IIlness is outcome of adaptation - Dr Gabor Mate

 

Gabor Mate welcome back to the show 

Nice to be back again, thank you 

Dude so good to have you as we were talking about before, we started  roll rolling your book a is incredible but is very unnerving in the picture that it  paints because it feels so accurate. It's a big book in terms of what it's taking on. So  i want to start at the beginning explain to people when you say the myth of normal, what do you mean? and then after that we'll get into what a  toxic culture?

Gabor Mate selamat datang kembali di Podcast ini.

Senang bisa kembali lagi, terimakasih

Bung sangat senang bisa bertemu lagi, seperti yang pernah kita bicarakan sebelumnya. Kita mulai mengupas bukumu yang luar biasa tetapi menjadi sangat mengerikan pada gambaran yang dilukisnya karena rasanya sangat akurat. Ini adalah buku yang bagus dalam hal apa yang diambilnya. Jadi aku ingin mulai dari awal menjelaskan kepada orang-orang ketika kau mengatakan mitos normal, 

Apa maksud Anda? 

Dan kemudian setelah itu kita akan  masuk pada pembahasan budaya yang beracun.

I mean two things, we have this idea what is normal, is also healthy and natural. And I'm saying that in this culture the norm is neither healthy and neither natural, in fact a norm, I think is making us  sick, number one. 

Number two we talk about illnesses, and body & mind abnormalities. I'm saying  that illness in this society given the conditions is a normal response to an abnormal circumstance. So that's what I mean by the myth of normal.

Maksudku dua hal, kita punya ide ini apa yang normal, juga sehat dan alami. Dan kukatakan bahwa dalam budaya ini norma tidak sehat dan tidak alami, sebenarnya norma, yang kupikir membuat kita sakit. Itu satu. Sedangkan nomor dua kita berbicara tentang penyakit, dan kelainan tubuh dan pikiran. Aku mengatakan bahwa penyakit di masyarakat ini mengingat kondisinya adalah respons normal terhadap keadaan yang tidak normal. Jadi itu yang kumaksud dengan mitos normal.

Okey, so the obviously you go into great detail about this in the book. And I remember at one point, stopping and taking the note like wait a second, basically everything that we think of like you're  saying is sort of a normal result of aging,mor this is you know just some people have this  kind of response and it is what it is it's just natural. It's all coming back to trauma. And  it's all coming back to childhood trauma and a specific idea that we'll get to in a minute. But i want to push a little bit on that idea, 

So why is what we see in terms of things that we would categorize as mental health issues or overly stressed lives or all of the  myriad things that we think of like  rheumatoid arthritis one of the examples that  you give? 

How is that an adaptive response?

Oke, Jadi jelas kau masuk ke detail besar tentang dalam buku. Dan aku ingat pada satu titik, berhenti dan mencatat seperti tunggu sebentar, pada dasarnya semua yang kami pikirkan seperti yang kau katakan adalah semacam hasil normal dari penuaan atau ini adalah kau tahu hanya beberapa orang yang memiliki respons semacam ini, dan itu adalah apa itu wajar. Semuanya kembali ke trauma dan semuanya kembali ke trauma masa kecil. Dan ide spesifik yang akan kita dapatkan dalam satu menit. Tetapi aku ingin mendorong sedikit pada ide itu. Jadi mengapa? Apa yang kita lihat dalam hal hal-hal yang akan kita kategorikan sebagai masalah kesehatan mental, atau kehidupan yang terlalu stres, atau semua hal yang kita pikirkan seperti rheumatoid arthritis salah satu contoh yang kau berikan. 

Bagaimana itu respon adaptif?

Well, rheumatoid arthritis is not adaptive response in itself, is the outcome  of an adaptive response. So when you talk to  people and i've interviewed many or you look at  the research literature on who gets rheumatoid  arthritis, it's people 

• Who are super conscientious. 
• They have what's called hyper autonomous self-sufficiency in other words they don't ask for help. 
• They looked after the emotional  needs of others rather than carrying their own. 
• They tend  to suppress their healthy anger. 
• And they really try to fit in and not make waves. 

And these people that's an adaptation this is how they adapted to their childhood. They grew up in families where they were not accepted seen for they were. They might have been  traumatized the adaptation was to make themselves to suppress their authentic emotions. And to try  and fit in, with other people's expectations. And to meet other people's needs. That's the adaptation. 

But that adaptation puts tremendous stress on the  person. And that stress causes the illness so  one of those things that the illness is the outcome of an adaptation.

Nah penyakit rematik bukanlah respons adaptif itu sendiri, tetapi hasil dari respons adaptif. Jadi ketika kau bicara dengan orang-orang, dan aku telah mewawancarai banyak orang. Atau kau melihat literatur penelitian tentang siapa yang terkena rematik? 

• itu adalah orang-orang yang sangat teliti. 
• memiliki apa yang disebut swasembada hiper otonom. Dengan kata lain mereka tidak meminta bantuan. 

Mereka menjaga kebutuhan emosional orang lain, daripada membawa kebutuhan mereka sendiri. Mereka cenderung menekan kemarahan mereka yang sehat. Dan mereka benar-benar mencoba untuk menyesuaikan diri, dan tidak membuat gelombang. Dan orang-orang ini yang merupakan adaptasi ini adalah bagaimana mereka beradaptasi dengan masa kecil mereka. Mereka tumbuh dalam keluarga di mana mereka tidak diterima, terlihat seperti mereka. Mereka mungkin telah trauma adaptasi adalah untuk membuat diri mereka untuk menekan emosi otentik mereka. Dan untuk mencoba dan menyesuaikan dengan harapan orang lain. Dan untuk memenuhi kebutuhan orang lain, itulah adaptasinya. Tetapi adaptasi itu memberi tekanan luar biasa pada orang tersebut. Dan stres itu menyebabkan penyakit, hingga salah satu hal bahwa penyakit adalah hasil dari adaptasi.

Okay so let's talk  about that adaptation so yeah i think a lot  about the human mind as having directives. There  are things that we have been hardwired to do  over millions of years of evolution through  even you know sort of the non-human part of  our evolutionary tree up through where we are now. And so these directives get implanted. And it seems like your thesis is largely about the way that as  a child we go, okay this is what our environment is i don't have a secure attachment style  maybe my parents aren't paying attention to me. 

But what is the directive? 

• is the directive to get  a long 
• is the directive to fit in, like what is the  core directive that causes this to become pathological?

Oke jadi mari kita bicara tentang adaptasi itu. Jadi ya aku banyak berpikir tentang pikiran manusia sebagai makhluk yang punya arahan. Ada hal-hal yang telah kita lakukan selama jutaan tahun evolusi, bahkan semacam bagian non-human dari pohon evolusi kita di tempat kita sekarang. 

Dan arahan ini ditanamkan dan sepertinya tesismu, sebagian besar tentang cara kita sebagai seorang anak baik-baik saja, ini adalah lingkungan kita. Aku tidak memiliki gaya keterikatan yang aman, mungkin orang tuaku tidak memperhatikanku.

Tapi apa arahannya? 

• arahan untuk bertahan hidup
• Apakah arahan yang sesuai, seperti apa arahan inti yang menyebabkan ini menjadi patologis?

The core directive is twofold

• One is we have to attach, we have to be long, we have to connect 
• But the other directive is that we have to do so while maintaining  our own autonomy, our own authenticity. Auto means the self. 

So that means we have to be  in touch with our gut feelings and our emotions, and to be true to them. And so what we need is relationships in which can be true to ourselves  that's the directive. 

As soon as the directive  changes by because of this is what we're wired for example authenticity being in touch with  the gut feeling out there in the wild there's a hunter-gatherer, how long do you survive if you're not in touch with your gut feelings? so that's an essential thing. 

Arahan inti ada dua lipatan. 

• Satu adalah kita harus melampirkan, kita harus lama, kita harus terhubung. 
• Tapi arahan lainnya adalah bahwa kita harus melakukannya sambil mempertahankan otonomi kita sendiri, keaslian otomatis kita sendiri berarti diri. 

Jadi itu berarti kita harus berhubungan dengan perasaan dan emosi kita, dan jujur pada mereka. Dan yang kita butuhkan adalah hubungan yang bisa jujur pada diri kita sendiri itulah arahannya. Segera setelah arahan berubah karena ini adalah apa yang kami hubungkan misalnya keaslian berhubungan dengan perasaan di luar sana di alam liar ada pemburu-pengumpul. Berapa lama kau bertahan jika kau tidak berhubungan dengan perasaan ususmu? Jadi itu benar sangat penting.

But what if you grew up in a home where your honest emotions are not  accepted by your parents let's say your parents  have read jordan peterson's book 12 rules for  life, where he actually says that an angry child  should be made to sit by themselves till they  come back to normal. Or that parents should be able to hit their kids in order to get them to comply. 

Now if a child experiences healthy and normal anger of a two-year-old but the message he gets that if you're angry you will not be accepted by us, in fact you'll be excluded, you'll be given a timeout it won't even be with you, until you come back to quote unquote "normal". Then the child will adaptively repress their anger so as to maintain their relationship with their parents. So they  give up their authenticity for the sake of  the attachment. That giving of the attachment  suppresses not just the emotions but because the emotions are physiologically connected to immune system in fact. They're part and parcel of the same  apparatus. When you suppress your emotions you're suppressing your immune system as well.

Now you're  asking, why are we seeing a rise of autoimmune disease in this society which we are and as  globalization spreads we're seeing more autoimmune disease around the world is because people  are more and more having to suppress themselves to fit in with the false expectations of a society. So that's the link. 

Jadi itu hal yang penting tetapi bagaimana jika kau tumbuh di rumah di mana emosi jujurmu tidak diterima oleh orang tuamu? katakanlah orang tuamu telah membaca buku jordan peterson 12 aturan untuk hidup, di mana dia benar-benar mengatakan bahwa

• anak yang marah harus dibuat untuk duduk sendiri sampai mereka kembali normal. 
• tau orang tua harus bisa memukul anak-anak mereka untuk membuat mereka patuh. 

Sekarang jika seorang anak mengalami kemarahan yang sehat dan normal dari anak berusia dua tahun, tetapi pesan yang dia dapatkan bahwa jika kau marah, kau tidak akan diterima oleh kami. Sebenarnya kau akan dikecualikan, kau akan diberikan batas waktu itu bahkan tidak akan bersamamu, sampai kau kembali “normal”.

Kemudian anak akan secara adaptif menekan kemarahannya untuk mempertahankan hubungan mereka dengan orang tuanya, sehingga mereka melepaskan keaslian mereka, demi keterikatan. Bahwa memberikan keterikatan akan menekan tidak hanya emosi, tetapi juga kekebalan tubuh karena emosi secara fisiologis terhubung ke sistem kekebalan tubuh. Sebenarnya emosi dan kekebalan tubuh adalah satu paket, atau bagian tak terpisahkan. Ketika kau menekan emosimu, kau juga menekan sistem kekebalan tubuhmu. Sekarang kau bertanya mengapa kita melihat munculnya penyakit autoimun di masyarakat saat ini? dan ketika globalisasi menyebar kita melihat lebih banyak penyakit autoimun di seluruh dunia adalah karena orang semakin harus menekan diri mereka sendiri agar sesuai dengan harapan palsu dari masyarakat. Jadi itulah tautannya.

All right i'm gonna see if I can hold all this my head, because this is one of the the most interesting core elements of the book. Is this collision between authenticity and attachment yes used a incredible analogy that really hit me hard and that's you said 

the lung is not the response to an expectation of oxygen, 
the lung is the expectation of oxygen.

Like it is the manifestation of that.

Yeah if there's no oxygen, we'd no lungs. Our lungs evolved as an expectation for oxygen.

Which makes total sense to me, yeah i'm paraphrasing here but i think i'm pretty close. That the human is the expectation of attachment.

Absolutely 

So that we exist only in relation to having that attachment  

Baiklah aku akan lihat dari sisi apakah aku bisa menahan semua ini di kepalaku, karena ini adalah salah satu elemen inti yang paling menarik dari buku ini. Apakah tabrakan antara keaslian dan keterikatan ini ya menggunakan analogi luar biasa yang benar-benar menyadarkanku. Dan itu yang kau katakan

Paru-paru bukanlah respons terhadap harapan atas oksigen, tetapi Paru-paru adalah ekspektasi dari oksigen itu. Seperti bahwa paru2 atau perangkat dalam tubuh kita ini adalah manifestasi dari alam.

Ya jika tidak ada oksigen, kita tidak akan memiliki paru-paru. Paru-paru kita berevolusi karena adanya harapan atas oksigen.

Yang sangat masuk akal bagiku, ya aku memparafrasekan, tetapi kupikir cukup dekat maknanya bahwa manusia adalah harapan atas keterikatan.

Betul sekali

Kita bener2 bisa bertahan hidup hanya karena adanya hubungan untuk memiliki keterikatan atas sesuatu.

Well, how long would a baby survive without attachment? It wouldn't. So the infant is an expectation but not just for physical attachment. But also for emotional attachment of a nurturing and unconditional kind. We're an expectation for that. We're that's how we evolved as a species. 

The baby gorilla is an expectation to be loved nurtured held  and fed and protected by mother gorilla. Now have you ever seen the mother gorilla who  ignores their babies cries? Can you even imagine one have you seen a mother a cat that  ignores the the little infant kittens meow?

Infant is an expectation for unconditional acceptance 

• We tell parents to ignore their babies crying. 
• We tell parents to separate from their kids if the kids behave in a way that they don't like. 
• We tell parents to deny children's  natural need to play out there in nature. 

So human beings are expect. We evolved as you say  as hominins over the last couple of million years  and as a species the human you know the homo  sapiens, we evolved as expectations for certain conditions. The lesser society meets those  conditions the more toxic it becomes to the developmental needs, and therefore healthy growth of the human being.

Nah berapa lama bayi akan bertahan hidup tanpa keterikatan itu? tidak akan  kan? Jadi bayi punya harapan tetapi tidak hanya untuk keterikatan fisik, tetapi juga untuk keterikatan emosional dari berbagai jenis pengasuhan dan tanpa syarat. 

Kita adalah harapan itu. Begitulah cara kita berevolusi sebagai spesies. Bayi gorila punya harapan untuk dicintai dipelihara dan diberi makan dan dilindungi oleh induk gorila. Sekarang pernahkah kau lihat 

• Ibu gorila yang mengabaikan bayi mereka menangis? 
• dapatkah kau bayangkan seseorang yang pernah kau lihat seorang ibu kucing yang mengabaikan bayi kecil, anak kucing mengeong?

 Bayi punya harapan untuk penerimaan tanpa syarat. 

• Kami memberi tahu orang tua untuk mengabaikan bayi mereka menangis.
• Kami memberi tahu orang tua untuk berpisah dari anak-anak mereka jika anak-anak berperilaku dengan cara yang tidak mereka sukai.
• Kami memberi tahu orang tua untuk menyangkal kebutuhan alami anak-anak untuk bermain di alam.

Jadi manusia berharap kita berevolusi seperti yang kau katakan sebagai hominin selama beberapa juta tahun terakhir. Dan sebagai spesies manusia yang kau kenal homo sapiens, kami berevolusi sebagai harapan untuk kondisi tertentu. Semakin rendah masyarakat memenuhi kondisi tersebut, semakin berbahaya bagi kebutuhan perkembangan. Dan oleh karena itu pertumbuhan manusia yang sehat.

Okay so let's walk through that. So yeah what do you do because you talk about needing to set boundaries. And you're you mentioned look I'm a parent and  at the end of the day, I do have to set boundaries. 

So how do we set a boundary without and i'll quote, i think it was plato or aristotle that said 

This the only impossible job is raising children. 

One of  the reasons that I did not have kids is because my sister and I were raised in the house. 

• The same house 
• by the same parents 

and we  reacted very differently to that.

Well first of  all you're not brought up in the same home, by the same parents 

that's interesting, why do  you say that 

Oke jadi mari bahas tentang itu. Jadi ya apa yang kau lakukan karena kau berbicara tentang perlunya menetapkan batasan. Dan kau sebutkan, lihat aku adalah orang tua dan pada akhirnya aku harus menetapkan batasan. 

Jadi bagaimana kita menetapkan batas tanpa dan aku akan mengutip, Aku pikir itu adalah plato atau aristotle yang mengatakan ini 

Satu-satunya pekerjaan yang mustahil adalah menumbuhkan anak-anak. Salah satu alasanku tidak memiliki anak adalah karena saudara perempuanku dan aku sendiri dibesarkan di rumah rumah yang sama oleh orang tua yang sama, tapi kami bereaksi sangat berbeda terhadap itu.

Baik pertama-tama, kalian tidak dibesarkan “di rumah” yang sama oleh “orang tua yang sama”

Itu menarik, kenapa kamu bilang begitu?

Because the parent, that the child experiences is the parent. The way they show up for that particular child. Your parents did not show up the same way for a female child, as for a male child even if they tried to they couldn't have. Because they're programmed culturally not to.

Secondly you were different ages. You came along at different stages of their parent relationship to one another. Or their cell phone or their   relationship to themselves. Did not have the same parents. You did not grow up in the same house number one.

Number two, you might have different sensibilities.

that is for sure 

One of you may be temporarily more or less sensitive than the other. So that means even if your parents could have been the same which they couldn't have been. But even if they could have been the same to both of you, you would have experienced them differently.

Itu semua karena orang tua. Orang tua adalah pengalaman anak2. Cara mereka memperlakukan anak, itulah yang muncul pada anak itu. Orang tuamu mungkin tidak muncul dengan cara yang sama untuk anak perempuan, seperti untuk anak laki-laki bahkan jika mereka mencoba, mereka tidak bisa melakukannya. Karena mereka diprogram secara budaya untuk tidak demikian.

Kedua, Kau memiliki usia yang berbeda. Kau datang pada tahap yang berbeda dari hubungan orang tua satu sama lainnya. Atau ponsel mereka atau hubungan mereka dengan diri mereka sendiri, tidak memiliki orang tua yang sama. Kalian tidak tumbuh “di rumah” yang sama.

Nomor dua, kalian mungkin memiliki kepekaan yang berbeda.

Itu sudah pasti

Salah satu dari kalian mungkin ada yang lebih atau kurang sensitif daripada yang lain. Jadi itu berarti bahkan jika orang tua bisa saja sama seperti yang tidak bisa mereka lakukan. Tetapi bahkan jika mereka bisa saja sama untuk kalian berdua, kalian akan mengalaminya secara berbeda.

Okay so knowing that level of complexity yeah. How do you do this well like it seems so my mother disciplined me both physically, so i was spanked.

Sort of interrupted, Discipline you is one way to put it. Hits you is another way to put it. Yeah you know 

So which that word doesn't ring weird to me but i know given your area of expertise that it does for you. And that's what i'm trying to figure out. So how do we set a boundary without the child feeling that there are conditions around the love. Because reading that in your book. And again I don't have kids. 

So nobody needs to panic but unconditional love to me at an intellectual level anyway doesn't seem to break just because you're told to sit on the stairs or be isolated.

Oke jadi mengetahui tingkat kompleksitas itu ya. Bagaimana Anda melakukan ini dengan baik seperti sepertinya ibu saya mendisiplinkan saya baik secara fisik. Jadi saya dipukul dan yah ini

Semacam terganggu, Disiplin Anda adalah salah satu cara untuk mengatakannya. Memukul Anda adalah cara lain untuk mengatakannya. Ya kamu tahu

Jadi kata mana yang tidak terdengar aneh bagi saya tetapi saya tahu mengingat bidang keahlian Anda. Itu untuk Anda dan itulah yang saya coba cari tahu. Jadi bagaimana kita menetapkan batas tanpa anak merasa bahwa ada kondisi di sekitar cinta. Karena membaca itu di bukumu. Dan lagi saya tidak punya anak.

Jadi tidak ada yang perlu panik tetapi cinta tanpa syarat kepada saya pada tingkat intelektual tampaknya tidak putus hanya karena Anda disuruh duduk di tangga atau terisolasi.

Well you see, the love that the child experiences. See I don't doubt that  your mother loved you. But the love that the child experiences is not what the parent feels it's what the child gets from the parent. 

Now if you're told that if you're angry you need to be on your own. What message are you getting you're getting the message that only under certain emotions are you only. When certain emotions are  present are you acceptable to the parent. The child will not experience that  as love. 

Nah kau akan lihat cinta yang dialami anak itu. Aku tidak ragu bahwa ibumu mencintaimu. Tapi cinta yang dialami anak bukanlah yang dirasakan orang tua, melainkan yang didapat anak dari orang tua. 

Sekarang jika kau diberitahu bahwa jika marah, kau harus sendirian. 

Pesan apa yang kau dapatkan? Kau mendapatkan pesan bahwa hanya pada taraf emosi tertentu yang ditoleransi. Namun ketika emosi tertentu hadir apakah kau dapat diterima oleh orang tua? Anak anak tidak akan mengalami itu sebagai cinta.

But that um so i will say this this  is purely anecdotal and it's just me. And i  don't want to get lost in that. yeah but I remember, I even as a kid I would say that my mom, I sometimes get very angry at my mom but I never doubt that she loves me. 

No, I nor should you doubt that she loved you because she loved you. But that doesn't mean that your experience, the love is unconditional. You wouldn't have any idea. You had nothing to compare it to. That's the  only love you'd ever known.

So how do you set  a boundary without breaking the sentence so that's  the question of who's setting the boundary you see, let's say a parent with 

Tapi itu jadi aku akan mengatakan ini murni anekdot, dan itu mungkin hanya padaku. Dan aku tidak ingin tersesat dalam hal itu. Ya tapi aku ingat, aku bahkan sebagai seorang anak, akan mengatakan bahwa ibuku,  aku kadang-kadang sangat marah pada ibuku, tetapi aku tak pernah ragu bahwa dia mencintaiku.

Tidak demikian, bahkan aku tidak seharusnya meragukan kasih sayang seorang ibu, karena memang ibumu itu mencintaimu. Tapi itu bukan berarti bahwa pengalamanmu, bahwa cinta itu tanpa syarat. Kau tidak akan tahu. Kau tak punya apa-apa untuk membandingkannya. Itulah satu-satunya cinta yang pernah kau kenal, dari seorang ibu ke anak.

Jadi bagaimana kau menetapkan batas tanpa melanggarnya? sehingga itu pertanyaannya tentang siapa yang menetapkan batas itu? kau lihat katakanlah orang tua dengan

No but here's what i mean,

with children who are naturally lovingly connected  to their parents. How you set a boundary is you say don't do that with a parent. That the child is  not totally unconditionally connected. You have to use more and more force. So when you talk about  setting boundaries, Yes, you can't let a kid. 

I live in vancouver british columbia, it's not alaska but we get pretty cold there. It gets pretty cold in the winter time, A one-year-old doesn't get a choice about do i get to go outside naked into the winter  in vancouver no choice it's not a democracy.  No you don't go outside naked. But I do that a child who's wanted to attach to the parent warmly will naturally follow the parent's advice. 

Tidak tapi ini yang kumaksud,

Dengan anak-anak yang secara alami terhubung dengan penuh kasih dengan orang tua mereka. Bagaimana Anda menetapkan batas adalah Anda mengatakan jangan lakukan itu dengan orang tua. Bahwa anak tidak sepenuhnya terhubung tanpa syarat. Anda harus menggunakan lebih banyak kekuatan. Jadi ketika Anda berbicara tentang menetapkan batasan, Ya, Anda tidak bisa membiarkan seorang anak.

Saya tinggal di vancouver british columbia, itu bukan alaska tapi kami menjadi cukup dingin di sana. Ini menjadi sangat dingin di musim dingin, A one-year-old tidak punya pilihan tentang apakah saya bisa pergi keluar telanjang ke musim dingin di vancouver tidak ada pilihan itu bukan demokrasi. Tidak, kamu tidak pergi ke luar telanjang. Tapi saya melakukan itu seorang anak yang ingin melekat pada orang tua dengan hangat secara alami akan mengikuti saran orang tua.

You see your mother hit you, aboriginal people hunter-gatherer people don't hit their kids. When the caucasians or  the europeans the christians arrived in north america, they were appalled at the  parenting practices of the natives, because they  didn't hit their kids. And yet those kids were far  more confident and capable than the caucasian kids. So that you can set boundaries 

• through just love 
• through relationship 
• through example  

it doesn't have to involve force. And certainly does not have to include physical force.   

Anda melihat ibu Anda memukul Anda, orang aborigin orang pemburu-pengumpul tidak memukul anak-anak mereka. Ketika orang Kaukasia atau orang Eropa orang Kristen tiba di Amerika Utara, mereka terkejut dengan praktik pengasuhan penduduk asli, karena mereka tidak memukul anak-anak mereka. Namun anak-anak itu jauh lebih percaya diri dan mampu daripada anak-anak Kaukasia. Agar kamu bisa menetapkan batasan

• Hanya melalui cinta
• Melalui hubungan
• Melalui contoh

Itu tidak harus melibatkan kekerasan. Dan tentu saja tidak harus memasukkan kekuatan fisik.

Is there so that is one of the things that doesn't ring true to me. No I haven't studied it. So who knows so maybe this is just because I've grown up in the system where it's sort of broken already from the jump. But is there anywhere where that  experiment is being run today. Where we could see that because kids seem impulsive and their brains  aren't developed, and they just seem like little  messes that need things like for instance. A kid that throws a tantrum because you won't let them go outside into the snow so 

Apakah ada jadi itu adalah salah satu hal yang tidak berdering benar bagi saya. Tidak, saya belum mempelajarinya. Jadi siapa tahu jadi mungkin ini hanya karena saya tumbuh dalam sistem di mana itu sudah agak rusak dari lompatan. Tetapi apakah ada tempat di mana eksperimen itu dijalankan hari ini. Di mana kita bisa melihat bahwa karena anak-anak tampak impulsif dan otak mereka tidak berkembang, dan mereka hanya tampak seperti kekacauan kecil yang membutuhkan hal-hal seperti misalnya. Seorang anak yang mengamuk karena kamu tidak akan membiarkan mereka keluar ke salju jadi

So why can't they throw a tantrum? that's they're expressing their anger. No yeah let's say but what were you saying before. Because I want to go back to it just before we talked about the tantrum.  

Oh yeah Kids are impulsive, here's the thing children 

• want to be long to the parent
• they want  to connect to their parent 

There's a natural range of attachment behaviors.  That the kid will go through under healthy circumstances. One of them first of  all is they want to be physically near you, they want to be held by you. In fact aboriginal  people carry their kids everywhere. They go that's what they do. Gorillas carry their kids everywhere, they go spontaneously. number one. 

Jadi (pertanyakan juga) mengapa ada dari mereka tidak bisa tantrum? Itu mereka mengekspresikan kemarahan mereka. Tidak ya katakanlah tapi apa yang kamu katakan sebelumnya. Karena saya ingin kembali ke sana sebelum kita berbicara tentang tantrum. 

Oh ya.. Anak itu impulsif, karena dia anak anak

• Ingin  selalu bersama orang tua 
• Mereka ingin terhubung dengan orang tua mereka

Ada rentang alami dari perilaku keterikatan. Bahwa anak itu akan melaluinya dalam keadaan yang sehat. Salah satunya pertama-tama mereka ingin berada secara fisik di dekat kalian, mereka ingin dipegang oleh kalian. 

Bahkan orang-orang aborigin membawa anak-anak mereka kemana-mana pun mereka pergi. Itulah yang mereka lakukan. Gorila membawa anak-anak mereka ke mana-mana, dan itu mereka lakukan secara spontan, nomor satu.

Number  two the child wants to emulate you they want to be  like you that's a natural attachment drive. So if  you show up as a loving nurturing parental figure the parent, the kid will naturally want to emulate you and copy you.

Number three the child will want to be good for you without any coercion whatsoever. And again i'm telling you hunter-gatherer groups have been studied extensively for how they parent. And those even  books are being written now about trying to learn  the lessons that they teach about how to parent, why? Because we've lost our parenting instincts. 

Nomor dua anak ingin menirumu. Mereka ingin menjadi sepertimu, itu adalah dorongan keterikatan alami. Jadi jika kau muncul sebagai sosok orang tua yang mengasuh dengan penuh kasih, menjadi sosok orang tua, maka anak itu secara alami akan ingin mencoba lekat dengan mu dan menirumu.

Nomor tiga anak akan ingin menjadi baik, tanpa paksaan apa pun. Dan lagi kuberi tahu bahwa kelompok pemburu-pengumpul telah dipelajari secara ekstensif untuk bagaimana mereka menjadi orang tua. Dan bahkan buku-buku itu sedang ditulis sekarang tentang mencoba mempelajari pelajaran yang mereka ajarkan tentang cara menjadi orang tua, mengapa? Karena kita sudah kehilangan naluri parenting kita.

You're talking like an adult without parenting instincts. And that's not a criticism. I'm just saying that. When you're tweeted like the way you tweeted? Some ways I was tweeted, I talk in the book about it. 

Look let me just jump back a little bit. It's this is in the book i'm two weeks old, I'm still in the hospital with my mother. And she she writes her diary my poor little son  my heart breaks for you because you've been crying for the last hour and a half to be fed but i don't feed you because i promised the doctor that i only  feed you on schedule. now what's happening to me  this woman loves me my mother desperately loved me. i know that in so many ways. 

But she's not  listening to her own parenting instincts.  Her heart is breaking but she's letting me cry  by myself because she promised some stupid doctor that should only feed me on schedule what  message i'm getting am i getting the message   that i'm being loved, or is it too recalled i'm  getting the message that my needs don't matter  and they don't care about how i feel which  message am i getting yes she totally loved me  but she wasn't listening to  your own parenting instincts and that is traumatic for the child and it's confusing. Because she loves me yes  she doesn't even feed me when i'm hungry well that's really confusing and it's traumatizing. And we're telling this to parents all the time  in this society. 

Misalnya kau berbicara layaknya orang dewasa, tanpa ada insting parenting. Ini bukan kritik, tapi aku hanya mengatakanya. Ketika kau berkicau di tweeter, seperti caramu berkicau? Di sisi lain, dulu aku juga suka tweet, dan aku telah membicarakan itu di buku ini.

Kita mundur sedikit saja. Ini ada di bukuku, ketika aku berumur dua minggu dan aku masih di rumah sakit bersama ibu saya. Dan dia menulis buku hariannya putra kecilku yang malang hatiku hancur untukmu karena kamu telah menangis selama satu setengah jam terakhir untuk diberi makan tetapi aku tidak memberimu makan karena aku berjanji kepada dokter bahwa aku hanya memberimu makan sesuai jadwal. sekarang apa yang terjadi padaku wanita ini mencintaiku ibuku sangat mencintaiku. aku tahu itu dalam banyak hal.

Tapi dia tidak mendengarkan naluri pengasuhannya sendiri. Hatinya hancur tetapi dia membiarkan saya menangis sendiri karena dia berjanji kepada beberapa dokter bodoh yang seharusnya hanya memberi saya makan sesuai jadwal pesan apa yang saya dapatkan apakah saya mendapatkan pesan bahwa saya dicintai, atau apakah itu terlalu diingat saya mendapatkan pesan bahwa kebutuhan saya tidak masalah dan mereka tidak peduli tentang bagaimana perasaan saya pesan mana yang saya dapatkan ya dia benar-benar mencintai saya tetapi dia tidak mendengarkan naluri pengasuhan Anda sendiri dan itu traumatis bagi anak dan itu membingungkan karena dia mencintai saya ya dia bahkan tidak memberi saya makan ketika Saya lapar dengan baik itu benar-benar membingungkan dan itu membuat trauma. Dan kami mengatakan ini kepada orang tua sepanjang waktu di masyarakat ini.

As a physician, I used to tell  parents to behave that way. I regret that but I  did. So what i'm talking about is a culture that  has lost contact with the parenting instinct. Or take the example of do you remember dr spock. Is  that Dr spock was the world's painting expert for decades and he talked about how you  deal with kids? 

• you put them to sleep 
• you put them  to bed 
• and you walk out quietly 
• and you close  the door 
• and you don't go back in 

because you  don't give in to the tyranny of the infant.  He  said the tyranny of the infant. 

The infant has  an attachment drive that says I need to be held by mommy or daddy. The child is crying to express  that attachment need because physically that's how they can attach it's phys they can't emotionally connect as a as a month old they can connect if  you hold them if they see you if they hear you. What message are you giving to the kid when  you don't pick them up when they're crying?

That their feelings don't matter that they don't matter that's the message you're giving. You may love them but you're still giving them a  very negative message. And so that you may know on some level that your parent loves you because they feed you they hug you that whatever but at the same time these people that love  you are deeply hurting you that's traumatic. 

Aboriginal peoples don't do that kind of stuff in  under normal circumstances they just don't do it.  

Do they have a right of passage moment where so  

Let me do it again sorry the spanking business, there's been studies recently published in the american journal during the american medical association's pediatrics publication the kids were spent experience as much trauma. As kids were  more severely abused that's what the findings  are in the long term certain interrupt but 

No, not at all this topic is a incredibly meaningful  for anybody considering having kids raising kids yeah. And certainly even for me somebody  that doesn't have kids nor plan to have kids it's  it is the the thesis of your book is so big and  so powerful that it what it does though is it. Okay so i've grown up in a culture this  your hypothesis i've grown up in a culture  that is fundamentally sick. yeah is stopping um  parent many many things the book is way bigger  than uh just parenting we just  happen to be on that right now. but so it's created sort of parents that are detached  from their parental instincts that's right and  so they're constantly making these mistakes but  it feels normal right so i grew up in it to  the fish is the last one to recognize what water is yeah 

And so i can't even see that  there could be another way of doing this right  but because of that when i look at this i think once you're in the cycle how do you break out  of it because a you can't be an infant forever even you know gorillas at some point like th  the child is distance from the parents needs to be either they break away themselves or  they get pushed away. 

Or their parents may die  

Also very possible. And in the cultures that I have unintentionally encountered rights of  passage rituals because i'm interested in rights of passage there's this moment but I don't so the one i'll talk to specifically because I remember it so vividly is in um the long walk to  freedom nelson mandela's book he talks about how  i think it was your 14th birthday you're with the woman and your mother yeah and then  you are ceremoniously removed from her physically like they come and grab you and take  you away at what age uh i think it was 14. 

Okay  and they take you away and then there is this  they cover you in mud and then you are actually  i think before you get covered in mud i'm getting  the order wrong here but anyway they sit you down buck naked in front of the whole tribe with a  very sharp rock they cut your foreskin off and  they make you yell a warrior prayer yeah and  then they cover you in mud, and then another  young woman comes in after some time washes the  mud off your body I mean it's this whole thing  and before reading your work i was like that's so rad like this rite of passage that's dope you're taking the child away from the mother. 

Is that  is that a necessary moment? 

or is that all part of this like just sort of crazy detachment from  what we should be doing? 

So I think it's a mix  of both um let's just step back a little bit um nature has a natural agenda for every human being like when you plant an acorn what's nature's  agenda for that acorn grow into a tree go out  to be an oak tree so nature is the same agenda  for human beings to grow to be independent  self-mastered collective connected beings  that's nature's agenda this is how we evolved. 

That means if you meet the right developmental  conditions that kid will grow up to be   an independent person not because you push them away but because that's nature's agenda  because the parents are gonna die at some  point or another so at some point or another   that infant has to be an independent adult, that's  nature's agenda. We don't have to make that happen that happens spontaneously so long as the  conditions are right now if you plant that  acorn into dry ground with no irrigation  and no sunlight ain't gonna be any oak tree.  Not because the acorn doesn't have that capacity  but because the conditions weren't right same with human beings. So i'm saying if the conditions are right, that independence will happen anyway now it's true societies  have developed rituals of passage so there's a jewish bar mitzvah ceremony which happens at age 13. You know there's a vision quest that indigenous people will lead you know  but those ritual rites of passages or those  passages of rich rites of passage rituals  are conducted by adults to welcome  the child into the adult community  in their our general original environments which is small band hunter or groups  there wasn't circumcision. 

In fact i quote  an expert on aboriginal indigenous or  hunter-gatherer groups dr donna cion arves of  notre dame university who says that circumcision wasn't a part of that kind of practice so that circumcision came along later with with with  more settled tribes and agriculture and so on  so once you get away from the hunter-gatherer milieu we're getting more and more or less and  less natural so what mandela is describing then  is a combination of a healthy rite of passage if we're recognizing your adulthood now we're  honoring you welcoming you to the community of adults but there was also an element of  barbarism in it where you're deliberately  hurting a child for which there's no reason   whatsoever whether it's a male child or it's  a female child and we know to what degree female children in some areas of the world  are hurt by the rituals of circumcision the male children are hurt as well. Not to the same  degree as the females but those are already post hunter-gatherer additions. So yes rite of passage beautiful  why is it necessary to hurt somebody it's not.

Hiding in there and i'm so curious i'm so glad  that i get to ask you directly. Hiding in there is a sounds like to me a vision of  humanity that is just loving and wonderful and that our natural state is um  we would grow into the oak tree that doesn't  that isn't my same base assumption but you very much have an expertise that i lack. So does your world view require that belief about  humans to be not purely good but certainly default good?

No nobody's default good. We've always said problems as human beings because  we're flawed beings, you know. But it's a question again of what develops under what conditions, you know. And  the more our needs are met, the more....  

Like for example in this society the belief very much is that were competitive  aggressive even hostile selfish creatures that's not how most of that's not how humanity developed we could never have developed if that's  the way we were, we could only have developed if they were nurturing and communal support and connection. And so if you look at all kinds  of cultures that are so-called um primitive so-called primitive giving and  receiving and connection are values  and people gain wealth by giving not by gathering and taking from others so wealth  is defined as a set of social connections rather than a set of physical possessions.

In canada in the northwest, pacific northwest they  used to have the pot latch and the potlatch were  do you know what apartheid says yeah yeah so it's  an event where people gather and they give gifts which is how they gather wealth of connections that's a very different sense of wealth than  gathering everything onto myself by taking it away from everybody else one of the first thing  that the colonialists did is they forbade their rituals and the spiritual ways of the indigenous  people including the potlatch. Because it  threatened the qualist acquisitive ethic. So we went against thousands of years of tradition  in order to force people into a cultural mindset that suited the purpose of colonialism that's  what happened.

Okay so going back to the idea of it doesn't require humans to be perfect we're  an imperfect creature. So if we are imperfect  and do you agree with uh i think it was soulja nitsan who said that the evil runs through or the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man which rings true to me does  that ring true to you.

I would say that the  potential for both runs through every person. Hitler was a human being as I say this in  the book jesus was a human being at least let's agree that in his earthly manifestation whether you're a christian he was a human being even jesus was tempted wasn't he you know  he's in the desert is tempted by power and ego and acquisition.

The buddha, in the buddha story he's tempted by lust and by greed and by aggression and egotism. So yes the potential for that kind of egotistical self-regard which turns out to be evil that is ultimate expression is is  that that strain is in us so is 

• the strain for compassion like the buddha 
• infinite love like  jesus 
• humility like moses that's all within us as well. 

The question is which conditions promote  which in his development the buddhist talks about seeds of which seeds in our minds are planted and  which get watered and which don't so yes i agree  that the potentials are there and in an embryo  everything is there but the question is what gets  nourished and what gets suppressed and i'm  saying that in this society it's the worst of us that gets nourished and the best of us that gets suppressed. 

All right so let's define those what uh i would assume that loving attachment  unconditionally loving attachment certainly towards your children that's part of the best  of us yeah what are some other attributes of  the best and then we'll move on to some of the  worst 

So let's talk about children and now let's  talk about people in general so children's  needs are unconditional loving acceptance  

from everyone or just their parents 

for their  parents or well ideally from the community but   certainly they're nurturing caregivers whoever  they are and their meant to me wasn't just a parent by the way we're never meant to be parented  in nuclear families okay it's pure that's a modern  thing so unconditional living acceptance rest from  having to work to make the relationship work say that again rest from having to work to make the relationship work in other words the child should   not have to be mold themselves into anything to  make the relationship work with their parents they shouldn't have to work they shouldn't have to  be good nice pretty to make the relationship work they shouldn't have to take care of the parents  emotional needs to make the relationship work like people that have to work to make their to  meet their parents emotional needs end up in deep trouble as adults very often physically ill you  go into tremendous detail in the book about that so children should be able to allow to feel all  their emotions and i mentioned play before those are the needs of the child as human beings  more generally we need a sense of connection a sense of meaning a sense of belonging a sense of  transcendence so that there's something we're part of something greater than just our legal egoic  concerns these are all the needs of human beings to the extent that they're met we thrive to  the extent that they're not met we shrivel and there's lots of shriveled people in  positions of great power in this society no doubt okay so what are what are the as we're  creating this soil that we're going to nurture things in yeah how do things start to go awry and  how do we begin to prep the soil for something better well we've covered that to some degree so  things will begin to go awry when we lose contact with our pending instincts and we'll and we is it  just that like is this would you um speaking from experience very broad but if you were going  to really like bring it down is this largely an echo of a parenting system that has become  dysfunctional it's it's a society that's become humanly dysfunctional that transmits its  expectations through the parents and that actually

begins before birth because already the the  more stressed and troubled the parents are that  

has a physiological impact on the child's brain  development so i'm just talking pure science here  

so mothers who are stressed and depressed their  infants in the womb were already getting those  

messages hormonally and through nerve conduction  and so on so that you can actually monitor the 

heart rates of mothers who are stressed and those  heart rates will be different than the heart rates   of infants whose mothers are not stressed in the  book you talk about the uh the crazy ice storm  

ends up showing up in the epigenetic markers  of kids if you don't mind walk us through that   it's pretty crazy well it's only that um in  the laboratory they have shown that the more  

you stress um parent animals the more troubled  and stressed the kids will be so in quebec there  

was an ice storm some years ago and the parents  underwent great the mothers underwent great stress  

and you know it was really cold there was  no heating a lot of stuff wasn't working  

um those mothers who experienced that stress their  children were shown to have more troubles later on  

behaviorally and learning wise and and in other  ways as well so again the stresses of the parent  

translate into the physiology of the child there's  a there's a study that i quoted in the book about  

they looked at um marriages that were stressed and you could there's  two ways you could tell how stressed the marriage  

was one is you could ask the parents and they  could they would talk about it the other way is   you could marry you could measure the urinary  stress hormone levels of their children wow

and the parental conflict was reflected  in elevated stress hormone levels in the 

urine of the children the elevated stress  hormone levels in the urine means that the   immune system itself is under assault and  that has an implication for health later on

we know for example that the more stressed  parents are the greater the risk of asthma   for their children and that the degree of stress  on the parents is correlated with the amount of  

medication the kid will need for their asthma  amongst other studies lots of such studies so  

in other words there's a correlation between  the emotional environment that we grew up in   and our physiology yeah i mean that's  really the core thrust of the book is  

hey all these things that you think are maybe just  old age or um bad diet they're actually related to  

trauma or even disease in fact one of the ones you  talk about that was the most eye opening was als   yeah which you know i would think of as a  genetic disease bummer horrible roll of the  

dice but walk people through the the um there is  a predictable personality trait of people with als  

that i was like well so um first of all there's  nothing genetic about als nobody's ever shown  

i mean there might be some rare examples of  als genetically into this but those would be a   tiny infinitely small minority so genes don't  have much to do with most chronic illnesses  

there are some illnesses that are genetic  there's one that runs in my family   my mother and my aunt had it muscular dystrophy  gradually they became weaker and weaker already  

when i was a child my mother couldn't lift her  arm up and in the end she was not immobile at all  

and so if you get that gene you're going to get  the disease but those diseases are very very rare  

about one in ten thousand most chronic illnesses  have very little or no genetic basis to it  

so for example there's a breast cancer gene but  out of 100 women with breast cancer only seven  

will have the gene and out of 100 women with  the gene not all of them will get the cancer so  

in many cases even if these genes are  implicated it's in it's the interaction   of genes and environment now in als it's you  know the the als personality which i noticed  

in palliative care when i was a palliative care  physician also in the literature are people that   repress their healthy anger are emotionally very  rigid and they don't ask for help from anybody 

and usually that's based on childhood trauma   and logarithmic was like that the ultimate you  define trauma in you you go to very careful links  

in the book to make sure that people understand  trauma isn't always getting hit with a bat or   uh being sexually abused like there's a range  that can be wildly impactful well let's take  

uh lou gehrig after whom the name the disease is  named in north america his father was an alcoholic  

and lou gehrig was one of these very nice guys  that took care of his mother emotionally he had  

to that's what happens in the home of an alcoholic  very often the child becomes the caregiver 

now he was such a nice guy that you know  he the the the record that he set for 

uh consecutive games played that stood for so  many many many decades why did he set that record  

because even if he was sick he would play  because he's too dutiful to his teammates  

to take himself out of a game is that  a healthy thing or not it's not healthy  

on the other hand when there was a young  rookie on the on the yankees who got sick and   he couldn't play and the manager was very upset  with this kid gerry says what are you talking 

about he's sick he can't play took the rookie  to his own home where he lived with his mother  

his mother put the kid to bed the rookie  nursed him and luger slept on the couch  

so that kind of self-sacrificing self-negating  emotionally repressed really nice person  

is the person which is typical of the als  personality and there's been a whole lot of   studies on that that show that you know these are  the people that get als it's just that the doctors  

don't make the link between that personality  pattern and the ls that's just basically   swallowing your anger swelling your healthy anger  directly yeah sorry swallowing your healthy anger  

is directly causative to als i think  it's a major contributor you never see it  

you never see it and you never see the healthy  anger in anybody with als and you always see  

this hyper conscientious hyper autonomous  self-sufficiency that no i don't need any help  

now and when you talk to neurologists  which has been done in studies  

they always describe their patients as  extraordinary nice als patients extraordinarily   nice why they're so nice because they repress  their healthy aggression it's just that the  

neurologists don't make the link between that and  the disease i'm saying that that plays a major   role because that repression of emotions again  the emotions are not separable from our physiology  

the nervous system and the immune system and  hormonal apparatus and the god and the heart  

they're all one system when  something happens in one area  

something happens in the other area as  well look the analogy in the book is this

think of a person with a big beach ball  trying to push a beach ball under the water  

that takes a lot of effort now have you ever been  angry of course okay now when you're angry it's  

not just an emotional state in your head it's a  whole body is now how much energy would it take  

to suppress that energy to suppress that anger  can you imagine so that you don't even feel it

but not feeling your anger was an adaptation to  your childhood where the anger wasn't permitted  

so that emotional physiological effort  of repressing anger takes a toll on the  

nervous system and an immune system it's a major  role in disease i'm saying yeah it pays a major  

contribution yeah this is where the book really  starts to get into some fascinating territory as  

you go through all these different diseases and  you start talking about okay repressing anger  

uh you go into the god is it the natural killer  t cells end up uh being suppressed because you're  

putting so much energy away from your immune  system your immune system can't keep up and so   there's all kinds of things like cancer that are  afflicted there was one thing you said like back 

in the 1800s or early 1900s there was a doctor  that was like oh whenever you see somebody with   heart disease they have this type of personality  and you even talk about in the book the type c you  

said it's not a personality type but that there  are traits yeah that people with type c have 

that end up being sort of pro disease personality  traits yeah what are some of those traits  

well before i answer that let me go back  to something let's talk about healthy   anger for a minute if you could okay um then i'll  illustrate these traits okay what is healthy anger  

why are we given healthy anger so there's  a there's a system in our brain for anger

not just for us mammals what is it there for is  there to protect our boundaries somebody to invade  

your space physically or in the case of human  beings emotionally you should say no stay out  

that's the rule of healthy anger now you're frust  if you are repressed that healthy anger what would 

happen to you to me in life people would be just  trespassing all over me all the time because i had  

no boundaries so healthy anger is a boundary  defense is that clear okay healthy anger is a  

boundary defense it just says it seems like one of  its uses i'll be honest i don't know that i'd say   it's it's only use but i don't know healthy anger  that's its only use that's his major use just  

boundary protection that's just measure that's  why it came along animals have it you're in my

how space you extending that to loved ones  so now if you encroach upon a loved one  

well if your loved one intrudes your  space emotionally no i mean if somebody   else is intruding on my loved ones oh  yeah dad too yeah yeah oh yeah yeah  

you or your loved ones anything  you cherish absolutely for sure   so that's healthy anger so the role of anger  is to set a boundary between what's nourishing 

uh you know to to let in a lot of healthy anger  is to keep up what's dangerous and unwelcome right  

what's the role of the emotional system in  general is to let in what's healthy and nurturing  

and to keep what was dangerous and unwelcome is  that fair enough seems good what's the rule of the 

immune system same exactly it's the same the role  of the immune system is to keep what was dangerous 

and toxic along with nourishing and healthy the  immune system and then and the emotional system  

are not separate systems they're part and parcel  of the same apparatus they're unified when you 

suppress the emotions you're also suppressing the  immune system when you say when you when you tom  

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be legendary when you don't know how to defend  your emotional boundaries that also  

weakens your immune boundaries physiologically  it's that simple or if you repress the anger  

that anger doesn't go away it doesn't evaporate  into the heavens it turns against you in the  

form of depression or self-loathing and so on in  the same way the immune system turns against you  

and now you have autoimmune disease and so the  traits that were identified with chronic illness  

most chronic illness like cancers or immune  disease are emotional self-suppression inability  

to experience healthy anger desire to please  others to fit in to be acceptable to be nice

to be ignoring of your own needs these are  the traits that are over and over and again   identified in the literature whether with  multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis or  

with cancer now these are not the real per these  are not the real person these are adaptive traits 

in response to the childhood environment but  they take a heavy toll or take another so-called  

illness and by the way the case i'm making is that  what we call illness is actually response to life 

so take a take depression this so-called  biological disease of the brain  

what does it mean to depress something  try to push it down to push it down 

what gets pushed and what's got pushed on  in depression well i can tell you i've been   depressed what gets pushed on depression  is your natural emotions everything is flat 

and nothing matters nothing has any meaning  and that starts with people pushing them down  

that's that's the word that's what the world means  it means to push it down it starts in childhood  

with people people having to push down their  emotions why do they have to push their emotions   to fit in with other people's expectations so  and i don't know the literature on this at all so there often times then the depression  will just sort of creep in slowly i always assumed it was tied to something being stuck  in um a bad relationship uh death in the family loss of a job that there would be some sort  of triggering event well the okay fair enough if you're in a bad relationship the healthy  response is not depression but to deal with the challenges in their retirement in their  relationship either by work they're now out   or by leaving their relationship depression is  not necessary outcome the response to the death of a close one of a close one is not depression  it's grief grief is the healthy response we have a system in our brain for grief by the way  so grief becomes depression when you're not allowing yourself to grieve but you don't know how  to grieve properly yeah and you don't know a lot of grief properly because your emotions were  suppressed as a child and so yeah we have these healthy systems but they get their activity  gets deformed through our natural expectations okay so to stay with depression for a  minute so you're pushing all this stuff down   it starts in early childhood you're trying to  fit in you want unconditional love you're not getting it so you have this directive  for attachment and so you begin to   oh i see what i can do if i if i don't yell  scream if i'm not expressing frustration 

if i'm the caretaker or whatever that  situation demands then i'll as well so now i've   learned this adaptive response to suppress  my emotions and over time it begins to numb me i would assume i have not been depressed  so but uh so you're beginning to be numbed but now something it gets starts to be very extreme and  you what i have heard depression explained as is just like the skies are permanently gray you will  never see joy again and so what what is breaking in that that like the beach ball analogy i like  right i'm pushing something under the water but   if i stop pushing it will pop back up and so if  that thing or my emotions is when you're treating depression let's say non-pharmacologically  is it the release of the pressure on those emotions to let them finally come up yeah so the  so the the difference between the pushing the beach ball down is that i'm doing it consciously  and deliberately but the repression of emotions that a child um engages in is not conscious is  not deliberate it's an automatic response it's  unconscious therefore the child can't just that  go like that and then as you say it numbs and then becomes overall a depression now the by the  way i'm not against pharmacological treatment i've taken antidepressants they have helped  me so i'm not here to advocate against them I could talk about their misuse but in principle  sometimes they're helpful and occasionally they're life-saving and much of the time they're over  prescribed for way too long and we're not dealing with the real issues because the pharmacology  deals with the symptom but it doesn't deal with   the underlying problem so yes the healing  of depression and i talk you know the last the final part the longest part  of the book really is unhealing   is you have to reconnect to yourself so you  can feel your emotions that's the treatment of depression talk to me about reconnecting  how do you reconnect what is that process well first of all you recognize  that you're disconnected and you notice how that disconnect shows  up you know in so many areas of your life in your on the job or in the uh in your  personal relationships for example or in your relationship to yourself so you have to  become aware and this is where i talk about disease whether it's physical or so-called mental  um as teacher not that i recommend the illness as  a way of learning to anybody it's that's not my  fault but if it happens but if it happens it can actually teach you and you can ask yourself what  i've been pushing down and what are the stories why do i push it down oh i pushed on my emotions  because i've learned i have the belief that if i'm angry i'm a bad person well is that really true  is a person experiences anger really a bad person. I learned that if i push down my needs then  people will love me do i really really do i really want to be loved at the expense of disconnecting  from myself as a child i had no choice because i had to be loved or connected  with otherwise i wouldn't have survived   is it still like that so basically it's a graduate  isn't it though sorry 

isn't it like isn't in fact this is my overarching question and somebody that  has helped so many people through therapy you probably have the answer or an insight but as we  become adults yeah you don't have like other than your parents should you be lucky enough that  they're still alive but man out in the outside   world peop people do want you to act a certain way  and if you don't they're not going to be around you like i'll just be honest if somebody's  throwing a tantrum as an adult i don't have   time for that but an adult doesn't do a tantrum  are you sure yeah like i have seen adults throw what i don't have an adult version you've seen you  have children in that old body just throw tantrums interesting okay go on you know so the the adult  who throws a tantrum he's a traumatized child who has not developed self-regulation i'm not  talking about repression of self but regulation 

so for example help me differentiate so for example i  throw up at the airline counter and uh they've overbooked the airplane okay my healthy response  is disappointment and some degree of anger. I'd say this is not right that you did this i want  you to redress it you do something about it please throwing a tantrum yelling at the poor clerk  behind the counter who had nothing to do with creating the problem who's just trying to do  her job and trying to help me as best she can is that that's not a mature adult that's a child  whose midfielder cortex or self-regulation has  gone offline and his emotional circuits  have taken over believe me i've been an  adult child very often in my life as my wife  could tell me tell you so that's not an adult.

Okay so then the process there goes back to  connect to yourself figure out why you're   repressing this yeah let go of those things that  are keeping it down find a way to be able to regulate yourself so that they're sort  of contextually sensical so that we're not in unhealthy anger territory um okay  interesting.

So trauma is um is an imprint that makes you react to the present like  you're still a child essentially i mean that's a very narrow definition of trauma that's one  of his essential aspects and that the important thing that you said earlier is it's automatic it's  automatic it's unveiled it's automatic and it's um  and actually when you look at the brain  scans of deeply traumatized people   the prefrontal cortex is totally asleep and  the emotional circuits you know they're the the the primitive emotional responses are active this  is why so many of so much of the jail population are traumatized people that's why end up in jail  but instead of dealing with their trauma and helping them develop which they could under  the right circumstances become adult people self-regulated the jails just make it worse by  the way by the way they torment people and the way they traumatize people even further so when i talk  about a trauma for society informed society. What if we actually understood trauma what if you just  actually understood it you have huge implications   for medical school for medical uh health  delivery what if when you went to the doctor with your depression you weren't just told you got  this biological disease of the brain here's a pill but they actually said what happened to you as a  child one of the people i quote in the book is the great pediatrician psychiatrist no scientist  bruce perry who just wrote a book with oprah the title of which is called what happened to you  now what's wrong with you what happened to you what if we asked that question you know so that  would change medical treatment completely what if inju in the in the in the prison system or in the  legal system we didn't just say what did you do but what happened to you that made you do it now  that wouldn't mean that we allow or encourage  

antisocial behavior but it would mean that  we would actually want to rehabilitate people  

and to help them become who they could be you  know that's a very different legal concept 

what if in education it was kids developmental  needs that were put paramount rather than their  

performance it's interesting how would you do  that functionally what would school look like  well i talk about it a bit like schools in finland  there's much more play there's much more freedom and they have much better results than we do  so that be in other words to be honored what  are the right results to look at a child who is  curious who wants to learn who's engaged who is respectful of others um who is confident  um that would be the right results then you don't have to worry about stuff acknowledged  on their throats why because they want to learn they want to learn so you don't have to punish  them you don't have to reward them you just   present them with the opportunities to learn and  they will that's a natural human attribute we kill that in this society and how much of that  like and again i i am so aware that i come at the interpretation of your solutions as somebody  sort of in the thick of the broken thing yeah I used to teach adults so very different than  teaching you know 12 year olds or whatever but there is a certain amount of like  hey i need everybody to stop talking and   pay attention right so yeah how do you  how do you create the the system where we want a totally different outcome so we're not  going to be judging just based on your math we're   going to be looking at inquisitiveness we're going  to be looking at how much that you want to learn but you're dealing with large groups people in  all different kinds of positions like how do we   because the their the punch line of your book is  like basically hey we're going to have to overhaul a lot of this yeah i mean you go very specifically  into the ways in which the culture is toxic 

you have to read the book to get into it um  but it is like in a nutshell is basically  

we're sort of like this is a ground-up restart  like there is a fundamental flaw we've already   talked about the sort of basic basic first  building block of how you actually in fact 

we haven't because in the book you talk about like  even before you get pregnant the things that can  

create trauma in uh fetus and it's carried on  and look i i will tell you dear audience that  

uh he talks about the science and there really is  from what i've seen quite a bit of science that   can show i think it was up to five generations  you could see an epigenetic marker of trauma  

and even the father who's carrying that across  the sperm into the fertilized egg it has an impact  

on how the dna is wrapped and expressed it's  insane and that it goes for five generations  

that's madness and you begin to realize how easy  it is to perpetuate this sort of wheel of trauma 

so knowing that there's probably two things we  should talk about because right now if mothers  

are paying attention they're freaking out  about all the mistakes that they made that   have now traumatized their children uh and so  you go into blame in the book i think that's  

important to touch on and then yeah go into the  importance of not blaming exactly exactly so i   want you to speak to the role of blame here yeah  um and then how do we begin to heal stroke build  

a society that isn't sick well the good news is  that i wrote this book with my eldest son i mean  

and believe me i've had a lot of guilt  as a parent i felt a lot of guilt   for the way that i stressed and and passed  on my own trauma to my children which i did  

not because i wanted to i love them i i've  always said i would have thrown myself into  

a fire for them but there was a problem they  never needed me to throw myself into a fire 

they just needed me to be at home self-regulated  knowing how to take care of myself and being  

knowing how to attune with their needs  now that is a traumatized survivor of the  

genocide in europe and there's a  workaholic doctor and as an anxious husband  

in a conflictual marriage i wasn't able  to do and that really did hurt my kids  

i say that at this point not with guilt just to  say that's what happened i know i did my best  

that just happened to me my best but anyway what  i'm saying is is that um i wrote this book with my  

son and even the writing was a process of working  out our issues so the first thing though is that  

these issues can always be worked out  that the the patterns can be reversed   we don't get stay stuck in them so that's  the good news as far as blame is concerned  

um as you say trauma is  passed on multi-generationally   you know the bible says that the sins of the  fathers will be visited unto the third and  

fourth generations they're not talking about the  sins of the fathers they're talking about the   traumas of the parents will be passed on to the  future generation it's true but if that's true  

um if i passed on my trial to my kid my trauma  to my kids did i cause my own trauma as a child  

why would anybody be blamed the  end of who you end up blaming   adam and eve you know you end up blaming some  eight living in a tree who was my ancestor at  

some point i mean blame doesn't make any sense  it's also cruel and and and totally unhelpful  

so there's no blame in fact it's it's it's  not about blaming it's about understanding  

but once we understand now we can start to  do things differently that's the whole point  

it's not about blaming so we have to break the  cycle self-awareness get in touch with ourselves  

now let's zoom out a little bit so we know  what to do on an individual basis we have to  

stop the repression let the emotions come up  mature into the adult that has the ability to  

self-regulate that could be there for the next  generation to raise a child in a healthier way  

at a societal level how do we begin to think  about this and what are some highlights of like  

the the things that you're like yo this is really  broken and causing a lot of problems is it the  

health care system is it the education  system like where do you think sort of the   the real big ones are well the  healthcare system and educational system  

in any given society the dominant institutions  will reflect the interests of the dominant groups  

in any society so who are the dominant groups  in this society here's what we know i know i'm  

talking to somebody who's made a lot of money okay  so don't take this personally but but the dominant  

groups in this society are getting wealthier and  wealthier and wealthier and the rest of society  

is getting more and more uncertain and insecure  that's an untenable situation because when you  

look at what stresses people are loss of control  uncertainty conflict and lack of information which  

are precisely the conditions that most people are  increasingly living with there's less security  

there's less sense of a positive future there's  more sense of loss of control there's more sense  

that on my little voice i don't matter even doing  covid when a lot of people lost a lot of money and  

under terrific economic stress the top  stratum of billionaires gained immensely

well that's a stressful situation for a lot of  people that stress translates into physiological  

illness that's just how it works that's the first  point uncertainty loss of control conflict lack of  

information that's a given condition of globalized  capitalism because you never know when somebody  

a zillion miles away is going to make a decision  that's going to change your life completely   over which you have no control  whatsoever that's a designation  

or that's a recipe for stress  okay number one number two um

you look at well there's a chapter on socio sociopathy  or strategy now you look at corporations  

major corporations who make decisions to  deliberately concoct products that'll get  

people hooked and addicted i'm talking about  the food companies this has been documented  

that they actually plan scientifically which  combination of soft sugar and fat are going  

to get people addicted which are going to  excite the addictive circuits in the brain   no doubt thereby killing millions of people

the tobacco companies don't have to talk  about them at all above what they've done   the companies that have for decades hired phony  scientists to deny climate change thereby creating  

conditions of ill health and the engineering  life itself and these are respectable well-to-do  

um pillars of society and philanthropists on  massive scale um the pharmaceutical companies  

the pharmaceutical companies  who sell opiates knowing  

now i'm not against opius by the way as a  palliative care doctor i love the opiates   not for myself but for the patients i was  looking after thank god but to sell those  

products and telling doctors that they're not  addictive when you when you know that they are

tens and hundreds of thousands of people are  dying of opioid overdoses but that's sociopathy  

by any definition and these are the people at  the top still an echo of childhood trauma or  

do you think there's something else at play well  it's a combination i think the people who do it  

they're really disconnected from themselves  they really are disconnected from themselves

and they're acting out their traumas in some  ways but it's also the nature of this system   these are the people that this system raises to  high levels of power and rewards then there's  

the political system now i'm not talking  about political policy here for a moment 

but in the book in the in the  chapter on trauma and politics   we looked at two opposing candidates hillary  clinton and donald trump now trump is a as  

one of the world's trauma experts bessel van  der kolk said to me is a poster boy for for   trauma the grandiosity the denial of reality  the genuine inability to tell reality from lies  

um the aggressiveness trump said once that um  that the world is a horrible place it's dog even  

your friends want your wife they want your money  they want your house and this is your friends now  

he wasn't making it up that sense of the world  being a horrible place reflected his childhood  

under alternate tyrant of a father   who demeaned his kids horribly and the mother  who didn't protect them and one of his brothers  

drank himself to death now as we know his niece  wrote a book who knows the family really well  

and the trump and the trauma that trump  endured and how it manifests in his adult life  

now i'm not criticizing the guy i'm not blaming  him i'm not even talking about specific policies   i'm talking about his personality now  that's trump okay who was he running against  

so let me tell you the story i you probably read  it but let me tell it to you and give me your 

opinion a four-year-old girl runs into the house  to his mother she's upset because neighborhood  

courts are building neighborhood children are  bullying her and the mother says there's no  

room for cards in this house now you get out there  and deal with it what's the message to that child

at four years old yeah at four years old how would that  be read that you're on your own kid  

yeah you would suck it up and  don't be vulnerable in this house  

that story was told at hillary clinton's  nomination celebration at the democratic  

convention in 2016 and it was told  as an example of wonderful parenting  

that same election campaign when hillary  developed pneumonia what did she do with it   remember nothing right she didn't tell anybody  she collapsed in the street she sucked it up  

and she put up of course  with the philandering of her   husband all those years blaming herself for  not meeting his needs typical trauma response  

what i'm saying is that the american public  had the choice of being too traumatized people

they chose the more traumatized  one the more traumatized   you know yeah that's that's the one thing  that's the one they chose there are all  

kinds of reasons for that again i'm not talking  about policy foreign or domestic i'm talking  

about personalities here these are the people  that we elevate to public uh high public level  

and they carry their traumas with them inevitably  those traumas show up in their politics

okay so society healing making things better i  know that you consider yourself hopeful as do i  

I am worried uh we were talking about this before  we started recording there is uh my audience is  

going to get tired of hearing me say this but  there is a chinese uh curse proverb you live in  

interesting times correct yeah and uh i would  say right about now it's very interesting very  

interesting times so how do we and i think you've  even said that it you know there's going to be  

a period of of deep unpleasantness but that long  term you're optimistic and walk me through one is  

why are you optimistic i am too but i'm just  curious what drives your optimism and then how  do we make sure we end up on the optimistic side  well look first of all to speak personally 

the imprint on me of um being an infant  under conditions of genocide and war  

and then the conditions of a  mother who was really stressed and

terrorized um and grief struck because  her parents were killed in auschwitz

and then who gives me up to a total stranger  when i'm a year old to save my life i remember   that story yeah was that this is a bad world that  i'm on my own that um nothing's ever gonna work  

out for me and so even when i was successful  as a physician and even as a writer and so on  

my innate belief was i'm basically screwed  now i don't feel that way anymore so 

i remember when that changed like i'm  trying to figure out when that changed so   what was the work that you were doing  because we have the the thumbnail sketch  

we understand we have to stop repressing our  emotions let them get reattached to ourselves   but like if it were that easy then everybody be  cured at the end of this podcast which of course  

they won't be it's not that easy now so in the  work that you were doing on yourself were there   a string of breakthroughs there were stranger  breakthroughs it wasn't like one big epiphany

it was the gradual work over time do  you remember any of the the key moments

a lot of it happened in my relationship  i'm married to somebody who in my first  

1:14:59

chapter i say that you know my problem is  that my wife understands me you know and  

she does all too well but she loved me anyway  so and and wanted to be in that relationship 

i had to grow up because at a certain point she  wasn't willing to live with the child anymore  

so we grew together i would say that  was the basic ground of my development   but getting therapy learning to know my  own patterns and where they came from and  

learning to get some agency over  them was very important for me   what i observed as a physician as a clinician  as a healer was huge fonts of information for me  

in learning because you start to understand  the patterns of human behavior yeah i started   to understand human beings um sometimes i took  antidepressants that helped temporarily by lifting  

the cloud lifting the clouds i could fear more  clearly in fact you know again i'm not an advocate  

for the massive and i think horrendously overdone  use of medications but i can tell you that the  

first time i took antidepressant after a few days  i said you mean people can feel like this normally 

so when that cloud is lifted i could see a bit  more clearly now a lot more clearly actually 

um coming to terms with my adhd and understanding  the patterns not as it inherited disease 

but as an adaptive response really helped as well  um oh interesting so wait i'm not surprised so  

everything comes back to trauma so how is adhd  an adaptive response to a situation so picture  

me okay as i was at the first year of my life um  my father's in forced labor my mother doesn't know  

if he's dead or alive her parents are killed  in oceans when i'm five months of age she has   to wear the yellow badge as a jew under the nazis  that painting of that is going to be in the book

she's terrorized she doesn't know if she's  going to survive if i'm going to survive how  

am i feeling i can only imagine give me a few  words um afraid yeah lost there's a pediatrician  

that saw me and said he has never seen such  fear in everybody's eyes than in my own eyes   lost right all that hopeless stressed  okay very how do i cope with that 

you push it down i dissociate i tune out what  is it add all about tuning out really never  

thought of it like well they did the major trait  of edd is tuning out a kind of absent-mindedness   and unwilled tuning out as an infant  what else could i do could i escape  

could i change the situation i tune out when am  i tuning out when my brain is developing the two  

gets programmed into my brain why are we  seeing more and more kids with adhd these days 

because parents are so stressed and sensitive  kids pick up on that stress they don't know  

what to do with it they tune out as they're as  small children when their brains are developing   it's not a genetic disease it's an adaptive  response the problem with adaptive responses  

is they help you at the time but later on they  become problems in other words adaptive at one  

point maladaptive at another point again the  problem is that they're not conscious adaptations  

i mean look if you it was if it was raining in  california what is always good in los angeles  

but let's go back to canada okay it's um i'm  up in the north of canada it's freezing you  

know 50 below whatever that even means you  know how do i adapt i put on warm clothing  

that helps me survive but what if i still wore  that warm clothing in the wintertime when it's   really hot that same adaptation would not  kill me the problem with these childhood  

adaptations now with the cold clothing i  could take it off oh it's not cold anymore  

I can take off the warm clothing these childhood  psychological adaptations they're not conscious  

they're not will they're not deliberate they're  automatic they're under the level of awareness 

therefore i can't just drop them in fact  i even associate my survival with them 

so i'm very reluctant to give them up so something  has to happen to wake me up oh this isn't working  

anymore this is where a diagnosis like adhd or  depression comes in this is where illness comes in  

it can be a wake-up call again i don't  recommend it or a relation or a bad divorce  

all of a sudden you realize i married  somebody who didn't understand me   why did i stay with them so long because my  parents never understood me so i expect not to be  

understood but it doesn't work for me anymore so  next time i marry i'm going to marry somebody who  

is a bit more mature and you know i'm more  mature now so what i'm saying is that these  

adaptations they show up as problems later  on in life and then we can learn from them

in the case of my marriage we learn together i'm  curious in in a marriage so parents should offer  

1:20:32

their kids unconditional love should a spouse  offer their other half unconditional love yes  

1:20:41

but it shows up differently so unconditional  love doesn't mean that i have to put up with it  

1:20:47

it doesn't mean that you know in in the case of uh  in the case of my wife when i'm throwing a tantrum  

1:20:54

the healthy response on her part is  to say if you're going to be like that   i don't want to be in the same room with you  but if you keep doing it i don't even want to  

be in the same house with you so what if she  just changes between childhood and adulthood  

because in childhood don't do  that the dependency the dependency

that that the child depends on the parent for  very life itself and for healthy development  

my wife is not responsible for my healthy  development she's not my mother anymore as a  

matter of fact the reason women get so much to  autoimmune disease is they suppress themselves  

to take care of the stresses of their men very  often yeah you tell a story i think it's in  

the book i've heard so many interviews as well  sometimes they get confused what was in the book   uh of a woman who's diagnosed with breast cancer  and her husband whose first wife had also died of  

breast cancer her first thought was oh my god i  hope i don't get so sick that i can't take care   of it yeah it's in the book her immediate she's  the one that diagnosed with breast cancer she's  

going to have to chemotherapy or radiation or  surgery or whatever and her first thought is  

how will i look after my husband's emotional needs  well that's culturally ingrained in women that's  

why do you think it's just cultural or is it also  an echo of the need to be nurturing to the child  

it's true that the nurturing  instinct in women is much more   developed than in men partly because they have  more of the hormone oxytocin which is a nurturing  

hormone but partly because it's their cultural  role now if you take men who look after children  

they become really good mothers so it's a  question of what role are people put in anyway

yeah so you know i forgot what we're talking about   right before that last saying you were  explaining the difference between um the  

dependencies of a child oh yeah my wife is not  responsible to help me grow into a healthy adult  

that's not her job her job is to be responsible  for the healthy growth of our children if she suppresses her needs and puts all her  energy in taking care of the women have this  decision to make in our society  my wife did really in a sense   am i going to look after the little babies and  we're going to look after the big baby and the energy they put into looking after the big baby  is taken away from the little babies and children   suffer as a result so my wife is not responsible  for my maturation and my healthy growth

she ex she has the right to expect that i'm going  to show up as an adult okay when you're supposed  to offer unconditional love and you're not  getting what you need from your significant other  

how do you have people play that out is it is  there a point at which they say look i just i  

can't offer you unconditional love i need to  separate from this or you can say i love you  

i really want the best for you but i can't be  with this i can't be with it it's toxic for me  

it's bad for our children at some point that's  the result in that way do are you saying that  

we should have unconditional love for everybody  even though that means we'll maintain boundaries   we'll have different kinds of relationships  it depends what mean by unconditional love and  

again it depends on the age of the person  and the the needs of that person so 

having love for a person doesn't mean that you're  to put up with everything that they do but how you  

like even with children as we said earlier we have  to draw our boundaries but the question is how do   we draw our boundaries and in what spirit  and with what intention that's interesting  

that's so complicated and makes me despair because  it's so hard but i think you're right the spirit  

in which you make the intention so for instance  my wife and i yeah i would never have said that i  

love her unconditionally just because that doesn't  feel true in that i have specifically given her  

conditions and said um if you were unfaithful  to me that would be the end of the marriage  

um that'll be the end of my marriage too for sure  so but the spirit in which i make that is not  

meant to be a threat or anything like that it's  just clarity what you're actually saying is honey  

my relationship with you is so important that  i can't bear to share that with somebody else  

on that intimate basis because my capacity  to be intimate with you would really suffer  

if i had to wonder whether you're choosing  somebody else instead of me that's a perfectly  

normal healthy statement to make to an adult  partner it's an expression of love actually

help me understand that how is that an  expression of love because you really want her   you're helping them be successful you don't want  that you really want that person in your life  

you're saying i really want you in my life  fully and there's no room for that in that  

you can have all kinds of friends and i hope  you're independent and you have a life that's   not all bonded with my own and i want you to have  your own activities and find your own meaning and  

have your own friends and have your own  activities but in terms of intimate relationships  i can't handle sharing that with somebody  else that's an expression of love there's so much depth and nuance to the human mind  to the human experience do you at all worry that  we as a society will not be that here's my thesis  we didn't intentionally get it right a thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago yeah it  was just that was the nature of what we had   access to that's right and to sort of co-opt chris  rock's statement you're only as faithful as your  options which i totally disagree with but uh but  culturally like when you take it on mass it does  feel like a lot of the sort of sickness things are  us solving like these minor annoyances that end  

up snowballing into becoming deep problems like  at first it's just like hey we want to be able   to control the food supply so we don't starve to  death amazing then it's like well we can already  

do that now i want to make sure that the food that  i'm storing tastes good and it's like whoa well   if i can do that then i want to be able to sell  it and if i want to sell it i want to sell more  

of it now that i want to sell more of it i want to  make sure that it tastes really good and gets into   that addictive quality that you're talking about  and look not everybody does it obviously from a  

food perspective that was the whole reason that  my partners and i got into food in the first place   was we wanted to make junk food good for you and  so using things like that i'd explain that how do  

you mean junk food good for you so it's good for  you it's not junk food well so to your point this  

depends on how we define junk food so i'll define  the way that we looked at it is things that you  

grew up as like craving wanting whether it was  chips so we made protein chips now the great  

thing about protein chips is they naturally kill  your hunger so you're only going to eat so many   of them and then they stop being fun so doing  things like that but anyway i don't want to get  

lost in that but so i worry that that this isn't  a bell that can't be unrung well look but let's  

go back to what we were talking about intention  your intention wasn't purely to make a profit  

your intention was also to serve people while  making a profit that's a very different intention  

than my own then my only purpose is to make a  lot of money at no matter what cost no matter  

how many people get sick how many people develop  diabetes become obese become addicted to the stuff  

that's terrible for them that's the actual  intention of many of the major corporations  

now that wasn't your intention so i'm talking  about intention but how do we scale that that's   my punchline how do we scale it what do you mean  by that so i really i i have i could have retired  

and never worked again but i really want to help  people like get to i wouldn't use your language  

the word i always use is is a growth mindset i  want people to have a growth mindset okay but i   think secretly we sort of have a very similar  aim which is we want people to thrive we just  

happen to be each attacking a different party so  that's the intention the intention is that people   should thrive now how do we scale that how do we  get heavy you know what i'm not a business person  

what do you mean by scale how do you get sorry i  don't mean it from another on a massive level yeah   yeah so if we have a sick society which  i'm with you or a sick culture i'm with you  

how do we how do we get a culture like i mean  we're recording this as there is a war going on on  

the borders of europe so yeah uh it does make me  feel like there's just a nature to humans and it  

repeats i think we're gonna have to challenge  who's in control for one thing at some point  

we're gonna have to challenge that on some  level this is not a book about we talked to  

do we do touch upon politics and the trauma that's  manifested in politics but i hope the answer isn't  

politics i hope the answer is but but this book is  not a political manifesto i agreed you know um but 

i think people have to start thinking about what  i'm talking about on a large scale rather than   just how do i make my life better how do we make  society better in other words how can we think  

with the mutual need as our intention and our  commonality is intention rather than just my  

personal uh aggrandizement i think that shift is  going to have to happen for survival number one  

in terms of what you say about wars and so on  well in any war if you examine them closely  

including this one they're always conflicting  interests and power interests and so on i don't  

think i want to get into the politics of this  war and what i think about it but it's not just   an expression of human nature it's an expression  of political systems clashing with each other for 

very selfish reasons that's what i see happening  and i see that in just about every war you know so 

is it in our nature to be aggressive and  cruel certainly our potential to be that way   but you know here's what i see yesterday i  was talking to a a a u.s veteran a navy seal  

who who came back as many do with  severe post-traumatic stress disorder 

and uh through a psychedelic experience  actually he turned it around he was  

losing his marriage he was there he was throwing   coffee pots through the window he was terrifying  his children his wife no longer recognized him  

and then he had this experience  and he rediscovered his true nature 

which was loving and and and nurturing and so  on and now he's that way towards the world he  

would never go back and do the things again  that he did then you know so even doing kovid you say human nature well in the book i make this  point the alfie khon who's a educator educator and a writer he says when somebody behaves selfishly  we say well that's just human nature how about when somebody behaves generously we never  say oh that's just human nature but it is and so at least in the early days of kovit the  more stressed we got and the more overwhelmed we got by the crisis the more the divisions and  the rancor showed up in so many on both sides but what did we see in the beginning we saw a lot  of people cooperating collaborating being kind to each other um being communal celebrating the  healthcare workers you know supporting one another that that's in our potential as well so why should  we settle for the worst version of ourselves  “Why should we settle for the worst versions of ourselves…” and i say that's us it isn't  actually most people want peace  they don't want war people usually have to be  manipulated into war which they are very often you know so what's their nature that's  why i'm optimistic i think it's in us  i love it i have to get you on an  airplane so i have to let you go   the book was amazing man where can people  connect with you where can they get the book well um the book will be published  is published on september 13th   and it's going to be available everywhere um i  hope people will favor their local bookstores pick up the book but you know it's obviously  every it's going to be available online as well in terms of i have a website drgabermate.com and  pretty much everything i'm up to i'm also all over youtube not that i'm all over youtube but people  have published amazing presence your interview   with me last year lots of hits and lots of other  interviews are available on youtube so i'm easy to 

find these days yes you are yeah boys and girls uh  i fear that trauma may be the hidden influence on 

the world and there are few people that elucidate  it more clearly and what to do more clearly than 

this man i hope you will read the book and i hope  that you will engage with him online you will be   richly rewarded as i know many of you i'm sure  and according to the good doctor all of us 

have experienced trauma in some way or another and  to be blind to it will be to your own detriment so 

check it out you definitely will not regret  it and speaking of things you won't regret   if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and  until next time my friends be legendary take care  

peace there's an animal part of our nature which  is we completely take appearances for reality  

that's sort of the source of our  problems and our misery to be honest with   you in life so the front that people present  the way they look the way they talk to us