Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Dr Gabor Maté, in NYC. After 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, Dr. Maté worked for over a decade in Vancouver with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness.
Here are a few takeaways from the event.
➤ We live in a traumaphobic society. We separate out the physical, but we are really psychosocial creatures.
➤ The real study of medicine does not separate mind and body. Humans are inseparable from our environment and biology. Our nervous systems are all wired together – interpersonal.
➤ Abandonment can cause rage. The repression of healthy anger is a boundary defense.
➤ The “tyranny of the past” is where the past governs the present.
➤ There is actually wisdom in trauma – it helps us survive.
➤ Research has shown that autoimmune disorders are more prevalent in women and those living in poverty. Episodes of stress cause relapses.
➤ Studies have also shown a link between emotional distress and breast cancer, particularly feeling overly responsible. Yet people are not asked about stress or childhood trauma.
➤ Cortisol, the stress hormone is a common treatment for many illnesses, yet we don’t ask about the cause of the stress.
➤ There’s no gene for depression. It’s a pushing down of emotions.
➤ We have an innate need for attachment.
➤ There’s an epidemic of loneliness.
➤ Stress together with isolation has a high correlation to illness.
➤ Normal means healthy and natural, but this is a myth.
➤ Indigenous people never hit their kids or let them cry it out.
➤ Are the mentally ill abnormal? Or is it a normal response?
➤ Tuning out (a symptom of ADD) is a trauma response – perhaps the parents are too stressed.
➤ “Spontaneous recovery” is possible.
➤ We are born for love.
➤ We also have an innate need for authenticity – expressing our feelings, and being in touch with our gut feelings.
➤ When we suppress ourselves to conform, it’s toxic.
➤ We learned that in order to be accepted in our environment we need to turn off our authenticity.
➤ Disconnection from self is the source of trauma. We need the freedom to be ourselves.
“Find out who you are and be that.”
