← The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
Dr. Gabor Maté on Workaholism, Stress, & Healing Trauma
00:47:13
This episode originally aired in April 2024 and quickly became one of the most popular episodes of The Journey. Whether you're tuning in for the first time or revisiting this conversation, this episode will get you thinking about healing in a toxic...
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Journey podcast. I'm really excited because I have an incredible, incredible person. A physician, a Holocaust survivor, and a four time New York Times bestselling author. Maybe five times. It's an incredible amount. Dr. Gabor Mate, we are going to talk through a variety of topics in this episode. It's a little bit deeper than how I usually go and so I hope you guys really enjoy it. Dr. Mate has a variety of books. One is called the myth of Normal. Another one is called hold on to your kids. Because honestly, after this conversation, I was like, I need every one of these signs. As you guys know, I'm on my own journey becoming a parent. So this episode gets a little bit personal, but I find it really inspiring and really insightful and I hope you really enjoy it. And I would recommend that you listen to this episode in a quiet place, a place where you can truly listen to what we're talking about and sit with yourself a little bit. Because we're all on our own journey through trauma, stress managing all of the inputs of culture and society. I think unbeknownst to us, there is a toll that those things take. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I'm Morgan debon, a passionate entrepreneur and life advisor. With the Journey podcast, you'll discover that success isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. I'm sharing stories of amazing people who've taken control of their lives. Join me on my own journey to discover the secret sauce behind reaching success. With permission from no one else. Welcome, doctor to the podcast.
- [01:33]
B
Thank you.
- [01:33]
A
I want to just start off with a little bit on your journey. As we were just talking before the episode started, you are a Holocaust survivor and was born as an infant under occupancy.
- [01:46]
B
I was two months of age in Budapest when the Nazis occupied Hungary, so I spent my first year as a Jewish infant under the Nazi occupation.
- [01:56]
A
Wow. And you talk about that in your book?
- [01:59]
B
The book is entitled the myth of normal Trauma, illness and healing in a toxic culture. In the context in which I talk about it in the very first chapter is. I think it's rather relevant because it's all about how early experiences shape our reactions and personalities, sometimes for a lifetime. So I talk about an episode where I arrive home from a speaking trip here in Vancouver eight years ago when my wife is supposed to pick me up at the airport and I get a text on arrival saying, I haven't left home yet. Do you still want me to come. And I go into a rage. I go into a rage and when I get home, I don't even look at her. And this is after decades of marriage where I know that my wife is an artist and she's in her studio, she forgets that she's married. You know, she's just in the creative flow of painting. So what was that withdrawal and that solemnness and that rage all about? But what happened was it's a sense of rejection and abandonment. But I wasn't rejected and abandoned. She just didn't look at her clock in her studio or she was engrossed in her painting. When I was 11 months of age, my mother gave me to a stranger in the street to save my life because literally I was dying and she couldn't ensure my survival. And I didn't see her for five or six weeks. When I saw her again, I wouldn't even look at her. And that's, that's what small babies do on separation. And it's kind of a defensive mechanism in the brain that says, you were so hurt when you abandoned that you'll not make yourself so vulnerable again. Now, I don't recall that happening because the part of the brain that recalls isn't online at 11 month of age. But I remember it because there's a kind of memory called implicit memory, which doesn't have recall for the actual episode, but which carries the emotional imprint of those early experiences. So literally, my reaction to my wife 8 years ago at age 72 was that of an 11 month old baby being abandoned. My mother. And so, if you understand what I'm saying, what I'm talking about is that those early imprints, those traumas, can govern our behaviors for a lifetime until we work them out. And it's responsible for a lot of our behaviors and a lot of our problems.
- [04:26]
A
Throughout your journey, learning that, how did you become aware of the connectivity and the correlation between those traumas and your reaction through adulthood?
- [04:36]
B
Well, look, I was a successful family doctor in my 40s. I was the head of the palliative care unit at a big hospital here. I had nothing but admiration and a good income. And I was unhappy. My marriage was struggling, my kids were nervous around me, and I had to start asking what's going on? And I know I'm talking to entrepreneurs. So here's the thing. In a sense, I was a medical entrepreneur. I mean, I didn't have a business or a product, but I was the product, you know, and I was a workaholic. And I drove myself really hard now, what was that all about? When I entered medicine, I had the ideal of helping humanity, which is a legitimate goal. And also I wanted to be in a profession where I'd have a reasonable income, and that's a reasonable goal. But I didn't realize that driving me was something unconscious, and that was the need to prove my value. Now, why did I have a need to prove my value and to demonstrate my importance to the world? Is because the message I got is that I wasn't wanted. When my mother. Your mother gives you to a stranger, or when your mother is unhappy and terrified because of what's going on in the world, you get the sense that you're not good enough and you're not wanted. So if you're not wanted, and if you don't perceive subconsciously then that you're important, then here's what you do. You become a workaholic. And you keep trying to prove to yourself how important you are. And so that was the case with me. And so gradually I had to come to terms with what's driving me anyway, you know, so I could have been a very fine physician, and I was a good physician, dedicated to my calling, but I didn't have to be a workaholic. So the difference is this. There's a calling which calls you, and you can answer that call or not answer it. But being driven is something else. When you're driven, you're like a leaf in the wind, being driven by forces you don't even understand. And I see this a lot in the professional world. Maybe you understand personally what I'm talking about, that there's that calling, which is the pure excitement of where you want to express yourself and contribute to the world. That's the calling. But then there's the being driveness, where you have to justify your existence and you have to keep going and going and going, no matter what the cost. And that is very common in our culture. And it's very hard on the children. Because when I'm a workaholic doctor, being driven by the need to justify my existence, that means I'm on call 247 and most babies, or running to the emergency ward or looking after my office patients. What message do my kids get?
- [07:09]
A
Oh, I actually, I know the message. My father is a hematologist, oncologist, pediatrician at Vanderbilt. And I love my father. I'm a daddy's girl. But I know what message it sends. Because I was a child, you know, when my dad was working and on call and crazy hours. Now he's Way more balanced. I see him a couple times a week and you know, he's worked it out. But my mom and him say, you know, she was a single mom for the first 10 years of our lives. You know, my memories of my father really started 10, 13 years old.
- [07:43]
B
Yeah. So basically, like my kids, you had an absent father in some sense.
- [07:48]
A
Yeah, he was providing, he was doing what he could. He did the best that he could.
- [07:51]
B
Yeah. But yeah, so the message to the child is that they're not important, not as important. And yeah, so this is how we pass on our stuff. So when you ask how did I come to terms with all this? It took time and it's taken a lot of self work and therapy and self examination and reevaluating and also having to deal with the fact that I was married to somebody who wasn't happy with the way I was living my life.
- [08:19]
A
Right. Yeah. You know, my parents relationship is private, so I have no idea how my mom handled it. But I do know, I think more recently, especially as I've become a parent, there's been a lot more discussions with my parents about what they did as parents. And there's times when they'll say something and tell me a story about, you know, well, we did this when you were little and you know, we were very intentional about this, which is why you are who you are today, independent, high achieving, etc. And I say, well, that's not exactly how I remember it and that's not how I received it. And those have been really awkward moments, I think, because they're not used to me saying like, well, that's not exactly. That was your intention, but that's not what happened to me.
- [08:59]
B
It's interesting what you're saying, Morgan, because my eldest son and I, with whom I wrote the Myth of Normal, are now writing a new book together called hello Again, A Fresh Start for Parents and Adult Children. And he's saying that his memory of his childhood and our narrative of his childhood are very different. Yeah, I never thought of that. I never thought of that. I never thought of that. But he said basically he has to be the narrator of his own childhood.
- [09:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
So I mean, the task of us as parents, it's very difficult in our society because I mean, as a subtitle of the Myth of Normal says, trauma, Illness and Healing a toxic Culture. This is a toxic culture. This culture does not support parenting. It does not support healthy parenting in.
- [09:45]
A
So many ways or working mothers.
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B
I mean, well, look, in the United states, it's scandalous. 25 of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth.
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A
Just terrible.
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B
Which is a massive abandonment of children because the child can only experience it as an abandonment because the child needs that mother. If you look at a. Humans evolved. We evolved in small band hunter gatherer groups and we lived that way for millions of years until very recently. Which means that mothers were always around other mothers and other parents, and children were on parents the whole day, adults the whole day. So we grew up in communally with the child being parented by the whole community. And young parents had lots of support. So this whole idea of the nuclear family and people living in an isolated fashion and then both parents having to go to work, necessarily, and the child is with strangers the whole day, and the parents are stressed, you know, struggling, you know, a lot of people. I mean, maybe audience being entrepreneurs, you're possibly better off than the average, but not necessarily.
- [10:47]
A
I think most of the data show most people are worse off, actually.
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B
Oh, is that right? Okay, well, that means that they're struggling.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the stress on the parents already, even in utero already, the stress on the mother during pregnancy, that has an impact on the child's brain development. And so that the more stressed pregnant mothers are, the more likely their kids are to have mental health problems early on in life. Attention deficit and other problems. No, because children absorb the stresses of their parents. And it's not a question of blaming parents, but it's saying that it's very hard to be a good parent in this culture.
- [11:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. These are facts. I think the science is pretty clear and consistent about it. I've talked also about for black women and black maternal health. As you know, I have all the resources in the world. I live down the street from Vanderbilt and I was very worried about preeclampsia because the data is really clear that regardless of income level, if you're a black woman, you are more likely to have preterm labor. You're more likely for your child to have a low birth weight, just regardless of income, which is because of stress.
- [11:53]
B
This is the stress of racism, basically what it is. And the physiological impacts are, as you say, scientifically, completely beyond doubt, have been demonstrated. There's a shocking fact in the United States that black babies have a higher rate of dying at birth than Caucasian babies, which. Which rate is lowered if they're delivered by a black physician.
- [12:15]
A
That's right. I worked very hard.
- [12:21]
B
And as you say, it's regardless of income. And black women, black men have a higher risk of blood pressure problems and well, we could go on. But the point is that our health, our physiology, is inseparable from our minds and our emotional states. And our emotional states are inseparable from the social, cultural context in which we live. So, for example, in indigenous women in Canada, where I live, they have six times the rate of rheumatoid arthritis than others. Black women who experience racism in the states, the more racism they have to endure, the higher the risk for asthma. In other words, the inflammation in the body that both rheumatoid arthritis and asthma represents has to do with social factors and social pressures. And it's in this context. And then people are trying to parent.
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A
Right.
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B
And we know, for example, that the more stressed parents are, the higher the risk for asthma for the child.
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A
Wow. And so how do we, as parents, as people. Well, I will say one, a lot of people are intentionally not becoming parents. I would say we've talked about that quite a bit on this podcast. Is the resources available, the choices that people are making. I talked about how I was borderline at one point on if I wanted to have children in this world. And I think part of that is because of the acknowledgement of the responsibility that parents and the mothers have. These are mostly women. Well, I'm sure there's men that are choosing to be childless, but the people who I'm talking to oftentimes are women making this choice. And there's a consciousness that, I don't know that was there previously around all of these choices that we have to make. And it is a choice like it is a responsibility to raise good human beings and to do your best. And so I'm curious, for someone who's a high achiever, you know, I own my business, so I work a lot, but I also have the privilege of 10 years in where I have a little bit more flexibility than a normal 9 to 5. I work from home, you know, I have in home childcare. And yet I'm still struggling with attachment. So, for example, next week is the first week that I'm going to spend a night away from the baby. So I'm flying to California and leave at 7 o'clock in the morning. He'll sleep alone. Well, he'll sleep with his father and, you know, in his house, but without me. And then I take a flight back the next morning, you know, to get back by mid afternoon. But I'm like so anxious about it. And I just have this fear of him waking up and looking around for me and I'm not there.
- [14:45]
B
Yeah. And he's going to be distressed by that. And the saving grace is what the child needs is attachment. The child's brain is wired for attachment. Attachment meaning being close to somebody for the sake of being taken care of. That's the physical need of the infant, obviously, but it's also a deep emotional need. And the biggest failure of this culture is to provide for children's attachment needs. Again, how we evolved as human beings was children were ensconced in a network of attachments, not just to mom and dad, but to uncles and aunts and grandparents and so on. And, you know, in the context of the clan and the tribe, there's the African saying, it takes a village to raise a child. That's what they're talking about. So it takes a lot. Now, if your child has a safe attachment relationship with his father, then if you're not there for one night, that's quite tolerable because the child has another, you know, adult to attach to and to feel safe with. If that wasn't the case, the shock to him would be far greater. Yeah, I don't know if you're breastfeeding or not, but if you are, you know, so I was.
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A
It's going to be a struggle. His father was actually originally coming with me, and then as I was reading more about it, we decided, you know, it's best for you to stay home.
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B
Yeah, you've asked. You made the absolutely the right decision. That child needs a secure, already established attachment figure.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And. And that's what we talk about in the book that just being republished. Hold on to your kids. Why parents need to matter more than peers is that in this culture, children lose their attachment to their parents because they don't see them the whole day and they're lost. And so that their brains say, well, the parents are not here. Who should I attach to? They're attached to the peer group. And then we promote this with play dates and all this kind of stuff. And so, basically, gradually, but very inexorably, children's attachment needs are transferred from adults to each other. And now the game is lost, because now you have immature creatures influencing each other when they should be under the influence of the parents. Now, again, in the clan, there'd be the grandparents around, you know, there'd be the uncles and the aunts. There'd be a whole web of adult attachments. This culture doesn't understand attachment. We've lost the plot. And so much of the parenting advice that people get run counter to the child's attachment needs. Like you mentioned, the letting them Sleeping it out.
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A
Yeah, the cry it out method.
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B
Now you tell a mother cat to ignore the baby's cries or try and tell a mother orangutan to ignore the baby's distress. You know, you find out what mother rage is really all about. You know, so I understand the impulse to train the baby to sleep by not picking them up because the parents have to go to work in the morning and they don't have the support of the clan and the tribe. Here, I'll take the baby. I'll hold the baby for you. You know, so in the absence of that, parents think, okay, I have to just basically ignore this kid till they go back to sleep. So they learn not. But what's the message to the child is that their emotions don't matter and that they're not cared about. Those implicit messages, those emotional imprints are ingrained in the child. And so how do you. If your partner, if your spouse was distressed and asking for your help as an adult, would you ignore them?
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A
No.
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B
Well, why do we ignore the baby's distress? Here's the thing. It's a bit complex, but attachment is this powerful dynamic to keep us close to each other. Human beings need that. Especially immature creatures need that. But we need it throughout the lifetime. We need friends, we need companions, we need people around us. You know, now there's different ways of attaching. Like you're not going to see your husband for a night when you go traveling. But that's not going to interfere with your relationship because you love each other and you can hold that love in your heart. Babies can't do that.
- [19:00]
A
Right.
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B
The only way babies attach is physically by hearing you, seeing you, smelling you, touching you. So that when the baby wants to be picked up at night, it's not just to be fed. It's actually they need that contact.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Now, you imagine in an adult relationship what would happen if you consistently ignore the other person's needs and that adult is not as dependent on you or as the baby because you for the baby. We are the world. So when we, the parents, don't pick up that baby, it's. The world is ignoring the baby. That's. The baby experiences that is an impact on their brains. As a physician, I can tell you that. Or the advice about timeouts, you know, that if you don't behave well, Time out. What's the message? The message to the child is, see, children have these emotions. We're wired for emotions. We're wired for anger. We're wired for love. We're wired for playfulness for curiosity, for fear, not just. We are wired for these. All mammals are wired for them. We share that with other mammals. One of the needs of the child is to be able to experience all their emotions and to be able to express them and to have those needs validated and understood by the adult. Now, if an angry child is told, you can't be with me when you're angry, time out. Message to the child is, if I'm myself, I'm rejected. So in order to be accepted, I have to suppress myself, which is a major source of pathology. And in this culture, this is what we tell parents all the time, is to ignore the child's attachment needs. We're saying in this book to hold on to your kids, or in my book, the myth of normal is that the attachment dynamic is sacred. It's the most important thing there is. It's more important than anything else. And children who are, well, attached to us, they will heed our advice. They will look to us for guidance. It will be our disciples so we don't have to discipline them. They'll follow us. But if we undermine or ignore or don't understand the value, appreciate the attachment relationship, parenting becomes so much more difficult and so much more complicated, so much more alienating, unsatisfactory, and less effective. And this culture undermines the attachment relationship. And so much of the parenting advice is then designed to control the child's behavior rather than to deepen the attachment relationship.
- [21:27]
A
That's right. So I'm curious for those who might be listening, where their child's already five, and so they've already gone through some of these things. Maybe they sleep train their child at 6 months old or 4 months old. I have a girlfriend who told me she trained her child at, like, six weeks old. And I said, wow, that's intense. But she's got three kids, and I'm like, I get it. Like, you know, I get it.
- [21:48]
B
I get it too.
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A
You know, And I can just hear the question of, like, okay, well, like, that's nice. But I do live in America. I am an entrepreneur. I do have, you know, maybe two other kids, and I am responsible for 50 employees. How do I form an attachment or even heal some attachment that I can already see in my child's, like, behavior while balancing it all? Like, are there certain things that have more impact than others that I can do and incorporate into my routines and my habits and my family?
- [22:19]
B
Yeah. Well, first of all, you have a decision to make. What is your highest value? What is your deepest intention? I'm Telling you something. What we're looking in the world these days, what are we seeing? We're seeing more and more kids diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, with anxiety, with depression, suicide.
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A
It's off the chain.
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B
Lots of suicide rates have been, you know, alarming for a long time now. Alienation, bullying, drug use. As a physician, I've dealt with all this and I've written about all this. And the source of it all is childhood dysfunction. So we have to make a decision. And I'm going to tell you something. I wish I had known this decades ago when my kids were small. If we get the first three years right, we're basically okay. And if we don't, we're going to spend the rest of the lives doing remedial parenting. And the most important dynamic in those first three years, first five years, is the attachment relationship. So you may be an entrepreneur and you may have all these ambitions and responsibilities, but if you decide that the attachment relationship with your child is primary, you're going to make sure that every day you devote time to it. Every day you hang out with that kid, not for the purpose of instructing them or watching TV together, or everybody's sitting there on their cell phones isolated, but to relate to each other in a warm, playful way. You're going to find time every day to do that. When you haven't seen your kids the whole day, don't assume they're still your kids because the attachment relationship has been attenuated somewhat. As Gordon Neufeld, who's the main author of hold on to your kids, a new edition of which is coming up as we speak, that book has been published in 40 languages now. And as he says, collect them before you direct them. So before you start telling your kid what to do, bring them under your wings. You know, get their eyes looking at your eyes, get some smiles going, hug them, hold them, play with them, then take care of business, you know, so that every day we have to hold that attachment relationship supreme and make sure there'll be water it. Water that plant every day. That's the first thing, you know. The second thing is minimize technology. These things are designed to be addictive to the kid brain. And they've been brain scans that show the impact of digital media on kids brains. And they interfere with learning, with independent thought, with creativity. So if I have, I was a parent, I wouldn't let them near screen for years. Literally.
- [25:02]
A
I think the science is two years. Like no screen time for two years. Except I think people are making exceptions for FaceTime. Because it shows human interaction.
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B
Oh, well, if, for example, if the grandparents live in San Francisco and you live in LA or something like that, then that's great. Zoom or something. You know, that's a wonderful attachments adjunct. But except for human contact with relevant people, I wouldn't let them near a screen for years.
- [25:30]
A
Wow.
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B
And I would minimize the screen time even later on, you know. So to come back to your question about what does a busy entrepreneur do? Well, if you understand the importance of the attachment relationship and how essential it is and what costs you're going to pay later on if you don't attend to it, you would make that a priority. And when you're with them, be with them. Not the way I was as a parent. When I was with my kids, my beeper was with me. I could be called anytime. My mind was always on the job. When you're with them, be with them fully.
- [26:05]
A
It sounds so simple. And yet probably some of the hardest things that many of us will do is making that shift, you know, because it does require a shift. And I, in fact, actually hired an executive coach to help me with that shift because I was worried. I was a workaholic for 10 years. You know, I used to live in the Bay Area in la, and I moved to Nashville, where my parents live, partially to rebalance.
- [26:29]
B
That's great.
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A
And have a better center. But, you know, you can. I can get back in old habits very quickly. Like, there was times when I would sleep with my laptop in my bed. That's how much I worked. You know, you roll over, go to sleep, wake up and get back to it. And so I think with a new human being that I'm now responsible for and his primary source of life, I have to surround myself even more with like, no, do not. These are your boundaries. It's okay to say no, you don't have to do these trips. I have to go to New York next week. I'm flying in and out, same day. You know, like, just trying as much as possible to stay with the morning routines, the nighttime routines, and to your point, connectivity. But it is counterintuitive to all of the inputs that I am getting from so many people in the world. And the request.
- [27:16]
B
You know, I would phrase it differently. I mean, it's actually intuitive because it's actually countercultural. But it's intuitive, right?
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A
Yes, because.
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B
Let me ask you a question. If you just consulted your heart, what would it tell you?
- [27:31]
A
Oh, say snuggle all day. What are you talking about?
- [27:34]
B
So that's the intuition part. Of the toxicity of this culture that I talk about is that it runs counter to human heart and human intuition. Because if you look at those parents, look as a physician, I used to advise sleep training until I found out better, Until I learned about how the human's brain develops in interaction with the emotional environment and what an impact our relationships have on our personalities and who we are and even how our brains develop. So I used to give that advice. Now when you talk to parents who sleep train, and if you ask them, what do you feel in your heart when your baby is crying and you're not picking them up? They say, my heart is breaking. Yeah, well, that's the intuition. That's the parenting instinct. The toxicity of this culture is that it tells people to ignore their intuitions and to fit into the cultural expectations and the cultural demands. And not to mention, as you alluded to earlier, it's not even just a matter of preference for a lot of people. It's just economic necessity. You know, I mean, yeah, especially in America, nobody wants to go back to work two weeks after giving birth. If they have to, it's because they're economically constrained to do so.
- [28:48]
A
That's right. So I want to transition to another thread that you talk about, which is the horizontal versus vertical as it relates to peer groups. You know, there's this common conversation of, you know, socialize your kids or they need siblings, they need playdates. If you're a stay at home mom and your kids are at home with you, you should have them in daycare two, three times a, so that they can socialize with other children. I mean, that is like a very strong cultural thing happening right now. Share with me more kind of your thoughts around that.
- [29:18]
B
So we talk about this in. Hold on to your kids. This is completely contrary to nature. Because when you look at human development, there's a natural progression. It's like a pyramid. The basis of it has to be the secure attachment. That's the base of everything. The child has to feel unconditionally loved, accepted, welcomed, celebrated, just for existing and enjoyed. That's what the child needs.
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A
Just wake up and you're perfect as you are.
- [29:44]
B
Exactly.
- [29:45]
A
Yes.
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B
So that secure attachment is the basis now. Then comes what we call individuation. Individuation is when the child becomes their own person and they have their own preferences, their sense of themselves as separate from the parent. Your baby doesn't have a sense of themselves as separate from you yet. That's developing. But that development takes place over time. You're in for A rude surprise. At one and a half years of age. The kid's gonna start saying a word that's gonna drive you crazy. What do you think that word's gonna be?
- [30:16]
A
No.
- [30:17]
B
No. Yeah. Put your shoes on. No. You know, dinner time. No. That's nature way of making that. Sure. That the child develops their own personality. And at first, before they learn how to say yes meaningfully, they have to learn how to say no. Now, we can take that personally and try and crush it and break it down, in which case we're asking for trouble. Or we can work with it creatively, in which case we're helping the child develop. So the second tier of the pyramid then is individuation. Attachment has to be there all the way throughout. Then comes individuation. Then should come socialization. In this society, we put socialization ahead of individuation. We want these kids to be socialized before they're individuals. Yeah, but as an adult, you'll know that if you don't know how to hold on to yourself, then when you socialize, what's going to happen? You can try and please everybody else and fit in and be desperate for acceptance, and you won't have a sense of what's important to you. So we don't have to socialize our kids. That happens spontaneously if their attachment is secure and individuation is well on the way. So we don't have to hurry it, we don't have to move it along. Independence is nature's agenda. Nature is an agenda for your child. It's just that he should grow up to be an independent person, independent of you, in contact with you as long as you're alive, but ultimately independent. Because you know what? If nature's agenda is fulfilled, he's going to live longer than you. So they have to be independent. So independence is nature's agenda for all creatures. We don't have to push it. It's going to happen. We have to provide the right ground for its development. And that's the secure attachment relationship and the sense of healthy individuation. Then they're going to socialize. So here's the problem with. I don't have any problem with kids playing with other kids. I mean, that's natural. That's always been the case. Right, but in what context? In the hunter gatherer group, kids used to play with each other under the eyes and in the presence of the nurturing adults. So that the primary relationship with the nurturing adults was maintained. But when we send our kids out of the Home and be in daycare the whole day. They don't see us. As I said, young kids can only attach through the senses. When they don't see us, they lose their sense of attachment. Now, I don't know if you know what happens to a duck. When a duck is born, it hatches from the egg and looks around and sees the mother duck. And then there's a process of what's called imprinting. Imprinting means the duckling says to himself, this creature, the mother duck, is my mentor, my guide, my protector, my nurturer. I'm going to follow her, take my cues from her. But what happens to the duckling if the mother duck is not there?
- [33:22]
A
Imprints on the first thing.
- [33:24]
B
Exactly. Which could be a mechanical toy or a dog or a horse, none of which are designed by nature to bring up the duckling. So children's brain are the same. In the absence of the parent, the child will imprint on other kids. And now you have kids orienting, trying to get their direction from each other rather than nurturing adults. And not only that, I'm trying to fit a lot of information into a short space. But attachment is bipolar. And by bipolar, I don't mean like a disease, I mean like a magnet. A magnet is two poles. One pole attracts, but the other four repels. When kids start orienting and attaching to other kids as their primary attachment, they start pushing away from the adults. Now, we label them oppositional. Now we think they're bad kids, they're disobedient kids. Now we put the pressure on, try and coerce them into the right behavior, cajole them, bribe them, threaten them, time out and deprive privileges. The more we do, the more we drive them away from ourselves. And so that.
- [34:30]
A
Do you believe that there's too much attachment? Like this idea of mama's boys and daddy's girls is. Do you believe that there's ever too much.
- [34:37]
B
Yes. It depends on whose purposes are being served. If the mother and dad are hovering and attaching to the gate to serve their own needs, that can overwhelm the child. But there's no too much attachment from the child's point of view. So there was an interesting study that I quote in the Myth of Normal, where they look at young mothers and babies interacting and they lab and most mothers are quite adequate. They're really good at with their kids into playing and, you know, having fun and making faces and so on. There's a smaller group are inadequate. They're just detached. Clearly their own trauma, something. Then there's a group of super moms. And these are extra warm with their kids. They hold them extra more. They're more interactive. They're. Some are just more present with them. They looked at these kids 30 years later. The healthiest ones were the kids of the super moms. And what the researchers concluded is, you can't love a child too much, so you don't spoil a kid by giving them lots of attachment. Now, if you're doing it like there are young mothers, I've seen this in my medical practice, teenage mothers who are quite immature when they give birth. They're lacking proper attachments in their lives, hoping that the baby will supply that. Now, that's not healthy for the child. The child is not there to meet the needs of the parent. The parents are there to meet the needs of the child. So if there's a reversal of that. Yeah, but from the child's point of view, you know, they can't. You can't give them too much attachment. You know what they'll tell you when it's too much? At a certain point? Yeah, they're enough, you know, and. And they'll say, I'm gonna lose by myself. And, you know, so you can take your cues from the child, not to worry about it beforehand.
- [36:29]
A
Yeah. I mean, I always tell people during these podcasts, I'm like, they're very selfish in nature because the topic always winds up morphing into something that I also need to hear. And so I really appreciate you sharing these things. I want to shift gears to psychedelics because it's something that I've been very curious about and is becoming more and more prevalent in terms of cultural conversations. You know, Steve Jobs famously was someone who used psychedelics. And I think many people listen to this podcast, have studied Steve Jobs, and many other entrepreneurs have also been very vocal about it. Talk to me about your research and your perspective on how psychedelics can play a role in our understanding of selves and also just our mindsets.
- [37:11]
B
Well, let me just say, first of all, that genius and creative unique that he was, I wouldn't want to hold those Steve Jobs as a model for anybody. He had a very traumatic childhood, and that traumatic childhood affected his whole life and how he worked. And from my point of view, it also contributed to his death, you know, his cancer. That's a whole other subject I write about in some of my books, you know, but so we can respect somebody and learn from them, but let's not just take it on wholesale.
- [37:43]
A
I agree with you. Yeah. I mean, all the Stories that I've read is that he was a very difficult, challenging person, had a challenging life.
- [37:50]
B
So, yes, he was somebody who had not worked out his traumas, severe childhood traumas. Now, psychedelics. So I became Interested in psychedelics 14 years ago now my book on addiction was published. It's called in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. And I used to work with North America's most concentrated area of drug use. Here in a downtown east side of Vancouver, British Columbia, people hooked on heroin, crystal meth, coke, everything you can name. These people were all deeply traumatized. And my view is that addiction, whether it's work in my case or shopping or eating or drugs, is a attempt to deal with the pain of trauma. So it's in that context that after I published that book, in the Realm of Hunger Goes, people kept asking me, what can you tell us about psychedelics and the healing of addiction? And I said nothing, because I had nobody medical school talked about that stuff, until finally the questions became so insistent that I thought maybe I should find out. And then I began to work with psychedelics. First of all, ayahuasca, which is a Brazilian, or I should say Amazonian plant. And then, you know, mdma, mushrooms and so on. And as you're aware, in the last 20 years or so, there's been a huge resurgence of research in the potential healing capacities of psychedelics. And so in my new book, the Myth of Normal, there's a chapter dedicated to psychedelics. And that's because I've come to the conclusion that potentially they can be very powerful healing agents in the right context, under the right guidance, with the right intention. So psychedelics can be used as playthings, as, you know, recreational things. I'm not interested in that personally. But for healing purposes, the reason that can be so powerful is so much of our behavior is unconscious. Like when you say you're workaholic, something is driving you. Or in my case, you know. And that drivenness has an unconscious source. So many of our decisions, we think, are free, deliberately arrived at conclusions. So much of what we do, who we choose as a partner, how we react to our partner, how we relate to our work, how we react to our kids, how we feel about ourselves. So much is determined by unconscious factors that we're not aware of by definition. And at a certain point, our life's not working, and we say, what the heck is going on here? Which is certainly what happened to me. Psychedelics, no matter which ones we're talking about, can help remove the membrane between the conscious and the unconscious. So we actually get to see what's underneath our reactions, our behaviors and our emotions that could be tremendously liberating. We also get to see potentially our wholeness and our non brokenness that underneath all this dysfunction and trauma and anxiety and fear and whatever is driving us, there's actually a purity, there's actually a wholeheartedness that we can actually get in touch with. So we get to see both the fears, terrors, rages, anxieties that drive us unconsciously. But we got to see that underneath it all, there's something really good and solid and permanent. Not permanent, but enduring. Nothing is permanent. So there's been a lot of research on MDMA dealing with post traumatic stress disorder. There's an African plant, the New York Times had an article about it just a week before we speak now called iboga or ibogaine, which is. Well, it's got a unique quality and I've seen it. And as a former addiction physician, this frustrates the heck out of me. Iboga, which comes from Gabon in Africa, you know what it can do? You can take a heroin addict who's been using, shooting heroin for 20 years, you give them iboga, and after one night, they don't have any withdrawal symptoms. I know you're looking at me like I'm nuts.
- [41:50]
A
Yes, I am.
- [41:51]
B
Don't take my word for it. It's been studied. It's being used right now in a number of places in the world, including just south of San Diego and Mexico, because it's illegal in the States, and I've seen it myself. Now, is that 100%? No, let's say it's only 60%. That makes it 10 times better than no. That doesn't mean that the work of addiction healing is over, because as I said, driving that addiction is some kind of a pain, some kind of a trauma. At least you're not using anymore. Now you can work on your trauma.
- [42:21]
A
That's right.
- [42:22]
B
You know, psychedelics, whether it's ayahuasca, mdma, mushrooms, peyote, iboga, they can really help to work through the trauma in the right context, with the right leadership, with the right guidance. I have to really emphasize that.
- [42:39]
A
And when you say right leadership, guidance, I just want to be more explicit for those who don't know what we're talking about. There are retreats, there are guides that you can do this with. You don't need to just like go buy mushrooms off the street and take them. That's not what we're talking about here.
- [42:52]
B
If you're talking about Serious healing. I don't recommend doing this on your own. I mean, people have, you know, people have trips and mushrooms and. But if you're looking for healing, I'd look at trained healers. In the case of peyote or ayahuasca, I'd look for people who are shamans, who are deeply trained in that tradition, a tradition that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. In the case of mdma, a lot of therapists are training now to work with mdma, and actually outside of the.
- [43:21]
A
United States, I assume for it to be.
- [43:23]
B
No, no. In the U.S. no. Your health authorities are fast tracking MDMA now to be used for PTSD because the medical PTSD treatments are so ineffective and the need is so great and the results are so good that these studies that have been done legally now with MDMA are really being fast tracked now in the US and Canada and elsewhere. So, you know, a lot of people are training in psychedelic therapy now, so there's a huge potential there now. Do I think they're the panacea? No, they're not. They're not for everybody. Nothing is for everybody. And access will be a problem because they're expensive. Yeah, as always, you know. But is there potential there? There's a huge potential there. And, you know, and again, in the Myth of Normal, I talk about my own experience with psychedelics and what I've seen as a clinician, and on the whole, it's positive as long as we're careful.
- [44:17]
A
Well, I appreciate you sharing that. I have been exploring how I wanted to try it out, but still researching and everything, so.
- [44:24]
B
Well, you can reach out to me privately if you want some more specific advice.
- [44:27]
A
Yeah, I go to Costa Rica often, like a month out of the year.
- [44:31]
B
Okay, well, in Costa Rica, I can give you a good place in Costa Rica to go to. Place called Soltara. S O L T A R A. And they use traditional shamans from South America. I don't have a financial relationship with them, just to let you know, but I do send people there on scholarship because they do such a good job. In Peru, there's a place called the Temple of the Way of Light. I recommend that as well for ayahuasca. So those are. They're not the only two places, but there are two places that I know, and certainly Solterra and Costa Rica. It's a beautiful place. I sent somebody there on a scholarship just last week. I just heard back from them. A woman with breast cancer, actually, and her life has totally changed.
- [45:11]
A
That's really awesome. We didn't even get to like half the things I had on my short list. But this has just been for me, just as really special hour with you and I appreciate your time, I appreciate your work and I have some ordering to do on Amazon for myself and my partner. So how can others connect with you with your work, with your new additions and of course your social media as well.
- [45:35]
B
So on Instagram I think it's Gabor Matemd. My website is Dr. Gabor Mate www.gabor mate. Literally dozens of my talks have been uploaded on YouTube so you can watch them on psychedelics, on trauma, on child development, on addictions, on current issues in Palestine, Israel. A lot of my talks are on there. I've written five books, published in 40 languages now, bestsellers all over the world. The one that's been a focus of this conversation is hold on to your kids why Parents need to Matter More than Peers. It's got a new edition coming up in early April. I'm not the main author, by the way. That's a brilliant psychologist friend of mine, Gordon Neufeld, but I'm totally aligned with his work. And the other book of mine that I mentioned is called the Myth of Trauma, Illness and Healing a Toxic Culture. I have three other books. I'm not going to mention them now, but you can find them easily. They're out there and my work is hard to miss.
- [46:34]
A
I look forward to also reading all of those and your future book. Reading that with my dad.
- [46:41]
B
Yeah, My son and I are writing a book called hello Again. A Fresh Start for Parents and Adult Children. And you know why? Because we've had our own stuff to work out.
- [46:50]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you for your time. Thanks for listening to the Journey podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review and head to our Instagram and YouTube to leave a comment. I look forward to hearing how this podcast has made an impact on your own journey.