0
SPEAKER_05
Bring a little optimism into your life with The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast from Hello Sunshine, hosted by me, Danielle Robay.
0
SPEAKER_05
And me, Simone Boyce.
0
SPEAKER_05
Every weekday, we re bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.
0
SPEAKER_00
I am so excited about this podcast, The Bright Side.
0
SPEAKER_00
You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives, shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.
0
SPEAKER_02
Listen to The Bright Side on America s number one podcast network, iHeart.
0
SPEAKER_02
Open your free iHeart app and search The Bright Side.
0
SPEAKER_06
Something that makes me crazy is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste.
0
SPEAKER_06
And that s where the perspective shift comes, that it s not a waste, that everything you ve done has built you to where you are now.
0
SPEAKER_06
This is She Pivots, the podcast where we explore the inspiring pivots women have made and dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them.
0
SPEAKER_06
Join me, Emily Tish Sussman, every Wednesday on She Pivots.
0
SPEAKER_06
Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
SPEAKER_04
Get emotional with me, Radhi Devlukia, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry.
0
SPEAKER_04
We re going to be talking with some of my best friends.
0
SPEAKER_04
I didn t know we were going to go there on this.
0
SPEAKER_04
People that I admire.
0
SPEAKER_04
When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what s going on.
0
SPEAKER_04
Authors of books that have changed my life.
0
SPEAKER_04
Now you re talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy.
0
SPEAKER_04
Never forget, it s OK to cry as long as you make it a really good one.
0
SPEAKER_04
Listen to A Really Good Cry with Radhi Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
SPEAKER_03
I couldn t be more excited to share something truly special with all you tea lovers out there.
0
SPEAKER_03
And even if you don t love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling sodas that are good for you, listen to this.
0
SPEAKER_03
Radhi and I poured our hearts into creating Juni Sparkling Tea with Adaptogens for you because we believe in nurturing your body and with every sip, you ll experience calmness of mind, a refreshing vitality and a burst of brightness to your day.
0
SPEAKER_03
Juni is infused with adaptogens that are amazing natural substances that act like superheroes for your body to help you adapt to stress and find balance in your busy life.
0
SPEAKER_03
Our Super 5 blend of these powerful ingredients include green tea, ashwagandha,
0
SPEAKER_03
acerola cherry, and lion s mane mushroom, and these may help boost your metabolism, give you a natural kick of caffeine, combat stress, pack your body with antioxidants, and stimulate brain function.
0
SPEAKER_03
Even better, Juni has zero sugar and only 5 calories per can.
0
SPEAKER_03
We believe in nurturing and energizing your body while enjoying a truly delicious and refreshing drink.
0
SPEAKER_03
So visit drinkjuni.com today to elevate your wellness journey and use code ONPURPOSE to receive 15% off your first order.
0
SPEAKER_03
That s drinkjuni.com and make sure you use the code ONPURPOSE.
0
SPEAKER_01
You can be yourself, or you can be accepted, but not both at the same time.
0
SPEAKER_01
At some point, you start wondering, who the heck are we anyway?
0
SPEAKER_05
We know him as the best-selling author of a number of books.
0
SPEAKER_02
His work on the relationship between addiction and childhood development.
0
SPEAKER_02
Please help me welcome Dr. Gabor Maté.
0
SPEAKER_01
The top regrets of people who died before their time, you know what it is?
0
SPEAKER_01
That they weren t themselves.
0
SPEAKER_01
They spent their whole life trying to please others.
0
SPEAKER_01
That s the top regret.
0
SPEAKER_03
How do we fix broken people?
0
SPEAKER_03
Before we jump into this episode, I d like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier, healthier, and more healed.
0
SPEAKER_03
All I want you to do is click on the subscribe button.
0
SPEAKER_03
I love your support.
0
SPEAKER_03
It s incredible to see all your comments, and we re just getting started.
0
SPEAKER_03
I can t wait to go on this journey with you.
0
SPEAKER_03
Thank you so much for subscribing.
0
SPEAKER_03
It means the world to me.
0
SPEAKER_01
The number one health and wellness podcast.
0
SPEAKER_01
Jay Shetty.
0
SPEAKER_05
Jay Shetty.
0
SPEAKER_05
The one, the only, Jay Shetty.
0
SPEAKER_03
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast in the world.
0
SPEAKER_03
Thanks to each and every one of you that keep coming back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed.
0
SPEAKER_03
Now today s guest is someone that you absolutely adore, that you love, that I admire so deeply.
0
SPEAKER_03
I feel honored whenever I m in his presence.
0
SPEAKER_03
I m a huge fan and follower of his work.
0
SPEAKER_03
And I would also like to say that we ve been
0
SPEAKER_03
Developing a little bit of a friendship behind the scenes, which I m very grateful for as well, I m speaking about the one and only Gabor Maté, who spent 20 years working in family practice and palliative care experience and worked for over a decade in Vancouver s downtown Eastside with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness.
0
SPEAKER_03
Gabor is the best-selling author of five books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction.
0
SPEAKER_03
Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker, highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness.
0
SPEAKER_03
And Gabor s latest book, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, remains a bestseller globally, and I highly recommend you get a copy if you haven t already.
0
SPEAKER_03
If you have a copy, grab one for a friend, and really, this would be my recommendation, make it your book club pick for your local book club, for your online book club.
0
SPEAKER_03
Make it a book that you discuss and share.
0
SPEAKER_03
Please welcome back to On Purpose, Gabor Matei.
0
SPEAKER_03
Thank you for being here.
0
SPEAKER_03
I am fondly remembering not only the last interview we had, but the last time we were together in Vancouver, when I saw you just before my show and we spent a few moments together.
0
SPEAKER_03
And I genuinely look forward to seeing you whenever I can.
0
SPEAKER_03
So thank you for doing this.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, it s such a pleasure.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I remember bicycling down to your hotel and, um, I wasn t in a great state and we talked and that helped to ground me.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then,
0
SPEAKER_01
I think it was my idea that we should meditate together and we did and that was just so helpful for me so it s just good to sit with you in any capacity.
0
SPEAKER_03
No, well, I remember I walked away from last time s conversation both times, the first time we recorded and second time from that.
0
SPEAKER_03
And I always feel you create tiny mini shifts in my mindset through very subtle points you make.
0
SPEAKER_03
And it takes someone who s deeply studied their subject, not just theoretically, but practically to be able to do that.
0
SPEAKER_03
So thank you, but let s dive straight in.
0
SPEAKER_03
I wanted to ask you this question.
0
SPEAKER_03
I ve had the burning desire to ask you this question.
0
SPEAKER_03
So I read this quote the other day, and it says, it s by Frederick Douglass.
0
SPEAKER_03
And the quote goes, it is easier to build strong children than fix broken men.
0
SPEAKER_03
And my question was, how do we fix broken people?
0
SPEAKER_01
There s a wonderful song by Leonard Cohen called Come Heal or Come Healing.
0
SPEAKER_01
So it begins, O gather up the brokenness, bring it to me now, the fragrance of those promises you never dared to vow.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then he says at some point, and here s the answer to your question,
0
SPEAKER_01
O troubledness concealing an undivided love, the heart beneath is teaching to the broken heart above.
0
SPEAKER_01
So this poet, prophet, poet, visionary is saying we have two hearts.
0
SPEAKER_01
There s the brokenness above and the undivided love that s below, that s underneath.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s saying there s the broken heart above and then there s a heart beneath that teaching the broken heart.
0
SPEAKER_01
So that implied in that is that nobody s broken.
0
SPEAKER_01
Then underneath the brokenness, there s wholeness.
0
SPEAKER_01
So, and that s not only Leonard Cohen, any spiritual teachers you know will tell you the same thing.
0
SPEAKER_01
So it s not a matter of fixing anything broken.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s finding the wholeness that s underneath the brokenness.
0
SPEAKER_01
Now Douglas is totally right.
0
SPEAKER_01
Studies have shown that if you get children who
0
SPEAKER_01
Suffer for first three years and then things get okay for them They do much worse than most children who are well treated and have a good life for three years And then everything goes to pieces the latter group does much better because there s words where it says the child is the father of the man so that What happens early in life shapes our worldview and our sense of ourselves?
0
SPEAKER_01
So yes, Douglas is totally right, but ultimately when I look at people
0
SPEAKER_01
whether they agree with me or don t, or whether they are suffering or not, or whether they, even when they do terrible things, there s a wholeness, there s an undivided love underneath it, isn t there?
0
SPEAKER_01
There s a shore right now in Los Angeles by somebody who s in a death row prison in Texas.
0
SPEAKER_01
and his name s Obi, sentenced to death.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he s on death row, has been for the last 20 years.
0
SPEAKER_01
But his appeals wind their slow way through the courts.
0
SPEAKER_01
If he wins the appeal, the best thing he can hope for is life without parole.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he s in love with life.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s had a transformation.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s dealt with his addictions.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s dealt with his brokenness.
1
SPEAKER_00
He learned meditation.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s an artist.
1
SPEAKER_00
And some of his art is being shown in Los Angeles right now.
1
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately, I can t go see it because it s only open certain days a week and I m not here.
1
SPEAKER_00
But there s somebody who came from a totally broken childhood and found a kind of presence.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you saw him, you and I could only envy the kind of presence, and at least to speak for myself, can t speak for you, the kind of presence and the kind of engagement and life that he s got in a death row prison.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, if that can be healed, if that brokenness, the wholeness can be discovered underneath, there s nobody broken.
1
SPEAKER_01
Very well said.
1
SPEAKER_01
I would agree too.
1
SPEAKER_01
At the core, at the root, at the essence, none of us are broken.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
that which is broken and imperfect often rubs off on us.
1
SPEAKER_01
But what would you say are the most detrimental experiences that people have in those three years that end up creating horrific ripple effects long term?
1
SPEAKER_00
Anything that makes them disconnect from themselves, from their true selves, from their gut feelings, from their connection to their bodies, anything that deprives them of hope.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember taking part in a retreat once, it s called an enlightenment intensive, where you do intensive spiritual work.
1
SPEAKER_00
I won t go into the details, but please go into the details.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s dyads, and it s two people at one time sitting across from each other in a meditation posture, putting a question to one another.
1
SPEAKER_00
First, one person asks, the other one listens, and then you switch places for four times, and then you get a different partner.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the question is, tell me who you are.
1
SPEAKER_00
The original question comes from Ramana Maharshi, whose work I m sure you know, one of these Indian rishis and gurus, who just asked everybody, tell me who you are.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the idea is that by emptying your mind and saying whatever is in your head, clearing out the mental space, the direct experience of who you are will come to you.
1
SPEAKER_00
A direct experience, not a thought, not an emotion, but a direct experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, I never had a direct experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was embittered at the end.
1
SPEAKER_00
And at the very last dyad, the person said, tell me who you are.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I just started shaking.
1
SPEAKER_00
And my whole body was tingling.
1
SPEAKER_00
And instead of paying attention to that, I plunged into bitterness.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said, is it my fault?
1
SPEAKER_00
They turned off the light in me.
1
SPEAKER_00
They killed the light in me so early.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I truly believed that the light in me had been killed by what had happened to me as an infant.
1
SPEAKER_00
And for much of my life, even after I became a healer, and even after I became a healer that was respected by so many people, I thought I could help heal everybody else, but I can t be healed myself.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, to go back to your question, whatever early experience kills your faith in your own possibilities, that s what s so damaging.
1
SPEAKER_00
And for that, it could be evidence or experiences of severe abuse.
1
SPEAKER_00
It could also be a very sensitive child.
1
SPEAKER_00
who the world doesn t see for who they are, who the world doesn t permit to express themselves, so they shut off from themselves in order to be accepted by the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
So any early experience that deprives you of yourself, and that happens to a lot of us,
1
SPEAKER_00
So trauma is a huge spectrum, but anything that breaks your connection to yourself and your genuine, not your false, egoic belief in yourself, but your genuine belief in your wholeness, that ll do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that happens to a lot of us.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve always personally experienced it as the volume of my inner voice.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I found that at different points in my life,
1
SPEAKER_01
my inner voice was extremely loud and clear, and not only could I hear it clearly, but the direction was clear.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I ve had moments in my life where, as you re referencing, disconnected from yourself, that voice is extremely quiet, maybe even non-existent, or it s screaming out for help.
1
SPEAKER_00
You mean the voice of you and yourself is very quiet?
1
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
1
SPEAKER_01
It can be.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, the Bible talks about the small, still voice.
1
SPEAKER_00
They actually call it that, the small, still voice.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it really takes attention to notice it because there s so much noise in the world and so much noise in our heads.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there s all these other voices that are much louder.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, the singer Sheryl Crow, she had breast cancer.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she said afterwards, and this could be, and I quote this in The Myth of Normal, and it could be right out of my own work, but she doesn t know about me.
1
SPEAKER_00
She just came to this awareness because the disease taught her something.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she said that she always used to be serving other people and trying to meet other people s emotional needs.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the breast cancer, now she s actually listening to herself.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she says, there used to be these loud voices inside myself telling me that whatever I did wasn t right enough.
1
SPEAKER_00
She says, no, I ve stilled those voices.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, on the one hand, the voices of self-disregard and self-loathing or self-seduction are very loud, and that true voice, for most of us, is just so quiet.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it takes a lot of attention to notice it.
1
SPEAKER_01
A lot of what you re saying, today we experience it
1
SPEAKER_01
as this idea of people-pleasing, shape-shifting, mediating, wanting to make peace often in our families, in our friend circle, all of which can be good, noble things, but often we find ourselves disconnected from ourselves, trying to play these different roles.
1
SPEAKER_01
Not only does that seem to be stemming from a form of trauma, of being disconnected from yourself early on, what steps can one take to
1
SPEAKER_01
regain one s connection with oneself so that we re not running around shape-shifting people-pleasing, but at the same time have genuine connections with others.
1
SPEAKER_00
In the book, we talk about this tension between authenticity and attachment, and authenticity being connected to our two selves, our gut feelings, which is necessary.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nature gave us gut feelings for a good reason, gave us emotions for a good reason.
1
SPEAKER_00
Attachment is a need to belong and if we can be authentic and belong, that s ideal.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if you can find relationships in which you can be our true selves and be accepted and loved, that s ideal.
1
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of our families of origin, our parents just couldn t give that to us.
1
SPEAKER_00
They had their own limitations, they couldn t see us, so they had their own traumas.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like I did as a parent.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so kids then get the message that you can be yourself or you can be accepted, but not both at the same time.
1
SPEAKER_00
At which point for sheer survival s sake, we go with what would we need to do to get accepted?
1
SPEAKER_00
And then we get that message reinforced in school and on the playground and with our peers and at our work.
1
SPEAKER_00
And at some point,
1
SPEAKER_00
You start wondering, who the heck are we anyway?
1
SPEAKER_00
And whose life am I leading anyway?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, how to get back to it?
1
SPEAKER_00
Here s the question.
1
SPEAKER_00
Prior to your awakening, and I m sure that for your awakening,
1
SPEAKER_00
was probably both a series of unique events but also it was a long-term process.
1
SPEAKER_00
For me it was mostly process rather than distinct experiences.
1
SPEAKER_00
But say prior to awakening, did you sometimes know that you re not being authentic?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because I sure did.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know why I was choosing not to be authentic.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t even choosing it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just wasn t.
1
SPEAKER_00
But something in me knew.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, here s the question.
1
SPEAKER_00
Who inside us knows?
1
SPEAKER_00
Only that authentic self.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s always there.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I say to people, don t try and look for the authentic self.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just notice when you re not authentic.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just notice when you re not saying no.
1
SPEAKER_00
When there s a no that wants to be said.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just see where you re not saying yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
But there s a yes that wants to be said inside you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Notice the impact on you.
2
SPEAKER_03
when you don t assert your true self?
2
SPEAKER_03
How do you feel afterwards?
2
SPEAKER_03
Resentful, ashamed, or tired, or whatever?
2
SPEAKER_03
So, notice the difficulty being authentic, and ask yourself, well, what is the belief that I m carrying, that if I m authentic, then what?
2
SPEAKER_03
So in other words, all that noticing, what does that do?
2
SPEAKER_03
Who s the one that s noticing?
2
SPEAKER_03
It s the authentic self.
2
SPEAKER_03
So just by asking those questions, you re strengthening, you re empowering that authentic self.
2
SPEAKER_03
And just going back to that, the heart underneath is teaching the broken heart above, while that wholeness is teaching the disconnection.
2
SPEAKER_03
It s always there.
2
SPEAKER_04
I find that in between those two hearts and in between those two layers, there s almost a layer of guilt and shame.
2
SPEAKER_04
So when we go against our authentic self, we do it because we re scared of
2
SPEAKER_04
whether we feel guilty or we may feel shame or fear.
2
SPEAKER_04
And if we act authentically, we then sometimes feel guilt for acting that way because of how it impacts others or shame and fear.
2
SPEAKER_04
So walk me through the construction of fear and guilt and shame, which seem to be such, like if you thought about the emotions we all experience most on a daily basis, I mean, let me ask you that actually, what do you think
2
SPEAKER_04
What are the emotions that you believe people are experiencing most often, most repetitively on a daily basis?
2
SPEAKER_03
I was going to give you an easy answer to the shame, guilt, fear question, but then you threw a curveball.
2
SPEAKER_04
Sorry, I went off.
2
SPEAKER_04
I m following my authentic voice.
2
SPEAKER_03
No, I love curveballs.
2
SPEAKER_03
I just have to think about it.
2
SPEAKER_03
So what are the emotions people experience most often?
2
SPEAKER_03
I think anger.
2
SPEAKER_03
Rage.
2
SPEAKER_03
And resentment.
2
SPEAKER_03
I think there s a lot more of that than we acknowledge.
2
SPEAKER_03
Often unacknowledged.
2
SPEAKER_03
Experienced, but not acknowledged.
2
SPEAKER_03
For fear of consequences.
2
SPEAKER_03
I think also love, that we also are often afraid to acknowledge because it s so vulnerable.
2
SPEAKER_03
And we might say, if I want you to love me, but I m afraid to be vulnerable,
2
SPEAKER_03
then I may try to impress you, which may be the closest thing I can get so that you ll pay attention to me.
2
SPEAKER_03
Emotions, shame, I think is very frequent for a lot of people.
2
SPEAKER_03
That has to do with trauma more than anything else.
2
SPEAKER_03
Fear is something that people experience a lot, much more than they can admit to themselves.
2
SPEAKER_03
Joy, people are not so afraid of it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Well, you know what, that might be.
2
SPEAKER_03
Joy has been very difficult for me in my life and I think some part of, actually some part of me used to say, why do I have to feel joy when there s so much suffering in the world?
2
SPEAKER_03
Now that s logically a good question, but it s a nonsensical question.
2
SPEAKER_04
Why?
2
SPEAKER_03
Because there is a lot of suffering in the world and there s a lot of joy in the world.
2
SPEAKER_03
And one doesn t negate the other.
2
SPEAKER_03
So for me, it was like, what right do I have to experience joy when my grandparents died in Auschwitz?
2
SPEAKER_03
I quote this in The Myth of Normal, my friend and colleague and teacher, Bessel van der Kolk, the psychiatrist who wrote the book, The Body Keeps the Score.
2
SPEAKER_03
He said to me once,
2
SPEAKER_03
Gabor, you don t have to drag Auschwitz around with you all the time.
2
SPEAKER_03
Which means that you don t have to allow, not to forget about Auschwitz, but not to let that control your consciousness.
2
SPEAKER_03
Which means you do have the right to feel joy.
2
SPEAKER_03
You do have the right to be happy, even as the world suffers.
2
SPEAKER_03
Not because the world suffers, and not ignoring the suffering in the world.
2
SPEAKER_03
But there s no contradiction.
2
SPEAKER_05
The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is an NAACP and Webby Award winning podcast dedicated to all things mental health, personal development, and all of the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
2
SPEAKER_05
Here, we have the conversations that help black women decipher how their past inform who they are today.
2
SPEAKER_05
and use that information to decide who they want to be moving forward.
2
SPEAKER_05
We chat about things like how to establish routines that center self-care, what burnout looks and feels like, and defining what aspects of our lives are making us happy and what parts are holding us back.
2
SPEAKER_05
I m your host, Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia.
2
SPEAKER_05
And I can t wait for you to join the conversation every Wednesday.
2
SPEAKER_05
Listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_05
Take good care, and we ll see you there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Something that makes me crazy is when people say, well, I had this career before, but it was a waste.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s where the perspective shift comes.
2
SPEAKER_00
That it s not a waste, that everything you ve done has built you to where you are now.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is She Pivots.
2
SPEAKER_00
the podcast where we explore the inspiring pivots women have made and dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them.
2
SPEAKER_00
Join me, Emily Tish Sussman, every Wednesday on She Pivots, as I sit down with inspiring women like Misty Copeland, Brooke Shields, Vanessa Hudgens, and so many more.
2
SPEAKER_00
We dive into how these women made their pivot and their mindset shifts that happened as a result.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a podcast about women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success.
2
SPEAKER_00
Listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_02
When you find that bright spot to help you get through your day, it s powerful.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s where The Bright Side comes in.
2
SPEAKER_01
A new daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that s bringing you a daily dose of joy.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m Danielle Robay.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m Simone Boyce.
2
SPEAKER_02
Listen, both Danielle and I are reporters.
2
SPEAKER_02
We ve covered the news and we know the world can feel heavy, but The Bright Side podcast is a space to have a little fun, to learn something new and get into some friendly debates.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Join us five days a week to see how life can look from the bright side.
2
SPEAKER_01
We ll hear from celebrities, authors, experts and listeners like you, whether it s relationships, friend advice or figuring out how to navigate life s transitions.
2
SPEAKER_02
We ll talk through it all together.
2
SPEAKER_01
Listen to the bright side from Hello Sunshine every weekday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
SPEAKER_04
Let s dive into some of those emotions because, and I love how they were easy answers for you and then the curve ball, but I think, as you said, fear is a repetitive, daily emotion taught for so many people.
2
SPEAKER_04
A lack of safety, emotionally, mentally, physically, on so many levels, we feel unsafe.
2
SPEAKER_04
How does one process and heal through and with fear because it seems to be so consistent?
2
SPEAKER_03
The way that fear shows up in most people s lives is in the form of anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_03
See, we are wired for fear.
2
SPEAKER_03
There s a great neuropsychologist, died a few years ago, before his time, Dr. Panksepp, and he identified all these emotional circuits that we share with other mammals, and fear was one of them.
2
SPEAKER_03
We have a circuitry for fear, good thing.
2
SPEAKER_03
We re not afraid we die, out there in nature, you know.
2
SPEAKER_03
But that can become anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_03
So let me tell you a story.
2
SPEAKER_03
I want to show you this bracelet that I m wearing.
2
SPEAKER_04
It s beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_03
It is beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I never thought I d ever be wearing a bracelet.
2
SPEAKER_03
But I was given this just shortly after the time that I met you.
2
SPEAKER_03
And this comes from a place called Haida Gwaii.
2
SPEAKER_03
And Haida Gwaii is islands in northern British Columbia where I live.
2
SPEAKER_03
They used to be known as Haida Gwaii.
2
SPEAKER_03
Then with the British colonization they became known as Queen Charlotte Islands.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s really funny because I was speaking in London once or actually a couple of months ago to an audience of 2,100 Britishers and I said does anybody in this audience know who the hell Queen Charlotte was?
2
SPEAKER_03
Nobody knew.
2
SPEAKER_03
Apparently she was some German princess who married King George, the Mad King George, who was King of England when America became independent.
2
SPEAKER_03
Anyway, so the British came, they named it Queen Charlotte Islands.
2
SPEAKER_03
All of a sudden, these indigenous people whose ancestors have been living there for something like 13,000 years,
2
SPEAKER_03
All of a sudden, they were living not on Haida Gowai anymore, which means land of the people, but they were living in Queen s Shoulder land.
2
SPEAKER_03
So I was giving a trauma workshop there for Haida people.
2
SPEAKER_03
That s when they gave me this bracelet.
3
SPEAKER_00
the meaning of the carvings that means these words matter.
3
SPEAKER_00
At the end of two days, almost at the very end of the trauma workshop for the Haida people, a woman in her 70s at least comes up and she said, I used to speak perfect Haida until I was five years old.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I forgot my language.
3
SPEAKER_00
And even when I ve gone back to school as an adult to learn my native language, the words don t stick in my brain.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, what happened to you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, what happened to her?
3
SPEAKER_00
She went to this residential school, residential schools where the indigenous kids were forced to go, run by the churches mostly, and she dared speak her native language.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the teacher took a stick and beat her mercilessly, in her body, in her head, in her limbs.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, native kids in my own lifetime is when I was a teenager in British Columbia, a four-year-old Indian, they re not Indians, indigenous Canadian, first nation kid, spoke their own language, they d have a pin stuck in her tongue.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, they literally, as I said to her, look, you re losing your language.
3
SPEAKER_00
Was your organism protecting you?
3
SPEAKER_00
It was your fear system telling you.
3
SPEAKER_00
that if you do that again, you might not survive.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because she hated herself for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
She hated herself for the anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_00
She hated herself because I was so passive, she said.
3
SPEAKER_00
I said, that passivity was your organism s only way to protect you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because had you fought back, or had you asserted your right to speak your language, much worse would have happened to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that fear protected her.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it translates into anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_00
Where it s no longer fear of a specific thing, it s just fear of the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now the rate of anxiety, so we have a system for fear.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the greatest danger to a young child is the loss of relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because without relationship we can t survive.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we re defenseless, we re vulnerable, we re helpless.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the loss of protective adults is the biggest fear that the child has.
3
SPEAKER_00
In this society, a lot of parents can t be there for their kids the way they need to be, the way they want to be, because of the stresses, economic, social, racial, political, whatever they re going through, just the nature of the disconnected culture that we live in.
3
SPEAKER_00
Parents are not there for their kids the way the children need to be.
3
SPEAKER_00
The fear becomes chronic anxiety, that we re never safe.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now that becomes part of our sense of self.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what you say, but this lack of emotional safety, what it actually is, is that early childhood fear.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because when a child is afraid, they will ask for help.
3
SPEAKER_00
But when repeatedly, the help is not available.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the adults don t come because they re too busy, too stressed, too traumatized, too preoccupied, too downtrodden, or too propagandized by parenting experts to ignore their kids  cries.
3
SPEAKER_00
The child gets the message that there s no safety.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that original fear that s meant to result in a cry for help now becomes chronic anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_00
So fear not dealt with gets ingrained as anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s no longer about anything specific.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just being in the world is a source of fear, which it shouldn t be.
3
SPEAKER_01
It almost feels like, as you were saying, that what should result in a cry for help externally becomes a perpetual cry internally without a feeling of being able to help yourself.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know that Beatles song, Help?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Help, I need somebody and not just anybody.
3
SPEAKER_00
And John Lennon sings, and he was a very traumatized child, as you know, whose father left him when he was born and whose mother abandoned him a few years later.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then he sings in his song, when I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody s help in any way.
3
SPEAKER_00
But now those days are gone.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m not so self-assured.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I open the door, you know, please help me.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, that s not the way it was.
3
SPEAKER_00
When he was younger, so much younger than today, he needed everybody s help in every way.
3
SPEAKER_00
But because the help wasn t available, he had to shut himself down and make himself sort of like a self-created, self-sufficient person.
3
SPEAKER_00
And only later on does he realize, you know what, I actually do need help.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he was never that person who didn t need help.
3
SPEAKER_00
He just believed he didn t need help.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why did he believe that?
3
SPEAKER_00
As an adaptation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because the help wasn t there.
3
SPEAKER_00
So many of us,
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the biggest things that people are afraid to do is to ask for help.
3
SPEAKER_00
When I give workshops, and I myself is, my automatic reaction when somebody offers help, oh no, it s okay, I m fine.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even though the help would be very welcome, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you find that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because I feel so many people today have someone in their life who s closed off from help.
3
SPEAKER_01
It might be your partner.
3
SPEAKER_01
It might be a child.
3
SPEAKER_01
It might be a parent.
3
SPEAKER_01
We all have someone in our life who in our limited capacity, but a little bit of awakening, we can notice that someone is really closed and won t receive help.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you help someone who is rejecting help or not accepting that they may need it because of the position they ve experienced based on what you just said?
3
SPEAKER_00
I myself used to believe I was one of these people.
3
SPEAKER_00
I actually used to believe, can you believe this?
3
SPEAKER_00
I used to believe that everybody else could be stressed, but I couldn t be.
3
SPEAKER_01
I used to feel like that, too.
3
SPEAKER_00
I used to believe that I can help everybody, but I don t need help myself, you know?
3
SPEAKER_00
There used to be a time when I used to feel that, too.
3
SPEAKER_00
So how do you help someone like that?
3
SPEAKER_00
You help them by accepting that that s how it is for them right now and not trying to push your help on them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because when you try and push help, you re just going to get resistance.
3
SPEAKER_00
So if you can handle it, you can be around them and be open, but not insist or try and prove to them that they need help.
3
SPEAKER_00
Life will teach them.
3
SPEAKER_00
When I meditate these days, I do the compassion meditation, which says, you know, may I face and overcome all of life s inevitable setbacks and challenges and failures with patience, understanding, strength, and determination, and may I rise above them with compassion and morality and integrity and wisdom and mindfulness.
3
SPEAKER_00
If we can stare on people compassionately,
3
SPEAKER_00
without trying to prove to them that they need something that they don t believe they need, then at some point, life will bring a challenge that may prove to them that, yeah, they need help.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you re still around, open, then they ll reach out to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you try and convince them, bring them over, prove it to them, force it on them, and I believe I ve done that, I ve done it with my own family, I ve done it with others, you just invite resistance.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the best way to help people is not to help, unless the help is invited.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s almost what most of us don t want to hear because we want to, again, going back to our earlier point, we want to fix and solve and make everything nice and perfect right now.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I guess that is also a form of trauma.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s something there as to why we want that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when I write about people who are prone for chronic illness, it s often people, like autoimmune disease for example, it s often, and this is not just my own finding, other researchers have found this as well, that there are people who tend to ignore their own emotional needs and are compulsively concerned with the emotional needs of others.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they tend to believe that
3
SPEAKER_00
In the myth of normal, I quote an obituary, and obituaries are really interesting to me because they often highlight as laudable qualities the very things that I think contributed to a person s death.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s talk about those.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there was a book written by an Australian nurse, 12 years ago now, called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she, like I used to work in palliative care, working with dying people, as you mentioned in your introduction.
3
SPEAKER_00
And for seven years I was the medical coordinator of a big palliative care unit, dying people at Vancouver Hospital.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this nurse, also a palliative care health worker, wrote this book, The Top Regrets of People Who Died Before Their Time.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what it is?
3
SPEAKER_00
That they weren t themselves.
3
SPEAKER_00
That they spent their whole life trying to please others.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the top regret.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, this obituary, you have to believe that I m not making this up.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is a
4
SPEAKER_02
in Canada who died age 72 of cancer and the obituary says
4
SPEAKER_02
Sidney and his mother had an incredibly special relationship, a bond that was apparent in all aspects of their lives until her death.
4
SPEAKER_02
As a married man with young children, Sidney would have dinner with his parents every day.
4
SPEAKER_02
Then he would go home as his wife Roslyn and their three children waited for him with yet another dinner to eat and to enjoy.
4
SPEAKER_02
not wanting to disappoint either woman in his life, Sidney kept eating two dinners a day for years until gradual weight gain began to raise suspicions.
4
SPEAKER_02
But this man suffered from two fatal beliefs, and when I say fatal, I mean fatal.
4
SPEAKER_02
One is that he was responsible for how other people feel, and the other is that he was never disappointed in anybody.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, so many of us go through life like that, you know?
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, actually, I m not responsible for how you feel.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m responsible for how I act, for how I speak, what I do and what I say.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m not responsible for how you feel in response.
4
SPEAKER_02
When you were in Vancouver and you contacted me, and if I hadn t feel like seeing you, but I hadn t slept all night, say, cause I was up with some other duty or looking out to somebody.
4
SPEAKER_02
And if I had said yes and still come meet you for coffee, cause I had fear of disappointing you.
4
SPEAKER_02
And because I didn t want you to feel disappointed.
4
SPEAKER_02
What would that have meant for me?
4
SPEAKER_02
It would have meant for me more fatigue and probably I would have resented the hell out of you.
4
SPEAKER_02
Even though I was pretending to be nice.
4
SPEAKER_03
Thank God.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you on the other hand, if I said no, if I was authentic and I said, look, Jay, I m sorry.
4
SPEAKER_02
So glad you re in town, but I was up all night.
4
SPEAKER_02
If you had felt hurt and perceived yourself as rejected by me,
4
SPEAKER_02
That s not on me.
4
SPEAKER_02
That s your interpretation of my behavior.
4
SPEAKER_02
Nothing to do with me.
4
SPEAKER_02
I just said what was true for me.
4
SPEAKER_02
So, but that fear of disappointment, had I been afraid to disappoint you because I don t want to lose your friendship and I don t want to lose your friendship.
4
SPEAKER_02
But if I believe that if I m authentic, I m going to lose Jay s friendship, that s going to keep me inauthentic.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you ll never know me.
4
SPEAKER_02
And even when you like me, there s still going to be a fear in me.
4
SPEAKER_02
What if he really knew me?
4
SPEAKER_02
So it doesn t even work.
4
SPEAKER_02
But we re so afraid of disappointing others.
4
SPEAKER_03
And then one day I may feel we have an inauthentic friendship because I can notice that you re not being fully yourself.
4
SPEAKER_03
And then I can even feel that way.
4
SPEAKER_03
You can let me down even by trying to be everything I wanted you to be.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s what I find so fascinating in life, is that you can let someone down even after becoming everything you thought they wanted you to be.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_02
Go back to the example of coffee.
4
SPEAKER_02
If I said to you, Jay, I m sorry, I can t do it today, which honors you more?
4
SPEAKER_02
If I believe that you re so weak and vulnerable that you can t handle a no, or if I honor you by telling you the truth, which shows you more respect.
4
SPEAKER_02
Definitely.
4
SPEAKER_02
So that I can be everything you want me to be and still not honor you.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yes, yeah, it s fascinating how we can be so opposite in our perceptions and viewpoints.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_03
And a big part of that comes also, we talked about fear, but I wanted to talk about guilt because... Yeah, oh yeah, guilt.
4
SPEAKER_01
Guilt.
4
SPEAKER_01
What do you want to say about guilt?
4
SPEAKER_03
No, well, I want to hear from you about guilt, but when I think of
4
SPEAKER_03
I think it s such a strong driver for so many actions in the world today.
4
SPEAKER_03
It is.
4
SPEAKER_03
We re guilty of something in the past and therefore we do something strange in the future or the present that we wouldn t have done.
4
SPEAKER_03
We feel guilty right now and that makes us say something that we don t mean or something that we... Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_03
How do we...
4
SPEAKER_03
untrap ourselves from the trappings of guilt.
4
SPEAKER_02
Great.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, let me tell you a story.
4
SPEAKER_02
So, you know, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, Moses is a Hebrew boy born at a time when the pharaoh s soothsayers declared that some Hebrew male born around this time will rise up and challenge the pharaoh.
4
SPEAKER_02
So they decide to kill all the Hebrew newborns.
4
SPEAKER_02
by throwing him into the Nile River.
4
SPEAKER_02
But Moses  mother rather than throws the boy into the river, but in a wicker basket.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so Moses flows down the river and he gets plucked out of the water by the Pharaoh s daughter.
4
SPEAKER_02
who adopts him.
4
SPEAKER_02
So this Hebrew infant is adopted into the royal court, treated like a prince.
4
SPEAKER_02
That s why Walt Disney could make a film called Prince of Egypt.
4
SPEAKER_02
All this happened just so Walt Disney could make a film.
4
SPEAKER_02
In any case,
4
SPEAKER_02
There s an extra-biblical legend.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s not in the Bible, but it s an ancient legend.
4
SPEAKER_02
And you think, what the heck is this guy talking about?
4
SPEAKER_02
I just asked him about guilt and he s talking about guilt.
4
SPEAKER_03
No, I love this.
4
SPEAKER_03
This is my favorite type of answer is when I m curious and I m following because I don t know where you re going.
4
SPEAKER_02
Okay, great.
4
SPEAKER_02
But believe me, I m going to come back to guilt.
4
SPEAKER_03
I believe it.
4
SPEAKER_03
I believe it.
4
SPEAKER_03
I trust you.
4
SPEAKER_02
So the legend is that Moses is a toddler and the Pharaoh s soothsayers divine that he might be a danger.
4
SPEAKER_02
which eventually he proves to be.
4
SPEAKER_02
So they decide to put him to a test.
4
SPEAKER_02
They put in front of him two sparkling objects.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know if you remember, but in the Bible, Moses is a speech impediment, and it s his brother Aaron who has to do the speaking for him.
4
SPEAKER_02
How does he get the speech impediment?
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, the pharaoh s soothsayers say, well, this boy needs to be examined, and they decide to put him to a test.
4
SPEAKER_02
And they put in front of him two sparkling objects.
4
SPEAKER_02
One of them is a royal diamond of Egypt, and the other is a glowing ember of coal.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now if Moses reaches for the royal diamond, it means he s got royal ambition and he needs to be killed.
4
SPEAKER_02
So there s this little toddler, delightedly looking at these two scintillating objects, and his hand starts moving towards the diamond.
4
SPEAKER_02
At which point, standing behind him, is Gabriel.
4
SPEAKER_02
which is the Hebrew version of my name, Gabor, by the way, and grabs his hand and takes it away from the diamond and puts it to the coal.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now Moses, finishing the motion that kids will do, picks up the coal, puts it to his mouth and burns his lips.
4
SPEAKER_02
And that s how he develops the speech impediment.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now here s my question to you.
4
SPEAKER_02
Is the angel Moses  friend or enemy?
4
SPEAKER_00
Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like easy listening, but for fiction.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you ve overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m Katherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the Bedtime Story podcast, Nothing Much Happens.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m an architect of cozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default.
4
SPEAKER_00
When you tune in, you ll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs, unrescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly, and pretty stones are found.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
Listen, relax, enjoy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_06
Get emotional with me, Radhi Devlukia, in my new podcast, A Really Good Cry.
4
SPEAKER_06
We re going to talk about and go through all the things that are sometimes difficult to process alone.
4
SPEAKER_06
We re going to go over how to regulate your emotions, diving deep into holistic personal development, and just building your mindset to have a happier, healthier life.
4
SPEAKER_06
We re going to be talking with some of my best friends.
4
SPEAKER_06
I didn t know we were going to go there.
4
SPEAKER_06
People that I admire.
4
SPEAKER_06
When we say listen to your body, really tune in to what s going on.
4
SPEAKER_06
Authors of books that have changed my life.
4
SPEAKER_06
Now you re talking about sympathy, which is different than empathy, right?
4
SPEAKER_06
And basically have conversations that can help us get through this crazy thing we call life.
4
SPEAKER_06
I already believe in myself.
4
SPEAKER_06
I already see myself.
4
SPEAKER_06
And so when people give me an opportunity, I m just like,
4
SPEAKER_06
Oh great, you see me too!
4
SPEAKER_06
We ll laugh together, we ll cry together, and find a way through all of our emotions.
4
SPEAKER_06
Never forget, it s okay to cry, as long as you make it a really good one.
4
SPEAKER_06
Listen to A Really Good Cry with Radhi Devlukia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_06
A new season of Bridgerton is here.
4
SPEAKER_06
And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the
5
SPEAKER_00
official podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m your host Gabrielle Collins, and this season we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
5
SPEAKER_00
Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is Betrothal written in the stars for the eligible bachelor?
5
SPEAKER_00
Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who holds Lady Whistledown s pen.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re discussing it all.
5
SPEAKER_00
I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, and more to offer an exclusive peek behind the scenes of each episode of the new season.
5
SPEAKER_00
Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
5
SPEAKER_00
Then, fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
5
SPEAKER_00
Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s trying to be a friend, but... But he hurt him.
5
SPEAKER_03
Had to hurt him to save his life.
5
SPEAKER_03
Right?
5
SPEAKER_01
He was a friend.
5
SPEAKER_03
Guilt is that kind of a friend.
5
SPEAKER_03
Okay?
5
SPEAKER_03
Guilt comes along.
5
SPEAKER_03
In early childhood, not because you did anything wrong, but because you sense that whatever you did displeased your parents and you can t afford to do that.
5
SPEAKER_03
So there needs to be an internal mechanism that keeps you close to your parents that says, for example, if you re authentic and you show your anger, you won t be accepted.
5
SPEAKER_03
there better be an internal mechanism to keep you on track.
5
SPEAKER_03
So guilt comes along as this friend that says, no, take your hand away from where you want to put it.
5
SPEAKER_03
You have to stifle your real desires.
5
SPEAKER_03
So guilt comes along to maintain a relationship, not because you did anything wrong, because a two year old, three year old, they can t do anything wrong by definition.
5
SPEAKER_03
They may do things that are not good and they need to be taught not to do it, but it s not wrong.
5
SPEAKER_03
There s no guilt there.
5
SPEAKER_03
There s no, I m going to do something evil here.
5
SPEAKER_03
You know, so guilt is totally.
5
SPEAKER_03
Not appropriate.
5
SPEAKER_03
And there s ways of teaching children without guilt.
5
SPEAKER_03
But guilt comes along to keep you in line.
5
SPEAKER_03
Now, is that your friend or your enemy?
5
SPEAKER_03
It s your friend, but it s hurting you.
5
SPEAKER_03
The problem with these early friends, and I call them, sometimes people don t like this word, but I say call them stupid friends.
5
SPEAKER_03
The stupidity comes in the fact they don t realize that you re an adult.
5
SPEAKER_03
You can make your own decisions now and look after yourself.
5
SPEAKER_03
You don t need to be controlled by their advice that was meant for a two-year-old.
5
SPEAKER_03
So that s where the, they re just not educable.
5
SPEAKER_03
So when I say to people these days, now most people who feel guilty when they act a little bit on their own behalf, I say to them, for God s sakes, have a party, celebrate.
5
SPEAKER_03
I ve done something for myself.
5
SPEAKER_03
Call your friends, you know, have a celebration that you were so quote-unquote selfish, like Sheryl Crow said.
5
SPEAKER_03
All these voices that always told her that she has to ignore herself and serve others.
5
SPEAKER_03
Now she doesn t listen to them anymore.
5
SPEAKER_03
That s the guilt.
5
SPEAKER_03
So, you know, recognize the guilt, say hello to it, thank it now.
5
SPEAKER_03
Is there such a thing as health remorse?
5
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_03
If I promise to meet you for coffee and I don t show up because I find something more pleasurable to do, I should feel some remorse.
5
SPEAKER_03
So remorse is about specific, that s healthy remorse.
5
SPEAKER_03
You know, if I break my word, if I hurt somebody, I should feel remorse.
5
SPEAKER_03
But that s not a long-term thing.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s not the chronic guilt that you re talking about.
5
SPEAKER_03
That s not something, what happened a long time ago, and now it limits me, or controls me.
5
SPEAKER_03
It s a healthy remorse for some specific thing.
5
SPEAKER_03
That s different from guilt.
5
SPEAKER_03
Guilt is this old friend that s long outlived their usefulness.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the challenge is that we still treat it like a today friend.
5
SPEAKER_03
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like we re so scared of breaking that dependence as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
We are thinking, well, I feel guilty that I m not around, so I ll stay around this individual, this group of people, whatever it may be.
5
SPEAKER_01
but there s a part of me that wants to depend on them as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t want to break free completely as well because I don t even know what that looks like.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like you re saying, like as an adult, you can take care of yourself, you can walk your own path, but you re actually scared of doing that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so you accept the pain of guilt because it allows for dependence.
5
SPEAKER_03
Well, that s a good point.
5
SPEAKER_03
And I often say to people, you re going to have pain one way or the other.
5
SPEAKER_03
Which pain would you like?
5
SPEAKER_03
Because sometimes in life there s no pain free options.
5
SPEAKER_03
You can have the pain of suppressing yourself for the sake of being accepted, or you can have the pain sometimes of being yourself and not being accepted.
5
SPEAKER_03
you can have pain one way or the other.
5
SPEAKER_03
And I have my own bias, that the pain of not being ourselves ultimately is by far the greater and more chronic pain, and that the pain, the short-term pain of being ourselves brings liberation and genuine independence, which means I can have genuinely independent relationships with other people who are willing to accept me as independent.
5
SPEAKER_03
But in the short term, which pain do you want?
5
SPEAKER_03
There s no pain-free option.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for sure.
5
SPEAKER_01
You reminded me of this beautiful idea that Thich Nhat Hanh shares, that there s familiar pain and unfamiliar pain.
5
SPEAKER_01
And these are our two choices.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the challenge is we re so scared of unfamiliar pain that we would rather choose familiar pain and go through the same pain because we know how it s going to feel.
5
SPEAKER_01
And we think, oh, at least I m aware, at least I am conscious of how bad it can get.
5
SPEAKER_01
But hearing you speak, being independent or being dependent both has pain.
5
SPEAKER_01
But the pain of dependence
5
SPEAKER_01
far outweighs the pain of independence.
5
SPEAKER_03
Well, just put a bit of a nuance in there.
5
SPEAKER_03
Ultimate, I mean, Thich Nhat Hanh also talk about interbeing, how we are all inter-are.
5
SPEAKER_03
So in a certain sense, we do depend on each other, and that s okay.
5
SPEAKER_03
The question is, do we depend on each other authentically or inauthentically?
5
SPEAKER_03
The fact that I m independent doesn t mean that I m not gonna reach out for help, or that I won t offer it, but it does mean
5
SPEAKER_03
that I will be honest with you, and I won t pretend to be somebody else that I m not, so that you ll accept me.
5
SPEAKER_03
You know, so, there s an interesting word difference between two phrases that sound very familiar.
5
SPEAKER_03
One is called individualism, and the other is called individuation.
5
SPEAKER_03
Now, rugged individualism is, I don t need anybody, and it s me against the world, and this is the North American capitalist ideal, you know?
5
SPEAKER_03
Well, human beings never would have evolved had we been those rugged individualists.
5
SPEAKER_03
The rugged individualists wouldn t last more than one generation.
5
SPEAKER_03
But individuated means that we can be ourselves, truly ourselves, in genuine relationship with others.
5
SPEAKER_03
Not rugged individualists.
5
SPEAKER_03
I mean, the most boring people are rugged individualists, because they all look the same, you know?
5
SPEAKER_03
So you can be individuated and be truly yourself and still belong and still vulnerably desire human contact.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I couldn t agree more.
5
SPEAKER_01
there s a lot of rhetoric around, we don t care what anyone else thinks, and it doesn t matter, and you just do your own thing, and it s almost, that s almost a bitter response as well, because we do have to care what people think.
5
SPEAKER_01
If we lived in a world where you didn t care what anyone thought, it wouldn t be that healthy, because we would do all sorts of obscene, horrific things.
5
SPEAKER_03
I treat it differently.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m intrigued, yeah, I m intrigued.
5
SPEAKER_03
I don t care what anybody thinks, but I do care what I do and how it affects other people.
5
SPEAKER_03
There s another spiritual teacher, Gunnar Rottana, he wrote a book called Mindfulness in Plain English, which I ve just been working through recently.
5
SPEAKER_03
And he s talking about a higher morality that comes from being truly yourself and in touch.
5
SPEAKER_03
And he says, well, you don t need rules anymore, because it s like St.
5
SPEAKER_03
Augustine said, love and do what you will.
5
SPEAKER_03
So if you actually love the world, you don t have to give yourself rules, because that love will dictate how you ll act towards other people.
5
SPEAKER_03
I can t worry about what other people think.
5
SPEAKER_03
Look, if I worried about what other people think, I would not have written any of my books.
6
SPEAKER_01
challenged the reigning orthodoxy in, say, medicine, you know, or whether it s around attention deficit or stress and disease or addictions.
6
SPEAKER_01
Every time I write a book, I m saying something that... I m not saying that I invented it, but...
6
SPEAKER_01
that I ve come to understand and fervently believe and want to communicate.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I can t worry about what other people think.
6
SPEAKER_01
Or when I make a political statement, I m responsible for what I say, how I say it, but not what other people think about it.
6
SPEAKER_01
But that doesn t mean that I can ignore other people s experience.
6
SPEAKER_01
So as long as my intention is purely to speak a truth,
6
SPEAKER_01
and I do so with integrity, I can t worry about what other people think.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can t.
6
SPEAKER_01
But that doesn t mean I m gonna go around just doing terrible things, because I don t care what you think.
6
SPEAKER_01
As long as I m convinced that what I do, if I ve done that kind of inventory, and I haven t always, but if I do an inventory about, well, what is my intention here?
6
SPEAKER_00
Is there a hierarchy of pain or hierarchy of trauma
6
SPEAKER_01
What do you mean by hierarchy?
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like people feel like, well, this trauma is worse than this trauma, and this trauma is better than this one.
6
SPEAKER_00
We often hear about that as a conversation.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is that accurate?
6
SPEAKER_01
So one could say so, because if you look at a child who s, say, sexually abused, as opposed to a child whose parents just can t honor and accept and validate their emotions, well, my God.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re talking about two different set of experiences so that there s certainly horrific things happen to some people to wound them and other people suffer wounds in a very different way.
6
SPEAKER_01
But the question is, is it useful to make that distinction?
6
SPEAKER_01
It s one thing to recognize it, but let s say, let s say you were my four year old.
6
SPEAKER_01
You come to me and you say, that I m afraid of so-and-so.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I say, snap out of it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Only cowards are afraid.
6
SPEAKER_01
Get out of here and take care of yourself.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then you went to your mom and said, I tried to talk to daddy, but you know,
6
SPEAKER_01
Would it be helpful for your mother to say, go snap out of it?
6
SPEAKER_01
Think of all the kids that are being sexually abused.
6
SPEAKER_01
Think of all the starving kids.
6
SPEAKER_01
Think all the kids that are being bombed.
6
SPEAKER_01
What are you complaining about?
6
SPEAKER_01
Would that be helpful?
6
SPEAKER_00
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that it s not a helpful game to play.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t compare people s traumas.
6
SPEAKER_01
Trauma simply means a wound and people are wounded in all kinds of ways.
6
SPEAKER_01
When I try to help people, the least helpful thing I can do is to tell them that somebody else s trauma is much worse than mine or much worse than yours.
6
SPEAKER_01
So, objectively, yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
Practically, it s not a helpful distinction.
6
SPEAKER_01
People are wounded and you have to tend to the wound, whatever it is.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, if you came to me with a cut on your arm,
6
SPEAKER_01
and you ask me to stitch it up, it wouldn t be helpful for me to tell you that, oh, what are you worried about?
6
SPEAKER_01
There s people with broken arms out there, or people with broken, you know.
6
SPEAKER_01
So no, it s not a helpful thing to engage in, even though there s truth in it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s really fascinating every time I speak to you, Gabor, is that there s such nuance, subtlety, and there s a quote that I want to share with you to get your thoughts on.
6
SPEAKER_00
I want to bring it up here.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
So this quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who famously wrote, the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
6
SPEAKER_00
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.
6
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that s brilliant.
6
SPEAKER_01
And what Fitzgerald is talking about there is what is called integrative intelligence.
6
SPEAKER_01
And integrative intelligence is when you can say, on the one hand, on the other hand, both things can be true.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I need to somehow come to some conclusion about them without rejecting the one truth or the other.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now, little kids are totally incapable of integrative intelligence.
6
SPEAKER_01
So a three-year-old will either say, I hate you, daddy, or I love you, daddy.
6
SPEAKER_01
But they can t say, I love you, daddy, but I m very angry with you, which is really what s going on.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s either love or hate.
6
SPEAKER_01
So integrative thinking is a capacity of intellectual and actually emotional maturation.
6
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people are completely incapable of it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s one or the other.
6
SPEAKER_01
You talked about the...
6
SPEAKER_01
the deadness of the heart and the moral apathy and all my life since I ve been conscious of the horrors including and beginning with the Holocaust that nearly killed me and
6
SPEAKER_01
killed my grandparents, nearly killed my parents and I. When I became conscious of that at age 11, what happened was that my parents had a book on a high shelf they didn t want me to read.
6
SPEAKER_01
And when I was 11 I climbed up on a chair and it was a book called The Scourge of the Swastika.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it was the first book about the Nazi horrors.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I saw photographs and I read the story.
6
SPEAKER_01
And for years afterwards, literally every day my head would be dizzy.
6
SPEAKER_01
I d spin.
6
SPEAKER_01
I d say, how is this possible?
6
SPEAKER_01
How is the heart not broken every day?
6
SPEAKER_01
I m asking you now.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I m wrestling with this question.
6
SPEAKER_01
I suppose I have an intellectual answer.
6
SPEAKER_01
Or more to the point, maybe along the lines of what Fitzgerald says.
6
SPEAKER_01
How can our heart be broken and not be broken at the same time?
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I think both are necessary.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I find everything all across the world that occurs, I feel like people s hearts are broken
6
SPEAKER_00
but they break and ache for different things.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I think that that s why the words of Fitzgerald resonate so strongly with me.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because just to repeat those last two lines, one should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, what you re saying, it s how I was trained in the monastery as well.
6
SPEAKER_00
The goal was always, how can you be a helper?
6
SPEAKER_00
How can you be a server?
6
SPEAKER_00
How can you be useful?
6
SPEAKER_00
How can you help heal?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, that s what you look for in moments of tragedy, whatever they may be.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I just think that not much,
6
SPEAKER_00
unites us on the heart level as equals across the world.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t think there s many things that we look to globally as the human race, as we were once referred to or called to, that creates a sense of connectivity.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there s genuine fear that makes us feel, well, if my heart breaks for this, then what will happen to my heart?
6
SPEAKER_01
But the grief might be too much to bear.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, or not that, I mean more so that, well, if my heart breaks for this event, some part of it is, yes, there s too much to think about, for sure, it s overwhelming, and then the other side is, well, if it breaks for this, then is it allowed to break for that as well?
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, this idea of holding to opposing ideas seems to be such a need in the world, like just generally, like even the belief of,
6
SPEAKER_00
I have to work on my health, but I m happy I m alive.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, these are two opposing ideas.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, we re not looking at it from I m unhealthy or I m healthy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, you know what s interesting there is that when I was working in palliative care, sometimes people would say to me, and this is amazing, I don t recommend it, but they d say, they d be dying.
6
SPEAKER_01
They d actually be dying.
6
SPEAKER_01
They d have a couple of weeks left.
6
SPEAKER_01
They d say, Doc, I don t want to explain this exactly, but this disease is the best thing that ever happened to me.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t wish it on anybody, but what were they talking about?
6
SPEAKER_01
Now there s a guy, a quote in The Myth of Normal, who wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor.
6
SPEAKER_01
Blessed with a Brain Tumor.
6
SPEAKER_01
Young Australian guy, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor, did have surgery, did accept treatment.
6
SPEAKER_01
He also had a spiritual transformation.
6
SPEAKER_01
has lived longer than his prognosis.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what his current status is, but he wrote a book called Blessed with a Brain Tumor, and by the way, he developed a brain tumor at exactly the same spot that he used to point at with an imaginary gun to shoot himself in the head when he was thinking of suicide.
6
SPEAKER_01
I said, what do you mean, blessed with a brain tumor?
6
SPEAKER_01
And he said, well, knowing that I m going to die,
7
SPEAKER_00
or that I might, means that every moment is precious.
7
SPEAKER_00
He says, that means that when I m talking to you or anybody else, I m fully aware that this may be the last conversation we ll ever have.
7
SPEAKER_00
That means that every moment is absolutely precious.
7
SPEAKER_00
I ve never been so engaged with life.
7
SPEAKER_00
And that s what people meant.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so that even the disease that
7
SPEAKER_00
We re always going to take their lives, they d say.
7
SPEAKER_00
And why?
7
SPEAKER_00
Because the disease taught them to be authentic for the first time in their lives.
7
SPEAKER_00
And they found out that was much more precious than anything else.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now, that s not a bargain I d recommend to anybody.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m just telling you that I ve witnessed it.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s quite astonishing.
7
SPEAKER_00
when people do find authenticity, to go back to our previous theme, they value that over anything else, over even longevity.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now most of us would probably run the other way.
7
SPEAKER_00
Again, I m not recommending it.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m just saying, I ve seen it.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it s always those opposing ideas, that feeling of, I m good and I want to be better.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m a good husband or a good dad or a good mom or I m a good whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
At the same time, I m not good enough.
7
SPEAKER_01
Whatever it may be, not that, that s negative, but the idea of, I know I can do more and I want to do more.
7
SPEAKER_01
So there s such a need for this dichotomy almost to be held.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, is there?
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, the ability to hold those two opposing ideas is needed, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because I don t want to live in a world where I think, I m perfectly healthy, everything s amazing, because then I may miss certain challenges.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I also don t want to live in the other world of, oh my God, everything s falling apart and I m dying every second of the day.
7
SPEAKER_00
But what if we just looked at it in a unitary way?
7
SPEAKER_00
Then it s a matter of growth.
7
SPEAKER_00
Then I m not as fully grown as I might be.
7
SPEAKER_00
But there s nothing wrong.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, I ll be 80.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, and we talk about... You said 80?
7
SPEAKER_01
80, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
I know it s a big number.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re doing great.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, due to the numbers, I was born in 44.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I always forget.
7
SPEAKER_00
I forget when I m with you.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
And there s this expression, I ve been thinking about this recently, this expression growing older.
7
SPEAKER_00
So we could just say being older or becoming older or getting older, but we say growing older.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now that s an interesting phrase, isn t it?
7
SPEAKER_00
Because actually, as we get older, we shrink.
7
SPEAKER_00
So what are we talking about growing older?
7
SPEAKER_00
Will.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because growth, being an emotional and spiritual process, that continues, that can continue forever.
7
SPEAKER_00
So for me it s not a matter of I m good but I can be better, it s a question of can I continue to grow?
7
SPEAKER_00
Not that there s anything wrong now, but can I continue to grow?
7
SPEAKER_00
Which is really the essence of life.
7
SPEAKER_00
As long as there s life, there s growth, isn t there?
7
SPEAKER_00
And the growth may be at some point purely physical,
7
SPEAKER_00
At some point.
7
SPEAKER_00
physically there might even be contraction, but spiritually and emotionally, there can always be growth.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it s rather than a dichotomy, it s more like a unitary process.
7
SPEAKER_01
I do appreciate that, I do feel that.
7
SPEAKER_01
You just sparked something for me, you were giving this example, the story you just told about how the gentleman, when he thought he was going to commit suicide, he would hold his, almost like a gun to his head, and that s the place he developed the trauma.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the tumor.
7
SPEAKER_01
How does trauma intercept the body in that way?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like this, that feels such like a physical example of that.
7
SPEAKER_00
I can give you other examples.
7
SPEAKER_00
When I was working in palliative care,
7
SPEAKER_00
I was looking after a young woman.
7
SPEAKER_00
She was 38 with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is a disease in the nervous system.
7
SPEAKER_00
You basically get paralyzed.
7
SPEAKER_00
The muscles or the nerves that activate your muscles just die.
7
SPEAKER_00
They harden.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s what sclerosis means.
7
SPEAKER_00
So they become rigid and they become unable to move.
7
SPEAKER_00
This woman, she was a dancer, a beautiful woman.
7
SPEAKER_00
We talked a lot in her last weeks.
7
SPEAKER_00
She told me that all her life she used to have this dream of being buried alive, boxed in, unable to breathe, unable to move.
7
SPEAKER_00
She was a dancer and she began to notice that on the dance floor she couldn t execute the movements anymore.
7
SPEAKER_00
Something was wrong.
7
SPEAKER_00
So she was diagnosed with ALS.
7
SPEAKER_00
And she went to the office of the ALS Society and on the wall there was a poster that said, having ALS is like being buried alive.
7
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
7
SPEAKER_00
Cellist Jacqueline Dupree was a great British classical cellist.
7
SPEAKER_00
Died in her 40s.
7
SPEAKER_00
She was a big international rocket star in the classical music world.
7
SPEAKER_00
She died of MS, multiple sclerosis.
7
SPEAKER_00
She couldn t move anymore.
7
SPEAKER_00
By the time she was in her late 20s, she couldn t play the cello anymore.
7
SPEAKER_00
When she was eight years old, she said to her sister Hillary, don t tell her mommy this, but when I grow up, I won t be able to move or walk.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now, all of these people, these three people, the guy with the brain tumor, the woman with the ALS, Jacqueline Dupre, they d been deeply traumatized in childhood.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to go into how, but they had been.
7
SPEAKER_00
That woman s dream that she couldn t move or walk was literally an expression of emotional experience in a family of origin.
7
SPEAKER_00
In her deathbed, nobody came to see her from her family.
7
SPEAKER_00
She was all alone, like she had been all her life.
7
SPEAKER_00
She couldn t be herself.
7
SPEAKER_00
She couldn t...
7
SPEAKER_00
speak or move or get enough air to be herself.
7
SPEAKER_00
So that dream was metaphoric to start with, then became a physical reality.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now, how does the metaphor or how does the emotion, how does the trauma translate into physical reality?
7
SPEAKER_00
That has to do with the scientific little secret.
7
SPEAKER_00
Don t tell any doctors this because
7
SPEAKER_00
They might not know what to do with it, but, well, some of them don t.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re not taught in medical school.
7
SPEAKER_00
Mind and body are inseparable.
7
SPEAKER_00
Our emotions, our nervous system, our emotional system in our brains and our bodies, our nervous system, our hormonal apparatus, and our immune system are actually one system.
7
SPEAKER_00
all serving survival and growth and reproduction.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so they re not separate.
7
SPEAKER_00
Even to say that they re connected is a bit false because it s one.
7
SPEAKER_00
No, which means that what happens emotionally can have a significant impact on the nervous system, on the gut, on the heart, on the immune system, and on hormones, just obviously.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, without going into the mechanisms of how trauma affects, but trauma can affect genetic functioning, how chromosomes function, trauma can affect our immune system.
7
SPEAKER_00
Actually, for example, a study that I called women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have double the risk of ovarian cancer, according to a Harvard study a few years ago.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, that means that the severe emotions endured by the woman with PTSD
7
SPEAKER_00
can declare themselves in a form of malignancy because they affect the immune system.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the milder the symptoms, the less the risk of ovarian cancer.
7
SPEAKER_00
So mind and body being one unit, obviously our emotional lives and emotional traumas and wounds can show up in our physiology, which is why autoimmune diseases are much more common amongst racialized women, both in Canada and the U.S., because they re heard a lot more as women and as racialized people.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s just all one thing.
7
SPEAKER_00
And again, is that a new finding or is that something, or is that an ancient wisdom?
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s both.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s both modern science, not taught in medical schools for reasons that are interesting, but rather distressing.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s ancient wisdom as well.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s all one.
7
SPEAKER_01
And with that approach, I mean, we can t minimize the number of steps and the uniqueness of those, but the hope is that people can work medically and mentally to be able to release that trauma.
7
SPEAKER_00
I have photographs on my cell phone, on my computer, of a woman that I met five years ago.
7
SPEAKER_00
I gave a talk in London on this subject of mind-body unity and how stress and trauma can lead to autoimmune disease.
7
SPEAKER_00
And autoimmune disease is where the immune system attacks the body itself.
7
SPEAKER_00
and this woman sent me photographs a year ago.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now when I met her, she d been diagnosed with autoimmune disease called systemic lupus, which has got a typical presentation of what s called a butterfly rash.
7
SPEAKER_00
So her face is red, like here, like the wings of a butterfly, with the body of the butterfly as a red
8
SPEAKER_04
It s called the butterfly rash.
8
SPEAKER_04
It s typical of that disease.
8
SPEAKER_04
And she sent me a picture of her fingers when she was diagnosed.
8
SPEAKER_04
They were like yellow as wax because the blood supply had been constricted.
8
SPEAKER_04
She was told that you got this disease.
8
SPEAKER_04
We don t know what causes it.
8
SPEAKER_04
Can t cure it.
8
SPEAKER_04
Probably it ll get worse and you ll be on medication for the rest of your life.
8
SPEAKER_04
I could send these photographs, you could actually show them because she s given me permission.
8
SPEAKER_04
She sent me pictures a year ago.
8
SPEAKER_04
Face totally beautiful, pink as anything, no rash.
8
SPEAKER_04
Fingers are as pink as mine and yours.
8
SPEAKER_04
No medication.
8
SPEAKER_04
No treatment.
8
SPEAKER_04
She just dealt with the emotional part of it.
8
SPEAKER_04
All her life she had suppressed herself.
8
SPEAKER_04
Just along the lines I ve been talking about.
8
SPEAKER_04
She dealt with her trauma.
8
SPEAKER_04
She s become fully authentically and vigorously herself.
8
SPEAKER_04
The disease is gone.
8
SPEAKER_04
Doctors would say, some doctors say, well that s just an anecdote.
8
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, it s an anecdote.
8
SPEAKER_04
But it has to be a true anecdote.
8
SPEAKER_04
I pay attention to anecdotes.
8
SPEAKER_04
Not only that, this has been studied.
8
SPEAKER_04
systematically by others.
8
SPEAKER_04
And there are people who, once they deal with the emotional side of things and take charge of their lives, they recover from diseases that are supposed to have been hopeless.
8
SPEAKER_04
And if you just look at the example of Stephen Hawking, the great physicist, who was diagnosed with ALS at age 20, he lived another 55 years.
8
SPEAKER_04
Now, the disease progressed, but he outlived his prognosis by a good half a century.
8
SPEAKER_04
Folks, I hate to tell you this, we doctors don t know everything.
8
SPEAKER_04
And especially, we don t fully understand, I should say, as a profession, the wondrous workings of mind and body, and the spirit, and how they all interact.
8
SPEAKER_04
So when you look at the indigenous healing practices, like the North American natives, they ve got this medicine wheel, the four quadrants, which is, you know, the physical and the mental, which means also the emotional,
8
SPEAKER_04
and the social and the spiritual.
8
SPEAKER_04
And those four quadrants have to be in balance for us to be healthy.
8
SPEAKER_04
No, they didn t have the science we do.
8
SPEAKER_04
And they didn t have the amazing achievements of Western medicine, which are truly miraculous.
8
SPEAKER_04
But they did have a wisdom that, if only we adopted and combined it with the incredible achievements of Western medicine, boy, what a health system we could possibly have.
8
SPEAKER_02
And that s definitely what you re helping try and build for the future.
8
SPEAKER_02
And all of our platforms are dedicated to that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Hopefully we can get to a place for that integrative, holistic viewpoint.
8
SPEAKER_04
And there are more and more physicians practicing that way.
8
SPEAKER_04
You know, there are people, functional medicine and integrated medicine.
8
SPEAKER_04
not as holistic as I d like them to be, but far more holistic than mainstream medicine.
8
SPEAKER_04
And these are medically trained physicians like I was, so it s not like some fly-by-night alternative weirdo cult.
8
SPEAKER_04
I mean, these are just doctors who, like myself, at some point came to terms with the limitations of their education and needed to infuse some more ancient wisdom into how they practice the arts of healing.
8
SPEAKER_02
I d love to end with, I d love to hear from you what your wish, your prayer, your hope, however you d like to word it for humanity is right now, today, at this time, if there s some words that come from your heart.
8
SPEAKER_04
If we could just wake up to our possibilities.
8
SPEAKER_04
You know the famous story of the Buddha where he s walking along the road and somebody sees him with this radiant face and confident gait and he says, who are you, a god?
8
SPEAKER_04
And the Buddha says, no, I m awake.
8
SPEAKER_04
And if only we could be awake to our possibilities, like in every conflict,
8
SPEAKER_04
on a deepest human level, it s so unnecessary.
8
SPEAKER_04
We could actually be a human race together.
8
SPEAKER_04
We could be that.
8
SPEAKER_04
We don t have to hurt ourselves.
8
SPEAKER_04
We don t have to hurt others.
8
SPEAKER_04
We don t have to take from them, demand from them.
8
SPEAKER_04
We could be.
8
SPEAKER_04
This is actually possible for all of us, and it s possible for all of us as individuals, and for all of us as creatures.
8
SPEAKER_04
Let s just wake up to our possibilities.
8
SPEAKER_02
Thank you so much again for your time, your energy, your presence, and everyone who s been listening or watching at home.
8
SPEAKER_02
If you don t already, please do grab a copy of the book, Myth of Normal, because our first and second conversations were very different, and I guide you towards the book for the deeper resources, the step-by-step.
8
SPEAKER_02
What I try and avoid doing in these interviews is minimizing the amount of work it takes or oversimplifying what Gabor s beautiful work does in his deep books because I believe he and everyone else would want you to take those steps.
8
SPEAKER_02
So I wish you all the best in your journey of trauma, illness and healing.
8
SPEAKER_02
And Gabor, I thank you for your work and your contributions today as well and forever to humanity.
8
SPEAKER_04
Well, it s always so peaceful to be with you and believe me these days, I enjoy an oasis of peace.
8
SPEAKER_04
So thank you so much.
8
SPEAKER_03
Thank you so much.
8
SPEAKER_03
Thank you.
8
SPEAKER_03
If you love this episode, you ll love my interview with Dr. Gabor Maté on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
8
SPEAKER_04
Everything in nature grows only where it s vulnerable.
8
SPEAKER_04
So a tree doesn t grow where it s hard and thick, does it?
8
SPEAKER_04
It grows where it s soft and green and vulnerable.
8
SPEAKER_04
You don t put those inside of you, do you?
8
SPEAKER_01
This is a show about women.
8
SPEAKER_04
I mean, you do?
8
SPEAKER_01
Finally, a show about women that isn t just a thinly-veiled aspirational nightmare.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s not hosted, not narrated.
8
SPEAKER_01
We re just dropping into a woman s world.
8
SPEAKER_01
I found out when my dad was gay when I was 10.
8
SPEAKER_01
We were in a convertible on the 405 freeway, listening to the B-52s.
8
SPEAKER_01
Looking back, I should have said, this is gay.
8
SPEAKER_01
This is already all gay.
8
SPEAKER_01
Listen to Finally A Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
8
SPEAKER_00
Guess what, Will?
8
SPEAKER_00
What s that, Mango?
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we ve done over 250 episodes, we don t really talk about murders or cults.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
8
SPEAKER_00
We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
8
SPEAKER_00
And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
8
SPEAKER_00
So what you re saying is everyone should be listening.
8
SPEAKER_00
Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
8
SPEAKER_05
A new season of Bridgerton is here.
8
SPEAKER_05
And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
8
SPEAKER_05
I m your host, Gabby Collins.
8
SPEAKER_05
And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
8
SPEAKER_05
Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
8
SPEAKER_05
Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
8
SPEAKER_05
Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.