Podcast interview with Gabor Mate

https://www.richroll.com/podcast/gabor-mate-702/ (Dr. Gabor Maté On How Trauma Fuels Disease | Rich Roll)

Dr Mate has written a new book with his son called The Myth of Normal which is due out this week.

 

Thank you for this tip. Maté’s earlier book, When the Body Says No, played a role in helping me to overcome decades of multiple forms of TMS. After reading an excerpt from his new, forthcoming book on Amazon, I have ordered it and look forward to reading it. Although I no longer am bothered at all by TMS in any form, I maintain a keen intellectual interest in the subject and regularly read this tmswiki website because once in a while I learn here about an important new book bearing on the it, e.g., neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s 7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain (2020) and psychotherapist Alan Gordon’s The Way Out (2021).

 

When The Body Says No was the third book that saved my life - after The Divided Mind and Hope & Help For Your Nerves. In addition to this forum and the SEP, of course. This is exciting news, thanks @yb44!

Always good to see members from days gone by (I'm also looking at @Duggit!)

 

Yes, still kicking about, Jan. Like Duggit, I maintain an interest in all this. I hope you are keeping well as best you can with all the crap that’s going on in the world. Talk about trauma!

 

Hi Jan! I know we've talked about this before but I'm considering picking up When The Body Says No. In your opinion, do you think it lends itself well to a theory of healing from the kinds of issues Mate thinks stress can cause? Like, does he generally seem to think "stress/trauma can lead to these issues => they can be recovered from by reversing that mechanism" or is it more just a "trauma can cause these issues" without discussion of how that might be applied to recovery? I'm a little wary of the book being a nocebo for me that I'd be somehow unfixable, if that makes sense...

 

Well, sure, this makes sense, but making sense doesn't mean it's a desirable path to take.

Are you willing to see how THIS right here, this is absolutely your brain on TMS?

And have you ever noticed my tagline, @tag24?

Knowledge-Belief-Faith:
I Know how my brain creates symptoms;
I Believe my body is healthy;
I have Faith that I can heal myself.

There are many things in this world that are worth being afraid of, but knowledge should not be one of them.

I read WTBSN so long ago that I can't even answer your question, but even if I could, I wouldn't. That's because I am not going to enable your TMS brain to keep you in fear - that's the exact opposite of our goal here. Anyway, by the time I read WTBSN, I didn't need more guidance to do the work, because Dr. Sarno and the SEP and this forum in general had provided everything I needed - so if Dr Mate offers it, I don't remember. I read the book out of pure interest in expanding the breadth of my mindbody knowledge.

In thinking about this, I'm not sure I've ever stated this outright, but I feel that the main things which helped me have success in this work are 1) no childhood diversity or any serious life trauma (which makes "doing the work" on one's own a LOT easier), 2) lots of physical activity from a very young age, leading to a lifelong understanding of and respect for my body, and 3) long-standing knowledge of the mindbody connection and belief in my ability to heal myself. Keep in mind that I have many decades of life experience, now 72, and I discovered Dr. Sarno twelve years ago during a crisis of TMS symptoms that was probably triggered by turning 60. FWIW, in spite of the realities of aging along with rather extreme existential stress due to increasing world dysfunction, I'm far better off at 72 than I was at 60.

The extreme case studies that Dr. Mate examines in WTBSN are based in childhood adversity, and his primary premise is that repression of emotions as a result of childhood adversity can have these serious results later in life. I know for sure he does NOT state that these outcomes are inevitable - even his case studies show how there is incredible diversity in conditions and outcomes resulting from this one common factor.

This may be easy for me to say since I could easily see when reading the book that I did NOT have childhood adversity, but I do believe that the book could be valuable to anyone with TMS for that reason - to be able to better recognize (from Dr. Mate's compassionate recounting of the case studies) whether or not they might be dealing with childhood adversity (also known as ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences).

The lesson I took from Dr Mate is that addressing emotional repression is the key to health. Which I already knew is exactly what Dr. Sarno said. Ultimately the same message, presented in two very different ways from two very different sources.

Even if you did not have any ACEs, we all carry shit from our childhoods into our adult lives, and our primitive brains keep repressing the shit, to our detriment. Reading a book that scares you is not going to make any long-term difference at all if you ultimately fail to deal with what is really going on.

Get serious and work with your anxiety. Get vulnerable and work on your emotional repression. If you have childhood adversity, get therapy and get ready to make good use of your therapy by being willing to be face the shit that affected your most vulnerable young self.