In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ (founder of http://www.lawayra.com) has a conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté. Gabor is a renowned physician, speaker, and author best known for his groundbreaking work on trauma, addiction, child development, and the mind-body connection. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and The Myth of Normal.

We touch upon topics of:

  • Gabor’s personal healing journey (2:00)
  • His first Ayahuasca ceremony (5:10)
  • The importance of community in healing (7:06)
  • How trauma causes the heart to close (9:00)
  • The wisdom of trauma and adaptations (12:23)
  • Modern society as a root of disconnection (15:00)
  • Accumulated trauma and “death by a thousand cuts” (20:31)
  • How Ayahuasca helps addiction by addressing pain (23:59)
  • The risk of Ayahuasca evangelism (27:11)
  • Psychedelics and facing death (28:09)
  • Parenting and emotional availability (32:10)
  • The role of play in healing (37:15)
  • Dealing with criticism and healing from not being seen (40:42)

If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats go to http://www.lawayra.com

Find more about Gabor Maté at http://www.drgabormate.com

Transcript

Sam Believ: You’re listening

Dr. Gabor Maté: to ayahuasca podcast.com. Just a bunch of strangers come together for one evening, doesn’t do it because in the traditional arising of the Ayahuasca experience, it was done in community by people that knew each other and the shaman knew them, and it’d be integrated into the communal life wasn’t just like a one-off thing.

So I said let’s at least temporary create a community. So we’d let these retreats where people come together for a week and get to know each other. Talk about their process and set their intentions for the ceremony and the next day talk about and discover or uncover the meaning of their ICA experience and then support each other.

So I began to do that quite vigorously and I did that for quite a few years. I led retreats both in Canada and also in Mexico. So that’s how it all began. Since then, I’ve been to ceremonies where I wasn’t leading anything. I was just a participant. So I’ve had the experience both of guiding these events, but also of participating.

Sam Believ: In this very special episode of Ayahuasca podcast, I had a conversation with Gabor Mate. Gabor is a very special guest. It was always my dream to interview him. Even when I started the podcast, it was always my goal to get to the point where I can interview him. So it is a dream come true for me to have been able to have this conversation.

I really hope you will enjoy it as I, as much as I did. So there are. Hundreds of interviews with Gabor on internet. I’m sure you’ve seen some of them, or you might have seen clips. So I didn’t want to take this episode and go back into talking about his journey and his history. So I will give you. That information here in the intro.

So Gabor was born in 1944 and he grew up in Hungary and lived through Nazi occupation of Hungary. His grandparents died in Auschwitz. Then he was separated from his mother during infancy. I believe he was one month old. So there was this trauma there that later on he analyzed and learned a lot about, and that kind of guided his his journey.

After immigrating to Canada in 1956, he pursued career in medicine, focusing on family practice and palliative care. Gaur knows a lot about people dying, their last regrets addictions. He, his own addiction. So he wrote one book on a DHD which is a Scattered Mind. He wrote a book on addiction in the realm of Hungry Ghosts.

His latest book is Myth, myth of Normal, where he talks about how toxic our society is. I’ve read two of his books personally, and they are, they’re amazing. He’s known for his addiction, trauma, work, and childhood development specifically where he emphasizes on connection between early experiences in health.

He looks for the root cause and that’s what we do in our work with ayahuasca, where we find the root cause root trauma, and we tried to heal it instead of focusing on symptoms. For me personally, Gabbo was a huge influence in my own journey. I listened to his, to podcasts with him.

I read his books and through that I was educated on how to have my own personal journey with PLA medicines, how to use them properly, and also understanding addictions in, for myself and also for other people that come to the Wire and they look for relief from. From the medicine. So I used his phrases over and over again.

So this is a very special episode and I really hope you enjoy it and let me know in the comments. Here are the topics we discuss in this episode, realizing there are unresolved issues and emotional pain, discovery of ayahuasca as a healing tool. How Gabor began his healing in his forties, despite the professional success, emotional heart opening during the ceremony, insights into the root of addiction and trauma.

Importance of community and integration in plant medicine work, addiction as a response to pain, not a choice. I’ll ask his power in revealing suppressed trauma. Importance of post ceremony, integration, trauma and adaptation and survival mechanism, the wisdom of trauma. Child rearing differences in indigenous versus modern societies.

Closing of the heart due to childhood pain, and how to open your heart play as an essential for human development. I ask his ability to restore playfulness, reflection on mortality and ego death. Risk of becoming overly zealous after powerful experiences and the importance of consistency, humility, and embodied practices.

Enjoy this episode. This episode is sponsored by Lara Ayahuasca, retreat. At Lara, we combine affordability, accessibility, and authenticity. Lara Connect, heal, grow. Guys, I’m looking forward to hosting you Gabbo. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Nice to be with you. Hi son.

Sam Believ: Cover. So you’re mostly known for your books and you’re talking about trauma and childhood development.

Interestingly enough, I learned about you through Ayahuasca because it was my second ever ceremony and I was listening to Tim Ferry’s podcast with you, and I specifically looked for episodes about Ayahuasca. So you were with her, you were with me there in my ears in my very early Ayahuasca days.

So

Dr. Gabor Maté: I hope you didn’t have a brand to it.

Sam Believ: No, I had good experience, good enough, so I dedicated my life pretty much to ayahuasca. So I know it’s not your main, I know it’s not your main thing, but I do appreciate the things that you did say about it. And I know you talk about. Our society being sick and the issues with the society.

But what I do and you mentioned elders as well before. What I do like about you is you are my elder digitally, so a mother and day elder. So gbo you’re 81 years old. And I know your healing journey was long and most of it happened.

Dr. Gabor Maté: No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wasn’t was long. Is long

Sam Believ: is long. Correct. So can you talk to us about your own healing journey how it progressed and you give people hope that they can do it even later in life.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Look, I was in my mid forties early forties and. Successful as a physician and I had family, three kids, but I was not happy.

I was depressed. I had issues between me and my children, my wife and I. And it’s something that I had to recognize that there’s some stuff to deal with that just carrying on with the external activities. No longer. Guided me to where I needed to be. So that’s when I began to do some self study research, write reading into the child developmental literature, into the mental health literature, psychology.

All this corresponded the m medical practice where I increasingly saw the impact of emotions and psychological states and. Multigenerational histories on people’s functioning their health, their illness, and so on. So it’s, and it, so it’s been a long journey and at some point, fairly late in the game I discovered well discover, I found out about psychedelics including and beginning with Ayahuasca.

And so that’s contributed to my own healing process. It is been a lifetime, what can I say? Half a lifetime’s journey at least, trying to figure things out, trying to heal integrate finding inner peace. It’s an ongoing journey.

Sam Believ: So I know that I know your story about finding Ayahuasca, but can you tell our audience about that story?

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah, sure. So I published my book on addiction, which is my fourth book in 2009, in the realm of Hungry Ghosts, close to contrast with addiction. And in which I pointed out that addiction is not this disease that you inherit, nor is it a by choice that you may put actually, it’s an attempt to, so the pain imposed by Trump.

So it is a book on. My experiences personally as a physician working with a very addicted population, and also what I found out about the source of addiction in life, painful life experience. As I was doing the book tour every once in a while somebody would put their hands up and ask me, what do you know about I was on the healing of addiction.

I say Nothing. And then the next stop somebody else will put their hands up and say, what do you know about the healing? Addiction and I ask, I’d say nothing. And after a while I got tired of the question because I thought frustrated with this for God’s sakes. I just spent three years researching and writing this book, and you asked me about the one thing I don’t know anything about.

Leave me alone. And until finally somebody said you could experience, Hey, I was up here in Vancouver. You don’t have to go to the Amazon for it. Because there was a perian shaman visiting Vancouver, leading a ceremony, so I did participate in the ceremony. I’m always open to trying new things, and about 45 minutes into the experience, I got it because I experienced these tears of love flowing down my cheek and such openheartedness, such as I’d never known before, and I’d realized.

How much I close my heart to protect it because it was vulnerable and hurting when I was small. And I’ve been walking around with a closed heart. Now the fact is I still do walk around with a closed heart sometimes. But I did experience that opening and I recognized why people get addicted because there’s so much pain and they try to soothe the pain and.

How much it hurts to have a heart that’s open and that’s hurt, that’s hurting at the same time, but also how beautiful it is and how if we can keep our hearts open, we don’t have to run away from anything anymore. So I immediately got the potential and I immediately said, I’m gonna start working with this stuff.

And so I did. And, what I thought. Right now, I’m not a shaman. I don’t serve the plant, you know that’s, I got no training that way at all. But I worked with people who are trained that way, and what I decided right away is that just a bunch of strangers come together for one evening, doesn’t do it because in a traditional arising of the Iowa scar.

Experience. It was done in community by people that knew each other and the shaman who knew them, and it’d be integrated into the communal life. It wasn’t just like a one-off thing. So I said let’s at least temporary create a community. So we’d let these retreats where people come together for a week and get to know each other and talk about their process and set their intentions for the ceremony and the next day.

Talk about and discover or uncover the meaning of their Iowa experience and then support each other. So I began to do that quite vigorously and I did that for quite a few years. LED retreats, both in Canada and also in Mexico. So that’s how it all began. And since then I’ve been to ceremonies where I wasn’t leading anything.

I was just a participant. I’ve done that in Columbia with maybe, and also I did in Peru at the Temple of the wave of Light. So I’ve had the experience both of guiding these events, but also participating.

Sam Believ: Thank you for sharing that. I love your story in a way how people described the calling from Ayahuasca and your calling was also very obvious and something similar happened to me.

Eventually something happens in your life for you. You find yourself in this echo chamber where everything can hear around you is just ayahuasca. And then I think that is how Ayahuasca recruits us. And yeah, I forgot about Taito. Juanito. He is actually from the same tribe as the Tata I work with.

So you mentioned that I was gonna show you how it feels to have an open heart. And it’s an interesting thing about the plant medicines that. They show you how it feels, there’s a lot of phrases like love yourself, open your heart, but it’s really hard to understand really what it means.

But but those plans, medicines can show you what it really means. But let’s say for someone who can’t have ayahuasca how does one open their heart? What does it really mean?

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. I. For some, it’s more difficult than others. We’re basically born openhearted, so nobody has to teach a 1-year-old baby how open their hearts are totally open. And then what happens is when people are hurt, small infants or children are hurt and they can be hurt in many ways. Then.

The closing down the heart is a protective experience. It’s like you make yourself invulnerable so you don’t feel the pain, but when you make yourself invulnerable, so you don’t feel the pain, you also don’t feel the love, you also don’t feel the openness, the possibility, the belonging, the unity.

I wish I had a formula for telling people I open their hearts. There are certain practices, there’s, there’s Buddhist practices of loving kindness.

I’m not disciplined enough to have done them and also for me, they don’t work. For me it’s more recognizing where my heart is closed. And inquiring why? What am I afraid of right now? And what am I committed to? It’s usually a matter of relationship. Do I care about somebody enough to open my heart?

But for me, it’s a matter of noticing when it’s not open and being aware of that. I think that’s the key for me. It’s not, here, I can open my heart. Other people can do it. They can put their hands on their heart and open their hearts. For me, it’s a lot of effort actually.

Sam Believ: Yeah. The I think you also called, call it a dissociation.

I personally had a traumatic life’s traumatic. Childhood, early childhood. My story similar to yours, there was some abandonment involved in, what I normally describe it in the word circles that we do or where the new group comes, is that I tuned my emotional dial to zero and prevented myself from feeling good emotions, but al bad emotions, but also good emotions.

Dr. Gabor Maté: That’s right. There’s no, there’s no discrimination in pushing down. You only push 1 1, 1. You push down one thing, you’re pushing down everything else as well.

Sam Believ: Yeah. And what I’ve learned a lot from your work is that trauma that makes us do this, first of all, that it’s, there’s nothing wrong with us.

It’s a good thing. Can you talk to us about that?

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. All the all the difficulties, challenges, addictions, afflictions, mental health issues that people are struggling with, they at a beginning somewhere. There’s nothing wrong with the individual as such. Just that they had certain experiences to which they responded in certain ways, like you and I’ve been talking about this emotional shutting down that emotional shutting down was necessary at some point because the pain was too much and you were alone with it.

It pain is not the problem being alone with the pain as a small child, that’s the problem. Life will bring pain. As the BO points out, life is suffering. Life being suffering. There’s birth, death, there’s loss, disappointment, pain is inevitable, but to be alone with the pain for a small child is unbearable.

And so that the shutting down of emotion, which is you and I talk about, is just a defense. It’s a necessary one. It helps you endure. That same defense then later on leaves you flat, depressed, disengaged, whatever it is, so there’s nothing fundamentally wrong and what you think is wrong with you actually began as an adaptation, which actually was beneficial at the time, is no longer beneficial.

But it’s not your fault and it’s not who you are. You don’t have to be identified with it. And that’s the key here. So that when I talk about the wisdom of trauma, I talk about two things. One is the shutting down and pushing down, for example. That was wise. That was what you had to do. That’s what you didn’t do it consciously, but your organism did it.

That was the wisdom of the organism. And then there’s wisdom in trauma, and that once you start to look at that and learn from it, then we can learn from our trauma. There are lots of wisdom that can flow from understanding what happened to you. I’m sure you’ve had that experience, so that trauma has got this wisdom and that both in its initial manifestation, there’s a defense against what happened to you, but also then we can learn from it as we work through it.

Sam Believ: In your book, myth of Normal, you talk about the society at large, being not perfect for our existence right now. Talk to us why there’s so much trauma, especially in the modern day and age.

Dr. Gabor Maté: So you’re on Columbia. As I was telling you, I’m just reading a book about Columbia by the Canadian anthropologist, wonderful writer, Wade Davis.

And this book Magdalena is about the river Magdalena in Columbia. And, but it’s really is an ethno ethnographic geographic botanical historical account of Columbia. And

throughout the world, indigenous people when they were living in small tribes. I’m not talking about the big civilizations early, like the Aztecs or the of the Romans and Atlanta. I’m talking about in our origins, we lived in small groups in tribes, and there was no separation between individual and the community.

There was, sense of unity, sense of belonging. People did have the individuality, but they had a deep sense of belonging and connection and also a deep sense of connection with nature. That’s how we evolved, and the human beings have been on earth for millions of years. Our own species has been there for 200,000 years and until 15,000 years ago, we all lived out in nature in small band groups and that’s our nature.

So that if you wanna study a zebra, you could conclude that a zebra is an animal that sits around the whole day or lies on the whole day. Every once in a while, gets up and eats or whatever, and then lies down again. And you’d be right if you were watching a zebra in a zoo, but you see something totally different if you saw the zebra in its natural habitat.

You saw an animal that ranges over a large area and is active, moves in herds and so on. Human beings are living in the zoo right now. We’re living in totally artificial circumstances, totally different from the environment and the social relationships in which we evolved, in which our nature was foreign.

Modern capitalist society tells us that we’re individualistic, aggressive, competitive, and selfish. And that’s the world that we live in. That goes totally contrary to our nature. It affects how we raise children. It affects everything. And so it’s a toxic culture. It’s like we’re living in a cage and we don’t know it.

It’s a cage of owned construction, but we don’t know that. And therefore we. Behave in disturbed ways. So that’s what I mean by a toxic culture. And our needs are not met. And the needs of children for belonging, for unconditional acceptance. There’s a book called The Continuum Concept. It was an American writer visiting a jungle tribe in Venezuela in the 1980s or seventies.

Boy, they raised children so beautifully, so lovingly, so acceptingly with such freedom. With such security, with such a sense of belonging. It’s a totally different model of being a human being and how to raise our unity. You study it internationally. That’s how indigenous people raise their kids.

Very opposite to the way we raise our kids. So it’s a toxic culture that we live in. We’re living in a zoo.

Sam Believ: Yeah, it might be a golden cage and it looks really nice.

Dr. Gabor Maté: For some wait a minute. For some people it does, but even if you look at the wealthy countries, look at the rising inequality. It’s not such a beautiful cage for a lot of people.

A lot of people are right close to the poverty line or just above it. They may be a month away from financial disaster, this characterizes a lot of people in the prosperous Western world. Nevermind. Third world countries where inequality is amazing and a lot of people live in poverty and they struggle.

And so even the golden cages only golden to a fairly small percentage of the world’s population. And you and I are privileged enough to. To be not stratum, but it’s not universal.

Sam Believ: Yeah. Let’s say an illusion of golden Cage because we feel for some reason, even though most people are not happy, we feel like we’re more advanced and we’re at the next level.

I really love your way of analyzing. Our society from the past, from the tribal society. I do it a lot myself because a lot of times when things don’t make sense today, if you look at it from the point of view of tribal society a hundred thousand years ago, all of a sudden everything makes sense from dating to personal relationships and things like that.

Yeah. What you personally helped me understand is we all, we always look for a big trauma, like some event, but there is, there’s also this slow, gradual death by a thousand cuts, accumulation of trauma that nevertheless is still as traumatic.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. So trauma as I keep emphasizing, is not what happened to you.

Trauma literally means a wound. So Thomas, what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you. But sometimes what happens to you can be dramatic, like in the case of my own infancy, being born into a Jewish family in the Second World War, living on the Nazi occupation some children are abused or hit, they witness violence in their families.

Their parents die, or they live in a home where addiction is right. These are the big T traumatic events. It doesn’t have to be that people can be wounded just when they’re not seen for who they are, when they’re not accepted, when they’re expected to suppress themselves for the sake of belonging and being accepted and when love is conditional and they’re not big events that you can delineate.

But as you say, it’s like a thousand small cuts, but it, they’re even more, they can be just as insidious. More insidious. And some that’s more difficult to deal with ’cause it’s fairly easy to remember bad things that happened. But it’s not so easy to remember all the good things that didn’t happen, but should have.

And a lot of people are hurt. So when I’ve done ICO ceremonies and. This is where the plant can be so powerful because it can guide people in the right context if the holding environment is safe enough. It can guide people to understand how they were hurt and what was missing for them. Sometimes people uncover major traumatic events like abuse and so on, but sometimes they just experience what it felt like to be a lonely child, not seen and not understood, and not helped.

Sam Believ: You have I hear tens and tens of stories like this every month from people just realizing that it was small things that made them who they are now. And then this heal healing that is not easy takes, it takes a very long time. So I’m curious when when you’ve learned about Ayahuasca and then you immediately saw its potential, for working with people with addiction, and I really love this phrase that you say, which is, don’t look for the substance. Look for the pain. I’ve used it hundreds of times.

Dr. Gabor Maté: I say, don’t ask why the addiction? Ask why the pain? Yeah.

Sam Believ: Okay. Don’t ask for addiction. Ask for the pain. Look for the pain.

Yeah, sorry. So it means I was using it wrong, but nevertheless it helps a lot of people that are dealing with addiction. What have you observed in, in the retreats that you help organized in people in the, in their journeys with Plat medicines and addiction specifically?

Dr. Gabor Maté: When I first began to work with Ayahuasca.

I had the enthusiasm of a convert, and converts are very often, very enthusiastic. They think they’ve found the answer, and it’s more complex and subtle than that.

But the reason I always can help addiction is because it helps to heal. The trauma under lies, the addiction. So don’t ask why the addiction has, why the pain people can find their pain. And people can also, that be, that they’ve been running away from through the addiction. People can also find that wholeness in themselves, which teaches them that they don’t have to keep running.

So that’s all true, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Now some people, I’ve seen them give up alcohol or give up cigarettes or whatever You, even after a couple of I experiences,

the problem is. But these lessons, for the most part, have to be integrated. And what happens is people come to an Iowa school retreat, they have these door opening, eye opening transformative visions, but then they go back to their lives and all the same influences and relationships and circumstances, which they knew before.

People do have a tendency to revert back to their habitual way of being. So the plans can open up the door, they can give you the vision of where to go, but you have to go there yourself. And I’ve seen both success and I’ve seen lack of success depending on how much consistency and support and ongoing.

Work that person was willing to and capable of doing. Having said that, is still way more powerful than anything Western Medicine has to offer. But I mean by far, for people that are on opiate addiction I’ve seen people have visions when they were on opiates. Like they’re on methadone, for example, and they understand things, but.

It doesn’t change their habit because they have a deep dependence. Chemically iwco can’t change that. Iboga another psychedelic from Africa that can change the opiate dependence. Iwco can’t.

Sam Believ: Yeah. I’ve heard good things about Ibogaine and very strong addiction specifically. And regarding the zealously phase where.

After your first few experiences, you’re so passionate about it. That I have, I’ve also went through this phase and I warn people when they leave the retreat to, to be careful with it because you don’t wanna lose friends over it. And you definitely need to do work without, ’cause as I like to say, you gotta meet it halfway because it will show you what needs to be done, but you’re the only one that can do, they can do the actual work.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. And don’t become an evangelist, do your work first and integrate it into your life, and then your friends will wanna know what you did, but don’t come back as an evangelist. And I’ve seen a bit of, too much of ayahuasca evangelism, or psychedelic evangelism. And what I’ve also seen is some people get too hung up on the experience itself rather than the meaning of the experience for their lives.

So that. Like with every, like with any modality, their beauties and possibilities, but there’s also hazards.

Sam Believ: Yeah. You say if you can face death, you can face life. And I wanna talk a little bit about your experiences in palliative care, your own aging, and how you view it. And also.

Taking it to ayahuasca, how does experiencing death, even through psychedelics, can help you experience life better?

Dr. Gabor Maté: Some people have experienced what’s called an ego death through psychedelics, which is like a complete disidentification with the form that you are and with the history that you’ve had, and you just evaporate as a separate identity. I have not had that experience. I think I’ve held on too much.

Like I, I have a very strong stick skull and it’s hard to break through it. In my, in the middle of normal, my book that you mentioned, I do talk about a deep, I always have experience I had, but I wouldn’t say I was an ego death. People have that ego that sometimes through spiritual experiences without psychedelics, mystics.

Sophie is Christian, Jewish, Hindu mystics, Buddhists, they’ve had those direct experiences forever. I haven’t, I’m sure I’d be very terrified of it if it came up. I’m sure it would also be wonderful if I have had the experience, but I haven’t in terms of death, i’m 81 now. If I’m lucky, what have I got left Another 10 years.

If I’m lucky, healthy years, which is by far from guaranteed. I know people my age who are dying or are no longer alive, and I know people all the time who are facing. The end of their existence as we in this form anyway. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Like I can tell myself that I understand it and it’s inevitable it’s gonna happen and it happens to everybody.

And so what? But emotionally, I’ll have to find out. So I don’t know what I don’t know that any belief I have about death right now. It’s actually an accurate representation of where I’m at, because the truth of it is in the deepest emotional level. Can I let go? Am I willing to accept that I won’t exist anymore?

I don’t know. I don’t know about that one. I’ll have to come back after I die and let you know how it went from

Sam Believ: Yeah, that would be a great interview. Finding someone after me.

Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah. No, that’d be a great interview. You’re right.

Sam Believ: Yeah. If I might say that hopefully I can live to even be 81 if I’m lucky.

And then if I would love to have your mental capacity. ’cause I’ve listened to, in preparation to this episode, I’ve listened to seven different podcasts with you and you’re very sharp and very very ready to answer things.

Dr. Gabor Maté: For a very my age.

Sam Believ: Yeah.

Another thing I noticed is sometimes in, in your interviews you analyze the hosts emotional situation and you give them very valuable advice. So I have few cases for you with myself specifically. One is you talked about, you, yourself not knowing how to play with your kids and you were waiting for them to develop verbally.

And it hit me really hard because that’s exactly my case. So I have three very young children, four and a half, three and seven months, and I realized that I’m waiting for them and I tried to sit down and talk to them like an adult. So any advice there or any, anything I can do.

Dr. Gabor Maté: There’s two things.

One is, if you’re not familiar with this book I helped to write, it’s called Hold On To Your Kids By Parents Sleep Tonight or More Than Peers. It’s not my work, it’s the work of a billion psychologist friend of mine, Gordon Neufeld. But it’s the only panting book you’ll ever left to read. Okay. I, you gotta read that book, I promise you.

And there’s another book I can recommend for you called Parenting From the Inside Out, which is by Dan Siegel, and it tells you what you can learn about yourself through your parenting.

Those are two reads that I think would really help you, but in more specifically when you talk to them like adults, and that’s what I did. You don’t see them, you’re not seeing them. You’re projecting yourself onto them.

What are you afraid of?

I’m asking you a question.

Sam Believ: It’s hard to, it’s hard to understand, but maybe there’s a part of me that, may, maybe there’s a part of me that’s like a little bit jealous that they have they have it better than me. Maybe there’s this anxiety that I feel when everything is okay, because I feel that it’s not gonna be okay if I enjoy it too much.

Dr. Gabor Maté: So first of all, I can tell you. Same thing is true for me. If you don’t know how to play with the kids, it’s ’cause you weren’t played with when you, I don’t know what your situation was, what the emotional state your mother was in, your father was in, but they didn’t know how to play with, babies play, but two months of age peekaboo, they just spontaneously do it.

So the Sunday and new experience that. You weren’t seen, so you have trouble seeing your kids just so here’s my thing, just look at them. Just really look at them and see them. Okay? No agenda. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to make anything happen. Just see them.

Sam Believ: Thank you so much. That’s a great advice.

I will definitely read the books and I will definitely,

Dr. Gabor Maté: But I have more to say,

Sam Believ: okay,

Dr. Gabor Maté: let them teach you. Let them teach you how to play. They know how to play. You don’t have to make it happen. You just have to let it happen. And thirdly those parts of you that you mentioned that might be jealous or anxious, that fear that if things are going well, they’re gonna turn badly.

That’s a memory.

That’s a memory. That’s what happened to you. You had no security. That goodness will sustain itself. When things are good, something would happen to spoil things. Now it’s true, life can bring challenges and vicissitudes, but you don’t have to sit there anticipating. It anxiously the belief that things will always go bad when they’re good.

That’s a memory, so you’re not wrong to believe it, but examine the belief. It’s not reality. Reality is, yeah, anything could happen, but in that kind of belief that you have, there’s a certainty that things will go bad, and that’s your memory. Maybe even pre-verbal memory. You do your kids a huge favor if you didn’t impose that on them.

So that’s my response to your question.

Sam Believ: Thank you, G. That’s that’s very wise and very useful for me. You touched upon the topic of play and in preparation for this podcast, I’ve actually read my first ever child’s book since I was an adult, which was Vinny Depo. Because you mentioned it several times.

So talk to us about play and then why this book specifically? Why do you mention it?

Dr. Gabor Maté: Here’s an original English edition of Juan Depo. Here’s my Hungarian chat with copy of Man Depo and it’s all about play. The whole book is about play now. It’s very interesting. Mel, the author, he wrote this book and his son was called Robin.

They didn’t have a good relationship. But Mel wrote these books about these toys that he bought for his son, the Little Tiger and the bear and the kangaroo and so whatever their actual view of this shit was, the book is all about play. A little boy playing with his animals.

And it’s written so playfully. The language is playful. It’s a, one of the funniest books you’ll ever read, and it’s as much rattles as it is for kids. At the very end of the book, Robin, the boy has to go off to school and they won’t be able to play so much, but he, it says that, but in a magic forest, in the enchanted forest, wherever they go.

A little boy and his bear will always be playing. So there’s a part of us now actually, our brains are wired for play. There’s a circuitry in our brains for play. Nature intends us to play all animals play. That’s essential for human development, for mammalian development. So bear cubs, lion cubs, puppies, kittens, rat babies, they all play.

It’s essential for health development and it’s essential for health that we play.

Our lives. So that’s why that big book means so much to me. And certainly what’s also interesting is that in the aftermath of I experience, I can get very playful, very light, maybe a disclaim experience.

Sam Believ: Yeah. Many times happens to me where I get so playful indeed that I break my own rules, like the rules that are set for the ceremony, and then I feel bad about it.

But it’s definitely, it definitely feels helpful at that moment. I have one more scenario for you that that I want your opinion on. So I run this retreat and. There’s hundred people every month that come to me and say, thank you so much, and you changed my life. And it feels extremely uncomfortable.

But when I get one, so we have 605 star reviews on Google, but I have three one star reviews. And I don’t know most of the five star reviews, but I absolutely remember all the one star reviews. So the bad, the criticism just cuts right through me and hurts me badly. But all the positive things I can’t seem to be able to feel them.

Dr. Gabor Maté: What if you didn’t take any of them personally?

They’re not about you. They’re about the experience of that person. The people with the ones to use. They didn’t have a good experience.

Do you think you can please everybody? I. But if you look at the comments on my YouTube talks, oh, I could listen to him forever. His very voice calms me down. Somebody else will write, he bores me to death. Same they’re looking at the same thing, but they’re experiencing it differently.

Secondly, because critical reviews, maybe there’s something to learn there. Maybe there’s something that you could do differently or you could be more sensitive to, or more be more aware of. Maybe with those per people you weren’t as present or as maybe something and then brought up something in you that you weren’t at your best when you’re working with them.

It’s worthwhile to investigate but not to take it personally. And that doesn’t mean it’s something about you. It’s just something that you could learn. And the final point, and then have tovo is. Your pain is that the goodness in you wasn’t seen and your attack criticized, demean, judged, and that’s where your wound is.

And that’s why when you see a negative review, it triggers that wound. So that’s a wound that can still heal

if you. I felt totally confident that you’re okay, that you’ve done your best. Sometimes you make mistakes, sometimes you don’t succeed. But fundamentally, you’re a good person who is here to do your best and you do your best. It would mean so much to you. So somebody gives you a one star review. Okay, maybe I can learn something here.

Maybe it’s just their personality or whatever it is. But it wouldn’t get to you. The reason it gets to you is ’cause you have a wound or not being seen and not being valued, not being appreciated. So that’s something you can still do some more healing work on.

Sam Believ: Thank you Gabor. This was really great and I appreciate it a lot.

This was very valuable. And yeah, I hope you find find a way to make it here to La Wire and meet you in person. Thank you so much for this interview.

Dr. Gabor Maté: A pleasure to meet you, Sam. Take care. Bye-bye.

Sam Believ: Thank you guys for listening, as always, really the host and believe, and I will see you in the next episode.

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