Great Pods
Why You Feel Lost in Life: Dr. Gabor Maté on Trauma & How to Heal

Key Points

Trauma is not what happened to you, but what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you - it's a psychological wound
Children have fundamental needs for unconditional acceptance, safety, and emotional understanding that are essential for healthy development
No siblings grow up in the same house - birth order, gender, parents' circumstances, and individual temperaments create different experiences
Trauma begins even before birth - maternal stress hormones during pregnancy affect the developing child's nervous system and brain development
Big T traumas include physical/sexual/emotional abuse, neglect, parent addiction, death, jail, poverty, and racism, but smaller experiences can also wound children
Children develop shame-based views of themselves when their emotions or sensitivity are criticized or rejected by adults
Hypervigilance, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and anxiety are common adaptations children develop to maintain relationships with stressed parents
Trauma creates physiological changes including chronic inflammation, stress hormone dysregulation, and increased risk for autoimmune disease, cancer, and mental health issues
Nobody is "damaged goods" - all behaviors and responses are adaptations that helped children survive their circumstances
Healing begins with compassionate curiosity toward yourself, asking "I wonder why" instead of "Why am I like this?"
The first step in healing is recognizing your suffering rather than denying it or running from it through addictive behaviors
Children are naturally wired to ask for help, but trauma teaches them to suppress this capacity and become overly self-reliant
Play, creativity, and joyfulness are essential human needs that trauma often suppresses, leading to regret later in life
Success, attractiveness, and workaholism can sometimes be trauma responses - attempts to prove worthiness or attract the attention that should have been a birthright
Trauma is transmitted generationally but this is not about blame - pain flows through parents to children without conscious intent
Physical affection and emotional attunement from caregivers are crucial for healthy brain development and stress regulation in children
The healing process involves taking responsibility for change while understanding that the original wounds were not your fault
Freedom comes from no longer living under the tyranny of the past and being able to respond to the present moment rather than react from old wounds
Full Transcript

Language: en
Trauma is not what happened to you. It's
what h what what happened inside of you
as a result of what happened to you.
Physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional
abuse of children, neglect, a parent
being addicted, a parent dying, a parent
being jailed, poverty or racism. These
are big traumatic events that can wound
kids. I had a wildly traumatic birth. I
got rushed to emergency surgery. Oh
gosh. And lost 2 and 1/2 L of blood. Oh
gosh. and they sent Sawyer home with
Chris. They kept me in the hospital and
by the time I went home, I had severe
postpartum depression. She's recently
uh gone into therapy and one of her
visions is a vision that she
has where she's in her crib. Yeah. And
she really wants me to come. Yeah. and
it's my husband and then it's my mother
and then it's my mother-in-law and then
it's my friend Joanie that would sit
with me while Chris went to work and I
never came
that's one of the impacts of trauma is
that a that shame based view of the self
people start blaming themselves that
somehow you invited it or deserved it or
you didn't fight back hard enough the
healing needs to begin with some
compassionate curiosity towards the self
not why but
Why? It's a totally different
conversation. It makes
me sad that I didn't know this sooner.
Yeah. But I feel very grateful for your
work. Mhm.
Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so
thrilled that you're here with me. It is
always an honor to be able to spend time
together with you. If you're brand new,
welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. And
I know because you chose to listen to
this episode that you're the type of
person who values your time and you're
also interested in learning about ways
that you can improve your life. I love
that. I love that you're listening to
this episode. And you want to know what
else I love? I love that you and I are
going to get to spend time learning from
the extraordinary Dr. Gabbor Mate. Dr.
Mate is a world-renowned physician and
best-selling author whose work dives
deep into childhood development and the
impact of trauma on how it shapes your
mental and physical health over your
lifetime. Dr. Mate has completely
transformed how the world sees, talks
about, and understands trauma. And he
has absolutely had that impact on me,
and it's been life-changing. I promise
you this episode is going to shift the
way you see everything, how you show up
for yourself, how you connect with the
people you love, and why you experience
life the way that you do. It's going to
help you understand why coping has
become your default and how you can move
toward true healing. I am so excited for
both you and me. So, please, please,
please help me welcome the extraordinary
Dr. Gabbor mate to the Mel Robbins
podcast. Before we dive in, Gabbor, I
would love to have you speak directly to
the person who's listening to us and
just share with them what they might
expect to experience if they really take
to heart what you're about to teach us
and share with us today.
Well, a lot of people are facing
challenges. Um, a lot of people are very
hard on themselves. A lot of people
think there's something wrong with them.
uh my fundamental understanding and what
I've learned is that underneath there's
nothing wrong with anybody that
everything you're dealing with came
along for a reason. there were
adaptations or they were responses to
situations. And the more you can
understand where your issues came from
and even when your negative self you and
the shame and the self-loathing and the
self-criticism and the
perfectionism that you experience that
there were actually
responses to some kind of life
experience and that fundamentally there
was and there is nothing wrong with you.
And those things can be looked at and
you can understand them and you can um
transform that and really become
yourself who you are. That's available
to you. It's available to everybody. So
nobody's damaged goods. I love that. No
one is damaged goods. Yeah. We are going
to unpack this uh in this conversation
at length, but I think it might be
helpful for someone who is not familiar
with your work. Yeah. If we could go
back. Sure. And can you share if we go
all the way back to your childhood just
what was happening in your life and in
particular how finding your mother's
journal really impacted you and sent you
in a certain direction in terms of your
life's work? Well, so I was born uh 80
years ago uh this year um in Budapest,
Hungary, January 1944 to Jewish parents
whose um lives
were already impacted by the Second
World War. My father was in forced labor
with the Hungarian army. A Jewish man
had to go into forced labor when I was
born. So he wasn't there when I was
born. In um March, the German army
occupied Hungary. And then the genocide,
the holocaust that had obliterated the
Jewish population of Eastern Europe, but
not yet that of Hungaries began in our
country. And within three months between
March and
June, they murdered half a million Jews,
including my grandparents. And we came
very close to being deported ourselves,
my mother and I. So I spent the first
year of my life under Nazi occupation uh
with the mother was terrorized and grief
struck. didn't know if my father was
dead or alive for most of that year. And
then when I was 11 months of age to save
my life, mother mother gave me to a
complete stranger, Christian woman in
the street. And she conveyed me to some
relatives living in relative safety and
hiding. Um I didn't see her for five or
6 weeks. And all this is recorded in the
journal that she kept. I I didn't
discover the journal. I I always had
this her her
journal, but for many years when I tried
to read it, I get
dizzy. It's almost like sending me knew
that this is too painful for me to
handle. So it wasn't until some years
ago when my mother is still alive when I
asked her to actually read the journal
to me so I could really read what
And she wrote in the journal that I'm
writing this cuz if my son if my son
grows up I want him to know what
happened. So that's in a nutshell. But
those events left a deep imprint in my
nervous system in my body and in in my
psyche. Um, and those traumatic events
created a lot of psychological wounds in
me that took me some years to even
recognize, let alone to heal. And uh, it
wasn't until I was into late adulthood
and or middle age that I really began to
deal with it and to recognize the
subsequent impacts that then I passed on
to my kids without meaning to, but just
for the lack of awareness. So that's it
in a nutshell. Well, that's a big
nutshell. Yeah. Wow. So, how did those
experiences in your life really start to
shape your work? Like, how did you start
doing what you do today?
Well, before it shaped my work, it
shaped me and how I functioned in the
world or how I dysfunctioned in the
world in so many ways. So it's it's when
I began to experience challenges in my
life. Um I was a successful doctor in my
40s. Um
respected but depressed and unhappy. Um
I was married to the love of my life and
we had a very strained conflictual
marriage and my kids had issues and some
ways they were afraid of me cuz I was
very unpredictable.
Um so all those issues then made me
start looking for some answers. So the
work began by having to look at myself
and trying to understand the sources of
my behaviors. Um and that coincided with
me noticing things as a physician in my
medical practice. And that's how I began
to look at childhood development, the
impacts of early years, um the concept
of trauma and what that represented and
its impacts on adult or childhood mental
health, physical illness and so on. So
both my personal experience and my
professional work kind of led me in this
direction of exploration.
And what have you
learned about how childhood experiences
shape who we become as adults? They're
decisive and
um this begins even before birth. So
already the emotional states of the
mother while carrying the baby will
affect the child's brain development. I
just want to make sure that the person
that's with us in this conversation
really gets this because I didn't first
learn that your emotional state and your
physical state when you're carrying the
child impacts the nervous system and
development of the human being inside
you and it makes sense but but can you
explain more about that because this is
an idea that was brand new to me just a
couple years ago. Sure. But we have to
nail down first is we're not blaming
mothers here. They do their best. We're
talking about the stress is acting on
the pregnant woman. That's no fault of
her own. But speaking of stress, when
people are stressed, they release stress
hormones are dwelling on cortisol. When
the mother is stressed in pregnancy,
those stress hormones go through the
placenta of the umbilical cord to the
baby that affects the child's nervous
system in his development. Cortisol has
a huge impact on the development of
important brain circuits. You
can look at the heart rate of infants in
the womb as it changes as the mother is
more or less
stressed. So these are just
physiological facts. So um there was a
study done after
911 after
the tragedy of 9 911 women who were
pregnant then
uh and who suffered post-traumatic
stress disorder in the third trimester
of pregnancy as a result of
911 their infants had abnormal stress
hormone levels a year
later. Now abnormal tester levels have
an impact on brain development and on
physiology on the physiology and
physiological health as well. So you can
expect those kids unless something's
done to to correct it to face more
challenges later on. And we know that
mothers who are stressed during
pregnancy, depressed during during
pregnancy, their children are more
likely to have ADHD, attention deficit
disorder, other mental health
challenges. So it's just now what's
interesting here is indigenous people
have always known this. I was talking to
a a native group in British Columbia
where I live and this guy comes up to me
and says you know doc in our community
when a woman was pregnant there was a
rule that if you're stressed or upset
you were not permitted to go near them.
We didn't want your stress and upset to
affect the baby. So this modern science
has only confirmed indigenous wisdom.
But it's a huge issue in this country in
this culture cuz people are so stressed
for so many reasons.
Well, it's interesting to listen to you
explain all this because for me
personally, your work has impacted both
me and recognizing the way that
childhood experiences
and in vitro experiences when I was
inside my mother's body impacted Sorry.
In utero. In utero. Is that what it
Okay. See, I'm not a medical doctor. No,
in vitro means in the laboratory. Oh,
okay. You're right. In in utero.
Exactly. Yeah. so impacted me when I was
inside my mother developing, you know,
into a baby. Yeah. And then I think
about your work in the context of me as
a stressed out mother. Yeah. And the
state that I was in when I was carrying
any one of our three children and how
that absolutely impacted their
development. There's this kind of
conflict that I feel between, oh gosh,
you know, I hurt my kids and I didn't
mean to and also this understanding
that I think this is part of the human
experience on some level. Well, for
first of all, when my mother was
carrying me, I don't think she even
wanted to be pregnant. I mean, what
Jewish woman really wanted to be
pregnant in the middle of the Second
World War when my when her husband is in
forced labor? already in Udo kids can
feel if they're not
wanted. I've seen this show up in many
many many many ways. Now the the the
thing that I would take up with you
is on the one hand there's the awareness
that this is what happened but the way
you formulated that you hurt your kids.
No pain flowed through you to your
children but you didn't hurt them. You
didn't. It's not that you did something
deliberately or consciously to hurt
them. It's just that the way it worked
is that trauma is transmitted
transgenerationally. But that's not to
blame anybody. And it's really important
to remove blame cuz parents feel so
guilty already. Parents with kids who
are challeng have challenges. Believe
me, I've been one of them. There's a
tremendous sense of guilt which is
entirely unwarranted and undeserved and
it doesn't even help. So let's just
agree that the trauma does come through
us but we don't do it as such that is
incredibly helpful way to think about it
though when you said that it's pain
moving through you. Yeah. Yeah. That
made my shoulders drop.
How do you define trauma particularly
for somebody
who isn't aware whether or not they've
experienced it? Um the way I define it
is very straightforward. Trauma comes
from a Greek word for wound or wounding.
So trauma is a wound. It's a
psychological wound in this case. Could
be a physical wound, but here we're
talking about psychological wounds. The
important distinction to make is that
trauma is not what happened to you. It's
what h what happened inside of you as a
result of what happened to you. So in my
case, my trauma wasn't that my mother
gave me to a stranger. The trauma was
the wound which is that I perceive
myself as not wanted. I perceive myself
as abandoned. Who gets abandoned?
Somebody who doesn't deserve to be
loved. So then I develop this sense of
not being good enough, not um being
lovable enough. Now that means I spend
much of my life trying to prove that I'm
good, that I'm lovable, that I am
important, which then drives all kinds
of behaviors which then create more
problems. But the trauma is not the
event, that's the traumatic
um episode, but the trauma is the wound
that happens inside you. So if I get a
blow head, that's not the trauma. The
trauma is the concussion that I
developed. Now, in that case, it's
physical. And I want to kind of hover
here because for a long time I just
assumed trauma was something that
happened to people. Yeah. Who were at
war or were in a country that was
occupied by you know a fascist
government or country coming in like
your parents were and that you were.
Yeah. I or somebody that was the the
victim of a violent crime. I never
understood that experiences that may
seem insignificant on the surface,
somebody's mood, somebody criticizing
you, feeling left out, that these are
things that can also leave a mark just
like a blow to a head can can actually
leave a concussion. And I would love for
you to explain to us what actually is a
psychological wound because one of the
things that I see happening a lot is
people either shame themselves for being
stuck or they say I'm just too emotional
or I should just get over it. And there
is something deeper that you mean when
you say it's a psychological wound. So
well that self-t talk that negative
selft talk that you just articulated is
itself a psychological wound.
It's a sign of psychological wound. It's
a sign of self-rejection which is one of
the deepest impacts of of trauma is that
people traumatized they develop a shame
based view of themselves. So they begin
to think that there's something wrong
with them. That itself is a wound. Now
when you talked about seemingly
insignificant things we have to make a
distinction here. There are what we call
the big T traumatic events. Those are
have been well studied. Physical abuse,
sexual abuse, emotional abuse of
neglect, a parent being addicted, a
parent dying, a parent being jailed, um
violence in the family, um a ranker's
divorce, a parent being mentally ill, to
which we need to add social factors such
as poverty or racism. These are bigt
traumatic events that can wound kids and
we can talk about the ways that hap
happens. But you can also wound kids not
by doing bad things to them that you
shouldn't but by not doing the good
things that they need. In other words,
children have certain needs. A human
child is born with certain evolution
determined needs. Those children whose
needs are not met that way for example
for unconditional loving acceptance and
I'm not talking about the parents love.
I'm talking about the capacity of the
parent to unconditionally accept the
child and to see the child. What do you
mean when you say unconditional
acceptance? Because I think most of us
it's revelatory to hear no. There's a
biological hardwired need that you have
as a child to feel unconditional
acceptance and safety. Yeah. From the
adults around you and in your
environment. And if you do not feel that
way, it creates a response inside your
body. There is a reaction to that. But
most of us, I think we even just skip
over that fact, Gabbor, that there's a
fundamental need that a child has to
feel accepted. And so what does that
mean? If you could unpack it for us.
Sure. Children get to experience and see
themselves the way they are seen by the
adults. So if a child gets emotional and
they get criticized, then there's think
there's something wrong with their
If a child is very sensitive and they're
told, "Don't be so sensitive," they
think there's something wrong with
them. If
um a child, a young toddler is behaving
a certain way and the parent thinks that
the way to correct this is to punish the
child, then the child and the child is
just being a 2-year-old.
Then the child begins to believe that
there's something wrong with them and
they have to compensate for that by
meeting the parents
expectations. So now the acceptance is
no longer unconditional. I'll accept you
if you look this way, talk this way,
behave this way. And then all your life
you'll be worried about how do people
see you. That's a sign of a childhood
wound. Because fundamentally uh we need
to be connected to ourselves and and um
when parents don't see us, we don't see
ourselves. That's just a fact. And if
you look at human evolution,
um we didn't
evolve under the conditions that kids
are raised now. We evolved under
conditions for millions of years
until 15,000 years ago living in small
communities where there were many
adults. It takes a village to raise a
child. Um the kids were always with the
parents. There was no separation. Kids
were carried everywhere. They were not
put down to let it let them cry it out.
they were just unconditionally accepted
and uh not punished actually not
hit. It's a totally different paradigm
of of parenting. That's how we evolved
which means that the human child expects
to be treated that
way uncondition you know unconsciously
when those needs are not met kids are
hurt. Children have another need which
is we're wired to have certain emotions
you know along with other mammals we're
wired to have anger it's anger is
essential for survival fear we're wired
to have fear we're wired to have um
curiosity seeking we're wired to have
um separation
distress so that if the adults not
around we should be upset we should
panic so we cry so the parents come and
get us. Mhm. We're wired for play. And
children have this need that when those
emotions arise, parents should
understand those emotions and and and
not necessarily do what the kid wants
them to do, but to understand the
child's feelings.
And when children are denied that kind
of understanding, they think there's
something wrong with their emotions.
Then they start telling themselves, I'm
too emotional. I'm not good enough. Uh
I'm too sensitive. I am
um not lovable. Or when children don't
get the attention that they need, guess
what? They develop and need to be
attractive so they can attract
attention. Now look at the damage done
in this culture by people thinking that
they need to meet certain standards of
looks and the trouble that people go to.
It's all because they were not accepted
just for who they were and not they're
trying to attract attention. Is there a
human being on the planet that doesn't
have trauma from their childhood? I
mean, you know, cuz I I'm sitting here
listening and it's an interesting
conversation because you listen to it
both from your experience. Yeah. And I
love that you said we're not going to
blame mothers. Yeah. And pain is moving
through people. Yeah. This is why trauma
passes through your family and through
cultures generationally. Yeah. And
learning about this helps you understand
the responses to your childhood that
helped you survived. Yeah. And it also
helps you feel empowered to take
responsibility. That's right. To change
those now subconscious responses that
you have. Yeah. So going back to your
question about is there anybody on the
planet? Yeah. But in this culture, that
would be the exception because there's
so many features of this culture that
don't meet human needs that human make
human life difficult. Look, the United
States is the richest country in
history. 70% of adults are at least on
one medication. 40% of adults are at
least on two medications. More and more
kids are getting medicated for all kinds
of conditions from ADHD to self- cutting
to to aggression to so-called
oppositionality to
anxiety. We can look at this two ways.
Either human beings are just
innately troubled or there's something
wrong with the environment in which
we're raising our kids and in which
we're trying to striving to doing our
best but we're facing conditions that
are enimical to healthy human
development. So in this sense when we
talk about trauma we're talking about
the conditions under which parents have
to function these days. If I was
functioning in a laboratory trying to
microorganisms, the word is called
culturing. We're trying to culture
organisms, laboratory culture. If in
that laboratory culture, a lot of those
microorganisms began to develop
pathologies or die off, you have to say
this is a toxic culture. Well, it's the
same thing with human beings. So rather
than look at the source of people's
problems strictly within themselves, we
have to actually look at the conditions
for any creature in the world, whether
it's a plant or animal, you have to look
at the conditions under which people are
living and raising kids and trying to
function. So that's what I'm doing here.
When you think of childhood trauma, how
do you identify it? Well, again, I
mentioned those 10 conditions, the big
T, the big T's ones. um adding to it
poverty and
racism. Those things actually affect the
physiology of the body. So people who
are traumatized that way, they have a
much higher risk. For example, people
who've had several of those big
experiences that I talked about, they
have a higher risk for autoimmune
disease, high risk for higher risk for
cancer, much higher risk for addiction,
much higher risk for mental health
problems and so on. Why? Like can you
explain for from a medical reason like
in the body this show is has listeners
in 194 countries. Sure. And this might
be the very first time as you're
listening to God birth that you're
actually starting to go wait a minute.
Everything that he's saying is what I
experienced. Yeah. Or at least pieces of
it. I've never considered that this
could be trauma. Yeah. And we've talked
about it as a psychological wound, but I
think it'd be really helpful if you also
explained how does this create either
programming or conditioning in your body
that starts to define who you become as
an adult and create behaviors that you
never intended. So that happens on both
the physiological and the psychological
level. Okay. On the physiological level,
trauma incites inflammation in the body.
So people who are severely traumatized
in childhood, you can measure the level
of inflammatory particles in their
bloodstream. They'll be abnormally high,
which makes them more at risk for
cancer, more at risk for autoimmune
disease, more at risk for depression,
mental health problems, and so on.
That's just a physiological fact. Trauma
can affect the way uh genes are turned
on and off. So genes don't function
independently. Um there are very few
conditions that are purely genetically
determined. There are some when one runs
in my family musculardrophe if you
inherit the gene you'll have the disease
but that's very rare relatively but
genes are turned on off by the animal
environment so the wrong genes can be
turned on and the and the right genes
can be turned off by trauma then trauma
can disregulate the body's stress
mechanism. So people are secretreting
more cortisol and adrenaline. These are
the stress hormones which in the short
term are lifesaving because if I was
threatened or you were we would generate
cortisol adrenaline from an adrenal
gland and we would be stronger and
faster and better able to counter the
threat either to escape or to fight
back. But in the long term, those same
stress hormones thin the bones, create
more clotting in the blood, narrow the
blood vessels, elevate the high blood
pressure, elevate the blood pressure,
you get hypertension, suppress the
immune system, put fat on your belly,
creating higher risk for heart disease,
makes you depressed, ulcerate your
intestines. These are the stress
hormones. Wow. So there's all that um on
the physiological side and I could say
more about it, but if you for example I
I mentioned racism. So if you look at
the chromosomeal aging of black people
in this country, they age faster than
Caucasians. And black is already have
higher blood pressure measurements than
their Caucasian counterparts. It's got
nothing to do with genetics. It's got to
do with the stress of racism.
A black woman in this country, the more
episodes of racism they experience, the
higher the risk for
asthma. Children whose parents are
stressed are at higher risk for asthma.
This has been known for
decades. I could go on a great length
about that. So these are some of the
physiological impacts. Then there are
the emotional impacts.
So like in my case being given to a
stranger gives me the sense of not being
wanted, not being important. Then I
develop behaviors where I try and prove
my importance. So I become a workaholic
doctor. So I drive myself too hard and I
don't pay so much attention to my family
cuz I'm out there trying to prove my
importance in the world. Now that has
impact on my kids, that has an impact on
my marriage. So there's these um
behavior emotional impacts which result
in certain behaviors. Then we can talk
about addictions. Addictions is a huge
consequence of childhood trauma of all
kinds. And there's all kinds of science
behind that. So the one more thing if I
say when people get the message that
their emotions aren't acceptable to the
adults children will push down their
feelings in order to be accepted and
they'll try to be nice and
cooperative and they'll try to fit in
with other people's expectations which
then means they'll be stressed all the
time which then potentiates all kinds of
illness. You know, I am sitting here
thinking about ways in
which I can try to
distill down what you're saying because
the information has been so
life-changing for me in my own life to
really accept, acknowledge, and seek to
understand how childhood
experiences created a traumatic response
inside of me. And I want to focus on the
I guess you would call it the smaller T
stuff which is that you have fundamental
needs as a child and when they are not
provided to you that it creates trauma
inside of you. And is it fair to say
that another way to think about trauma
is that it's something happening outside
of you that creates this almost like
alarm or bracing in your body. It's like
it it kind of flips you into that fight
or flight cuz I have this experience of
not like going back through my childhood
and not like seeing anything that's
massive related to my parents but just
having this sense of constantly being on
edge, constantly feeling like, you know,
it's my job to make everybody happy,
don't say the wrong thing, this hyper
vigilance. And I never knew where it
came from. Yeah. Well, the child is very
sensitive to the parents emotional
states and uh even if for example you
uh one of the ways you can tell if a
marriage is troubled is you can ask the
parents or you can measure the child's
stress hormone
levels. So the stresses of the parents
are directly rel um affecting the
child's physiology and the child's
psychology. So you may not have
articulated and and and and clearly see
what was going on, but especially if
you're a sensitive person genetically,
and that is genetic sensitivity, you'll
feel exactly what's going on, and you'll
think it's all about you. And then you
also develop the belief that it's your
job to fix it. And then when you can't
fix it, you have this tremendous sense
of guilt and shame cuz you failed at
your job of making your parents happy,
which never should have been the child's
job in the first place.
What is a child supposed to do? About
Just as you're growing up. It's
interesting because I think so many
people at least in my life and my lived
experience is that that that's my job to
protect myself to like make everybody
happy to but but you see that's how you
survived because what you needed most of
all is a relationship with your parents
and one of the needs of children that I
haven't mentioned is what we can call
rest which means in order to cuz in that
rest state we can develop and grow and
unfold now rest means the child doesn't
have to work to make the relationship
work with the parent. The relationship
is just there. There's nothing the child
can do to break the relationship.
Now, in a situation where that's not the
case, then the child
necessarily has to work to make the
relationship work because without that
relationship, they know they can't
survive. So, that
adaptation, the the hyper vigilance on
your part, remember I said in the
beginning that nobody's damaged goods.
Mhm. So that that hyper vigilance on
your part and that belief that it's your
job to make the situation peaceful,
that's an adaptation on your part. So
that's a form of trauma. That's an
outcome of trauma. The problem
is that that becomes then wired into
your personality. But children don't
have any choice in the matter. They have
to adapt to this situation. Those
adaptations they become wired into their
personalities and that's who they think
they are. That's not who they are. Those
are their adaptations, their trauma
showing up in their behavior and in
their emotional functioning. One of the
ways that I've seen people really deny
Yeah. the existence of trauma inside a
family is between siblings. Yeah. Where
two siblings will grow up in the same
household and be like, "Well, that never
happened." Or, "Mom wasn't like that, or
you're just being too sensitive." In
your work, what have you discovered
about how siblings can grow up in the
same house? No siblings grow up in the
same house. No siblings have the same
parents. No siblings have the same
family. No siblings have the same
childhood. Why not? There whole lot of
reasons. Number one, there's the birth
order. Parents don't relate to the first
child the way they relate to the second
child. Then there's gender differences.
Parents don't relate to I'm not talking
about whe the parents love the kids or
not. I'm talking about what actually
happens. The child doesn't experience
the parents love. The child experiences
the way the parent shows up. So um
number one, number two, the parents
relationship might be in a different
phase, one child and another
um the parents might be in a different
situation. The parents lives might be
different. Um
then each child will evoke a different
response from the parent like with my
three kids or your three kids. Yeah. You
have three children. Yeah. You have two
daughters and a son. I have two sons and
a daughter. It's not that I loved or we
loved any one of them more than the
other. But we responded to them
differently. And there's one more factor
which is children are born with
different temperaments which is they
experience the world differently. So
even if I could be the same parent to
all my kids, which I couldn't be, they
still have three different parents
because they would experience me
differently.
Well, you know, I
I am sitting here
listening again kind of from two places.
one as a mother, right? And one as a
human being who was a daughter who has
recognized that there were lots of small
things that happened and one big thing
that created a tremendous like a
traumatic response inside me. Sure. That
created hypervigilance and anxiety and
probably ADHD. And I'm also thinking and
I'm going to share this because I think
it'll be really helpful that I had a
wildly traumatic birth. I was two weeks
overdue. They had to induce me here in
Boston and my daughter Sawyer who is
sitting outside this studio and yeah
worked on the let them theory book with
me she did not want to come out. Yeah.
So it was 36 hours. They had to use a
forceps didn't work. They ended up doing
a vacuum extraction and then I tore and
I got rushed to emergency surgery. Oh
gosh. And lost 2 and 12 liters of blood.
Oh gosh. And they sent Sawyer home with
Chris. They kept me in the hospital and
by the time I went home, my skin was as
gray as a dolphin. Yeah. And I had
severe postpartum depression. Yeah. and
the kind gobber where I could not be
alone with her because I was in such a
depressive and scary state and I was on
medications that made it completely
unsafe for me to breastfeed her. I
understand. And for the first 10 weeks
of her life, I was a zombie on
medication.
And oh my god, it just like kills me to
think about this. and she's recently
uh gone into therapy and has started
doing EMDR. Yeah. And one of her visions
when they kind of
trace her, you know, responses to
stressful things in the moment and it
goes all the way back to the first
vision. Yeah. Is a vision that she has
where she's in her crib. Yeah. And she
really wants me to come. Yeah. and it's
my husband and then it's my mother and
then it's my mother-in-law and then it's
my friend Joanie that would sit with me
while Chris went to work and I never
came. Yeah. So, we went through the same
thing uh with one of our children and my
wife had a severe postbone depression.
She couldn't even look at the kid and
um so let me say a couple of things
Um one is that sometimes birth trauma
happens you know but yours was severe.
Now birth was created by nature in a
certain way and um during the birth
process there's natural hormones that
are released both in the mother and the
infant. It's been called a love
It's a combination of internal
opiates and
oxytocin and other brain chemicals which
create the bonding between the mother
and the
infant. Now, sometimes medical
intervention is life-saving and
essential. But we've medicalized birth
so much that we interfere with it so
much now that we're getting a lot of
birth trauma where it's not necessary.
I'm not saying that was the case in your
situation, but nevertheless, we're doing
it a lot, you
know, and that interferes with mother
and child bonding. Number one. Number
two, the child does have this need to
stay with the mother's body for many
months. Uh because the human child is
um least developed and the least mature
and the most dependent of any mammal.
and the maturation like a horse can run
on the first day of life. Human beings
can't do that for a year and a half. The
horse is a year and a half ahead of us
in terms of brain development. That's
because we develop these big
brains, these big heads. If we waited
any more than 9 months, we would never
get born. Sometimes even now, we barely
get born cuz the head is get stuck,
which is probably what happened in in
your case. Mhm. Which means that the
development that in other animals
happens in the womb in human beings have
to happen outside the womb. That's been
extrostation. There's introestation in
the womb and extra gestation outside the
womb. Now that means the mother's body,
the mother's skin, the mother's
heartbeat close to the baby for many
many many months. So when that doesn't
happen in in the US 25% of women have to
go back to work within two weeks of
giving birth which is a massive
abandonment they don't do it because
they want to they don't they they have
to do it for economic reasons it's a
massive abandonment of children so so
there's the birth trauma and its impacts
which then there's the mother's
depression and that has an impact on the
infant. So
people, kids whose mothers were
depressed postpartum have a higher risk
ADHD. And we can talk about why that's
the case. Why is that the case? Cuz all
three of my children have ADHD.
Well, I I can tell you what I The first
book I ever wrote, Scattered Minds, was
an ADHD after I was
diagnosed. And um we can talk about
that, but let me just say it now. That's
just the case. And we can discuss it.
They've done electro and sephiloggrams
on six-month old infants whose mother
was depressed and whose mother was not
depressed. You could tell from the eg of
the infant whose mother is depressed and
who is not.
Not because the depressed mother loves
the child any less or is any iota less
devoted than the non-depressed mother,
but because depress depressed mother
can't respond to the infant with the
same smiling u playful attuned
interaction which the child needs for
healthy brain development. It's a sacred
thing and and society needs to hold it
sacred. Now how mothers used to develop
or raise children is in the community
where they gave birth in a community
where they were with doulas where um no
mind you they didn't have the advantages
of modern medicine which again I'm not
dismissing I'm just talking about how we
evolved right and there was such a thing
as aloe mothering other mothers would
come and support the mother when the
mother needed to rest other women would
come and hold the baby
um and mothers are left very much on
their own in the society and that
depression in the mother then affects
the child's brain
development. Not only
that, given that we develop a sense of
ourselves based on how the adults look
at us when the mother or the parents
can't look at the child or they can't
hold the child again the child begins to
feel there's something wrong with them.
It feels like there's a million ways for
this to actually happen. Well, there is.
And I and I share the story because it's
true. I was a completely different
mother. Yeah. When I gave birth to our
second child, Kendall. Yeah. Just 19
months later. Yeah.
And her birth was different. Yeah. And
Chris and I were different. And so I can
see how without any ill intention Yeah.
you are a very different parent.
Absolutely. And the child is a very
different child. And the child is born
with a different temperament. Correct.
So even so they they experience you
differently to start with you know. So
how do you like how does this sort of
unresolved trauma from childhood that I
would imagine you know a lot of us learn
about this as an adult and then we start
to recognize that this is an explanation
for a lot of the patterns of behavior
that you don't really like but you're
not quite sure how to get control of
them. How does unresolved trauma impact
the way that you deal with stress as an
adult? So, um the body's stress
regulation apparatus which is
physiological. Mhm. It has to do with
the connection between certain uh brain
centers um down to the adrenal gland
which is the stress gland. You might
say no child is born with stress
regulation. Infants don't know how to
regulate their stresses. Well, neither
do adults. Well, as you say, as you say
in your book, most adults are eight
years old, if that, but I thought that
was pretty generous. This might have
been four, three or four years old.
Um, well, stress like other functions
has to
develop so that when something stressful
happens, I know how to face it without
being overwhelmed.
And that depends on the development of
these brain circuits and receptors for
brain chemicals.
Now trauma interferes with the
development of the body's stress
regulation
apparatus so that become adults and we
don't know how to handle stress and then
we seek escape. So one of the ways that
people escape from stress is addictive
behaviors. You know, for example, so if
you do if you talk about or talk to
addicts, if you I look at my own
behaviors. Even if I go quote unquote
sober for a
while and then I relapse, what usually
happened is that I got stressed and then
I reach for that addictive outlet as a
way of soothing my stress. So that's how
it shows up. But but physiologically it
shows up by a disregulation of the
body's stress regulation apparatus. So
there not just psychological, we're
talking physiology. And you can you've
done the studies in in laboratory
animals where the way the mother handles
that infant rat pup in the first few
days of life will have an impact on the
adult rat's capacity to handle stress.
And if you take the rats, by the way,
whose mothers don't handle them as well,
and you put them with mothers who do,
their brains develop normally. So it's
not a genetic effect. It's what's called
an epigenetic effect. It's the
environment acting on the genes. Which
is why we come back to your original
point. No human being is damaged goods.
No. That the good news is that if you
can recognize that your response to
stress Yeah. and traumatic situations
and overwhelming emotional situations.
Yeah. Is something that you can identify
and change. Yeah. That that's what the
opportunity is here in terms of being
able to heal and resolve trauma.
Absolutely. And especially if you begin
by recognizing that it's not your fault.
There's nothing wrong with you. You
know, when I think about my husband who
absolutely experienced trauma by having
a dad that was a workaholic. Yeah. And
never around and narcissistic
personality style and lots of drinking
and stress in the marriage. Right. And
his response to stress is to just shut
down. Yeah. The man goes silent and
stoic. And in our marriage, one of the
things that have come up a lot, which
you can direct line to his response to
his own childhood, is he doesn't really
know what his needs are because they
weren't met. That's right. And for him,
it took a long time to call that trauma
from his childhood because he's like,
"Well, I had food. My parents were
there. I I know went to school. It's not
like they beat me." I know. And for me,
I am the opposite. I'm a reactor. Like
I'm a human volcano. Yeah. And when I
get disregulated or triggered or upset
or overwhelmed, I'm like, and I and it's
even though I know this. Yeah. And I've
been working on it and I am a completely
different human being. I feel that way
over the last three years. Yeah, I still
Well, join the club and well well so how
do you personally navigate your daily
challenges and when you get overwhelmed
by stress? So let me say something about
Chris first if I may. Yes, please. When
he says that I wasn't beaten or we
weren't starving, I had food and
therefore I wasn't
traumatized. Here's what I would say to
him. So listen, Chris, let's take one of
kids and let's say you were an
alcoholic, which means that you came
home in different moods all the time and
the kids didn't couldn't rely on who dad
was going to be for one minute into the
next and your mom was constantly
stressed and you and and and if you were
this way, do you think your kids
wouldn't be hurt by
that? So just plug your kid into the
situation that you're in. You see how
and if one of your kids came to you and
said, "Dad, I I don't like it that
you're drinking and you're behaving this
way or that way and and you're a
workaholic like I never around." Would
you say to your kid, "Well, there's food
on the table. What are you complaining
about?" You know, but I did. Yeah. No,
that happened in our house like 15 years
ago. Okay. And he felt bad and I was an
Oh, okay. Again, more trauma
and more pain passing on to Yeah. our
kids. Yeah. I'm just saying that when
people look at their own childhoods,
they kind of minimize. Why do we do
that? Because it was too painful to
accept in the first
place. So that people dissociate and
they disconnect from their bodies and
their feelings. Now you said that he had
a hard time feeling what he feels. That
that itself is a trauma impact. It's a
protection. It's not a
flaw. It's not a damage. It's an
adaptation. If I was hurting you right
now and you couldn't escape and you
couldn't fight back and you couldn't ask
help, then dissociating and not
experiencing your feelings would be your
protection. But then it gets wired into
you and then all your life you go
through not knowing what you feel and
not knowing what your needs are. So
again, it's an adaptation. That's what
I'm saying is that nobody's damaged
goods. These are just adaptations. The
abnormality is not in the individual.
It's in the circumstances to which the
individual had to respond that way. So
that his response or yours or mine for
that matter were perfectly normal
responses to abnormal circumstances. I
say abnormal in a sense circumstances
that did not meet human needs. One of
the things that's coming to mind
is thinking back to my own life and the
moment where I first bumped into your
work and I learned that the seemingly
little things created a lasting impact.
Yeah. and that even though I wasn't to
blame for the emotional volatility or
the emotional
shutdown in my parents when I was
growing up that it impacted me. It was
real and it was my
responsibility to heal and to decide
whether or not I wanted to do the work
to change the way that it impacted me
cuz it did have a massive impact on my
behaviors. Constantly feeling on edge,
people pleasing, anxiety, ADHD, drinking
too much, chasing success as a way to
prove that I was worthy of something and
to make other people happy. Yes, it was
everywhere. Yeah, it honestly just
defined how I ran on default. And I
remember the moment though when I
started to truly accept the fact that
these were all indications of trauma.
Yeah. And that if I wanted my life to
feel different. Yeah. That I needed to
lean into everything that you're saying.
Yeah. And I felt a lot of conflict about
that moment because I felt guilty for
identifying it that way because I know
my parents were just doing the best that
they did. They did. And that there was a
lot that I didn't remember. Yeah.
And I'm wondering if you could just talk
to the person who's listening who is
having that awakening for the first time
where they're really accepting
that some of the behaviors and the
negative selft talk and the anxiety
that this is a result of experiences
that you had as a child where you were
not given the things that you needed.
Mel there's a lot in what you said.
Okay. F said you you behaved that way by
default. There's a difference between
default and fault.
Okay, default you didn't know you were
doing it. You didn't know any better.
You were just following patterns that
were programmed into you. But it's not
your fault. Okay, there's a huge
difference. Important
distinction. Number one. Number
two, it's never the child's job to make
the parents happy or to create peace in
the family. And a child invariably
fails, which instills a huge sense of
guilt and
inadequacy for not having fulfilled a
task that never ought to be in yours,
never should have been yours in the
first place. It's a reversal of roles
cuz whose job it is to hold who
emotionally to create
peace. And so when a child is forced
into that
position again as an adaptation to
maintain a relationship with the
parents, she's given an impossible task
that she's bound to fail at and bound to
feel shame over it. Which means that any
shame and guilt that you feel is
completely undeserved. When we start to
noticing these patterns, we can start
asking ourselves
questions. But it depends on how we ask
them. So I could say why am I behaving
way or is that a question?
No, it's an indictment. It's an
indictment. But I said hm I wonder why
I'm behaving that way. So we need to
begin to develop
that compassionate curiosity towards the
self where we start looking not to why
did I not this indictment as you say but
curiosity and from that perspective
everything pretty much everything
anybody thinks is wrong with them is
actually begins as an
adaptation or it begins as a failure of
development because the conditions for
development were not adequate.
And so then we can
understand now it's not a question of
victims. That's the last thing we want
to do is to uh foster victim mentality.
They did this to me and now I can't help
it. No, that happened and it's your
responsibility and it's your capacity to
change that now. So you have to drop the
victim mode altogether. But that doesn't
mean that we don't recognize what
happened. M so to say that stuff
happened to you and I get the sense that
something big happened that you haven't
articulated yet but something big
happened to you at some point. Um to
recognize that is not to say that you're
a victim. It's just to say that whatever
happened had certain impacts and
fostered certain adaptations on your
part that made you behave and undermine
your development in certain way. Oh,
I'll share it with you. When I was in
the fourth grade, I woke up in the
middle of the night on a family vacation
and an older kid was on top of me. Okay.
All right. And that had
massive implications on my life. When
were we? Uh I was fourth grade. Yeah.
And I was sound asleep. So I was in a
safe space. Wake up to an older kid on
top of me who was fondling me. Okay.
And in the scheme of things that can
happen, it was here I go to dismissing
it. You're looking at me. You're like,
"No, no, no. Don't go there." Okay.
Okay. But I like It's almost like I'm
shaming myself for having trauma about
this. No. Can I unpack this for you a
little bit? Sure. Are you open to it?
Oh, I'm so open to it. Yeah. Okay.
Here's a question I'm going to ask you.
Okay. How did you feel when this
I felt very confused and scared.
Confused and scared. Good enough. Who
did you speak to about it? No one.
Okay. Now, if something like this
happened to one of your
daughters in grade was it grade four?
Yeah. Okay. If one of these things
happened to um Sawyer or Kendall in
grade four. And if they didn't talk to
you, how would you explain that?
feel How would I explain it? I would
explain it. And I'm about to go
intellectual. I personally as the mother
would feel heartbroken. I understand how
you'd feel, but really I'm not asking
how you feel. I'm asking how you'd
explain it. Why wasn't my daughter
talking to me about feeling scared and
confused and
violated? Why? Because she didn't feel
safe talking to me. That's the
trauma. The trauma began before that
happened. Cuz if you had been able to
talk to your parents and they would have
said, "This is awful. You must feel
terrible. Come here, let me hold you and
let's deal with the situation. So the
trauma is not only in what happened is
that you were so alone when it happened.
And that aloneeness was yours before
this traumatic event ever occurred. As a
matter of fact, abusers can tell with
almost laserike accuracy who's defended
and protected and who's not, who can be
victimized and who cannot. So that your
primary traumatic event was not this
event. Not that this wasn't traumatic,
of course it was hugely traumatic, but
it became hugely traumatic cuz you were
alone and that sense of lack of
safety and and and lack of protection.
Furthermore, you may not even have
wanted to bother your parents cuz
already they're already stressed enough
already. You were protecting them.
That's the primary traumatic situation.
I've never looked at it like that. Yeah.
Do you see that when I Oh, a thousand%.
And I can also see when I think about
experiences that friends have shared
with me where they did say something.
Yeah. And then there was denial. There's
dismissal in or dismissal or we're not
going to tell anybody or this stays
within us. Yeah. Or even if they then go
after the person and confront it, it
blows up and somehow you're to blame.
And so I can see how That's right. And
and and of course when you shove it
down, you then think you've done
something wrong. And that was the other
thing that happened for me is that I
felt like I had done something wrong.
That's one of the impacts of trauma is
that the shame based view of the self
people start blaming themselves that
somehow you invited it or deserved it or
you didn't fight back hard enough
or which if you didn't was also self-p
protection.
Well, I think that was one of the
original moments that at least that I
remember where I literally left my body
and disassociated which was a defense.
Yes. So again, it's an adaptation. So
that's what I would say about that
incident. It makes perfect sense. Yeah.
But again, the problem is in the
environment in in a lack of being held
and being seen. So there's nothing and
then in your in your initial impulse
when you began a narrative about how
it's not as bad as what you know. Right.
Right. Right. Would you say that to your
your great
if your daughter comes to you and says
you it's not so bad. Think of all the
kids that are you know being beaten or
you know so that lack of self-compassion
is one of the ways that trauma shows up.
And that's why I'm saying the healing
needs to begin with some compassionate
curiosity towards the self. not why but
why. It's a totally different
conversation.
And then I can also see and take
responsibility and have a lot of
compassion for how my volatility
emotionally.
Absolutely. Just pass that on to my
daughters. Absolutely. And so there are
things that happened to them that in the
time they didn't feel comfortable coming
to me. Yeah. Yeah. Because the exact
same thing. Exactly. And you know, it it
of course just makes me
it it makes
me sad that I didn't know this sooner.
Yeah. But I feel very grateful for your
work because I know it now
and so do our children and so does my
husband. And that knowledge gives you
the the ability to truly address the
things that happened and the response
that happened in your body. Yeah. And
how that has created these default
patterns and this inability to manage
stress or emotion or conflict. Yeah. in
a way that
is healthy and that keeps you connected
to yourself instead of constantly
abandoning yourself and feeling
disappointed in yourself and shaming
yourself. And so while I can reflect on
that with a lot of sadness and grief
Yeah. and regret. Yeah. I feel more
empowered honestly. Well, that's the
whole point about what's possible.
That's the whole point is that we all
want to be free, but as long as we're
running on default mode and we're just
reacting to stuff, there's no freedom in
it. We're actually like puppets on a
string. And if you remember Pinocchio,
you know, when he becomes a real boy, he
says how silly, how foolish I was when I
was a puppet where we're all puppets in
that sense. As long as these traumatic
impacts are running our lives, we're
puppets on a string and those strings
are unconscious. So it's a whole thing
about becoming really free and that real
freedom looks at depends on looking at
how it was and getting in touch with our
capacity to take responsibility now you
know. So what really the work is for all
of us is how to become free so we can be
in the present moment connected to
ourselves. The great trauma psychologist
Peter Lavine says no longer living under
the tyranny of the past
and it's totally available. It's totally
possible. It is totally possible. Yeah.
And it's possible for you. It's possible
for your children. It's possible for
anybody that you know and love. It's
possible for your parents if they accept
the invitation to look at themselves if
they if they choose it. Yeah. Yes. What
is the first step? Is it asking the
question like why? Like just being
curious with a level of compassion like
why am I like this? Because if I reflect
on your
question that's what happened for me. I
started to say to myself it's no longer
tolerable for me to operate like this. I
don't want to be this person. I don't
want to feel like this. I don't want to
feel disconnected from other people. I
don't want to have this level of anger
inside me. So that's actually the first
step is to recognize one's suffering
rather than taking it for granted which
incidentally is the Buddha's first
teaching is that life is duka like is
life is brings suffering you know and
then the second question is okay
why you know so it does begin with
recognizing the suffering rather than
denying it and running away from it and
there's many ways to run away from our
um through certain behaviors and
addictions and the point is stop running
from your
pain. Accept that it's there and be
curious about it without blaming
yourself for it. So those are the first
steps and then you ask for help. I mean
the if help is available the natural
we're born seeking help. You've never
you've never met a one-year-old in one
day old infant who doesn't know ask for
But let me ask you a question. How easy
it has been going back for you to ask
for help.
You mean if I think about when I was in
fourth grade um then and and and even
decades later, are you are can you ask
for help or is that a pro challenge for
you? Well, I ask for a lot of help now.
No, I don't mean now. I mean I mean I
mean before your transformation.
Absolutely. Like like when you just said
that Yeah. I had this epiphany. Yeah.
That I've always felt like I got to do
it myself. Exactly. I've always felt
like it's on me. I've always felt like I
just I'll just take this on. I'll just
do this. Like, which was an adaptation
cuz there was no help available.
But you were, you know what's
interesting? So, sorry. Go ahead. Is you
just said there's no help available and
I felt this knee-jerk need. Yeah. To
protect your parents. Yes. I
understand. Because I do know like I I
mean I know my mom well enough to know
that she would have picked up a shovel
and probably clocked the kid into next
week. Like I Yeah. Yeah. That's not what
you needed your mother to do. You needed
your mother to say, "Oh gee, that's
awful. Come here. Let's talk about it."
You weren't born not knowing how to ask
for help. You were born with a supreme
capacity to ask for help.
I mean as we know any infant knows how
to ask for help. So something educates
educates it out of us. Something compels
us to suppress our capac capacity to
seek help. So if the first step is
recognizing our suffering and the second
step is getting curious about it. Then
the third step is I need some help here.
It's beautiful.
Well, it's only the simple truth.
It is so simple when you lay it out like
that. Yeah. And it's also so freeing.
Yeah. One of the things that you write
about that I think is so important that
I would love to have you explain is this
idea that we are naturally wired and
have a fundamental need for joyfulness,
playfulness, creativity, and that we
sacrifice that. Can you talk more about
Well, so there's
um a book written by a paliative care
nurse in Australia and I used to work in
paliative care and it's called the top
five regrets of dying people and she's
talking to people who died before their
time you know from cancer usually. One
of the regrets is is that they worked
too hard they didn't play enough.
Now playfulness is built into our brains
all mammals play. Bear cubs play, lion
cubs play, uh, puppies, kittens, they
all play. We're wired for play. Why?
Because play is essential for a number
of things. One is essential for brain
development. It's much more important
for brain development than academic
learning. I'm talking about
scientifically, you know, brain
physiologically. So play is important.
Play is also important to form
relationships cuz in play you can kind
of rough house a bit but you're not
actually being
enemies. So you're making friends that
way. So play is essential with the Pooh
which is one of my all-time favorite
books. Why is it one of your all-time
favorite books? Well, well, it's so
playful and uh but at the very end, and
I know you're married to Chris Robbins,
which is Christopher Robin, you know, I
mean, anyway, there's a passage at the
end of the book, W the Pooh, where
Christopher, the the boy, by the way,
him and his father had a terrible
relationship, which is a whole other
issue. I'm talking about the real
Christopher Robin. Um, but the fictional
Christopher Robin is now growing up and
he has to go to school, which means he
won't be able to play with his animals
anymore. And he's trying to explain this
to these animals, including Winnie the
Bear. And the book ends with this
statement that I'll paraphrase where it
says that they go off walking together
hand in hand. And the book ends with,
"But whatever they do and wherever they
go in the ent in the enchanted forest, a
little boy and his bear will always be
playing together." And that passage as
an adult would bring me to
because as a kid, as an infant, I wasn't
played with. My mother was way too
terrorized and depressed to play with
me. And and kids peekab-boo. Play starts
so early. It's essential for our mental
health. It's essential for our brain
development. So these poor people who
were looking back on their lives and
saying, "I wish I had played more." Play
is just essential. And I have to say
that one of the things that has kept our
marriage going 55 years now is that we
play so well together and we're just
playing all the time when we're not
fighting, which which by the way is long
gone. Not long gone, but gone. Um, so,
um, play is play is just essential. And
you weren't played with, so did you play
with your kids? It's interesting. I have
two brothers. They're both intuitively
playful with young kids. They just know
how to be with them, how to pretend, how
to just get into their space. I watch
them and I don't know how the hell they
do it cuz I didn't know how to play with
my kids. Um, not really. I I I I kind of
faked it. But I I always kept waiting
waiting for them to develop minds that I
could engage with
verbally cuz that on that verbal level
I'm very comfortable. On the play level,
I wasn't. I was rather
stiff. I wish I was a grandfather. I'm
not yet because I'd learn how to play.
I'd let that infant teach me how to
play. But no, I didn't know how to play.
I didn't know how to play.
I I really lacked that because it wasn't
given to me when I was small. My
brothers had it now. They grew up under
a very different circumstances. They
didn't have the same parents, you know,
in the way we talked about it today. So,
they know how to play. I don't But kids,
I mean, well, a very surprising insight
for me as I've been working to resolve
Yeah. issues from my past is noticing
that I'm a very warm person. Oh, but I'm
not affectionate. Uhhuh. And it's this
of going in more for the hug, being more
physical in terms of embracing my kids.
Mhm. And it's something that I
definitely did not receive. And I come
from a long line of farmers and hard
workers. Yeah. and pull up your, you
know, big girl panties and let's move
on. And that's the way that my mom is,
even though she's warm and amazing and
loving, but not physically embracing.
And so, I really relate to that because
it's something as an adult that I
recognize that I truly want to change.
Yeah. And it's takes effort. It takes
effort for me to go, "Oh, I noticed I'm
just standing here. I got to put my arm
around." Just gone to five.
That's true. And then hug somebody. Um
the um I used to be hug phobic. Really?
And I embraced you when you walked in.
Yeah, you did. But I honest to God when
people in a room would start hugging
each other, I'd stand there like this.
And is that a response? It's a response
to really not being held. And it's also
um a kind of a protective
shell. I don't want to make myself that
vulnerable. I don't want to open up.
Yeah. What might be some surprising
behaviors that are an indication of
unresolved trauma from your childhood?
Well, sometimes
it's attributes and behaviors that the
world respects you for.
So great success can sometimes be an
outcome of childhood trauma cuz you're
working so hard to prove something to
the world. Like I talked about my own
workism and and you know cuz I had to
prove that I was important. Now that
made me a very successful respected
physician from the outside and the
inside different story and in my family
a different situation altogether.
um people who are very
attractive and who put a lot of effort
into being very attractive, the world
admires them, but it's very often, like
I said before, they're trying to attract
the attention they should that should
have been their birthright and they
don't feel good
if they're not attractive. And you see
uh as people age, this desperation to
keep looking
young because um they're not acceptable
the way they are. So it sometimes it
shows up in success in what the world
considers success and other ways like
you talked about kind of not being the
kind of person that is open to hugging
or my husband shuts down. Well, my
response to
um a sense
of disruption in my relationship with my
wife is to shut down. So, I just, you
know, go sullen and uh
non-communicative. I mean, I talk about
that in the first chapter of the book.
This is, you know,
I I arrive home from a speaking trip
and she texts me that she hasn't lived
home yet to pick me up from the airplane
and I go into a sullen withdrawal stage
because I'm reliving my abandonment
unconsciously, but I don't realize it.
And when I saw my mother again after
that five or 6 week separation, I didn't
even look at her for several days, which
is the typical response of the child
because the child's brain says you were
so hurt when you were abandoned that you
will not open yourself up again. So your
husband is exhibiting the same thing
that that has been very dominant problem
in my relationship in my marriage is my
tendency to shut down.
uh in response to any sense of hurt even
if the hurt has nothing to do with the
present moment but it's a re triggering
of some old wound.
You're so amazing. What are your parting
You know what comes up for me is that
beautiful movie um with Robin Williams
and uh Matt Damon where Goodwill
Hunting. Goodwill Hunting here in
Boston. Yeah, that's right. where the
psychologist Robin Williams grabs this
very dysfunctional,
disregulated client paid by Matt Damon
and he says, "It's not your
fault." We can only get that. That's the
biggest takeaway I would say. Just get
it. It's not your fault, but there's
reason for it. It can be worked through.
Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you
for being here, for sharing all of your
wisdom and your research and for not
only validating Mhm. our experience, but
giving us three simple things we can do
to reconnect with ourselves and truly
take our power back.
You're amazing. My pleasure. Thank you.
You're welcome. Yeah. And for you on
YouTube, I just wanted to thank you for
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