The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Doctor Gabor Mate: I Regret My Interview With Prince Harry! The Shocking Link Between Kindness & Illness!

70% of the adult population is at least on one medication.

Quarter of women are on antidepressants.

The rate of childhood is going on.

Worldwide, there's this epidemic of distress.

What can we do about that?

So, the first step would be to

Dr. Gabor Matei, legendary thinker,

celebrated speaker and best-selling author,

highly sought-after for his expertise on addiction,

trauma, childhood development and distress.

People, these are the people that tend to develop diseases

when people don't know how to say no.

The body will say no for them.

That niceness is a repression of healthy anger

and that repression of healthy anger

has huge implications for your health.

And when you repress your immune system,

you're more likely to have that immune system

turn against you. People who are emotional repressed

are more likely to get cancer.

And emotional repression is one of the impacts

of childhood trauma.

We interrupt this film to tell you we are getting reports

that the people's princess is dead.

Here he was a traumatized child.

What he was told about his mother's death

is that it was an accident, your mother didn't make it.

His father touches Harry on the knee and says,

but it'll be okay, and leaves the room.

This 12-year-old, nobody held him.

And children can be traumatized

not just by terrible things happening to them,

but just by not having their needs met.

By not being seen, not being heard, not being held,

those are wounding for a child.

I brought my interview with Prince Harry.

I had a gut feeling all along

that I shouldn't agree to do the interview.

It really got to me. I lost myself.

What happened?

Gabel, there's a question we often ask each other

in flippant conversations,

which we usually kind of brush away

because it's the convenient thing to do.

That question is the question I wanted to start by asking you,

which is, how are you?

Yeah.

So that question, for me, brings up two dimensions.

One is, how am I at this present moment?

I am I at this moment, which is all there is.

I'm well.

I feel rather peaceful inside.

I'm very happy to be here with you.

If you'd asked me two days ago,

I wouldn't have said that.

I would have said I was feeling somewhat anxious

and kind of troubled.

So in the moment of answer, I'm well.

I also know how to keep well

as long as I stick with what I know.

And when I forget what I know,

then I can be very not well.

So the last year since we've met

has been in many ways a tough year for me.

Also one of deep learning.

So if the question is, how have I been?

Up and down.

And I've had real challenges that I've had to learn from.

How am I right now?

I'm really well. Thank you.

Two days ago, if I'd asked you that question,

your answer would have been anxious and troubled.

Yeah. Why?

I gave a talk on Monday night to 2100 people.

And I just didn't think I did my best.

Here in London.

And I thought, oh boy, I could have done better.

I let people down.

I allowed myself judgments and self-doubts

to really dominate my thinking.

And as much as I think I'm immune

to that kind of self-doubt, evidently I'm not.

So that's what happened.

When you say you let it cloud your thinking,

what were the symptoms of that?

So you gave a talk two days ago to 2100 people.

And you didn't feel you did your best.

You went home that night.

What was going on in your head?

Feeling.

Constant cyclical self-criticism of

I could have been more present.

I could have been more grounded,

more attuned with the audience perhaps.

But you know, there's all these self-criticisms

which then are accompanied by certain feelings in the body,

like kind of a roiling in my belly and so on.

And that's what I went through.

And what was the remedy for that?

Because we can all relate.

Yeah, earlier this year,

also feeling in the state of discombobulation,

just a few months ago, I did something radical.

I did a two-week total sabbatical from the internet.

No cell phone, no emails,

no checking on Amazon how my books are doing,

all this self-referential ego enhancement stuff.

And it just really made a difference.

By the end of two weeks, I was a different person.

And so I'm keeping it up.

And one of the things you learn is you start noticing

these body states that you're in

and the mental hoops that you jump through,

but you don't identify with them.

So what's the worst case scenario?

I didn't do the best possible job.

Okay, what's the headline in the newspaper?

Human being fails to do his best on a particular occasion.

What's the big deal?

So it's a matter of observing this all,

all this stuff and not identifying with it,

not letting it take you over as it tends to.

I was reading something that said

when we vocalize or share our stress,

it moves it from the emotional center of our brain

to the much more rational center of our brain

where we can kind of step outside of the video game

and hold the controller per se.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's the midfrontal cortex of our brain

that has insight and social connection

and awareness, you know,

which so often goes offline as soon as some emotion

takes over some anxiety or anger or resentment takes over.

The midfrontal cortex tends to go offline

and the more trauma you experience as a child,

the more likely that is to happen

so that your insightful capacities,

the executive functions get taken over

by some deeper emotional dynamics.

And so one of the benefits to me of meditation

is it restores that executive function

so that I'm not taken over or too long taken over

by emotional dynamics that just sweep me away.

For two weeks this year you said you went offline.

Yeah.

Why?

Sometimes people say to me,

I've written this book that I know that you have on your desk

when the body says no one

and my contention is my people don't know how to say no.

The body will say it in the form of illness

and I can tell you hundreds of times people have said to me,

your book has saved my life

and my response has always been maybe I should read it myself

because the fact is I'm quite capable of giving advice

and dispensing wisdom that I don't follow myself.

And that was the case.

So I became quite stressed

and my relationship with my wife Ray became very fraught.

And she said, enough.

Enough of this gap between who we are there in public

and how you are in private.

So that was a big incentive for me

because we're coming up to a 54th anniversary

and on the whole I'd rather stay married than not.

Everything else being considered.

But also for myself I don't need that guy anymore

who can speak the truth.

A lot of people consider it to be a truth so articulately

but not follow it myself.

So I just don't want to be that person

and that takes practice.

And that's why I take the break from the internet.

And what was interesting is

I had my cell phone on airplane mode

so nobody could get through me.

A couple of times a day I'd still pick up the cell phone

and I'd say, what are you doing?

There's nothing on it because it's on the internet

but the compulsion to try and get some from the outside

to fill some gap within.

I just kept noticing it.

By the end of two weeks it wasn't so strong anymore.

So I did it because I needed to

for the sake of my own mental health.

An up and down year for you, you said?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is that the down you were talking about?

Well, I remember a conversation, my conversation with you

and I think I remember you telling me

that you had this goal of becoming a millionaire.

When I was younger, yeah.

When I was younger.

And then it's when you achieved that goal

that you realized that that ain't all there is,

that you still left very much with your internal demons.

And that's a very common lesson.

I mean, there's two ways to wake up.

One is failure where you keep asking yourself,

but success is even more because you think

that once you get something, then you'll be happy.

So I thought, okay, well, jeez,

so this book, The Myth of Normal,

Best Seller Internationally and published in 35 languages,

I should be happy.

No, the more I got involved with it,

the more I toured with it,

the more engaged with the outside,

the more miserable I became inside.

So the great success of the book,

it swept me away and I lost myself.

So that was one thing.

And I did this very long, exhausting tour.

I wasn't taking care of myself.

Then there was my interview with Prince Harry

and all the fruitful around it before it and after it.

And I allowed that to take me over as well.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, in retrospect, I can see what happened,

but at the time I was too caught up in it to notice.

So what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter what I know.

If I don't pay attention, rigorous attention

to what's going on inside,

and if I keep looking to the outside to give me meaning

and give me validation,

then I can lose myself.

And that's what happened.

Your interview with Prince Harry,

how did that cause you to lose yourself?

Well, in two ways.

One is I had a gut feeling all along

that I shouldn't agree to doing it the way they set it up.

Because the way it was set up is in order to watch it,

people have to buy a copy of Harry's book.

And I thought this is not fair.

Four million people have already bought the book.

Why can't they watch this into you?

Do they have to buy another copy?

In other words, I believed that there should be a free public service

and a part of two people who can have a very interesting conversation.

But out of sheer opportunism, I agreed to it.

So I didn't follow my gut feelings.

I lost myself even in agreeing to the format.

And afterwards, Harry and I both wanted it released to the public for free,

but the lawyer said you can't do that.

Because this was advertised as a one-time only event,

and there could be a class action suit.

So the result was that I agreed to something that I didn't really like.

Not that I didn't like the idea of talking with him.

I didn't like the idea of putting this behind the paywall.

So I lost myself just in agreeing to it.

Number one.

Number two.

Then there was the incredible social media and British media reaction to it.

That was, for the most part, so negative and so demeaning and so dismissive and so distorted

that I barely even know how to talk about it.

I thought by this age I would know better.

But you know what?

It really got to me.

It really got to me.

I mean, I can give you examples.

But eventually what happened was that I was really in a negative state of mind.

And have you read the book, The Fox, the Mole, the Horse, The Boy and the Horse?

I bought it last week.

It's upstairs in my bag.

Wonderful.

So it's a great little book.

A great big book.

Although very few words in it.

Mostly just these wonderful drawings.

Charlie McKeezy, he's really channeling wisdom in that book.

And The Horse is the most grounded of the four characters, of the four friends.

And he's asked, what's the most courageous things you've ever said?

And The Horse says, help.

So it's so difficult to ask for help.

But I did.

You know, in the middle of all this frou-fra and my upset.

And I called a friend of mine, a psychiatrist.

And I said, I'm just in a bad state.

And he said, what's going on for you?

And I said, well, this is all this bad press.

And all the social media distortion of who I am and my motives.

He said, what is it about that you had bought us you so much?

And I said, not being seen.

Not being seen is one of the needs of the child.

But he said to me, okay, look, Gabor, when you were an infant, you're not being seen for who you are as a human being.

Almost cost you your life.

Which you did.

As soon as he said that, I said, yeah.

This isn't about the present.

This is an old unresolved, not yet fully resolved.

At age 79, I'm still upset at not being seen.

I don't care if people agree with me or they refute my ideas.

But I want them to see me and what I'm actually saying.

Not some distorted version created by their own minds.

And when he said that, that not being seen really threatened your life.

Yeah, that's what's going on.

And then I could relax.

So what?

What somebody else says.

I don't live in the British press.

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

Here I am, you know, let them think and say what they say.

But it took somebody to wake me up to that.

So that's what happened.

You said you could share examples of how it got to you.

Of, yeah.

Well, oh boy.

They called me a stern, overbearing merchant of pain, you know.

At some point in the interview, you know, when Harry was,

and the other thing was, see, Harry, he was a traumatized child.

And when you read his book, you can see why.

And people couldn't understand how this is possible.

How could somebody so privileged that the very apex of society

and gilded palaces be traumatized.

Total misunderstanding of trauma.

It's true.

People have it much tougher in many ways.

But as an infant, as a sensitive infant to be born into a loveless marriage

where the father's having an affair even before he's born,

where the mother's a troubled, very sensitive, very creative, warmhearted,

but very unbalanced young woman.

So Harry describes in his book, spare, that he's 12 years old when his mother's killed.

How he's told about his mother's death is that his father then pinched Charles,

comes into his room early in the morning and says,

something terrible happened.

There was an accident.

Then there's a few moments of awkward silence.

And finally Charles touches Harry on the knee and says,

but it'll be okay and leaves the room.

And this is how this 12 year old was told.

Nobody held him.

Charles himself was only doing what happened to him

when Queen Elizabeth went on an international four or five month royal tour

leaving the five year old kid behind

when she returned to England.

She greeted him by shaking his hand.

And now what I said to Harry was that even animals hold and touch their kids,

their infants, mammals, that's what they do.

Because mother rats, when the baby's born, they lick their babies.

And the way the mother rat licks the baby, this has been shown in the laboratory,

this one is the brain development of the child.

And those babies that get the right kind of licking, it's called grooming,

they have better brains as adults.

Premature infants used to be put in incubators and nobody used to touch them.

Then it was found out that just by stroking their backs 10 minutes a day,

that promotes healthy brain development.

And the great British-American anthropologist, Ashley Montague,

wrote a book called Skin, the Human Significance of Touch.

So I was saying that touch is important.

You're not being held and not being touched.

It was a deprivation.

And I said, mammals, monkeys.

You know what happens when a baby elephant is born?

This is fascinating.

The mother, I read this in the book called The Evolved Nest,

for which I wrote the preface by a wonderful psychologist called Darcya Narvez.

When an infant elephant is born and the mother goes into labor,

all the other mother elephants stand around in a circle.

When the infant plops on the ground, they all stroke them with their trunks.

So touch and being held is so important for mammals.

And I was saying, animals do that.

This journalist, who I don't know what she was listening to,

said, I said, the royal family treats like kids like animals.

I said, no, I wish they'd had.

So, I mean, the distortion is just laughable

if I hadn't taken it so personally,

for the reasons I already explained.

For you to take it so personally,

which led you to call a psychiatrist,

a man like you with the knowledge you have

that writes books about the mind and stress and the body and all these things,

you must have been in a pretty dark place.

I wasn't in a dark place.

But look, I'm a human like the rest.

And what Charlie McKeece says in that book

is that the most courageous thing you can do is ask for help.

It's true.

I don't remember the Beatles song, Help, I Need Somebody.

And John Lennon sings,

when I was younger, so much younger than today,

I didn't need anybody's help in any way.

But now, those days are gone, I'm much less self-assured.

He's actually saying that when he was younger,

he believed he didn't need help.

But the reason he believed he didn't need help

is that he has to make it on his own

because he was so traumatized as a child.

His father left him when he was born.

His mother left.

He was brought up by an aunt.

And Lennon goes up feeling abandoned,

that I can do this on my own.

I don't need anybody, you know?

And later on, he realizes, I need help.

But actually, we're all born needing help.

We're all born needing to be understood,

to be attuned with, to be seen,

to have emotions received and validated.

That's one of the essential needs of children

as I make the point in the myth of normal.

And children can be traumatized,

not just by terrible things happening to them,

but just by not having their needs met.

By not being seen, not being heard, not being held,

those are wounding for a child,

which is what the meaning of the word trauma means.

So you don't need terrible things to happen.

It's so difficult for people to understand that.

You know, they think for trauma,

you need horrific events.

Well, horrific events can be very traumatic,

but you can wound people, sensitive people.

The sensitive child or any child can be hurt,

just because the parents are too stressed

and unavailable emotionally,

to really see them for who they are.

I've struggled with that in my life,

especially being a CEO, I think.

I've struggled to ask for help when I need it,

because you kind of see yourself as the helper.

And also, I've struggled with the idea.

Maybe, I don't know where I got this story from that.

People like me, maybe because I'm a man,

maybe because I'm the head of businesses,

we have to figure it out on our own.

And the cost of repressing how I feel

has become more and more evident over time.

Yeah, how so?

Just like, I think, when I was younger,

I never experienced anxiety before.

And then as I had more difficult moments in business,

where I tried to solve the problem in my mind,

for the first time at like 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,

that I experienced like fully fledged,

what I'd call anxiety,

where I just couldn't get a thought out of my head

and I felt it in my body.

My breath was short, this constant state of like angst.

And yeah, I just thought I could deal with it myself.

I thought I could think my way through it.

Was that the hardest moment

in terms of your own psychology and your adult life

in recent times?

Let me answer that question a moment,

but let me ask you a question or a curse to me,

if I may.

Yeah, please.

It's like with beautiful women,

they sometimes have a very hard time

because they can never know

that somebody want me for who I really am

or they're just attracted to my physical features.

So for somebody who at a young age

becomes quite wealthy and successful,

how do you know when somebody's approaching you?

Are they approaching you

because they want something from you

or because they really care about you?

I mean, that must be a problem for you, I imagine.

100%.

100%.

You never really know and understand

what your relationships are.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

So it must be confusing sometimes.

It is.

And I typically fall back

onto the relationships I had before.

Yeah.

Because I can trust those ones.

Yeah.

So I have the same...

My best friends, people I spend my time with

on my birthday, there's five people there.

Yeah.

Are the five people that were there 10 years ago?

Yeah.

Unless, I think,

we get reconnected to our gut feelings,

then our gut feelings will tell us

what is real and what isn't.

But the problem for many of us

is that we get disconnected from our gut feelings

very early in life,

like in this room of 2100

at the troxy on Monday night.

I think I asked this question.

I always do.

Have you had the experience

of having a strong gut feeling about something

and not paying attention to it,

ignoring it and being sorry afterwards?

Yeah.

Almost everybody puts their hand up.

That's a child's sign of childhood wounding

because we're born connected to our gut feelings.

No baby is disconnected from the gut feelings.

Something happens to make us disconnect.

What is a gut feeling?

Is it from a physiological perspective?

Because gut feeling is used as a word to describe

an intuition or...

Well, real gut feelings really happen in the gut.

In the western way of looking at it,

we tend to look upon the intellect

and the intellectual brain

as the only brain that we have.

But actually,

our brain is a form of complicated structure

and our heart has a nervous system

which is connected to the brain up here

and is a kind of knowing in the heart.

Sometimes people say,

I knew in my heart and they did.

If they're connected,

gut feelings are what all animals possess.

It warns them of danger

or when it's safe and when it isn't safe.

Not in the brain.

The gut is connected to the brain.

The gut sends more connections to the brain

than the brain sends to the gut.

And the gut has more of the neurotransmitter

or serotonin in it than the brain does.

So that gut things are here

to tell us about what is safe and what isn't.

And when the brain in the gut

and the brain in the heart

and the brain up here in the head are connected,

then we're grounded and present

and very alert and very aware of what's going on.

But when childhood trauma interferes

with those connections, which it does,

then we start to just work from up here

and we can figure things just from up here.

But actually, when you think about human beings,

where did we evolve?

We evolved for millions of years out in nature.

How long does any creature in nature survive

if they don't pay attention to their gut feelings?

So to go back to your question about me,

I used to believe, I really used to believe

into my 40s that everybody else could be stressed,

but I couldn't be.

And it's like you and your anxiety.

I think the reason you...

I didn't feel the stress because I had coping mechanisms.

Like working hard

and getting people's attention

or using my smarts

and having status and all this kind of stuff, you know?

Then that broke down.

I realized I could be stressed like everybody else,

but literally, I had this belief.

I mean, it's almost unbelievable to me now

that I used to believe that I couldn't...

Everybody else could be stressed, but I couldn't be.

That's what I thought.

Your wife, when you went through that dark moment,

if I was her, what would I have observed?

Well, first of all,

and I talk about this in the myth of normal,

and Ray, my wife, came on stage at the truck

on Monday night and talked about this.

I asked her to.

Women have 80% of autoimmune disease in this society

so that disease with the immune system

that attacks the body

happens to women much more than to men.

Things like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus,

chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia,

inflammatory diseases of the gut,

and so on.

Why?

So, those diseases tend to happen to people

not just to go into my own observation,

although it's very much my own observation

when I was working in family practice

and palliative care.

Before I did addiction medicine,

I noticed that who got sick and who didn't

was an accidental.

It's the subject of my book when the body says no.

And then again, in the myth of normal,

people tended to be

compulsively concerned with the emotional needs

of others rather than their own.

Identified with duty, role, and responsibility.

So, they're working in a world

rather than their own true selves.

They tended to suppress healthy anger.

So, they tended to be very, very nice and peacemakers.

And they tended to believe that they're responsible

of how other people feel,

and that they would never disappoint anybody.

Too fatal beliefs.

So, these are the people that according to my observation,

but according to a whole lot of research as well,

that I didn't even know about,

but have since found an elegant research.

These are the people that tend to develop

autoimmune disease.

Now, in this society, which gender

is more acculturated, programmed,

to suppress their healthy anger,

to be the peacemakers, to be the caregivers?

Women. This is a function of a reality

that a lot of people deny,

but it's a patriarchal society,

which we can talk about, but it's not a conspiracy.

It's just how it works.

So, me and my marriage expect my wife

to absorb my stresses.

And if I'm unhappy, guess who I blame?

And who do I take it out on?

So, she would experience somebody who can be hostile

for no reason and blaming,

and she has to walk on eggshells.

No.

Thank God, she's not the type to do that for too long.

At some point, she'll call my bluff.

And then I either wake up or she says,

thank you very much, but enough of this.

And so, she would experience somebody who was irritable

and unreasonably blaming

and not taking care of their own needs

and then expecting her to take care of them for me.

And we both had to grow up.

Now, she was programmed that way as a child.

Her parents had a lot of problems,

and she became the peacemaker and a caregiver emotionally.

And then she carries that role into her marriage with me.

And here's where the bad news is for people.

We always marry somebody at the same level

of emotional development or trauma resolution as we are.

So, when we met, we were two traumatized people,

not even realizing it.

And then we played out our traumas,

in a typical male way,

which is to be aggressive and demanding and resentful

if she wasn't around to mother me.

And that's what she would have seen.

And this dynamic can still arise,

except when it does,

she puts a stop to it right away.

And I have the grace and the wisdom

I know to understand, yeah, I'm doing it again.

In fact, I haven't done it since then,

because I just don't want to be that guy.

But that's what she would have seen.

And what was going on inside your head?

Were you anxious? Were you depressed?

I was anxious, and then I want her soothing.

I want her, how should I say this?

There's an interesting sexual dynamic

between men and women that men very often

unconsciously expect their women to mother them,

to give them a mothering that they didn't fully receive as kids.

And the women take on that role,

because they are acculturated in this society to do that.

But then what happens sexually?

No healthy guy wants to sleep with his mother,

and no healthy woman wants to sleep with her son,

so that the ardor and the passion kind of drains out

because of this unconscious dynamic

of women mothering men and men demanding that they do.

So then I become frustrated.

And then who do I blame for that?

I blame her, rather than looking at how do I contribute,

how do I create this situation?

So all that stuff played out in our marriage,

and we've had to learn a lot from what didn't work.

In my relationship, when I was most anxious,

it's also when my relationship nearly ended with my partner,

because like you said, I inadvertently took it out on her,

because I felt that she should understand how I'm feeling

and basically adapt to me.

Exactly.

And she didn't, and so there was conflict,

because I felt like she was misunderstanding me,

and wasn't acting in the right way to meet the needs that I had.

And so that, I think I wore her down,

and then there was kind of like, as you say,

that ultimatum moment where she's basically saying,

listen, shall I just go?

Yeah, and what you probably didn't do,

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

is just to go to her and say, you know what, I'm feeling anxious.

Yeah, that's what happened after.

You know, and I'm feeling unsettled,

and I realized that I have resentful feelings towards you.

And instead of owning it, we acted out.

Yeah.

And then we, why don't they understand us?

You know, and actually, so what we're actually demanding

is that we can be children emotionally,

and they be the mothers who, without any effort on our part,

will understand and see us.

You know, and this is a strong dynamic

in men-female relationships,

and what tends to happen is that men then,

women at some point get to, if they're healthy enough,

if they're not strong enough to assert themselves,

you know what happens, they get sick.

And I know this is a mouthful,

but a lot of women's cancers and autoimmune disease

are precisely because of this self-repression,

and I could talk about that at great length,

the physiology of it.

But either the body will somehow say no for them.

That's why women are much more likely to be an antidepressants,

because they're taking a medication for both of them.

You know?

And so either the woman gets ill somehow,

or she asserts herself and says,

I'm not doing this anymore.

At which point the guy will go seeking a younger mother

who's not yet mature enough to assert herself.

And this happens all the time in relationships.

The cost of self-repression,

the cost of sort of emotional repression,

I think everybody is guilty at some point in their life

of repressing their emotions.

I think men do it a lot as well.

I mean, if you look at the suicidality

in the UK amongst men...

Men tend to act it out on themselves like that, yeah.

What is the cost of self-repression that you talked about,

the physiological mechanism of what's going on

when we repress our emotions and how we feel?

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

but others and documented

that repression of healthy anger

disturbs the immune system.

Now, why should that be the case?

Now, healthy anger is simply

when somebody is intruding on your space

and they won't desist.

You say, you're in my space, get out.

That's healthy anger.

It's in the moment.

One, it's done its job, it's finished with.

It's different from chronic rage,

which is a whole other thing.

No.

In other words, anger is a boundary defense.

That's all it is.

Animals do it.

Get out of my space.

Now, the emotional system in general

has the job, the human emotional system

in general has the role of allowing in

what is nurturing and loving and healthy

and welcome and to keep out what isn't.

That's the job of the emotional system.

Let me ask you a trick question.

What's the job of the immune system?

Okay, I'll answer.

It's to keep out what is unhealthy and

unwelcome and toxic and to let in

what is nurturing and healthy.

So the immune system is like,

it's been called a floating brain.

It is a memory.

It is reactive capacity.

And it allows in nutrients and vitamins

and healthy bacteria and keeps out

and destroys what isn't toxins

and unhealthy invading organisms and so on.

In other words, the immune system

and the emotional system are exactly the same role.

That's the first point.

The second point is they're not separate systems.

Physiologically speaking,

emotional system, the nervous system,

hormonal apparatus and the immune system

are all one system.

And there's a whole new science when I say new.

60, 70, 80 years old,

called psycho and neuroimmunology.

That studies the unity.

So it's not even that all these things are connected.

They're one.

So therefore, when you're suppressing one aspect of it,

you're also suppressing the other.

So people that repress healthy anger,

they have diminished in immune activity.

And this has been demonstrated.

So the repression of emotions has a physiological function.

And when you repress your immune system,

you're more likely to have that immune system

turn against you or to fail you

when it comes to malignancy.

The immune system,

like you and I have cancer cells in our bodies

probably every day because nature makes mistakes.

That's not a problem.

The immune system recognizes them as...

Cancer cells don't have on their surfaces

markers that our normal cells do.

So the immune system says,

this is a foreigner.

It's an enemy.

I'm going to destroy it.

But when you repress your emotions,

you can also undermine your immune system.

And now your immune system will not recognize malignancy

and not destroy it and allows it to proliferate.

There was a British surgeon in the 1960s

who operated on...

Am I talking too much?

No, you're not.

There's no such thing on this podcast.

Okay.

Because I just get so passionate about this stuff.

And the reason I get so passionate about it

is because it's so important in healing.

And we as physicians could do so much more for people

if we understood these scientific facts,

what we don't as a profession.

Anyway, there was a British thoracic surgeon

called David Kissen in the 1960s

who noticed what I noticed in my practice

that people emotionally repressed

are more likely to get lung cancer.

Now, it's true that most people

who get lung cancers are smokers.

But out of 100 smokers,

only about 10 or 15 get lung cancer.

Which doesn't mean that smoking

isn't the major contributor to lung cancer.

It is.

But he found that it was those of his patients

that were emotionally repressed

that were likely to get the lung cancer

as a result of the smoking.

And the more repressed they were,

the less smoking they had to do

in order to get lung cancer.

This guy noticed this in the 1960s.

So emotional repression has huge implications physiologically.

And emotional repression is one of the impacts

of childhood trauma.

Why?

The child is born with some fundamental needs.

One of them, as I've articulated earlier,

is for attachment, for closeness, proximity,

unconditional loving acceptance

by caring adults.

Not just a human child.

All mammalian children have that need.

Without that, they don't survive.

So that's called attachment.

The seeking of closeness and proximity

for the purpose of being taken care of

or to take care of the other.

And our brains are wired for attachment.

We have circuits in our brain

dedicated to the attachment relationships.

And that's so important all through our lives.

But especially when we're infants and young children.

Now, while we have another need,

we've already talked about it.

I just haven't named it.

The other need is for authenticity.

We used to be ourselves connected to our bodies

and our gut feelings.

Because again, without access to our gut feelings,

we don't survive out there in nature

where we evolved and where we lived

until 15,000 years ago.

And so that authenticity is very important

to be connected to yourself

so that you know when you're safe and when you're not.

You know what you want and what you don't want.

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

You know how to say yes when you do.

That's authenticity.

Out of the self, being ourselves.

And to go back to Harry,

his challenge all his life

was that he wasn't allowed to be authentic.

He had to play a certain role

and fit into a certain set of expectations

of how to be and who to be.

And he could never figure out who am I really

in that context.

But that's so general.

So many of us face that challenge of

who are we really, who are we authentically

as opposed to what's expected of us.

Now, so we have these two needs.

Attachment on one hand, authenticity on the other.

Ideally, the two are not in conflict.

Ideally, you can be in a relationship

or I can be in a relationship

where we can be ourselves

and be accepted and connected with.

And that's ideal all our lives.

But what happens to a young child

where if they're authentic, they're not accepted?

So for example, certain psychologists

recommend that angry children

should be punished for their anger.

Rather than their anger being understood

as to what it's all about

and the child being taught

different ways to express it,

they just to be punished for it

and by different ways.

By the way, if you're a parent of a two-year-old

and if you don't frustrate your child

you're probably not doing a good job

because your two-year-old may want a cookie before dinner

and you say, no, cookie before dinner.

Cookie, yeah.

In a minute, they're throwing a tantrum

because what do even adults do when they're frustrated?

They throw tantrums.

Children, that's just what they do.

They have no self-regulation yet.

Every year old gets upset.

Now you punish them.

You give them a message.

You're not acceptable to me when you're angry.

You have to be a certain way for me to accept you.

Or you mustn't be sad.

Cheer up.

What's wrong with you?

So when children are given this message of conditionality

that you're acceptable to me

if you behave in ways that I approve of

otherwise the attachment relationship is threatened

then the child is faced with this choice

which is not a choice at all.

Do I stay attached to my parents?

If my father's an alcoholic

and the only way I can find acceptance

is by repressing my emotions

and not showing my sadness and my fear.

Then do I show my sadness and my fear or my anger?

Or do I threaten their relationship?

Well, there's no choice at all.

The child will choose the attachment

and therefore they give up connection to themselves

which is the essence of trauma.

That disconnection from ourselves

not in my own words, in the words of other trauma theorists

who I agree with,

the worst aspect of trauma is the disconnection from ourselves.

And we do that for the sake of maintaining the attachments

which means for the rest of our lives

we'll be afraid to be ourselves.

Is this what they call people pleases?

Exactly.

So Cheryl Crowe, the American singer and musician

developed breast cancer

and she said that since my breast cancer

I've been a different person.

Until then I was always trying to please others.

And now, and there used to be voices in my head

that always telling me that I was wrong.

I don't listen to them anymore.

So that people pleasers are the ones

who gave up not by conscious choice

but as a matter of survival their authenticity

in order to stay liked and accepted and attached to it.

But then they carried that on in the rest of their lives

and they're at risk.

I always worry for the very nice people.

I find it incredibly fascinating

that when we look at the back end of Spotify

and Apple and our audio channels

the majority of people that watch this podcast

haven't yet hit the follow button

or the subscribe button wherever you're listening to this.

I would like to make a deal with you.

If you could do me a huge favour and hit that subscribe button

I will work tirelessly from now until forever

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I can't tell you how much it helps

when you hit that subscribe button.

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bring in all the guests you want to see

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If you have a small favour and hit the follow button

wherever you're listening to this that would mean the world to me.

That is the only favour I will ever ask you.

Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.

You always worry for the very nice people.

You talk a lot about that when the body says no.

Why is being nice a potential risk to one's health?

There's two places to be very nice from.

One is just genuine human compassion and concern for others

but you're still grounded in yourself.

That's great.

But a lot of people are very nice because they are afraid not to be.

Because they weren't liked who they were.

They weren't loved for who they were.

Being nice was the way of getting the love and the attention they needed.

Let me tell you a story.

In 1870 there was a French neurologist called Jean-Martin Charcot

who was the first one to describe multiple sclerosis

which is an inflammation of the nervous system.

Very debilitating.

And Charcot said in 1870 without any scientific research

but just from his own observation that this was a stress-driven disease.

Since then there's been a lot of research to show how stress and trauma

potentiate multiple sclerosis.

It's not even controversial.

Not that any neurologist knows that.

They don't get taught the stuff in medical school.

I was just there and I presented in my books.

In any case, when I was writing when the body says no

a group of a self-help group of multiple sclerosis patients

called me and said would you come and talk to us?

Because I would understand you working on stress and illness.

And I said yeah sure I'll come and talk to you.

And there's about 25 people in the group.

This is in Vancouver, Canada.

And I gave them very tentatively, apologetically.

I said look I don't know this for sure

but the sense I get from my work in family practice

and palliative care is that the people that develop your condition

and other conditions tend to be people with three pleasers.

They tend to have difficulty saying no.

They tend to be very nice people.

And I said you know I'm sorry if I offended you.

I don't mean to.

I'm just giving you something very tentative.

I haven't done the research yet.

I'm just giving you my observations.

They said you just described us.

And they all said that.

And there's a woman who says in the group who says

I don't even know how to say no.

I said terrific give me $100 right now.

She says well I don't have $100 with me right now.

I said it's not a problem.

I said outside this building there's an ATM machine.

We can go on after the meeting.

We can go out.

You can get $100 and give it to me.

She says I'm not comfortable doing that.

I said listen I'm just trying to get you to say no

to a ridiculous demand by a perfect stranger

to whom you own nothing whatsoever.

She said I can't say the word.

Because in childhood, by the way, when you have kids

you're going to find out what the word no means

because age one and a half all kids start saying no.

They say that long before they say yes.

Why?

Because that no is the boundary defense of I figure out who I am.

I'm not going to exceed to your demands.

I need to figure out what I want.

Put your shoes on.

No.

And the parents think this is something wrong.

There's nothing wrong.

It's nature individuating the child.

When families punish that, the child will repress the no

and the body will say in the form of multiple sclerosis.

For example, niceness, ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

are known in Britain as motor neuron disease.

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with it at age 21.

He was told he'd be dead within two years.

He lived another 55 years.

Doctors don't know everything, you know.

But there's been studies on ALS patients.

They're extraordinarily nice.

There was a Cleveland clinic in Ohio, a major referral clinic.

Two neurologists published a paper at an international ALS

or motor neuron congress.

Why are ALS patients so nice?

And what they described was that when people came to their office

for diagnosis before they met the physician,

they had underwent EDX,

electrodiagnostic testing of the nerves.

And the technicians who performed the tests

would write on the side of the test,

this person can't have ALS, she's not nice enough.

Or I'm afraid this person has ALS, they're too nice.

And the physicians, the neurologist specialists said

despite the shortness of their contact with their patients

and the obviously unscientific nature of their observations,

invariably they turned out to be right.

And then I called Dr. Wilbur and who did the study

and I said, what did the other neurologists say?

When you presented this, they said,

yeah, we all noticed this, we just can't explain it.

Since then there's been a study where they've asked neurologists

about their patients and the answer is

all our ALS patients are extraordinarily nice.

Now, what the neurologists don't do is they don't make the connection.

That niceness is a repression of healthy anger

and that repression of healthy anger plays a role

in the onset of that disease.

So it's not a accidental connection.

So why do I reward very nice people?

Because they're putting themselves at risk.

Again, niceness can come from genuine concern for others

but that's not accompanied by an ignoring of yourself.

You also care for yourself.

Then you can be as nice as you want.

But you also know how to say no.

And you also know how to set boundaries.

You know how to be angry if you need to be.

But the niceness that comes from self-repression,

that's the one that hurts.

There's clearly going to be a lot of very nice people hearing that.

That know they're nice, that know their people please,

that know they've experienced in their lives

the consequences of putting everyone else before themself.

It's funny as you were talking, I was thinking about the person

that I know who I think is nicest.

And that individual is sick all the time.

And I just connected that dot in my head.

But I remember making a joke to her about,

oh, you're sick, so whatever, you're sick a lot.

And then also thinking, oh my god, she is probably the nicest.

Nice is an interesting word because that can be

misconstrued as like, hiya!

Or like saying nice things to someone else.

But it's really at a deeper level

from what I've observed in that person,

putting everyone else before them

or chronically serving other people's needs before their own.

Well, so my contention is, as I said earlier,

when people do not say no, the body will say no for them

in the form of illness.

And for a lot of people with serious illness,

the illness is the wake-up call.

And they actually learn.

And when they do, that can make a difference

to the course of their illness sometimes.

Not always, but I've seen examples

of remarkable healing when people learn to say no

and stop being people-pleasers.

And I just only wish that physicians understood this.

So when somebody comes to them with chronic XMR

and all these other chronic conditions,

they will not just provide the physical treatment,

but they will also talk to the person about

how much stress do they're taking on.

It's very stressful to take on everybody else's issues

and ignoring your own. It's very stressful.

That stress has a physiological impact on the body.

How does someone who is a people-pleaser,

how do they turn that ship around?

Because they'll hear that,

but because their niceness or their people-pleasing

is so deep within them and it started so early,

they're not going to change.

Most of them won't change.

Well, they may change if they get sick,

and if they learn something from it.

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

But it happens very early,

but it's everybody's second nature, not their first nature.

It's a very interesting phrase, second nature.

It means that it's a first nature.

Now, no baby is born as a people-pleaser.

No baby lies there, no one-day-old baby lies there thinking,

gosh, I'm hungry and wet and lonely,

but gosh, mom and dad have been working so hard,

I better not bother them.

Babies will express their needs very volubly

and very articulately and very loudly.

That's how we're born.

We're meant to be born that way.

So that this suppression of that is our second nature,

and that first nature never goes away.

We can always retrieve it,

but you have to become conscious of it.

So, when the body says,

no, I lay out certain principles of healing.

In the myth of normal, I will actually teach this exercise.

Ask yourself this question.

Where in your life are you not saying,

no, where no one wants to be said,

but you're not saying it?

Let me give you an example.

Let's say I come to London and we're friends,

and I call you up, hey, Stephen, here I am,

doing enough coffee,

but you've been up all night helping a sick friend,

or otherwise you're just too stressed

to want to meet me right now.

Your desire is to say, no.

But what if you suppress that, no?

And you say, yes, for the fear of displeasing me

or disappointing me or losing my friendship.

If I say, no, Gabor won't like me anymore.

What's going to be the impact on you

if you keep behaving that way?

Physically, what's going to be the impact?

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

probably going to be more stressed.

All that.

You can be resentful.

Yeah, exactly.

So this person,

I teach this exercise in the book,

but where am I not saying no?

And what is my belief behind not saying no?

I don't want to upset Gabor if he's coming to London.

Exactly, and I depend on Gabor's liking.

Which means as a child,

you depend on your parents' liking

and you had to suppress your nose to be like,

thirdly, where did I learn this belief?

But if I say, no, I'm not likable

or I'm guilty or I'm not worthwhile.

And the fourth question is,

who would I be without that belief?

And so if your friend does this exercise regularly,

believe me, she can turn it around.

But it takes some practice.

Who would I be without that belief?

When I put myself in her shoes

I'm a people pleaser in certain environments,

but I wouldn't say I am generally.

I can imagine someone would respond to that

and say, well, I'd lose all my friends.

She'd find out who her friends really were.

Because the real friends would celebrate it.

They'd say, oh, finally.

We're so glad to see you being yourself.

The friends that were just using her

or relying on her to be their supporter unconditionally

will turn away.

And I say this to people.

This contest between attachment and authenticity

can be a painful one,

but you can decide which kind of pain you want.

As a child, you have no choice.

As an adult, it's true.

If you're authentic,

you might lose some attachment relationships.

That's going to be painful.

But which pain would you rather have?

The pain of being authentic

and losing some friendships that were no friendships at all?

Or the pain of losing yourself

and all these implications and all these impacts on the body?

So it would be difficult for her,

and it's true, some relationships that she has now,

they would fade away,

but my God,

she would also attract much more genuine and authentic relationships.

And her true friends would really celebrate her.

Now, let me tell you something that just occurred to me.

Forget it.

There's a book written by an Australian nurse

about 12 years ago.

This nurse, like I used to work in palliative care

with dying people,

she works in hospice with dying people.

And these are people who tend to die

of malignancy and chronic illness

well before that time.

She wrote a book called

The Top Five Regrets of Dying People.

For any way.

And you know what the top regret was?

That I wasn't being myself.

That I wasn't true to myself.

I wasn't being authentic.

That's the top regret of dying people.

And the third one was

that I didn't express my feelings

for fear of disturbing or displeasing others.

So authenticity is not just a new age concept.

It's actually a central dynamic

in staying healthy human beings.

Oh, one more thing.

I was in Westminster Abbey.

And I was looking at all these beautifully

and articulately worded monuments

to all these colonialists.

To all the people

that oppressed and murdered

and robbed and despoiled

native people all over the world.

They're the heroes of the British Empire.

And I think one of the reasons

there's such a strong pushback

against the idea of trauma in this society

is if you recognize trauma

which exists not only on the personal individual level

but very much on the collective level.

The ruling elites in this country

would have to come to terms with the fact

that their wealth is based on

the traumatization of foreign peoples.

Which incidentally

was one of the crimes of Harry

is that he pointed that out.

Let's face it.

The royalty, the wealth that I was born into

was achieved at the despoilation

and oppression of people around the world.

So trauma is not just a personal issue.

It's very much a social and collective and historical issue.

What's the cure?

Because if many of us are byproducts

of generational trauma

and we're seeking different ways to ease our pain

through the means of addiction

whether it's pornography or heroin or alcohol

we can't all afford

expensive therapists.

But we exhibit

those self-destructive behavior patterns

maybe every single day

maybe with social media addictions or whatever.

What do we do?

Unfortunately

the healthcare systems around the world

have very poor appreciation

of the emotional contribution

to people's physical or mental ill health.

And most physicians

and most psychiatrists are not trained in it.

Unfortunately, there's a huge

gap between science and research

and medical practice and the other.

It's maddening sometimes to contemplate it.

So the first step would be to educate the caregivers.

Just educate doctors about the actual science

of the mind-body connection and the impacts of trauma.

Educate them.

So when you go to a physician

with chronic fatigue

or inflammation of your joints

they don't just give you the necessary medication

which I'm not against

but they will also ask you what's going on.

So that's the first thing.

Second thing is let's prevent the problem.

So let's support young families

to be really there for their kids

so that families don't have to struggle economically

and their parents are so stressed.

As I may have mentioned, I've forgotten now

when parents are emotionally stressed,

economically stressed

according to a number of studies

the kids' stress hormone levels are abnormal.

And that is a harbinger of future disease.

And so let's look after young families.

Let's make people feel secure,

uncertainty, lack of control, lack of information.

These are some of the drivers of physiological stress.

So let's create a society

where there's a more sense of mutual acceptance

and communality and social support.

Let teachers be educated

that the kids who are so-called misbehaving

are kids who are actually troubled,

troubled because of stuff at home

and that the solution is not to exclude them

or to punish them

but to actually give them emotional support

in the classroom and in the schools.

Let the schools be.

The human brain, according to a Harvard study,

develops from before birth.

It's an ongoing process that begins before birth

and condenses into adulthood.

The necessary conditions for human brain development

is safe, supportive, emotional relationship with adults.

Let everybody who deals with children

from social workers to teachers to daycare workers

to kindergarten supervisors to parents

understand the emotional needs of kids

and provide that safety.

Let the justice system, so-called,

about which there's very little just,

in Canada, 50% of the women in jail are indigenous.

They make up 6% of the population.

50% of the jail population.

You call that justice?

You take the most traumatized people

who then act out their traumas

and then you punish them for it.

So let the medical system, let the educational system,

let the legal system understand

child development and trauma.

Now, in terms of the adult,

to answer your question more specifically,

so there's a social answer,

but then there's the individual answer.

Yeah, a lot of people can't afford good therapy.

It's true. It's expensive.

And then, even though there's a lot of people

who get therapy but not getting appropriate therapy,

well, if you can't afford therapy,

go to the library, read some books.

My own, but not just my own.

I could rattle out five of the books you should read.

Read Dick Schwartz's book on internal family systems

called No Bad Parts.

Read Bessel van der Koos' book on trauma

called The Body Keep the Score.

Read Peter Levine's book Waking the Tiger on Trauma.

Read Oprah Winfrey's and Bruce Perry's book

What Happened to You.

Read Bruce Perry's book called The Boy Was Raised as a Dog.

I'm interviewing Peter Levine.

Oh, yeah. Oh, good. Oh, good.

Wonderful. I'm glad to hear that.

He's one of my mentors and friends.

We often work together.

And all of these books will have some advice

about how to help yourself, including my books.

Then there's a lot of stuff on internet.

So this interview that you and I had a year ago,

I checked this morning, has been seen by 2.5 million people.

I'm sure it's helped a lot of people.

There's a lot that you can get just freely.

I'm in charge on the YouTube.

Lots of my talks are available.

Lots of talks by other really good people are available.

Do that.

They're self-help groups of all kinds.

Is there a risk here?

This is what the one side of the narrative sometimes argue,

that you can kind of over-traumatise your life

in terms of over-labelling everything that you do as a trauma.

I mean, that always happens, right?

When people become aware of something,

they become over-aware and they start over-labelling

and saying, that's a trauma response,

that's a trauma response, that's a trauma response.

And they kind of live with a feeling that they are inherently broken.

Yeah, but my point is that nobody's broken.

Actually, I talked about our first nature.

That's always there.

When people recover, it's interesting, word recovery.

What does it mean to recover?

When you recover something, what are you doing?

Going back to...

You're finding it.

Oh yeah, I'm true, yeah.

That's the definition of the word, isn't it?

What do people find when they recover?

They find their true selves.

That's what they'll tell you.

That true self never went away.

Nobody's damaged goods, nobody's broken.

To talk about trauma is not to disempower people,

but to empower them.

If I learn that my response to the British media

and the hairy issue

was actually nothing to do with the present moment,

it's actually some old programming.

Oh, okay, now I can drop it.

Are you glad it happened?

I'm glad that everything happened,

because everything is learning.

Nothing in this life is wasted if you know how to use it properly.

And so what I'm saying is that

to be aware of trauma is not to lose power,

but to gain it, because it's not an excuse.

I can't keep going to my wife and saying,

I'm being resentful of you and punishing you,

because my mother didn't take good care of me when I was a baby,

because she was too stressed, you know?

I mean, that's lack of responsibility.

But for me to understand that my demands on my wife

to take care of me like a mother would of a baby

actually is my trauma response, then I can drop it,

because I'm not a baby anymore.

I don't need, I'm not that helpless.

I'm not that resourceless.

I'm not that ungrounded.

So that when you recognize trauma,

it's not in order to use it as an excuse,

but to actually to overcome it.

That's the whole point.

When we talked about the suppression of our emotions and anger,

you used the word healthy anger.

Yeah.

Because there's a risk, isn't there,

when you're saying that anger can be a positive thing,

that people will then assume that berating someone

behind a counter or a waitress in a restaurant,

because they got one item when you're all the wrong,

is standing up for your boundaries.

I've done it.

No, it's not.

So healthy anger is in the moment,

and it's just the boundary defense.

It's not outrage.

It's, you're in my space, get out.

That's its purpose.

That's its only purpose.

Or to protect something.

Like you want to see anger,

try and tell a mother bear,

not to be close to their cubs.

You'll find out what healthy mother anger is all about.

That's just healthy.

The kind of rage you're talking about,

have you ever had that kind of rage?

Definitely on a spectrum.

So the reason I struggle with the answer is

because I've got a friend that's fully shown me

what the extreme side of that is,

where we used to call it the red mist with him,

where he would literally lose control.

Which is incidentally what Harry used to call his anger.

Oh, really?

So my friend,

one of my best friends in the world,

he talks about this all the time,

is you could trigger him by saying something,

usually by saying he was wrong about something,

or something like that,

and then he would just lose it.

So I remember the last time it happened was,

when the pandemic rolled in,

I was staying with him in his apartment

because the lockdown,

and I was living in America at the time,

and we were discussing the virus.

And I said to him,

I think people that are older,

and that have certain health situations,

are more at risk.

And he said to me,

no, people that are younger are more at risk.

And I showed an NHS website,

which said, no, it's people that are older are more at risk.

And he just went into this red mist,

where he was totally triggered

and lost control of his emotions.

And then what you would have noticed is,

remember what I said about healthy anger?

It's in the present moment.

Once it's done its job, it's gone.

Your friend, the anger he gets, the anger he gets.

So the rage just keeps building on itself.

Now we talk about a fit of anger.

It's a good word.

You know what else we talk about fits?

It's epileptic fits.

In epileptic fits,

certain electrical misfiring in the brain,

then recruits other brain circuits,

and it gets more and more and more

until the whole body is shaking

and the person may even lose consciousness

and soil themselves and so on.

That's an epileptic fit.

A fit of anger is the same.

That a fit of rage is the same.

So the more severe it gets,

the more brain circuits it recruits.

So rather than expending itself

doing its job

and then being gone,

it actually gets worse and worse and worse.

That's unhealthy anger.

And triggering is a good word.

Triggering means.

Now if you look at a weapon,

how big a part of the weapon is the trigger?

This big.

For the trigger to set off anything,

there has to be ammunition there.

There has to be

explosive material there.

So

your friend is carrying a lot of explosive material.

I can tell you,

your friend never felt understood or validated

as a child.

And he's still carrying the rage of that.

You trigger him

and then

by disagreeing with him

and all the pain of invalidation

and all the rage of no being understood

now gets triggered

and recruits more and more brain circuits.

Now I can tell you something.

Healthy anger is essential

for our physical integrity.

That rage

in the aftermath of a rage episode,

your risk of a heart attack

or stroke doubles for the next two hours.

What happens? Your blood pressure goes up.

Your blood vessels narrow

and the clotting factors in your blood increase.

So of course you had more risk.

So the repression of anger

can lead to chronic illness,

but so can rage.

Lead to heart attacks

and strokes and so on.

So anger is a delicate thing.

Should I tell you something about my friend

that we found out because he then went

to a childhood psychologist

to understand himself.

You can imagine that was three years ago.

The pandemic two, three years ago.

He went to a childhood psychologist

and what they uncovered through their work

was that as a kid, he was not only

a foot shorter than all the other kids,

but he was both dyslexic

and struggled a lot intellectually.

So the people around him

and on his report card

basically called him stupid

as a child.

I think he found a text message at some point

between his mum and his nan

and his chances of success.

And he grew up with this deep sense

of like, I am not intelligent.

A deep, deep sense of it.

And it's come out in all of these ways

as an adult and that, you're right,

that's what was coming out in that moment.

I was challenging, I was taking him back probably.

Well, and you know what,

again to come back to here, that's what happened to him.

They called him stupid

and thick-ho and naughty.

And

he was none of those things.

He just had trouble concentrating

and paying attention because of all the stress.

I find that's ADHD as well.

Yeah, yeah, and so

in his book he describes that he's been told

he had post-traumatic stress.

I didn't diagnose him with all this stuff, it's in his book.

I said, you know what, but I think

given how you were distracted as a kid

you're trouble paying attention.

They called you stupid.

This is ADD.

And I wasn't saying he's got a disease.

I was saying

that was a normal response

that you had to an abnormal situation

where you were under a lot of stress

and they made you wrong for it.

They called you naughty, they called you stupid,

they called you thick-ho. You're not any of that.

Now, a whole bunch of British psychiatrists

got their knickers tied in a knot

because they made that diagnosis.

You know?

My God, people.

I was saying to the guy,

you don't have a disease, you have a normal response

to have no circumstances.

You were not stupid ever.

But children

undergo this character assassination like you fended.

And imagine the rage inside him.

So when you disagree with him

you're triggering all that.

That's just how it works.

Not interestingly enough.

People call me stupid.

That's not a trigger for me.

Yeah, it's not for me.

Because I know I'm not.

I always grew up with a sense of my own intelligence

not over-stated.

But I never had any doubt about it.

But certain things you can do

like not see me

and that'll trigger me.

And for context for anybody

that doesn't know why you not being seen

triggers you?

Well, look,

I was born,

you know, I may have mentioned this last year.

So I was born two months before

the Nazis occupied Budapest.

Then they started exterminating all the Hungarian Jews.

So literally

my life was under threat

because they didn't see me as a human being.

They saw me as a vermin.

Now, not that I knew that directly

but my mother, can you imagine

what it was like for her

to have a two-month-old

and living under the risk of death all the time

for a whole year.

And then, as I mentioned before

she gave me to a stranger to save my life.

And I didn't see her for

five weeks.

I was not being seen

and my father's not there to see me

because he's in forced labor.

So literally not being seen

threatened my life.

So no wonder

when people,

when that happens now,

that for me is the trigger.

Now, of course the answer is

is to see myself.

If I fully see myself

it doesn't matter whether you see me or not.

So if you see me

if you're not seeing me

if you're distorting

who I am in your mind

and in your words

bothers me, it's only because I'm still

cunning on you

but other people

to see me because I don't know how to see myself.

If I'm fully confident in myself

I'll say, gee, it's too bad.

You know, Stephen doesn't see me.

Well, maybe we could talk

about it or maybe

you'll never understand it but

I don't live in his mind.

How do I fully see myself?

It's hard to do, right?

It's hard to do because

when you were seeing

it's not hard to do

because you children see themselves

through their parents' eyes.

But when you're not seeing

then you have to learn it.

This is one of the things

to go back to meditation.

That's not the only way.

First of all, notice all the ways that you're not seeing yourself.

Like two days ago

when I had this anxiety about how I may

I didn't give my best talk on Monday evening

you know what, I did my best.

It may not have been perfect but I prepared for it.

I put myself out there for two hours

and

I spoke a lot of truth.

It might have been the best but so what?

But at that moment

I wasn't seeing myself.

You know, I can still lose it.

So meditation

which is the form of meditation

at least I am learning

is about just noticing

and seeing what's going on inside with our judgment.

So being aware.

So let's practice.

And do you also suggest

removing the things from your life

that will stop you from seeing yourself?

Like social media?

Well...

Because that can be a lot of...

I can't remove social media from my life

but what I can remove is my attachment to it.

For example

I don't have to look at the comments

on

all my talks on YouTube.

Who says what? Who likes it?

Who doesn't like it?

I'm not on Facebook.

I have a professional Facebook page

but I don't administer it.

But people go on Facebook

and who says what?

Who likes me? Who doesn't like me?

They can win themselves off that.

So we may not be able to

stay off social media

to write my books.

Thank God for the internet.

But I don't have to

be attached to it.

So it's using it

but not letting it use you.

Which is very hard.

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The social media and all of these things,

these stimuli, I feel like

I'm concerned

that many of us are living in a state of

chronic stress,

mild

background stress.

And I say that a lot because

the amount of times that I catch myself, I spoke to James Nesta

who talks a lot about breathing and breath

and the amount of times that I now catch myself

very shallow in breath

after just looking at my

my phone or thinking about

something

let's get my skits and oxygen back into me

in bed at 1am as I'm trying to sleep

catch my breath being shallow during this podcast

when I start thinking about something my breath gets really shallow

looking at my phone my breath gets really shallow

I live in this, I feel like I'm living

in a state of like constant

subtle background stress.

Yeah, well

I'm glad you mentioned breath because

it's one of the

to go back to the question of what people can do for themselves

they can learn to breathe

and Eckhart Tolleo

is a spiritual teacher

he says that

rather than go to retreats and

therapists just take a few conscious breaths

several times a day

not to dismiss the other

but that's more important than anything else

and interestingly enough

the Buddha

when he was teaching his monks

in fact one of the Buddha's

assistants Ananda

asked him

oh holy one do you still meditate

and he said yes and what kind of

meditation do you practice says Ananda

and

Buddha says observing the breath

so in Buddhist meditation

I'm not here to advocate for any particular

pathway and I'm not a practitioner

of any religion

but

this is a very wise man

he thought awareness of breath

as the most important portal

into reality.

What do you think the antidote is

for the way we've designed

our lives to be constant

in this sort of stressful stimulation

because we're clearly, I was just wondering

if human beings are supposed to endure

this much constant stimulus and stress

in their lives and with chronic

inflammation and all these kinds of things

and now killing people at alarming rates

the diseases that are caused

by inflammation

what can we do about our stress

and is it okay, maybe it's okay

well

it's the norm so you can say

it's normal, is it okay

well the question is

to be answered by looking at

what the impacts are

and what are the impacts

the impacts are very serious

for, you can see it on

the individual level and in terms of mental

health conditions as I said earlier

are burgeoning internationally

autoimmune conditions are

but if you look at it also on the social level

there's more conflict

there's more

division, there's more intolerance

in our culture

than it has been for quite a while

these are the impacts of the stressful culture

that we live in, so is it okay

if you want this

it's okay, but if you don't

it's not okay, it depends what you want

relationships

romantic relationships

I thought a lot about the role that our trauma plays

in our ability to

form relationships, obviously society

has changed quite profoundly in the last couple of decades

different sort of gender

transformations have caused

certain mismatches and difficulties

with people connecting, the world has gone very digital now

so dating apps run

a lot of dating, I think 50% of people

originally meet online

that's their first point of contact

dating is very very hard for people and there's a lot of people that are kind of giving up on it

attachment, dating

trauma

I've come to learn that we are mirrors

I think I found love in my life when

not when I

discovered anything

externally, but when I did a lot of work

to figure out the barriers

that were standing in my way of connection

well you just answered your own question

oh really?

we can't form proper relationships

until we have the capacity to be alone

and be comfortable

with ourselves

and the more comfortable we can be alone

which is different from being lonely by the way

the more capacity to be with yourself

and to be around yourself

in your own truth

the more likely you're able to form meaningful

and positive relationships

rather than asking

a lot of people run into relationships

to solve their problems

then there's the initial

in love phase where everything is just ideal

and then reality hits

and then all of a sudden

that person who you're so infatuated with

becomes your enemy

and you hate them so much

I mean

I've experienced such hatred for my wife

over the years

and

when I've been disappointed

or dissatisfied

because I was looking to her

to fill me with

and nobody can fill you from the outside

so once you no longer need it

once you no longer are dependent on it

then you can enter into a healthy relationship

or to put it more positively

a relationship

can be a real ground

for mutual growth

so you can enter into a relationship

you're not going to be perfect

you're never going to be perfect

carry a certain degree of trauma

a certain degree of dysfunction

certain things that trigger you as we said earlier

but if both people

are committed to the truth

which my wife Ray and I have been

that's one thing you can say about ourselves

for all the stuff that we've been through

ultimately the truth mattered more than

who's right and who's wrong

so if you commit it to the truth

and working it out and it's a fundamental

love is there

then you can grow together

and so for me the relationship

has been the most important growth

going ground of my life

not the therapy that I've had

or the reading that I've done

not that I'm just missing any of that

but the actual relationship has been

my most

important schooling

in how to become authentic

there's no real chance of a good relationship

if one or more parties

in that relationship aren't committed to truth

and they're committed to being right

or to victory or

it happens all the time

as I said earlier people always meet at the same level

of

emotional development

or trauma resolution

so that water finding its

own level

but when one person starts growing

and it doesn't

it becomes impossible

either the person that does the growing

gives it up and goes back to their previous selves

which is almost impossible

or the other person is challenged

to start growing themselves

or they're going to split

that's just what's going to happen

and again to go back

to the situation between men and women

this is what tends to happen

and I've seen it

in my own marriage I've seen it

as an observer of human beings

the couple are kind of getting along

but then the children come along

now the mother's

caring energy has to go towards

the children

where it needs to go

the father

may feel now a bit of

their nose is a bit out of joint

because now they're not getting the attention

and now the woman is a decision to make

do I look after the

three day old baby or the three month

old baby

or do I look after the 35 year old baby

and

to the extent that the mother chooses

to look after the 35 year old baby

she's depriving the three month old

a lot of women then

make a choice that I need to look after my kids

and I can't put all this caring energy

mothering caring energy into my husband

anymore

and then relationships get into trouble

because the guys can't stand it

I've seen this over and over and over

it's universal

but it's very common

sex

in your practice

I imagine you've come across this quite often

where there's a sexless relationship

and that's causing issues

what is typically

the true cause of that

that disconnect

with intimacy with sex in the bedroom

because a lot of people are struggling with that

yeah

but first of all

today we jump into sexuality way too early

in other words

um

we talk about intimacy

but intimacy really means the innermost

and we tend to have

physical intimacy before we have emotional intimacy

so that

people jump into bed rather quickly

I'm not being prudish here

I'm not

prescribing that you should only have sex

when you get married or anything like that

but when we enter into sexuality

early

without the emotional intimacy

and emotional authenticity

then the sex becomes divorced

becomes divorced from our

our real needs

and especially for women

who tend to

I can't speak of everybody

but in general

women tend to want to have

more intimacy emotionally

um that becomes very hard

and if the emotional intimacy doesn't follow

sex becomes rather mechanical

becomes mechanical

so that's one big reason

the other reason we already talked about

is sort of parenting dynamic

between the genders

I know we're only talking about the two major genders now

there's all kinds of

gender variations these days

but these dynamics exist in all kinds of context

so that when one partner

is doing all the emotional carrying

or most of the emotional carrying

this is parent-child relationship

this is the sexual drive

you know Marissa Peer

she's a psychologist

she actually said to me the other day

never call your partner

mommy or daddy for this very reason

yeah well oh good

that's a good way to put it

I think it's because

we put sexuality

in this society

of course it just glorifies sexuality

and if you look at some of the

famous sex symbols

who were they

abused women

in like a Marilyn Monroe deeply traumatized child

and

abused

as an adult by president

Kennedy and

just about everybody

and she was the woman

everyone was asleep with

so that really distorted sexuality

here

and for women especially

safety is so important for sexuality

yeah

we talk about frigid women

but when do people freeze

it's a fear response

there's no way it's true nature

it's just a response

and usually something happened to them

or something is happening now

so that unmelting can happen

in a condition of safety

and then the intimacy, the emotional intimacy

is there which creates the safety

for the sexual opening

and that's the dynamic in my marriage as well

you know

what my wife says

she says truth is sexy

such a good point

is there anything in your practice

that you're increasingly

being confronted with

in the last couple of years that you weren't seeing as much

as when you first started

what I see out there is

increasing distress in this society

and people are more confused

people are just so challenged

and in the United States

the rate of childhood suicide

is going up

suicide

more and more kids are being

medicated for all kinds of conditions

in the U.S.

70% of the adult population

is at least on one medication

quarter of women at least in the U.S.

are on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications

those numbers are growing up

in Britain as well

from all the statistics that I see

so I see these are growing

manifestations of

distress, what I call a toxic culture

I see that all the time

and look

the fact that this book, The Myth of Normal

is being published in North Macedonia

and Thailand and Vietnam

and Northern Europe and Eastern Europe

and it's just

worldwide there's this epidemic of distress

that's what I'm seeing

and

I'm saying people

either we can look upon this as some

unexplainable misfortune

and bad luck

or we can actually look for the actual causes of it

in a way that we relate to each other

in a way that we raise our children

in a way that we approach ourselves

and I'm saying that

solutions are possible

but yeah, the world is getting more and more difficult

for a lot of people

and I do see that

and I don't think it's going to get better any time soon

You're not optimistic

So

Noam Chomsky once said that

when he was asked if he's optimistic

or pessimistic he says

strategically I'm an optimist

and tactically I'm a pessimist

which means that

in the long term I do believe in people

and in the same way I do believe in human beings

I do believe in the human capacity

to grow

to transform

to come to a deeper grounded

sanity in themselves both on the individual

and the social level

I do believe in that

if I didn't believe that I would just stay at home

and read books and listen to music

I do believe in that

I'm optimistic in that sense

but at the same time

I think in the short term it's getting darker and darker

and you can see that

so many manifestations of that

so yeah I am optimistic

in humanity and human beings

and I think we have a hard road

to travel

before we

get to our

better sense of self

and I have to close

this conversation by

seeking some solutions

you use the word solutions there and you

talked about this better sense of self

we've talked about this from a social level

what governments can do to change

education systems

on an individual level

on a family level

what can

what can I do

well

first of all

you need to define what your actual goals are

okay so let me try

I want to be

I want to do work that serves others

I want to do work that I

um

I find fulfilling and that keeps me challenged

and I want to

which incidentally serves your health

because it's been shown that people that live a life

of purpose and meaning

they're physiologically healthier

I want to be healthy because I want to do all of these things for longer

I want to have

relationships that are full and

true and raw

and honest

okay

and I want to

I think that's it, that's the work in person

and then I want to raise a family

that is

beautiful and

pure and free of as much trauma

as I can possibly make them be

and I want to be close to my children

in a way that I wasn't close to my parents

yeah

well then the question you're going to have to ask yourself is

um

what factors in your life support those goals

and what don't

what activities are you engaged in

that will support those aims

what will undermine them

and uh

to diminish or eliminate the ones

that are undermining your goals

and uh and and strengthen

the ones that are supporting it

that's what it is and um

you know

and your intentions by the way

are not

only superficially the ones you articulate

if owner or your real intentions

I have to look at how you live your life

not what you say about it

so when I was a young parent

if you had asked me

what is your goal what's your intention

I would have said this is the happiness of my children

and I would have said that

totally sincerely

if you had looked at how I live my life

as a workaholic doctor

not available to my kids

always out there looking for

being important and serving others

and and and and and you know

being at the center of people's lives

because I was so essential to them

my actual intention was self-importance

my stated intention

the happiness of my children

as much as I would have meant it

sincerely

did not jive

with how I was living my life

so what you need to ask yourself

is what anybody needs to ask themselves is

look at your intentions

both the conscious ones

and also the ones that show up

when you look at how I actually live your life

and bring the two into alignment

so look at again

what serves your intentions

and what undermines it

and look at that seriously

that would be my answer

it's so difficult to distinguish between the two sometimes

because

I mean on the surface

the system you gave there

are actually looking at how I'm allocating my time

and is my time being

allocated towards things that would further

what I'm saying my intentions are

is a very useful exercise to run

but you know as I said

those things that I said

as my stated goals

I do find a disconnect I think

I think those things have been handed to us

when you ask them when they're goals

they will say things

that will make the person asking the question

think well of them

because there's one goal that you didn't state

which is

I stayed away from the selfish goals

what was the one I didn't state

inner peace

because

without inner peace

you're not going to be able to serve any of those goals properly

or if you were

you'd do it at some risk to yourself

and so

how would that be for you as a goal, inner peace

and then

if running around

serving others in the name of this so called

higher goal undermines your inner peace

then you're not on the right track

and you know who I'm talking to

I'm talking to myself

took it to me as well

inner peace is not a selfish goal

it's from a position of safety

sorry a position of inner peace

that we can speak

compassionately and truthfully to others

that we can

serve our other goals

but Eckhart totally talks about

our inner purpose and our external purpose

and

you stated a bunch of external purposes

and that's why there's this

I believe

the diagnosis

or the analysis

that's why that disconnect that you mentioned

because the goals that you stated were largely external

and what are the internal goals

inner peace

very good, now you have to put that into the mix

and once you do

I don't believe that, now nobody handed that to you

I just

I think this is the issue with workaholics

is we think that the path to inner peace

is just by aiming at the external goals

like I think

maybe at some level that's what I believe

workaholics think they can

work their way or validate

external validate or trophy their way

or number one book their way to inner peace

because temporarily

when your book shows up as number one

on the best sellers list or shows up at all

you feel some inner peace

and there's a wonderful

physician and researcher

Vince Feliti

who studied childhood trauma quite a bit

and showing his relationship

to adult negative outcomes

and he said

it's hard to get enough of something that almost works

and so

yeah you can get that temporary inner peace

but look at the long term consequences of the workaholism

it's not inner peace

I can tell you that

I can tell you after a long experience

it doesn't matter even how successful you are

there we started the conversation

with this it's never gonna give you inner peace

inner peace doesn't come from the outside

that's not a goal anybody ever handed to you

that's something that

you have to come to yourself

you know this

how are you acting in line with what you know

are you doing it well

you know what

I'm not gonna give myself a hundred percent

by any means I mean just look at

this week but

I'm doing so much better than I ever did

and I'm so much more comfortable about it

and so much more comfortable about the future as well

you know I am

what is the one thing that we didn't discuss

that maybe

is the most important thing for

my audience that are listening

right now

that

not that we should impose suffering on any children

or anybody in order to teach them anything

life will bring its own suffering

but when

suffering comes along

there's two things we can do with it

we can

try and just get rid of it

not to feel it to numb ourselves

or we can actually learn from it

so suffering and pain can be big teachers

if you know how to relate to them

so

when illness comes along

when a crisis comes along in your life

you'll notice that the Chinese word

for crisis

is made up of two character letters

meaning danger and opportunity

so when there's a crisis

there's danger

but there's also opportunity to learn

and to grow

and there's such a thing as growing older

in other words not just getting older

but actually growing older

and

actually still keep growing as you get older

and that growing older

actually has to do with

becoming more and more authentic to yourself

so sometimes I do that successfully

sometimes I don't

but that's certainly the journey

and I'd recommend that journey to everybody

you can actually grow older

in other words you don't have to shrink

you can actually grow

when you said the word growth there

it reminded me of something you said in a topic

we haven't actually talked about which I did want to

speak to you about which is vulnerability

I remember you making this interesting connection

I saw it somewhere online between vulnerability

and growth

and vulnerability is a risk

for a lot of people it's always felt like a risk for me

so vulnerability comes

from the Latin word vulnerability to wound

to wound

yeah that's vulnerability to wound

and so

as human beings

or as any living creature

we're all profoundly vulnerable

from the moment that we're conceived

to the moment we die

we can be wounded

physically we can be wounded emotionally

that's just a given

when children are

safe

and seen and understood

they can accept their vulnerability

because they have the confidence that they can

deal with it

but when children are traumatized

or

not understood, not seen

and they're alone

emotionally

the vulnerability becomes too painful to bear

so be shut down or a sense of vulnerability

you know not to feel

the pain

but when you look at life

nothing goes without vulnerability

so a tree doesn't go where it's hard and thick does it

it goes where it's tender and soft

and there's these shoots that are very vulnerable

they can be eaten by animals

or insects

a crustacean animal

like a crab

they go inside a hard shell

what does it have to do when it needs to grow

it molds

and becomes this soft creature

that's very vulnerable

but without that vulnerability there's no growth

without emotional vulnerability

there's also no growth

and so much of our culture

is designed to deny vulnerability

and to shut it down

or to somehow distract ourselves from it

and what's the cost

and the cost is that we stay mature

and that we lose ourselves

that's what the cost is

I also think vulnerability is the

and I've just learnt this from doing this podcast

that vulnerability is a great connector

when I

much of the reason why I have good conversations

on this podcast I think is because I'm willing

to be open myself

which then allows your client

your guests the safety

to open up themselves

and in your personal life with your friends

I mean what's more

you can talk about

the scandal of Newcastle

beating Manchester City

in some game recently

by one to nothing

I don't say to talk about it

if that's interesting to you

but which is more meaningful to you

that or when you actually share

Struggle

Struggle and what's going on for you

no contest

but so much of this culture

designed to distract ourselves

from our vulnerability

but we have a closing tradition on this podcast

where the last guest leaves a question

for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave it for

question that's been left for you

it's quite a long one

today is your last day

on earth

you're allowed to make two phone calls

one phone call

to the person you love the most

and the second phone call

to the entire world

what do you say on both of those phone calls

what John Lennon sang all those years ago

all you need is love

and the phone call to the person you love the most

to the person I love the most

I don't have to say anything at all

why

because she knows

but if you were calling her

on that last day

I'd say thank you

what for

for everything

and uh

you know what I may even say that to the world

I might even say thank you

you know I mean for

um

for all the struggles and the trails

and troubles and tribulations

of childhood and adulthood

and parenting

and career and all this

thank you

you've given me so much

that's what I would say

I mean if I wasn't giving you advice

which is all you need is love

which is advice no forget that

I'd say I'd just say thank you

how do you want to be remembered

as somebody who did his best to make a difference

and who made a difference

which I know I have by the way

so um not that everybody agrees with me

but I also know I've made a difference

what difference do you think you've made

how to say this without

it's difficult

um

but I get so many messages

from around the world I mean literally from around the world

about reading my books

have transformed people's relationship to themselves

have made them understand themselves

um

I think um I mentioned maybe

in a different into you that

the best

review I ever had of the myth of normal

was that

some young guy said to me thank you

I read that book and I remembered myself

so um

my work

for those who are open to it

really helps to connect them to themselves

and to see themselves clearly

and that's a gift

in a world where it's increasingly hard to see

you really are

and it's hard for people to see themselves

and so people don't see themselves as broken

or as they retrieval be damaged

but actually they can begin

to see their capacity for wholeness

which incidentally is the root of the word

health is wholeness

and uh

so um

that's the difference I'm making

is that people can see themselves

not as broken and damaged

but as actually fundamentally whole

with some stuff to work through

that's it

we can learn so much from children can't we

so much of your work brings us back to the first nature

as you describe it of children

yeah well

a lot of parents will tell you

and you'll find out is that the greatest

teachers are your children

if you're willing to learn

Gabor thank you

thank you so much I

it's a difficult question to ask someone else about the impact they've made on the world

but I but even what you said I think is

a huge understatement

because the people that I know

close to me like my partner

who um like my partner who

just I mean her life I think has been

changed personally

but also professionally

much of the reason she does the work she does

she's the reason why she's not here to meet you

because she would have flight she would have gotten the next flight to fly here

is because she's doing a retreat in the south of

France with a big group of women

and much of the work she does there

is built on the work that you've

written about in your books and taught online

um so not only have you impacted people

personally but you've impacted the next generation

of teachers

and therapists

um which is going to be

a generational

it's like a domino's effect

it was counteracting the generational trauma

is the generational healing

that has come about because of people like you

who are wizards in our culture

and that are willing in the face of often

great um you know

adversaries who take a different

stance to persist with

truth but thank you

and one of the things that most

and harden me is that when I go about

London or any city in the world just about these days

it's all kinds of young people coming up to me

thanking me it's not people my

I mean people of all ages

but I'm just so enthused by

how young generations like people

one quarter of my age are coming up

to me to thank me well that shows me that

it's making a difference

if she could have been here and she was so annoyed

she realized she'd booked a retreat

on the same day that you were coming to London

because you didn't get to meet you last time because she was in Bali so

oh wow some other time

trust me she's probably watching live right now

but thank you so much

again for your generosity and your wisdom it's changed my life

and it continues to change many other people that are listening to this

but all around the world so thank you

thanks so much

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.