Doctor Gabor Mate: I Regret My Interview With Prince Harry! The Shocking Link Between Kindness & Illness!

[0] 70 % of the adult population is at least on one medication.

[1] Quarter of women are on antidepressants.

[2] The rate of childhood is going out.

[3] Worldwide, there's this epidemic of distress.

[4] What can we do about that?

[5] So the first step would be to...

[6] Dr. Gabor Maté, legendary thinker, celebrated speaker and best -selling author.

[7] Highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and distress.

[8] People pleasers, these are the people that tend to develop diseases.

[9] When people don't know how to say no, the body.

[10] will say no for them.

[11] That niceness is a repression of healthy anger, and that repression of healthy anger has huge implications for your health.

[12] And when you repress your immune system, you're more likely to have that immune system turn against you.

[13] People are emotional repressed are more likely to get cancer.

[14] And emotional repression is one of the impacts of childhood trauma.

[15] We interrupt this film to tell you we are getting reports that the people's princess is dead.

[16] Harry was a traumatized child.

[17] How he's told about his mother's death is that it was an accident, and your mother didn't make it.

[18] His father touches Harry on the knee and says, but it'll be okay and leaves the room.

[19] This 12 -year -old, nobody held him.

[20] And children can be traumatized not just by terrible things happening to them, but just by not having their needs met.

[21] By not being seen, not being heard, not being held, those are wounding for a child.

[22] I had my interview with Prince Harry.

[23] I had a gut feeling all along that I shouldn't agree to do at the interview.

[24] It really got to me. I lost myself.

[25] What happened?

[26] There's a question we often ask.

[27] each other in flippant conversations, which we usually kind of brush away because it's the convenient thing to do.

[28] Yeah.

[29] That question is the question I wanted to start by asking you, which is, how are you?

[30] Yeah.

[31] So that question is, for me, it brings up, you know, two dimensions.

[32] One is how am I at this present moment, which is, you know, how am I at this moment, you know, which is all there is.

[33] I'm well.

[34] I feel rather peaceful inside.

[35] 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 and kind of troubled you know so um as a in the moment answer i'm well and 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 and so the last year since we've met has been in many ways a tough year for me, also one of deep learning.

[36] So if the question means how have I been, I'd say I've been up and down and I've had real challenges that I've had to learn from, how am I right now?

[37] I'm really well, thank you.

[38] Two days ago if I'd asked you, that question your answer would have been anxious and troubled.

[39] Yeah.

[40] Why?

[41] I gave a talk on Monday night to 2100 people and I just didn't think I did my best here in London.

[42] And I thought, oh boy, I could have done better.

[43] I down.

[44] I allowed my self -judgments and self -doubts to really dominate my thinking.

[45] And, you know, as much as I think I'm immune to that kind of self -doubt, evidently I'm not.

[46] So that's what happened.

[47] When you say you let it cloud your thinking, what were the symptoms of that?

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

[49] Yeah.

[50] And you didn't feel you did your best.

[51] You went home that night.

[52] What was going on in your head?

[53] what are the symptoms of that 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 just 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 um 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 no checking on amazon how my book search doing you know all the 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 location what's the big deal you know 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.

[54] Exactly.

[55] Yeah, it's the midfrontal cortex of our brain that is insight and social connection and awareness, which so often goes offline, as soon as some emotion takes over some anxiety or anger or...

[56] resentment takes over, the midfrontal cortex tends to go offline.

[57] 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.

[58] And so one of the benefits to me of meditation is it restores that executive function.

[59] that I'm not taken over or too long taken over by emotional dynamics that just sweep me away.

[60] For two weeks this year, you said you went offline.

[61] Yeah.

[62] Sometimes people say to me, I've written this book that I know that you have on your desk when the body says no, and my contention is when people don't know how to say no, the body will say it in the form of illness.

[63] 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 you 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 i was being considered but also for myself i don't want to be that guy anymore who who can speak a truth a lot of people consider to be a truth so articulately but not follow it myself so i just don't be that person and that takes practice and that's why i began 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 to me a couple of times a day I'd still pick up the cell phone and I say what are you doing there's nothing on it because it's on internet but the compulsion to try and get some from the outside to fill some some gap within I just kept noticing it by the end of two weeks it wasn't so strong anymore.

[64] So I did it because I needed to for the sake of my own mental health.

[65] And up and down year for you, you said.

[66] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[67] Is that the down you were talking about?

[68] Well, I remember a conversation, my conversation with you.

[69] And I think I remember you telling me that you had this goal of becoming a millionaire.

[70] When I was younger, yeah.

[71] when it was younger and then it's when you achieve that goal that you realize 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 to wake up one is failure where you keep asking yourself you know but but but success is even more because you think that once you get something then you'll be happy and you know so i thought okay well geez you know to this book the myth of normal you know bestseller 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 it became the more miserable I became inside so the very success of the book and it swept me away and I lost myself you know so that was one thing and I did this very long exhausting tour I wasn't taking care of myself And then there was my interview with Prince Harry and all the froufer around it before it and after it and allowed that to take me over as well.

[72] Really?

[73] Yeah, yeah.

[74] I mean, in retrospect, I can see what happened, but at the time I was too caught up in it to notice.

[75] 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.

[76] And that's what happened.

[77] Your interview with Prince Harry, how did that cause you to lose yourself?

[78] Well, in two ways.

[79] One is I had a gut feeling all along that I shouldn't agree to doing it the way they set it up.

[80] Because the way it was set up is in order to watched, people have to buy a copy of Harry's book.

[81] And I thought, this is not fair.

[82] Four million people have already bought the book.

[83] Why can't I watch this into you?

[84] Did they have to buy another copy?

[85] In other words, I believed that this should be a free public service on a part of two people who can have a very interesting conversation.

[86] But out of sheer opportunism, I agreed to it.

[87] So I didn't follow my gut feelings.

[88] So I lost myself even in agreeing to the format.

[89] And afterwards, Harry and I both wanted it released to the public for free.

[90] But the lawyers said you can't do that because this is advertised as a one -time only event and there could be a class action suit.

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

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

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

[94] So I lost myself just in agreeing to it.

[95] Number one.

[96] Number two, then there was the incredible social media and British media reaction to it.

[97] 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.

[98] I thought by this age I would know better.

[99] But you know what?

[100] 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.

[101] And have you read the book, The Fox, the Mall, the horse, the boy and the horse.

[102] I bought it last week.

[103] It's upstairs in my bag.

[104] Wonderful.

[105] So, it's a great little book, a great big book, although very few words in it, mostly just these wonderful drawings.

[106] 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?

[107] And the horse says, help.

[108] So it's so difficult to ask for help.

[109] But I did, you know, in the middle of all this froufra and my upset.

[110] And I called a friend of mine, a psychiatrist.

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

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

[113] And I said, well, there's all this bad press and all the social media distortion of who I am and my motives.

[114] He said, what is the about that bothers you so much?

[115] And I said, not being seen.

[116] Not being seen.

[117] Or being seen.

[118] seen as one of the needs of the child.

[119] But he said to me, okay, look, Gabor, when you're an infant, you're not being seen for who you are as a human being almost cost to your life, which you did.

[120] As soon as he said that, I said, yeah, this isn't about the present.

[121] This is an old unresolved, not yet fully resolved wound, age 79.

[122] I'm still upset at not being seen.

[123] I don't care if people agree with me or they refute my ideas, but I'll always.

[124] want them to see me and what I'm actually saying, not some distorted version created by their own minds.

[125] And when he said that, that not being seen, really threaten you life.

[126] I said, yeah, that's what's going on.

[127] And then I could relax.

[128] So what somebody else says?

[129] I don't live in the British press.

[130] I don't live in somebody else's mind.

[131] Here I am.

[132] You know, let them think and say what they say.

[133] But it took somebody to wake me up to that.

[134] So that's what happened you said you could share examples of how it got to you of yeah well oh boy um they called me a stern overbearing merchant of pain you know uh at some point in the end to you know when harry was and the other thing was see harry really was a traumatized child um and you can when you read book you can see why you know he and people couldn't understand how this is possible how could somebody so privileged at the very apex of society and gilded palaces be traumatized total misunderstanding of trauma um it's true uh 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, but the mothers are troubled, very sensitive, very creative, warm -hearted, but very unbalanced young woman.

[135] So Harry describes in his book, Spare, that he's 12 years old when his mother's killed.

[136] How he's told about his mother's death is that his father, then Prince Charles, comes into his room early in the morning and says, something terrible happened.

[137] There was an accident, your mother didn't make it.

[138] 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.

[139] And this is how this 12 year old was told.

[140] Nobody held him.

[141] Charles himself was only doing what happened to him when Queen Elizabeth went on an international four or five months 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 is born they lick their babies and the way the mother rat licks the baby this has been shown in laboratory influence the brain development of the child.

[142] And those babies that get the right kind of licking, it's called grooming, they have better brains as adults.

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

[144] Then it was found out that if just by stroking their backs, 10 minutes a day, that promotes healthy brain development.

[145] 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.

[146] You're not being held and not being touched.

[147] It was a deprivation.

[148] And I said mammals, monkeys.

[149] You know what happens when a baby elephant is born?

[150] This is fascinating.

[151] The mother, I read this in the book called the Evolved Nest, for which I wrote the preface by a wonderful psychologist called Darcia Narvez.

[152] When an infant elephant is born and the mother goes into labor, all the other mother elephants stand around in a circle.

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

[154] So touch and being held is so important for mammals.

[155] And I was saying animals do that.

[156] This journalist, I don't know what she was listening to, I said, the royal family treats like kids like animals.

[157] I said, no, I wish they'd had.

[158] So I mean, the distortion is just laughable.

[159] if I hadn't taken it so personally for the reasons I already explained.

[160] 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.

[161] I was in a dark place and I wasn't, but look, I'm a human being like to rest And what Charlie McKeesy says in that book is that the most courageous thing he can do is ask for help.

[162] It's true.

[163] I don't know if you remember the Beatles song, Help, I need somebody.

[164] And John Lennon sings, when I was younger, so much younger than today, I didn't need anybody's help in any way.

[165] But now those days are gone.

[166] I'm much less self -assured.

[167] He's actually saying that when he was younger, he believed he didn't need help.

[168] But the reason he believed he didn't need help.

[169] he didn't need help that he has to make it on his own because he was so traumatized as a child.

[170] His father left him when he was born.

[171] His mother left.

[172] He was brought up by an aunt.

[173] And Lennon grows up feeling abandoned that I can do this on my own.

[174] I don't need anybody, you know?

[175] And later on, he realizes I need help.

[176] But actually, we were all born needing help.

[177] We all born needing to be understood.

[178] to be attuned with, to be seen, to have our emotions received and validated.

[179] That's one of the essential needs of children, as I make the point in the myth of normal.

[180] And children can be traumatized not just by terrible things happening to them, but just by not having their needs met.

[181] 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.

[182] So you don't need terrible things to happen.

[183] It's so difficult for people to understand, that.

[184] You know, they think for trauma.

[185] You need horrific events.

[186] Well, horrific events can be very traumatic, but you can wound people, sensitive people.

[187] 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.

[188] I've struggled with that in my life, especially being a CEO, I think.

[189] 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.

[190] Yeah.

[191] How so?

[192] Just like, I think, I, when I was younger, I never experienced anxiety before.

[193] And then as I had more difficult moments in business where I tried to solve the problem in my mind, were the first times at like 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 that I experienced like fully fledged what I would 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.

[194] yeah um and and yeah i just thought i could deal with it myself i thought i could think my way through it yeah um was that the hardest the hardest moment in terms of your own psychology in your adult life in recent times let me answer that question among us but let me ask you a question that occurs to me if i may you please um 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 am or whether you're just attracted to my physical features.

[195] So for somebody who at a young age becomes quite wealthy and successful, how do you know when somebody is approaching you?

[196] Are they approaching you because they want something from you or because they really care about you?

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

[198] 100%.

[199] 100%.

[200] You never really know, understand what your relationships are.

[201] Yeah.

[202] You know?

[203] Yeah.

[204] Yeah.

[205] It must be confusing sometimes.

[206] It is.

[207] And you, I typically fall back onto the relationships I had before.

[208] Yeah.

[209] Yeah.

[210] Because I can trust those ones.

[211] Yeah.

[212] So I have the same, my best friends, people I spend my time with on my birthday, there's five, you know, five people there.

[213] Yeah.

[214] Yeah.

[215] All the five people that were there 10 years ago.

[216] Yeah.

[217] Unless, I think, we get reconnected to our gut feelings, then our gut feelings will tell us what is really and what isn't.

[218] But the problem for many of us is that we get disconnected from a gut feelings.

[219] gut feelings very early in life.

[220] Like in this room of 2100 at the Troxie on Monday night, I think I asked this question.

[221] I always do.

[222] 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?

[223] Almost everybody puts a hand up.

[224] That's a sign of childhood wounding because we're born connected to our gut feelings.

[225] No baby is disconnected from the gut feelings.

[226] Something happens to make us disconnect.

[227] What is a gut feeling?

[228] From a physiological perspective, because gut feeling is used as a word to describe, you know, an intuition or, you know.

[229] Well, the real gut feelings really happen in the gut.

[230] In the Western way of looking at it, we tend to look upon the intellect and the intellectual brain is the only brain that we have.

[231] 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 there's 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 the gut sends more connections to the brain than the brain sends to the gut and the gut has more of the neurotransmitter serotonin in it than the brain does so that the 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 think we can figure things just from up here.

[232] But actually, when you think about human beings, where did we evolve?

[233] We evolved for millions of years out in nature.

[234] How long does any creature in nature survive if they don't pay attention to their gut feelings?

[235] 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 and it's like you and your anxiety I think the reason 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 to I had this belief.

[236] 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.

[237] That's what I thought.

[238] Yeah.

[239] Your wife, when you went through that dark moment, if I was her, what would I have observed?

[240] Well, first of all, and I talk about this in the myth of normal, and Ray, my wife came on stage at the Troxia on Monday night and talked about this.

[241] I asked her to.

[242] women have 80 % of autoimmune disease in the society so that diseases where the immune system attacks the body happens to women much more than to men things like rheumatolythritis systemic lupus, chronic fatigue, phrobomyalgia, inflammatory diseases of the gut and so on why so So those diseases tend to happen to people, not just according to 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 wasn't accidental.

[243] That'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.

[244] of others rather than their own.

[245] Identified with duty role and responsibility.

[246] So their work in the world rather than their own true selves.

[247] They tended to suppress healthy anger.

[248] So they tend to be very, very nice and peacemakers.

[249] And they tended to believe that they're responsible of how the people feel and that they must never disappoint anybody, two fatal beliefs.

[250] So these are the people that are 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 elegant research.

[251] These are the people that tend to develop autoimmune disease.

[252] Now in this society which gender is more acculturated, programmed to suppress their healthy anger to be the peacemakers to be the caregivers.

[253] Women.

[254] 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.

[255] It's just how it works so me in 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's um can be hostile for no reason and blaming and she has to walk her on eggshells no um thank god she's not the type to do that for too long and at some point she'll call my bluff and then i either wake up or she says thank you very much but enough for this you know 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 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 what the bad news is for people.

[256] We always marry somebody at the same level of emotional development or trauma resolution as we are.

[257] So when we met, we were too traumatized people not even realizing it.

[258] And then we played out our traumas.

[259] And I played it out in the 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.

[260] 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 how 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 you know 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 her soothing, I want her, how should I say this?

[261] There's an interesting sexual dynamic between men and women that men very often expect, unconsciously expect their women to mother them, to give them a mothering that they didn't fully receive as kids.

[262] And the women take on that role, because they're acculturated in a society to do that.

[263] But then what happens sexually?

[264] No healthy guy wants to sleep with his mother.

[265] 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.

[266] So then I become frustrated.

[267] And then who do I blame for that?

[268] I blame her rather than looking at how did I contribute to, how did I help create this situation?

[269] 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.

[270] And so there was conflict because I felt like she was misunderstanding me and wasn't like acting in the right way to meet the needs that I had.

[271] Like she couldn't understand.

[272] You know, and so that I think I wore her down.

[273] And then there was kind of like, as you say, that ultimatum moment where she's basically saying, listen, shall I just go?

[274] Yeah.

[275] 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?

[276] I'm feeling anxious.

[277] Yeah, that's what happened after.

[278] You know, you know, and I'm feeling unsettled.

[279] And I realize that I have resentful feelings towards you, you know.

[280] Instead of owning it, we acted out.

[281] Yeah.

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

[283] Yeah.

[284] 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.

[285] And this is a strong dynamic in men -female relationships.

[286] And what tends to happen is that men, then, women at some point get to the, if they're healthy enough, if they're not strong enough to assert themselves, you know what happens, they get sick.

[287] And I know this is a mouthful, but a lot of women's cancers and autoimmune diseases are precisely because of this self -repressure.

[288] And I could talk about that.

[289] the great length, the physiology of it.

[290] But either the body will somehow say no for them.

[291] That's why women are much more like to be an antidepressants because they're taking a medication for both of them.

[292] And so either the woman gets ill somehow or she asserts herself and says, I'm not doing this anymore.

[293] At which point, the guy will go seeking a younger mother who's not yet mature enough to assert herself.

[294] And this happens all the time in relationships.

[295] 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 yeah in the uk among 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.

[296] Now, why should that be the case?

[297] Now, healthy anger is simply when somebody is intruding on your space and they won't desist.

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

[299] That's healthy anger.

[300] It's in the moment.

[301] One, it's done its job, it's finished with.

[302] 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 ah get out of my space you know now the emotional system in general has the job of 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.

[303] That's the job of the emotional system.

[304] Let me ask you a trick question.

[305] What's the job of the immune system?

[306] Okay, I'll answer.

[307] It's to keep out what is unhealthy and unwelcome and toxic and to let in what is nurturing and healthy.

[308] So the immune system is like, it's been called a floating brain.

[309] It is memory.

[310] It is reactive capacity.

[311] And it allows in nutrient and vitamins and healthy bacteria and keeps out and destroys what isn't toxins and unhealthy invading organisms and so on.

[312] In other words, the immune system and the emotional system have exactly the same role.

[313] That's the first point.

[314] The second point is they're not separate systems.

[315] Physiologically speaking, emotional system, the nervous system, hormonal apparatus in the immune system are all one system.

[316] And there's a whole new science when I say, see new, 60, 70, 80 years old called psycho and neuroimmunology that studies the unity.

[317] So it's not even that all these things are connected, they're one.

[318] So therefore, when you're suppressing one aspect of it, you're also suppressing the other.

[319] So people that repress healthy anger, they have diminished immune activity.

[320] And this has been demonstrated.

[321] So the repression of emotions has a physiological function.

[322] And when you repress your immune system, you're more.

[323] like 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 are 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 the malignancy and not destroy it and allows it to to proliferate there was a British surgeon in the 1960s who operated on am I talking too much no you know 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 go do so much more for people if we understood these scientific facts but we don't as a profession anyway there was a there's a british thoracic surgeon called david kissin in the 1960s who noticed what i noticed in my practice that um people emotional repressed are more likely to get lung cancer now it's true that most people who get lung cancers are smokers but other people who get lung cancers are smokers but other of a hundred smokers only about 10 or 15 get lung cancer, which doesn't mean that smoking isn't the major contributor to lung cancer.

[324] It is.

[325] 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.

[326] And the more repressed they were, the less smoking they had to do in order to get lung cancer.

[327] This guy noticed this in the 1960s.

[328] 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.

[329] Without that, they don't survive.

[330] So that's called attachment, seeking of closeness and proximity for the purpose of being taken care of or to take care of the other.

[331] And our brains are wired for attachment.

[332] We have circuits in our brain dedicated to the attachment relationships.

[333] And that's so important all through our lives, but especially when we're infants and young children.

[334] Now, but we have another need.

[335] We've already talked about it.

[336] I just haven't named it.

[337] The other need is for authenticity.

[338] We just to be ourselves connected to our bodies and our gut feelings.

[339] 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.

[340] And so that authenticity is very important to be connected to yourself so that you know when you're safer and you're not.

[341] You know what you want and what you don't want.

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

[343] You know how to say yes when you do.

[344] That's authenticity.

[345] Auto the self, being ourselves.

[346] And to go back to Harry, his challenge all his life was that he wasn't allowed to be authentic.

[347] He had to pay a certain role and fit into a certain set of expectations of how to be and who to be.

[348] And he could never figure out who am I really, you know, in that context.

[349] But that's so general.

[350] So many of us face that challenge of who are we really.

[351] who are we authentically, as opposed to what's expected of us.

[352] Now, so we have these two needs.

[353] Attachment, on the one hand, authenticity and the other.

[354] Ideally, the two are not in conflict.

[355] 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.

[356] And that's ideal, all our lives.

[357] but what happens to a young child where if they're authentic, they're not accepted?

[358] So, for example, certain psychologists recommend that angry children should be punished for their anger.

[359] Rather than their anger being understood as to what it's all about and the child being taught different ways to express it, they're just to be punished for it and by different ways.

[360] 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 oh no 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 so the two -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 you know so when children are given this message of conditionality that you're acceptable to me only 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.

[361] Do I stay attached to my parents?

[362] If my father is an alcoholic.

[363] And the only way I can find acceptance is by repressing my emotions and not show my sadness and my fear.

[364] Do I show my sadness and my fear or my anger?

[365] Or do I threaten their relationship?

[366] Well, there's no choice at all.

[367] 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 will be afraid to be ourselves is this what they call people pleases people exactly Exactly.

[368] So Cheryl Crowe, the American singer and musician, developed breast cancer.

[369] And she said that since my breast cancer, I've been a different person.

[370] Until then, I was always trying to please others.

[371] And now, and there used to be voices in my head that I was telling me that I was wrong.

[372] I don't listen to them anymore.

[373] 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.

[374] But then they carry that on in the rest of their lives.

[375] And they're at risk.

[376] I always worry for the very nice people.

[377] 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.

[378] I would like to make a deal with you.

[379] If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better.

[380] I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button.

[381] The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing we love.

[382] If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you.

[383] Thank you so much for your time.

[384] Back to this episode.

[385] You always worry for the very nice people.

[386] Yeah.

[387] You talk a lot about that in when the body says, No. Yeah.

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

[389] Well, there's two, there's two places to be very nice from.

[390] One is just genuine human compassion and concerned for others, but you're still grounded in yourself.

[391] That's great.

[392] But a lot of people are very nice because they have afraid not to be.

[393] Because they weren't liked who they were, they weren't love for who they were, being nice was the way of getting the love and the attention they needed.

[394] Let me tell you a story.

[395] In 1870, there was a French neurologist, Jean Martin Charcot, who was the first one to describe multiple sclerosis, which is an inflammation of the nervous system, very debilitating.

[396] And Charcot said, in 1870, without any scientific research, but just from his own observation, that this was a stress -driven disease.

[397] Okay?

[398] Now, since then, there's been a lot of research.

[399] to show how stress and trauma potentiate multiple sclerosis.

[400] It's not even controversial.

[401] Not that any neurologist knows that, they don't get taught this stuff in medical school, but the research is there, and I presented it in my books.

[402] In any case, when I was writing when the body says no, a group of, a self -help group of multiple sclerosis patients phoned me and said, would you come and talk to us?

[403] Because I would understand you're working on stress and illness.

[404] And I said, yeah, sure, I'll come and talk to you.

[405] And there's about 25 people in the group.

[406] This is in Vancouver, Canada.

[407] And I gave them very tentatively, apologetically.

[408] I said, look, I don't know this for sure.

[409] 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 to be pleasers.

[410] They tend to have difficulty saying no. They tend to be very nice people.

[411] And I said, you know, I'm sorry if I've offended you.

[412] I don't mean to.

[413] I'm just giving you something very tentative.

[414] I haven't done their research yet.

[415] I'm just giving you my observations.

[416] They said, you just described us.

[417] And they all said that.

[418] And there's a woman who says, in the group who says, I don't even know how to say no. I said, terrific.

[419] Give me $100 right now.

[420] She says, well, I don't have $100 with me right now.

[421] I said, it's not a problem.

[422] I said, outside this building, there's an ATM machine.

[423] we can go and after the meeting we can go out you can get the hundred dollars and give it to me she says uh 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 you owe nothing whatsoever she said i can't say the word because in childhood but 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'll 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 individating the child when families punish that the child will repress the no and the body will say no the form of multiple sclerosis.

[424] For example, niceness, ALS, amatrophic lateral sclerosis are known and written as motor neuron disease.

[425] Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with it at age 21.

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

[427] He lived another 55 years.

[428] Doctors don't know everything, you know.

[429] But there's been studies on ALS patients.

[430] They're extraordinarily nice.

[431] So there was was a from a Cleveland clinic in Ohio, a major referral clinic, two neurologists published a paper at an international ALS or motor neuron Congress.

[432] Why are ALS patients so nice?

[433] 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 their nerves.

[434] And the technicians who'd perform the test would write on the side of the test, this person can't have ALS, she's not nice enough.

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

[436] And their physicians, the neurologist, specialist 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.

[437] And then I called Dr. Wilburne, who did this study, and I said, what did the other neurologist say?

[438] When you presented this, they said, yeah, we all know.

[439] notice this, we just can't explain it.

[440] Since then, there's been a study where they've asked neurologists about their patients, and the answer is all our ALA patients are extraordinarily nice.

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

[442] That that niceness is a repression of healthy anger, and that repression of healthy anger plays a role in the onset of that disease.

[443] So it's not an accidental connection.

[444] So why do I reward very nice people?

[445] Because they're putting themselves at risk.

[446] Again, niceness can come from genuine concern for others, but that's not accompanied by an ignoring of yourself.

[447] You also care for yourself.

[448] Then you can be as nice as you want.

[449] But you also know how to say no. And you also know how to set boundaries.

[450] You don't know how to be angry if you need to be.

[451] But the niceness that comes from self -repression, that's the one that hurts.

[452] There's clearly going to be a lot of very nice people hearing that, that know they're nice, that know their people pleases, that know they've experienced in their lives the consequences of putting everyone else before themselves.

[453] It's funny, as you were talking, I was thinking about the person that I know, who I think is nicest.

[454] and that individual is sick all the time.

[455] And I just connected that dot in my head that I remember making a joke to her about, oh, you're sick, so, like, whatever, you're sick a lot.

[456] And then also thinking, oh, my God, she is probably the nicest.

[457] Nice is an interesting word because that can be misconstrued as like, hi -ah, or like, you know, saying nice things to someone else.

[458] But it's really at a deeper level from what I've observed in that person, putting everyone else before them.

[459] or chronically serving other people's needs before their own?

[460] Well, so my contention is, as I said earlier, when people don't know how to say no, the body will say no for them in the form of illness.

[461] And for a lot of people with serious illness, the illness is the wake -up call.

[462] Yeah.

[463] And they actually learn.

[464] And when they do, that can make a difference to the course of their illness sometimes.

[465] Not always, but I've seen examples of remarkable healing when people learn to say no and stop being people -pleasers.

[466] And I just only wish that physicians understood this.

[467] 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.

[468] It's very stressful to take on everybody else's issues and ignoring your own.

[469] It's very stressful.

[470] That stress is a physiological impact on the body.

[471] How does someone who is a people pleaser, how do they turn that ship around?

[472] 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 was a first nature.

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

[474] 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 worked so hard, I better not bother them.

[475] You know, babies will express their needs very volubly and very articulately and very loudly.

[476] That's how we're born.

[477] We're meant to be born that way.

[478] 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 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 a no wants to be said but you're not saying it like let me ask you give an example Let's say I come to London and we're friends, and I call you up, hey, Stephen, here I am, dear enough coffee.

[479] But you've been up all night helping a sick friend, or otherwise you're just too stressed, don't want to meet me right now.

[480] Your desire is to say no. But what if you suppress that, no?

[481] And you say, yes, for the fear of displeasing me or disappointing me, or losing my friendship.

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

[483] what's going to be the impact on you if you keep behaving that way physically what's going to be impact i'm going to be more tired more exhausted probably going to be more stressed all that yeah you can be resent connected from yeah exactly you know so it's not this so this person they need to i teach this exercise in the book about where am i not saying no and what is my belief behind saying not saying no i don't want to upset gabbo if he's coming exactly and and i and i depend on gabo's liking yes you know uh which means as a child you depend on your parents liking and you had to suppress you no to be like thirdly where did i learn this belief but if i say no i'm not likable or i'm guilt or i'm not worthwhile you know and the fourth question is um who would i be without that belief you know um 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 yeah when I put myself in her shoes or I put myself in a people pleaser shoes I wouldn't I'm a people pleaser in certain environments but I wouldn't say I am generally yeah um 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.

[484] The friends that were just using her or relying on her to be their supporter unconditionally will turn away.

[485] And I say this to people.

[486] This contest between attachment and authenticity can be a painful one, but you can decide which kind of pain you want.

[487] As a child, you have no choice.

[488] As an adult, it's true.

[489] If you're authentic, you might lose some attachment relationships.

[490] That's going to be painful.

[491] But which pain would you rather have?

[492] The pain of being authentic and losing some friendships.

[493] There were no friendships at all.

[494] Or the pain of losing yourself and all this implications and all its impacts on the body.

[495] So it would be difficult for her.

[496] And it's true, some relationships that she has now that would fade away.

[497] But my God, she would also attract Muslim more genuine and authentic relationships.

[498] And her true friends would really celebrate her.

[499] You know, now let me tell you something that just occurred to me, but forget it.

[500] There was a book written by an Australian nurse about 12 years ago.

[501] And she, this nurse, like I used to work in palliative care with dying people, she works with in hospice, with dying people.

[502] And these are people who tend to die of malignancy and chronic illness well before that time.

[503] And she wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People.

[504] For any way.

[505] And, you know what the top regret was, that I wasn't being.

[506] myself.

[507] That I wasn't true to myself.

[508] I wasn't being authentic.

[509] That's the top regard of dying people.

[510] And the third one was that I didn't express my feelings for fear of disturbing or displeasing others.

[511] So authenticity is not just a new age concept.

[512] It's actually a central dynamic in staying healthy human beings.

[513] Oh, one more thing.

[514] So yesterday I was in Westminster Abbey.

[515] 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.

[516] They're the heroes of the British Empire.

[517] And I think one of the reasons there's such a strong pushback against the idea of trauma in this society is if you're recognize trauma, which exists not only on the personal individual level, but very much in the collective level, the ruling elites in this country would have to come to terms of 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.

[518] Let's face it, the royalty, the wealth that I was born into was achieved at the despoilation and oppression.

[519] of people around the world.

[520] So trauma is not just a personal issue.

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

[522] What's the cure?

[523] You know, 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 yeah what do we do unfortunately the health care 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 on one hand and medical practice on the other.

[524] It's maddening sometimes to contemplate it.

[525] So the first step would be to educate the caregivers.

[526] Just educate doctors about the actual science of the mind -body connection and the impacts of trauma.

[527] Educate them.

[528] So when you go to a physician with, say, chronic fatigue or inflammation of your joints, they don't just give you the necessary medication, which I'm not against, but they also ask you what's going on.

[529] So that's the first thing.

[530] Second thing is let's prevent the problem.

[531] 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.

[532] 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.

[533] And that is a harbinger of future disease.

[534] And so let's look after young families.

[535] Let's make people feel secure, uncertainty, lack of control, lack of information.

[536] These are some of the drivers of physiological stress.

[537] So let's create a society where there's more sense of mutual acceptance and communality and social support, you know, 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.

[538] Let the schools be.

[539] The human brain, I'm quoting a Harvard study develops from before birth.

[540] It's an ongoing process that begins before birth and contains into adulthood.

[541] The necessary conditions for human brain development is safe, supportive emotional relationship with adults.

[542] 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.

[543] Let the justice system so -called, about which there's very little just.

[544] In Canada, 50 % of the women in jail are indigenous.

[545] They make up 6 % of the population.

[546] 50 % of the jail population.

[547] You call that justice?

[548] You take the most traumatized people who then act out their traumas, and then you punish them for it.

[549] So let the medical system, let the education, 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 and even though there's a lot of people who are get therapy but not getting appropriate therapy well if you can't afford therapy go the library read some books my own but not just my own.

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

[551] Read Dick Schwartz's book on internal family systems called No Bad Parts.

[552] Read Bessel van der Kov's book called The Body Keep to Score.

[553] Read Peter Levine's book, Waking the Tiger on trauma.

[554] Read Oprah Winfrey's book.

[555] What Happened to You?

[556] Read Bruce Prairie's book called The Boy Was Raised as a Dog.

[557] I'm interviewing Peter Levine soon.

[558] Oh, yeah.

[559] Oh, good.

[560] Oh, good.

[561] Wonderful.

[562] I'm glad to hear that.

[563] He's one of my mentors and friends.

[564] And we often work together.

[565] So this is, and, and all of these books will have some advice about how to help yourself, including my books.

[566] Then there's a lot of stuff on Internet.

[567] So this, the interview that you and I had a year ago, I checked this morning, has been seen by two and a half million people.

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

[569] It's a lot that you can get.

[570] Just, you know, freely nobody's going to get in charge to you know on the youtube um lots of my talks are available lots of talks about other really good people are available do that there are self -help groups of all kinds um is there a risk here this is what the the one side of the narrative sometimes argue that you can kind of over traumatize your life in terms of over labeling everything that you do as a trauma.

[571] So, you know, and I mean, that that always happens, right?

[572] When when people become aware of something, they become over -aware and they start over -labeling and saying, that's a trauma response, that's a trauma response, that's a trauma response.

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

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

[575] Actually, I talked about our first nature.

[576] That's always there.

[577] 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 they're 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 this life is wasted if you know how to use it properly and um so what i'm saying is that to under to be aware of trauma is not to lose power but to gain it because it's not an excuse.

[578] 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?

[579] I mean, that's lack of responsibility.

[580] But for me to understand that my demands of my wife to take care of me like a motherhood of a baby actually is my trauma response, then I can drop it because I'm not a baby anymore.

[581] I don't need.

[582] I'm not that helpless.

[583] I'm not are resourceless.

[584] 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.

[585] That's the whole point.

[586] When we talked about the suppression of our emotions and anger, you used the word healthy anger.

[587] Yeah.

[588] When you, you know, because there's a, 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 counterer or a waitress in a restaurant because is they got one item on your order wrong, is standing up for your boundaries?

[589] I've done it.

[590] No, it's not.

[591] So healthy anger is in a moment, and it's just a boundary defense.

[592] It's not an outrage.

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

[594] That's its purpose.

[595] That's its only purpose.

[596] Or to protect something.

[597] Like, you want to see anger, try and tell a mother bear not to be close to their base, to their cubs you know you'll find out what healthy mother anger is all about you know that's just healthy the kind of rage you're talking about have you ever had that kind of rage definitely on a spectrum i've got i've got so the reason i struggle with the answer is because i've got a friend that's fully shown me what the that's the extreme side of that is where we used to call it the red mist with him where he would literally lose which is incidentally what hair used to call his anger oh really yeah yeah my friend so my friend um my friend um my friend one of my best friends in the world he talks about this all the time is he had you could trigger him by saying something usually by saying he was wrong about something yeah or something like that and then he would just lose it so i remember the first the last time it happened was and the pandemic rolled in i was staying with him uh 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 said and I showed an NHS website which said no it's people that were older at more at risk yeah and he just went into this red mist okay he was totally triggered and lost control of his emotions okay so if you observed them then what you would have noticed is You remember what I said about healthy anger?

[598] It's in the present moment.

[599] Once it's done his job, it's gone.

[600] Your friend, the anger he gets, the anger he gets.

[601] So the rage just keeps building on itself.

[602] Now we talk about a fit of anger.

[603] It's a good word.

[604] You know where else we talk about fits is epileptic fits.

[605] 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's shaking and the person may even lose consciousness and soil themselves and so on.

[606] That's an epileptic fit.

[607] A fit of anger is the same.

[608] A fit of rage is the same.

[609] So that the more severe it gets, the more brain circuits it recruits.

[610] So rather than expending itself, doing his job and then being gone, it actually gets worse and worse and worse.

[611] That's unhealthy anger.

[612] And triggering is a good word.

[613] Because look at what the word triggering means.

[614] Now, if you look at a weapon, how big a part of the weapon is the trigger?

[615] this big for the trigger to set off anything there has to be ammunition there 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 so you trigger him and then by disagreeing with him and all the pain of invalidation and all the rage of not being understood, not gets triggered and recruits more and more brain circuits.

[616] Now I can tell you something.

[617] Healthy anger is essential for our physical integrity.

[618] That rage, in the aftermath of a rage episode, your risk of a heart attack or stroke doubles for the next two hours, according to studies.

[619] Because what happens?

[620] Your blood pressure goes up, your blood vessels narrow, and the clotting factors in your blood increase.

[621] So of course you had more risk.

[622] So the repression of anger can lead to chronic illness, but so can rage lead to heart attacks and strokes and so on.

[623] So anger is a delicate thing.

[624] Should I say something about my friend that we found out because he then went to a childhood psychologist to understand himself?

[625] And that's why I said that was the last time.

[626] So you can imagine that was three years ago, the pandemic, two three years ago.

[627] 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 and then he actually found a I think he found a text message at some point between his mum and his nan where they were diminishing his chances of success and he grew up with this deep sense of like I am not intelligent a deep 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 going out in that moment I was challenging it I was taking him back probably well and you know what again to come back to Harry that's what happened to him they called him stupid and thickle and naughty and he was none of those things he just had trouble of concentrating and paying attention because of all the stress my friend has ADHD as well yeah yeah and so in his book he describes that he'd been told he'd had post -traumatic stress.

[628] I didn't diagnose him with all this stuff.

[629] It's in this book.

[630] I said, you know what, but I think given how you were distracted as a kid, you had trouble paying attention, they called you stupid.

[631] This is ADD.

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

[633] I was saying you actually, 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.

[634] They called you naughty, they called you stupid, they called you thickle.

[635] You're not any of that.

[636] Now, the whole bunch of British psychiatrists got their knickers tied in a knot because I made that diagnosis, you know.

[637] My God, people, I was saying to the guy, you don't have a disease, you have a normal response.

[638] To have no circumstances, you were not stupid ever.

[639] But children undergo this character assassination like you offended.

[640] And imagine the rage inside him.

[641] So when you disagree with him, you're triggering all that.

[642] it's just that's just how it works now 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 you know i always grew up with a sense of my own intelligence not too overstated but i never had any doubt about it but certain things you can do yeah 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?

[643] 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.

[644] Then they started exterminating all the Hungarian Jews.

[645] So literally, my life was under threat because they didn't see him as a human being.

[646] They saw me as a vermin.

[647] You know, 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 on.

[648] under the risk of death all the time for a whole year.

[649] And then, as I mentioned before, she gave me to a stranger to save my life.

[650] And I didn't see her for five weeks.

[651] But that's not being seen.

[652] And my father is not there to see me because he's in forced labor.

[653] So literally not being seen threatened my life.

[654] So no wonder when people, when that happens now, you know, that for me is the trigger.

[655] Now, of course, the answer.

[656] answer is, is to see myself.

[657] If I fully see myself, it doesn't matter whether you see me or not.

[658] You know, 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 at other people to see me because I don't know how to see myself.

[659] If I'm fully confident in myself, I'll say, gee, it's too bad.

[660] You know, Stephen doesn't see me. Well, maybe we'd talk about it, or maybe he'll never understand it, but I don't live in his mind.

[661] How do I fully see myself?

[662] It's hard to do, right?

[663] It's hard to do because when you were seen, it's not hard to do.

[664] Because children see themselves through their parents' eyes.

[665] But when you were not seen, then you have to learn it.

[666] And this is one of the things to go back to meditation.

[667] That's not the only way.

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

[669] 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?

[670] I did my best.

[671] It may not have been perfect, but I prepared for it.

[672] I put myself out there for two hours, and I spoke a lot of truth.

[673] Might have been the best, but so what?

[674] But at that moment, I wasn't seeing myself.

[675] you know i can still lose it so meditation which is the form of meditation that at least i am learning is about just noticing and seeing what's going on inside without judgment so being aware so it'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.

[676] For example, I don't have to look at the comments on all my talks on YouTube.

[677] Who says what?

[678] Who likes it?

[679] Who doesn't like it?

[680] You know, I'm not on Facebook.

[681] I don't have a professional Facebook page, but I don't administer it.

[682] But people go on Facebook and who says what?

[683] Who likes me?

[684] Who doesn't like me?

[685] You know, they can win themselves off that.

[686] So we may not be able to stay off social.

[687] media um to write my books thank god for the internet but i don't have to be attached to it so it's it's using it but not letting it use you which is very hard the social media and all of these things these stimuli they i feel like they've i'm concerned that many of us are living in a state of chronic stress mild background stress yeah and i say that a lot because The amount of times that I catch myself, I spoke to James Nester, who talks a lot about breathing in breath.

[688] Yeah.

[689] And the amount of times that I now catch myself, very shallow in breath, after just looking at my phone or thinking about something.

[690] Yeah.

[691] Let's get my skitm.

[692] back into me. In bed at 1 a .m. as I'm trying to sleep, catch my breath being shallow.

[693] During this podcast, when I start thinking about something, my breath gets really shallow.

[694] Looking at my phone, my breath gets really shallow.

[695] I live in this, I feel like I'm living in the state of, like, constant, subtle, background stress.

[696] Yeah.

[697] 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.

[698] And Eckartolio is a spiritual teacher.

[699] He says that rather than go to retreats and therapists just take a few conscious breath several times a day.

[700] I mean, not that, not to dismiss the other, but that's more important 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 and I'm not here to advocate for any particular pathway and I'm not the practitioner of any religion, but he, this is very wise man. He thought awareness of breath as the most important portal into reality.

[701] What do you think the antidote is for the way we've designed our lives to be constant in this sort of stressful stimulation?

[702] Because we're clearly, I was just wondering if human beings are supposed to endure this much constant stimulus and stress in their lives.

[703] And with, you know, chronic inflammation and all these kinds of things are now killing people at alarming rates, the, you know, the diseases that are caused by inflammation.

[704] What can we do about our stress?

[705] And is it okay?

[706] Maybe it's okay.

[707] Well, it's the norm.

[708] So you can say it's normal.

[709] Is it okay?

[710] Well, the question is to be answered by looking at what the impacts are.

[711] And what are the impacts?

[712] You know, the impacts are very serious.

[713] for you can see it on the individual level in terms of mental health conditions as I said earlier are burgeoning internationally our immune 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.

[714] Yeah, if you want to, if you want this, it's okay.

[715] But if you don't, it's not okay.

[716] It depends what you want.

[717] Relationships.

[718] Yeah.

[719] Romantic relationships.

[720] Yeah.

[721] I've thought a lot about the role that our trauma plays in our ability to form relationships.

[722] Obviously, society has changed quite profoundly in the last couple of decades.

[723] Different sort of gender transformations have caused certain mismatches and difficulties with people connecting.

[724] The world has gone very digital now.

[725] So data.

[726] apps run a lot of dating.

[727] I think 50 % of people originally meet online.

[728] That's their first point of contact.

[729] Dating is very, very hard for people.

[730] And there's a lot of people that are kind of giving up on it.

[731] Attachment, dating, trauma.

[732] I've come to line that we are mirrors.

[733] 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.

[734] Well, you just answered your own question oh really yeah we can't form proper relationships until we have the capacity to be alone and be comfortable with ourselves you know and the more comfortable you can be alone which is different from being lonely by the way um the more capacity to be actually to be to be allowed to be with yourself and to ground yourself in your own truth the more likely you're able to form meaningful and positive relationships and rather than asking me a lot of people who are into relationships to solve their problems, then there's the initial in -love phase where everything is just ideal, you know, and then reality hits.

[735] And then all of a sudden, that person who you're so infatuated with becomes your enemy and you hate them so much, you know?

[736] I mean, I've experienced such hatred for my wife over the years.

[737] And when I've been disappointed or dissatisfied, you know, because I was looking to her to fill me with, and nobody can fill you from the outside.

[738] So once you no longer need it, once you no longer are dependent on it, then you can enter into a healthy relationship.

[739] Or, to put it more positively, a relationship can be a real ground for mutual growth.

[740] So you can enter into a relationship, you're not going to be perfect, You're never going to be perfect.

[741] Carry a certain degree of trauma, a certain degree of dysfunction, certain things that trigger you, as we said earlier.

[742] But if both people are committed to the truth, which my wife Ray and I have been, I mean, that's one thing you can say about ourselves.

[743] You know, for all the stuff that we've been through, ultimately the truth mattered more than who's right and who's wrong.

[744] So if you're committed to the truth and working it out, and if the fundamental love is there, then you can grow together.

[745] 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.

[746] Not that I'm dismissing any of that.

[747] But the actual relationship has been my most important schooling in how to become authentic.

[748] 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.

[749] it happens all the time as i said earlier people always meet at the same level of of emotional development or trauma resolution so that water fighting its own level but when one person starts growing and the other 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.

[750] That's just what's going to happen.

[751] And again, to go back to the situation being men and women, this is what tends to happen.

[752] And I've seen it in my own marriage.

[753] I've seen it as a physician, as an observer of human beings.

[754] The couple are kind of getting along, but then the children come along.

[755] Now the mother's carrying energy has to go towards the children, where it needs to go.

[756] The father may feel now a bit of, their nose is a bit out of joint because now they're not getting the attention.

[757] And now the woman is a decision to make.

[758] Do I look after the three -day -old baby or the three -month -old baby?

[759] Or do I look after the 35 -year -old baby?

[760] And to the extent that the mother chooses to look after the 35 -year -old baby, she's depriving the three -month -old.

[761] 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.

[762] And then relationships get into trouble because the guys can't stand it.

[763] I've seen this over and over and over.

[764] I'm not saying it's universal, but it's very common.

[765] Sex.

[766] In your practice, I imagine you've come across this quite often where there's a sexless relationship and that's causing issues.

[767] What is typically the true cause of that, that disconnect with intimacy with sex in the bedroom?

[768] Because a lot of people are struggling with that.

[769] Yeah.

[770] Well, first of all, I think today we jump into sexuality way too early.

[771] In other words, we talk about intimacy.

[772] But intimacy really means the innermost.

[773] And we tend to have physical intimacy before we have emotional intimacy.

[774] so that people jump into bed rather quickly.

[775] I'm not being prudish here.

[776] I'm not prescribing that you should only have sex when you get married or anything like that.

[777] But when we enter into sexuality early without the emotional intimacy and emotional authenticity, then the sex becomes divorced from our real needs.

[778] And especially for women who tend to, I can't speak of everybody, but in general, women tend want to have more intimacy emotionally, that becomes very hard.

[779] And if the emotional intimacy doesn't follow, sex becomes kind of mechanical.

[780] Because mechanical.

[781] Yeah.

[782] So that's one big reason.

[783] The other reason we already talked about, this sort of parenting dynamic between the genders.

[784] No, I know we're only talking about the two major genders now.

[785] There's all kinds of gender variations these days.

[786] But these dynamics exist in all kinds of contexts so that when my partner is doing all the emotional caring or most of the emotional caring is this parent -child relationship that really deadens the sexual drive.

[787] You know Marissa Pia?

[788] Sorry?

[789] Marissa Pia.

[790] She's a psychologist.

[791] She actually said to me the other day, never call your partner, mummy or daddy for this very reason.

[792] Yeah, well, oh good.

[793] That's a good way to put it.

[794] I think it's because we put sexualized.

[795] And this society, of course, just glorifies sexuality.

[796] And if you look at some of the most famous sex symbols, who were they?

[797] Abused women, like a Marilyn Monroe, deeply traumatized child, and abused as an adult by President Kennedy and just about everybody.

[798] And she was the woman everyone who was to sleep with.

[799] You know, so that is really distorted sexuality here.

[800] And for women especially, safety is so important for sexuality.

[801] Yeah.

[802] We talk about frigid women.

[803] But when do people freeze?

[804] It's a fear response.

[805] There's nobody's true nature.

[806] It's just a response.

[807] And usually something happened to them or something is happening now.

[808] So that on melting can happen in a condition of safety.

[809] And then the intimacy, the emotional intimacy, is there, which creates the safety for the sexual opening.

[810] And that's the dynamic in my marriage as well.

[811] You know, what my wife says, she says, truth is sexy.

[812] Such a good point.

[813] Yeah.

[814] 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?

[815] What I see out there is increasing distress in this society.

[816] and people are more confused, and young people are just so challenged.

[817] And in the United States, the rate of childhood suicide is going up.

[818] You know, suicide.

[819] You know, more and more kids are being medicated for all kinds of conditions.

[820] In the U .S., 70 % of the adult population is at least on one medication.

[821] A quarter of women, at least in the U .S. or on antidepressants or anti -anxiety medications.

[822] Those numbers are growing up in Britain as well from all the statistics that I see.

[823] So I see it's a growing manifestations of distress, what I call a toxic culture.

[824] I see that all the time.

[825] And look, I mean, the fact that this book, The Myth of Normal, is being published in North Macedonia and Thailand, in Vietnam, in Northern Europe, and in Eastern Europe.

[826] It's just worldwide, there's this epidemic of distress.

[827] 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 the way that 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 I do see that and I don't think it's it's going to get better anytime soon.

[828] You're not optimistic?

[829] So, Noam Tromsky once said that when he was asked if he's optimistic or pessimistic, he says, he says, strategically I'm an optimist and tactically I'm a pessimist.

[830] Which means that in the long term, I do believe in people.

[831] I mean, and I'm the same way.

[832] I do believe in human beings.

[833] I do believe in the human capacity to grow, to transform, to come to a deeper, grounded, sanity and themselves, both on the individual on the social level.

[834] I do believe in that.

[835] If I didn't believe that, I would just stay at home and read books and listen to music.

[836] I do believe in that.

[837] I'm optimistic in that sense.

[838] But at the same time, I think in the short term it's getting darker and darker.

[839] And you can see that, so many manifestations of that.

[840] So, yeah, I am optimistic.

[841] I believe in humanity and human beings.

[842] And I think we have a hard road to try.

[843] trouble before we get to our better sense of self.

[844] And I have to close this conversation by seeking some solutions.

[845] You used the word solutions there and you talked about this better sense of self.

[846] We've talked about from a social level, what governments can do to change education systems.

[847] On an individual level, on a family level, what can I do?

[848] well um 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 i find fulfilling and that keeps me challenged yeah 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.

[849] I want to be healthy because I want to do all of these things for longer.

[850] Yeah.

[851] I want to have relationships that are full and true and raw and honest.

[852] Okay.

[853] And I want to, I think that's it.

[854] That's the work and personal.

[855] 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.

[856] and I want to be close to my children in a way that I wasn't close to my parents.

[857] Yeah.

[858] Well, then the question you have to ask yourself is, what factors in your life support those goals and what don't?

[859] What activities are you engaged in that will support those aims?

[860] What will undermine them?

[861] And seek to diminish or eliminate the ones that are undermining your goals and strengthen the ones that are supporting it.

[862] that's what it is.

[863] And your intentions, by the way, are not only superficially the ones you articulate.

[864] If I were your real intentions, I have to look at how you live your life, not what you say about it.

[865] 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.

[866] And I would have said that totally sincerely.

[867] If you looked at how I live my life, as a workaholic doctor not avail to my kids always are out there looking for being important and serving others and 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 that 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 you 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.

[868] But, you know, as I said those things that I said as my stated goals, I do find a disconnect, I think.

[869] I think those things have been handed to us.

[870] When you ask them when they're goals, they will say things that will make the person asking the question think well of them.

[871] Because there's one goal that you didn't state.

[872] Which is, I stayed away from the selfish goals?

[873] No. What's the one I didn't stay?

[874] Inner peace.

[875] Because without inner peace, you're not going to be able to serve any of those goals properly.

[876] Or if you were, you'd do it at some risk to yourself.

[877] And so, how would that be for you as a goal, inner peace?

[878] And then if running around, serving others in the name of this so -called higher goal, undermine your inner peace, then you're not on the right track.

[879] And you know who I'm talking to?

[880] I'm talking to myself.

[881] Talking to me as well.

[882] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[883] Inner peace is not a selfish goal.

[884] 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.

[885] But, you know, Eckhart Tolly talks about our inner purpose and our external purpose.

[886] And you stated a bunch of external purposes.

[887] And that's why there's the, I believe, if I may pardon the diagnosis, but or the analysis, but that's why that disconnect that you mentioned, because the goals like you stated were largely external.

[888] And what are the internal goals?

[889] In a piece.

[890] Very good.

[891] Yeah.

[892] Now you have to put that into the mix.

[893] And once you do, I don't believe that.

[894] Now, nobody handed that to you.

[895] I just, I think this is the issue with the workaholics is we think that.

[896] that the path to inner peace is just by aiming at the external goals.

[897] Like I think, I think maybe at some level that's what I believe.

[898] Workholics think they can work their way or validate, external validate, or trophy their way or number one book their way to inner peace.

[899] Because temporarily when your book shows up as number one on the best sellers list or shows up at all, you feel some inner pace.

[900] But it's addictive.

[901] And there's a wonderful physician and researcher, Vince Felitti, studied childhood trauma quite a bit and showing its 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 workholism.

[902] It's not inner peace I can tell you that you know I can tell you after a long experience it doesn't matter even how successfully you are out there we started the conversation with this it's never going to give you inner peace inner case it doesn't come from the outside.

[903] That's not a goal anybody ever handed to you.

[904] That's something that you have to come to yourself.

[905] You know this.

[906] How are you acting in line with what you know?

[907] Are you doing it well?

[908] You know what?

[909] I'm not going to give myself 100 % by any means.

[910] I mean, just look at this week.

[911] But I'm doing so much better than I ever did.

[912] And I'm so much more comfortable about it and so much more comfortable about the future as well.

[913] 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 um we can try and just get rid of it not to feel it to numb ourselves or we can actually learn from it.

[914] So suffering and pain can be big teachers if you know how to relate to them.

[915] So when illness comes along, when a crisis comes along in your life, you might notice that the Chinese word for crisis is made up of two character letters meaning danger and opportunity.

[916] So when there's a crisis, there's danger, but there's an also opportunity to learn and to grow.

[917] And there's such a thing as growing older.

[918] In other words, not just getting older, but actually growing older and actually still keep growing as you get older.

[919] And that growing older actually has to do with becoming more and more authentic to yourself.

[920] So sometimes I do that successfully.

[921] Sometimes I don't.

[922] But that's certainly the journey.

[923] And I'd recommend that journey to everybody.

[924] You can actually grow older.

[925] In other words, you don't have to shrink, you can actually grow.

[926] 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 was vulnerability.

[927] Yeah.

[928] I remember you making this interesting connection.

[929] I saw it somewhere online between vulnerability and growth.

[930] Yeah.

[931] And vulnerability is a risk for a lot of people.

[932] It's always felt like a risk for me. So vulnerability comes from the Latin word, vulnerability to wound.

[933] To wound.

[934] Yeah, that's vulnerability to wound.

[935] And so as human beings, or as any living creature, we're all profoundly vulnerable.

[936] From the moment that we're conceived to the moment we die, we can be wounded.

[937] We can be wounded physically, we can wounded emotionally.

[938] That's just a given.

[939] When children are safe and seen and understood, they can accept their vulnerability because they have the confidence that they can deal with it.

[940] But when children are traumatized or not understood, not seen, and they're alone emotionally, the vulnerability becomes too painful to bear.

[941] So be shut down our sense of vulnerability, not to feel the pain.

[942] But when you look at life, nothing goes without vulnerability.

[943] So a tree doesn't go where it's hard and thick, does it?

[944] It goes where it's tender and soft, and there's these shoots that are very vulnerable.

[945] They can be eaten by animals or insects.

[946] A crustacean animal, like a crab, cannot grow inside a hard shell.

[947] What does it have to do when it needs to grow?

[948] It molds and becomes this soft creature.

[949] That's very vulnerable.

[950] But without that vulnerability, there's no growth.

[951] Without emotional vulnerability, there's also no growth.

[952] And so much of our culture is designed to deny vulnerability, and to shut it down or to somehow distract ourselves from it.

[953] And what's the cost?

[954] And the cost is that we stay immature and that we lose ourselves.

[955] That's what the cost is.

[956] I also think vulnerability is, and I've just learned this from doing this podcast, that vulnerability is a great connector.

[957] Yeah.

[958] Much of the reason why I have good conversations on this podcast, I think, is because I'm willing to be open myself.

[959] Yeah.

[960] Which allows your client, your guest, safety to open up themselves and in your personal life with your friends i mean what's more and you can talk about the scandal of newcastle beating manchester city in the in some game recently by one to nothing which is not 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 what's how struggle then you know what's going on for you.

[961] I mean, it's no contest.

[962] But so much of this culture is designed to distract ourselves from our vulnerability.

[963] Yeah, 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.

[964] Yeah.

[965] Question that's been left for you.

[966] It's quite a long one.

[967] Today is your last day on earth.

[968] Yeah.

[969] You're allowed to make two phone calls.

[970] One phone call to the person you love the most and the second phone call.

[971] And the second phone call to the entire world, what do you say on both of those phone calls?

[972] What John Lennon sang all those years ago, all you need is love.

[973] And the phone call to the person you love the most?

[974] To the person I love the most, I don't have to say anything at all.

[975] Why?

[976] Because she knows.

[977] But if you were calling her on that last day, I'd say thank you.

[978] What for?

[979] For everything.

[980] and you know what i may even say that to the world i might even say thank you you know i mean for 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 advice, which is all you need is love, which is advice.

[981] No, forget that.

[982] I'd say, I'd just say thank you.

[983] How do you want to be remembered?

[984] As somebody who did his best to make a difference and who made a difference, which I know I have, by the way.

[985] So not that everybody agrees with me, but I also know I've made a difference.

[986] What difference do you think you've made?

[987] How to say this without son -y -egotistical.

[988] But I get so many messages from around the world, I mean literally from around the world.

[989] But reading my books have transformed people's relationship to themselves, and made them understand themselves.

[990] I think I mentioned maybe in a different interview 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.

[991] So my work for those who are open to it really helps to connect them to themselves and to see themselves clearly.

[992] And that's a gift.

[993] In a world where it's increasingly hard to see who we really are.

[994] Yeah, and it's hard for people to see themselves.

[995] And so people don't see themselves as broken or is the e -retrieve will be damaged.

[996] But actually, they can begin to see their capacity for wholeness, which incidentally is the root of the word health, is wholeness.

[997] and so that's the difference I'm making is that people can see themselves not as broken, damaged, but there's actually fundamentally whole with some stuff to work through.

[998] That's it.

[999] We can learn so much from children, can't we?

[1000] So much of your work brings us back to the first nature as you describe it of children.

[1001] Yeah.

[1002] 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.

[1003] Gabble, thank you.

[1004] Thank you so much.

[1005] It's a difficult question to ask someone else about the impact they've made on the world, but even what you said, I think, is a huge understatement because the people that I know close to me, like my partner, like my partner, who just, I mean, her life, I think, has been changed personally, but also professionally.

[1006] Much of the reason she does the work she does, the reason why she's not here to meet you because 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.

[1007] So not only have you impacted people personally, but you've impacted the next generation of teachers and therapists which is going to be a generational it's like a domino's effect.

[1008] 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, you know, adversaries who take a different stance to persist with truth.

[1009] But thank you.

[1010] And one of the things that most in heartened me is that when I go about London or any city in the world, which is 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 that people, one quarter my age, are coming up to me to thank me. Well, that shows me that is making a difference.

[1011] 100%.

[1012] If she could have been here and actually was so annoyed, if she realized she'd booked a retreat on the same day that you were coming to London because she didn't get to meet you last time because she was in Bali.

[1013] Oh, wow, some of the time.

[1014] She'll be watching this, trust me. She's probably watching live right now.

[1015] But thank you so much, Kabur, again, for your generosity and your wisdom.

[1016] It's changed my life and it continues to change many other people that are listening to this, but all around the world.

[1017] So thank you.

[1018] Thanks so much.