, look, first of all, when people say that they don't remember their childhoods, there's two things I say to them. One is, if you don't remember, there are two possibilities. Either nothing happened or too much happened. Am I too much happening? It was too painful. So the only way the child survives is by blocking it out. So that not remembering is actually a defense mechanism. You understand that? Yeah, that's the first point. The second point is there's different memories. There's. You might not recall, but you remember the whole. In other words, recall is when you can consciously call back. I know you've read the Myth of Normal, and I talk about this in the first chapter, about how when you recall something, it's when you can call it back that you can recall what you had for breakfast. You can recall what you did in grade one on a certain day. That's recall memory. But that's only one small part of memory. There's also implicit memory, which is the emotional memory. In the first chapter, I talk about how when my wife doesn't pick me up at the airport and I feel totally rejected and enraged. Why? Because in my mind there's a memory of being abandoned as a child, which I was. So that even though I don't recall being abandoned because I was one year of age, but the emotional memory of abandonment is in my mind. I think a lot of things that you've gone through in life is actually a memory, even if there's no recall, because the emotion that arise has to do with the past and not with the present. Am I making that clear enough?

[A]

Absolutely, yes.

[B]

So it's not true that you don't remember you were sexually abused. And if you don't recall, it's only because it was too painful and the blocking it out was your brain's way of protecting you from the pain. That's all.

[A]

Sometimes it's easiest for me to associate my behaviors that I do remember with knowing that that era of childhood was not. Well, like, for instance, I wet the bed until I was 13. I swear.

[B]

Like I wet my bed till I was 13.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And? Well, actually, it has to do with the development of the nervous system. Like, all babies wet their beds in a certain point. They don't, because the nerves develop. But how the nervous system develops depends on the environment. So if you're growing a tree or a plant in your backyard, how that plant or that tree would develop would depend on what kind of conditions you gave it right. Irrigation, sunlight, nutrition. Same with the human nervous system. Your nervous system, when you were an infant or mine did not support you. There was stress, there was trauma. I don't know what was going on. So the wedding of the bed is both a sign of anxiety, as you suggest, but it's also a failure of the nervous system to develop because of the conditions were not supportive enough. Can I ask you something?

[A]

Yeah, of course.

[B]

I could be on the wrong track completely here, but did you have attention problems as a kid?

[A]

Attention?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, yeah, Absolutely.

[B]

Yeah. Did you have trouble focusing, paying attention?

[A]

Yeah. I got good grades, but my number one thing on my report card was always that I just could not focus. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And did the teachers ever say to you, if only you could focus and have more discipline, you could do so much more?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. So, look, you probably like me. I'm not making a diagnosis because I don't know you, but you probably qualify for the diagnosis of add. Attention Deficit Disorder, which means people tend to tune out a lot and they have difficulty focusing and they get bored easily and so on. ADD kids tend to wet their beds. That's the reason I bring it up, because the ADD and the wetting of the bed, they both have to do with stress in the early environment. And like you, I got good grades in school, but at least when I was in elementary school, I did in high school when my mother couldn't pressure me so much anymore, I didn't. I just coasted through because I had the brains, but I didn't do it very well.

[A]

Yeah, I always did well in things I was interested in, but if I had to work for it, it was. I didn't do so well.

[B]

Me, too. That's why I didn't go to medical school when I wanted to. I did later, but originally I didn't because I just don't want to work that hard. All I'm saying is the sense I'm getting with you is that you're one of these highly sensitive children, emotionally highly sensitive. So you picked up a lot on what was going on in your environment. One of these very intelligent kids. So you got through on smarts and you were living in a very stressed environment.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. It's so hard to describe because my mom doted on me. Like my mom. There's no doubt she loved me and loves me, and I was so special to her. We were best buddies, connected at the hip and.

[B]

Well, let me. Let me. Let me jump in again. Yeah, I don't question that. She Loved you. I don't question that. She doted on you. I don't question that. She did her best. But did she see you?

[A]

No.

[B]

That's the problem. You were sexually abused?

[A]

Mm, yeah.

[B]

How old were you?

[A]

Maybe 13, 14.

[B]

How long did it go on for?

[A]

It was a one off with my best friend's dad.

[B]

And how did you feel when it happened?

[A]

Horrific.

[B]

Who did you talk to about it?

[A]

Nobody.

[B]

All right. How old are your children?

[A]

2. 2, 7 and 9.

[B]

Let's assume this happens to one of them when they're 12 or 13. Who would you want them to talk to?

[A]

Absolutely me.

[B]

This is very common for me, this line of questioning. If this happened to them and they didn't talk to you, how would you understand that?

[A]

That they didn't feel like they could open up to me.

[B]

So what I'm saying is you and my mom were close and you were buddies, but you shouldn't have been buddies. She should have been your mom with whom you felt absolutely safe, and she couldn't give you that. Now, why couldn't she give you that? Because she didn't get it herself when she was a child. We're not blaming her. I'm saying it's transgenerational. But your closeness was based on you not telling her what was happening for you. You were loved, but you were not seen. And not being seen is traumatic.

[A]

Why is mom so much of everything?

[B]

First of all, you were conceived inside your mom. And the mom is the world in which we develop. That's just how it is. And then how nature designed it is that kids are supposed to be with their moms for years. Like in evolution, if you look at any animal, any mammal, who do they spend their time with? The kitten or the chimpanzee or whatever. And the tribe and the clan is supposed to support the mom, to help the child. That's how it's supposed to work. That's just how nature designed it. We're not blaming anybody here. We're just saying that's how it is. And the mom literally is the world, and the mom is emotional in the world. And when a baby's born, we're very immature compared to other animals. Like, the horse can run on the first day of life. We can't do that for a year and a half. So the horse is a year and a half ahead of us in terms of brain development. And the first nine months of life have been called gestation, which is inside the womb. The first nine months of life have been called extero gestation. Gestation outside the womb, when we're still supposed to be connected to mom physically and to the breast milk and to everything else. That's just how nature designed it. That's just how it is. It's not mother's fault. And we're not blaming any mothers here. Like you had postpartum depression. In the Myth of Normal, I describe how my wife had postponed depression with one of our kids. That's not her fault. You know, what was going on. I was a workaholic father, emotionally absent. I wasn't there to support her. So the postpartum depression in the mother is very often reflects a lack of support from the environment. It's not the mother's fault, but there's an impact on the baby. That's just how it works. We have to get rid of the whole idea of blaming people. There's nobody to be blamed. It's just, can we understand it so that we can give children the support that they need?

[A]

Yeah. I have an incredible amount of empathy now, especially for my mom, and I feel bad, even like, talking about her with my therapist or anybody, because I truly believe everyone does the best that they can.

[B]

Yes, they do.

[A]

Again with my thinking that I'm misremembering things, but also, if I'm going to put any blame on what she did, my kids will do the same about me. And I don't know if I could ever handle that well.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And also that also, if you put your blame on your mom, then you'd have to put the blame on her parents. Yeah. And then you have to blame on their parents.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then we end up blaming Adam and Eve. I mean, you know, blame is just useless.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But can we understand things without blaming? Like you said, people do their best. Your mother did her best. My mother did her best. My father did their best. But stuff happened to me. Stuff happened to you. And it's not a question of blame.

[A]

I don't think I'm going to be able to handle it very well knowing that my daughter is talking about me in therapy.

[B]

I want my kids to talk about me in therapy. I said to my kids, I screwed you up. I'll pay for your therapy. I just said this to them, and I've said to them, I'm not worried that you're going to be angry with me. I'm worried that you won't be angry enough. I want them to feel what they feel. I want them to know themselves. I can handle it if they have anger for me. I know that when I was A parent. I didn't show up in a way that I wish now that I had. I didn't. You have young children. You have all kinds of opportunity to show up the way that you want to show up based on what you understand. When I was a young parent, I didn't understand any of this stuff. So if they need to be angry, so be it.

[A]

Well, you are going to be much better at that than I am. I just feel like I try so hard. From the second that they came out, except for granted, for the time of postpartum, I was not doing my best.

[B]

You've already given your kids something really huge, let me tell you. Let me ask you this question. How old were you when your mother started working on herself?

[A]

I'm 40. It hasn't happened yet.

[B]

What would it have meant for you when you were 9 years old or 2 years old, if your mother had worked on herself? What would that have meant?

[A]

That she cared and was trying and recognized something as well.

[B]

What would that have meant for you?

[A]

I would have felt better knowing that she knew something was wrong or that something wasn't being done in the correct way. It would give me validation.

[B]

Okay, you're already giving your kids that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're giving your kids something that you never got.

[A]

How can people do this with their families when they were raised in a family where you didn't talk about these things? Like, do we have to all be 40 years old and say, like, guys, should we do family therapy now? It just seems easier to just try to shove it away.

[B]

Yes, it is easier to shove it away, but how's that working out?

[A]

Not well, but I don't know if she could take it.

[B]

But you're not responsible. Let me ask you something. If your kids were in therapy, who would you want them to focus on?

[A]

Themselves.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. How about extending the same courtesy to yourself?

[A]

I see you differently, though, and I see other people around me as being stronger, though. We're super hypersensitive. I don't know if the relationship would benefit because of the sensitivity. Like, I have an Asian mom that you just culturally never forgets but also pushes everything down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know if there's any bouncing back from it.

[B]

I got some terrible news for you. Asians are human beings like everybody else. They have exactly the same emotions.

[A]

Sorry.

[B]

They have the same needs and the same emotions as everybody else. Culturally, they might relate to them differently, but we're all human beings. Same needs, same emotions. And what I keep hearing from you is this overwhelming sense of responsibility for your mother. I don't think your workers with your mom, your workers with yourself, okay? You're like a codependent. Here's what I mean by that. And it's not a criticism. I don't criticize or blame or judge anybody. I'm just describing things. The codependent. Every time you try and talk about them, they start thinking about the other person. Huh. So what I noticed in my conversation with you is every time I talk with you about yourself, you keep going back. To who?

[A]

My mom.

[B]

You keep going back to your mom. It's like you're the mother and she's your child and you're responsible for her. Do you notice that?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now, that's your trauma, Chrissy, is that there was a reversal of roles. Yes, you became the mother. And when you say you were close, yes, you were, because you were the mom and she was the child, emotionally speaking. But that reversal of roles is very painful for the child. Would you want one of your kids to be in that situation? No. At some point, you have a decision to make. Of whose healing do you want to take responsibility for, yours or your mother's? Because as long as you keep putting it on the focus on your mother's, you're neglecting yourself. But I can tell you something. You're 39 years old now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you're little under half my age. At your age, I never began to do the work that you already done. I haven't started it yet. So I got good news for you. It's never too late. Honest to God, you know, the self exploration that you have, you may believe that you have all these limitations and blockages and even a sense of hopelessness, but I'm telling you, you've done a lot more work by your age than I had done at your age.

[A]

And now for the toolkit. Each episode, our guests distill their expertise into practical and actionable insights. Today, Dr. Gabor takes us through his four A's of healing.

[B]

All right, so in my book, the Myth, the Normal, I talk about some of the principles of healing and I talk about the four A's of healing. And actually, I should mention five, but I'll mention a fifth one afterwards. So the first one is authenticity. Now, authenticity comes from the Greek word auto, the self auto, so that authenticity means being ourselves and manifesting ourselves and coming from our true selves. A lot of us have real trouble with that because as children when we were authentic, we weren't accepted for who we were, so we had to suppress our authenticity. In order to be accepted and liked by others. And being liked and accepted was essential for the child, for survival, that attachment relationship, the child needed that. And in a lot of families, a lot of situations, kids learn that to be acceptable to others, they have to suppress their authentic selves. And then we're afraid to be ourselves for the rest of our lives. And we keep worry about what other people think of us, how they like us, that do we look good to them or be acceptable to them. So it's. And so the biggest loss, the biggest trauma is that disconnection from ourselves in order to be acceptable to the world. And we suffer for that. So authenticity is reclaiming that sense of ourselves which makes life really worthwhile. So the first A is authenticity. And that also means when there's emptiness here, I acknowledge there's emptiness here. There's tension here, there's tension here, not trying to pretend that everything is okay. So that's authenticity. That's the first a. The second a is agency. An agency is actually having some power to make decisions about how we're going to show up. So if something doesn't feel right, I can say this doesn't feel right. I have agency here. It goes along with authenticity, but it's a question of who's in charge of our lives. Who's in charge? Am I in charge? Or is culture and society, or my partner or whoever it is in charge of who I am? So that's agency. And so when it comes to make decisions, agency also means that when I have a reaction to something where my. My wife says something, then am I just gonna have an automatic reaction, or do I get to choose how I respond? Can I develop the capacity to have some space inside so I can be the one making the decision? So I'm not just taken over and controlled by an automatic reaction. There's an American psychologist called Rolo May, and he said that between the stimulus and the response, there's a gap. And in that gap is our freedom to choose our response. So agency is developing that freedom to choose our response to what happens to us, not just to be in automatic reactive mode. So that's agency. The third one, Christy, we've talked about, it's anger. Now, it turns out if you look at the wiring of the human brain, we're wired for all these emotions as mammals are not just human beings. All mammals are. We're wired for caring. Why are we wired for caring? Because without caring, we don't survive. If the infant is not cared for, they don't survive. So we're wired for caring for each other, and we need caring. You need caring all your life. I need caring all my life. Human beings need to care for each other. We're wired for fear because without fear we don't survive. If a saber tooth tiger shows up, I better be afraid. So we're wired for fear. We're also wired for anger. By anger, I don't mean destructive rage. I mean if I were to invade your boundaries, either physically or emotionally, you should be angry because your anger would say, no, stop it this far and no further. No, that's healthy anger. A lot of people suppress that healthy anger early in life in order to be acceptable to other people. That suppression of healthy anger, when you push down anger, what is another word for pushing down? Depressing, Right. A lot of depression is because people pushed on their healthy anger. They pushed on their healthy anger in order to be acceptable. But that doesn't mean the anger has gone away. It's there. And I can also tell you, and it's a whole other subject, but a lot of autoimmune diseases and a lot of physical illnesses happen because people pushed on their healthy anger. That's a long discussion, which we don't have time for now, but I write about it in my books. So healthy anger. So anger is in the sense of. No, these are my boundaries and you don't cross them. No, that's what I mean by healthy anger. It's essential. It's essential. The fourth A is acceptance. And acceptance is difficult because the world is so painful or it can be like right now, look at in the world, and all these things are happening that break my heart. But I have to accept that this is the way the world is by accepting that this is the world there is. And I'm not accepting that this is good or I want it to be this way, but just that if I'm going to be dealing with the reality the way it is, I have to accept that this is reality right now. Can I accept that my mother didn't see me the way I needed to be seen? Because she didn't? Yeah, I can accept that. I may not like it, but accepting it is just recognizing that this is how it is. So acceptance is just being with how it is genuinely. So that's acceptance. That's my fourth a. There's a fifth one that I didn't put in the book, but it underlies all the others, which is awareness. We just have to be aware, keep our eyes open, not deny the way things are, be open to looking at what's inside of us. Just be aware of what's happening inside of us. I'm not talking about self consciousness, but we're worried about what other people think. I'm talking about self awareness, where we know how we think and what we feel. So those are the five A's, you know, the authenticity, the agency, the anger, the acceptance. And I should add awareness. That's my little toolkit from the method. Norm, have I made you miserable enough?

[A]

Thanks a lot. I needed that.

[B]

Okay, thank you.

[A]

Thank you so much for being here today on Self Conscious. Thank you.

[B]

Well, it's a great pleasure to meet you. I sure appreciate it how you showed up and your honesty.

[A]

Oh, thank you.

[B]

And I tell you what, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. Even though I'm a Jewish male from Eastern Europe.

[A]

Dr. Gabor, I want to thank you for joining me today on self conscious. Dr. Gabor Mate's the Myth of Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is available on Audible. Until then, take tune in, turn on and feel better. This is Chrissy Teigen and you've been listening to Self Conscious, an Audible original podcast. This has been an Audible original produced by Audible, Q Code and Huntley Productions, hosted by Chrissy Teigen, written and executive produced by Jimmy Jelinek, Executive producers for Q Code, Shen Yan Hu and Alexa Gabrielle Ramirez, executive producer for Huntley Productions Chrissy Teigen, executive producer for Audible, Stacy Creamer. Recorded and engineered by Ben Milchev. Filmed by Bridger Clements Production coordinator Brian Coulter. Edited, mixed and mastered by Ben Milchev, head of creative development at Audible, Kate Navin Chief content Officer Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2024 by Audible Originals, LLC. Sound Recording Copyright 2025 by Audible Originals, LLC.