This is a very short excerpt from an EXCEPTIONALLY wise, in-depth (2hr 24min) interview of Gabor Maté MD by Tim Ferris about the central role of trauma in depression, low self-esteem, ADHD, addictions, etc, and their compassionate treatment:
Tim Ferriss: “You just mentioned … that your gut feeling / physiological intuition can help you. And that’s something that, for many reasons, I completely muted or ignored for a very long time. So, it’s been a process of getting reacquainted with that.”
Dr. Gabor Maté: “Let me address why we shut down our gut feelings, if I may. A human being has two fundamental needs (apart from the physical needs in infancy) in childhood. One is for attachment. Now, attachment is the closeness and proximity with another human being for the sake of being looked after or for the sake of looking after the other. Human beings, as mammals, and even birds, are creatures of attachment. We have to connect and attach because, otherwise, we don’t survive. If there’s nobody that’s motivated to take care of us, to attach to us that way, and if we’re not motivated to attach to others, we just can’t survive.
One additional thing is that the endorphins, which are the body’s internal opiate chemicals (which heroin and all the other opiates resemble), they help facilitate attachment.
If you take infant mice, and you knock out their endorphin receptors, so they don’t have endorphin opiate activity in their brain, they won’t cry for help and separate from their mothers, which would mean that they would die in the wild, which goes back to what happens in early childhood. When there’s stress and trauma, these endorphin systems don’t develop. And then, when people do heroin, it feels like a warm, soft hug to them. They feel love and connection for the first time. That’s why it’s so powerful.
So, we have this need for attachment, which, obviously, the human infant who is the most helpless, the most dependent, the least mature of any creature in the universe at birth, cannot survive without the attachment. And that attachment relationship, given that we have the longest period of development of any creature, well into adolescence and beyond, attachment is not a negotiable need.
But we have another need, which is authenticity. Now, authenticity – ‘auto’ to self - means being connected to ourselves. Just knowing what we feel and being able to act on it. That means our gut feelings. So, let’s look at how human beings evolved. For hundreds of thousands of years, and for 100,000 years or of this species existing on earth, how did we live? We didn’t live in cities and houses and so on. We lived out there in the wild, until very recently in human existence. Now, just how long do you survive in the wild, if you’re not connected to your gut feelings?
Tim Ferriss: Not very long.
Dr. Gabor Maté: Not very long. If you start using your intellect instead of your gut feelings, you just don’t survive. So, that’s a powerful survival need as well. So, attachment is a survival need. Authenticity is a survival need. But what happens if your authenticity threatens your attachment relationships? For example, as a 2-year-old, you get angry because you didn’t get that cookie before dinner.
But your parents can handle anger because they grew up in homes when there was rage-aholism, and they’re terrified of the very expression of anger, so they give you the message that good, little kids don’t get angry. The message you receive is not that good, little kids don’t get angry, but that angry little kids don’t get loved because your parents are on their cell. They won’t look at you. They talk to you in a harsh way. You’re not getting loved, not experiencing love, at that moment. Now, but you’ve got to stay attached. Guess what you’re going to suppress? The authenticity every time.
And this is how we lose connection to ourselves and to our gut feeling. So that, strangely enough, that very dynamic, which is essential for human survival in a natural setting, now becomes a threat to our survival in this more modern setting where to stay authentic is to threaten attachment. And so, we give up our authenticity. And then, we wonder who the hell we are and whose life is this and who is experiencing all of this. And who am I really? And so, that’s where the re-connection has to happen.
That’s where the healing happens is with that re-connection. But it’s because of that conflict, that tragic conflict in childhood between authenticity and attachment that most of us face, that we lose ourselves and lose connection to our gut feelings.”
Dr. Gabor Maté Interview - The Tim Ferriss Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9B5mYfBPlY
