Dr. Gabor Maté on The Myth of Normal; The Roots Of Our Kids’ Struggles, Pressure On Today’s Parents, The Need For Community, And A Path To Healing

Brenda: Gabor Maté, thank you for being with me today. This is such a treat, to have you to spend some time, as I sit with you, I represent very scared parents, um, very confused parents. 

And so I appreciate you taking the time in this busy week and here to talk about your new book, the myth of normal. 

Gabor: And I have to say that I’m also. Someone who’s had the experience of having children and being very concerned about them and their struggles, their challenges, their habits. And so, um, not only here as a physician and somebody with some degree of expertise, but also somebody who’s being through the same challenges. 

Brenda: It is so terrifying. I think it’s, um, it’s something that no matter who you are, it just levels the playing field because. We, see our kids struggling, we see them hurting. And what, what I’m so excited to, to talk about with you is, um, for a lot of us and I’m, and I’m one who my oldest son, um, struggled, we don’t know what happened. 

And I remember, you know, before reading your books and, and really learning, I was so mystified like this child had. Wonderful. Perfect childhood. Right? That’s kind of our lens as a parent. How could this have happened? And so I think that’s true of a lot of parents who are just, you know, beating their head against a wall saying what is going on and with [00:03:00] fentanyl in the market, now we just, it takes everything to a new heightened level. 

Where we just want to fix this immediately. So, um, looking forward to some of the dialogue on that and in reading the book, I, I realize there’s, you know, you have chapters on addiction, but there’s just so much more that goes into it. , um, which I found really helpful to sort of round out the story.
Gabor: Well, let me begin by saying that. look at it from the lens of how much they love their kids, which is infinite. 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: Then they wonder what the heck could have gone wrong. But there’s a difference between what the parent feels and what the child experiences. 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: and what the parent feels the love and the devotion and the commitment that the parent experiences is not necessarily what the child receives, because there’s so many factors that can interfere with that loving intention. 

Getting through to the child 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: among the things that can get in the way or the parents on unresolved traumas, the [00:04:30] stresses in the parents’ lives, the stresses in the parent of relationship, the social conditions. The degree to which the parents are able to maintain or lose the primary intimate relationship with the child, whether the child gets caught up in their peer group or remains as the parent being the primary attachment figure. 

And we’ll talk about that later, if you like. And so for myself, um, I was in my forties when I had to realize that my kids were struggling. My you kids were struggling. And I had to look for the reasons why, 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: and it wasn’t to do with how much I loved them. Um, at any time I would’ve thrown myself into a fire for the sake of my kids, but the problem was they didn’t need, they didn’t need me to throw myself into a fire. 

They needed me to be, be there as a non-stressed the available, but to parent and that I couldn’t do cause I was a workaholic physician. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: But why? So if I may say, why was I workaholic? Cause there’s an infant. There’s a Jewish infant in Hungary in 19 44, 45 through the stresses and traumas of my mother and the tragedy that was happening around us. 

I got the message that I wasn’t wanted, which was never the intention of my mother, but. That’s the download that I received. Now, if you’re not wanted all your life, you’re gonna try and [00:06:00] prove yourself to yourself, how important you are and how, how much you need people to want you. Well, one way to do that is to go to medical school. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: So I go to medical school. Now everybody wants me all the time when they’re being born, when they’re dying and in between. And I’m addicted to that external. Valuation. Cause I don’t have the internal valuation now when I’m always working and when I’m kind of restless and alienated, when I’m at home, what message do my kids get? They get the message that they don’t want, that wasn’t ever the case, but that’s the message they receive. Or when my wife and I are struggling in our relationship and the tension is thick and palpable in the house as my son, Daniel, who’s my co-writer in his. Says in this book that when he was a child, the floor was never the floor. 

He used to have this nightmare of the floor disappearing. He never knew when the tension between Ray and I, my wife and I to whom the book is dedicated, would get to the point of, of, of emotional stress. And for that sensitive child. That’s like the floor disappearing. This is contrary, contrary to intentions, contrary to our awareness, and was only when we began to realize how much trauma we had carried into that relationship and unwittingly passed on our kids, that we began to understand our kids’ behavior. 

Brenda: Yeah. I’m so curious how you started to [00:07:30] figure that out. So you, you know, were workaholic, you were, um, I, in the, um, realm of hungry ghost, you talk about your CD purchasing and. um, I just wonder how did you, how did that realization start to come to you? Were you doing your own work in therapy or, um, what, what turned the light bulb on for you? 

Gabor: Well, I think one of the biggest impetus we all have to examine our lives is the struggles of our children. So that alone was enough to set me on a quest to find out what’s going on. And we can look at children as sort of being independent and. Entities, that stuff just happens to them, uh, for who knows what reason, or we can actually understand that the human brain and the human child develops an interaction with the environment. 

So if we understand, wanna understand why child is anxious or is diagnosed with ADHD or has got relational challenges or is a bully, or is being, being bullied. We really have to look at the, the environment and as Robert Sapolsky. Great neuroscientist at Stanford says we are affected by the environment as soon as we are in an environment. 

And that means already in the womb. 

Brenda: Hmm. Yeah. 

Gabor: So, so given I was in a stress marriage, my wife had significant [00:09:00] emotional stresses when she was pregnant, that already affects the child’s brain and the child development. And in this society, a lot of women who are pregnant or highly stressed. So part of the impetus for me was. 

Dealing with the, having to confront the unhappiness and struggles with my own children. But then of course, that was my own stuff. That was in my forties. I was a successful doctor. I was a newspaper columnist. I was respected middle class and I was unhappy. I was depressed and I was in a marriage that had significant problems, despite the fact that we loved each other immense. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: I had to start looking at my own life for what happened to me here. And how did what happen to me get unwittingly transmitted to my children and adding to that was of course, as a physician, I began to notice these patterns in my patients, the, the Western medicine in whichever strain separates the individual from the environment separates the mindfulness body, 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: but in scientific current, In actual scientific terms, you can’t separate the mind from the body and you can separate the individual from the environment. 

And I began to, so that in families where there were challenges with the kids, there were also challenges with the parents multi-generational challenges that didn’t begin with any one parent. And it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just kind of automatically transmitted from one generation to the next. So [00:10:30] as a physician, I began to sell these patterns. When I working with addicted clients. Highly addicted clients, street dwelling, HIV written, hepatitis C challenged heroin, cocaine addicts. I couldn’t help, but notice the trauma in their lives. So both my personal history and challenges, my children’s problems and my medical work really drove me to look at the whole picture of how do people develop, what are their needs, what happens to undermine those needs and what happens when those needs are under. 

Brenda: Yeah. So it just, there is just that cycle, that continuing cycle, because when we don’t realize what we are doing as. Transmitting that to our kids, it’s just gonna keep rolling downhill basically, um, is, is what I saw and, and really the themes that I pulled out of the book, um, were really that just the unmet needs of kids, that the. 

Our society today is doing such a horrible job of, you know, supporting parents. Um, and, and just all of those factors. So I’d love to talk about those a little bit. And then I think for me as the mom of, of a child who struggled and the impact of that, the link between chronic stress and, and illness. just got my heart going. 

cuz I, I started to recognize in myself and all of the parents that I work with, the impact when we are seeing our [00:12:00] kids struggle and be in very dangerous situations and put themselves at risk, that alone is just eating away at our bodies. So there’s just so many factors there. Um, And there was a, a quote about alien bodies and minds can be thought of as living alarms, which I just thought was so true. 

Um, and you saw that as a physician when you’re seeing from sort of a, um, air traffic control view, all of these, I’m sure you’re seeing these trends happen. And, um, it. It’s so obvious, like now that I’ve read, you know, other books of yours, but this one too, it just seems so obvious, but it’s not obvious when you’re in it. 

Um, when you’re watching your child. 

Gabor: and there’s one factor I need to mention here, which is the child’s own temperament. 

Brenda: Yeah, 

Gabor: These kids who struggle, tend to be very sensitive kids. They’re born very sensitive. That’s their nature. They’re genetically sensitive, sensitive means from a Latin word, sincere to feel. They just feel more 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: and you get the same child with the same genes and you’ve exposed them to an environment. 

Settled and grounded and nurturing. They just got the wonderful, creative, spontaneous, intuitive, um, artistic people, leaders, and, and, and helpers. But you take that same sensitivity [00:13:30] gene or genes, a child end up with that. And you put ’em in an environment with their stress because they feel more, they suffer more. 

Brenda: Yeah, 

Gabor: Now addiction. In my view are not inherited diseases. In fact, they’re not diseases at all, either inherited or otherwise what they are is an attempt to soothe pain. 

Brenda: right? 

Gabor: So, you know, the more sensitive you are, the less has to happen for you to feel pain. 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: And the analogy that I use is let’s say I tap myself on the shoulder. 

Well, there’s no pain whatsoever. I’m wearing your jacket, a shirt. And I got my skin intact. Well, what if I had a burn? And my nerve endings were close to the surface. In other words, I was thin skinned and now I tap myself on the shoulder with the same force. Wow. So the more sensitive you are, the more pain you’re gonna have, the more pain you have, the more you’re gonna need to escape from that pain. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: The numbers are ways we can escape from pain. One is by dissociating tuning. These kids tend to, a lot of them tend to be diagnosed with ADHD, not because they’ve inherited the disease, but because they’re so sensitive. And when there was stress around them, they tuned out as a way of protecting themselves that gets programmed into the brain. 

These kids also have more of a need to escape into, um, behaviors that, uh, Soo the pain such as internet and gaming and, and substances and so on. And so. [00:15:00] There are two things going on. We have to look at the stresses in the environment and we have to look at the sensitive of the child. And sometimes parents think we all did did the right things, but they don’t get as how sensitive their child was. 

And even the little things that didn’t happen that should’ve happened. Would’ve would’ve affected them, you know, 

Brenda: Yeah. Yeah, there was a. 

Gabor: Sorry. Go. 

Brenda: oh, no, I was gonna say there was a beautiful description in the book that, um, I can’t remember who it was. Describe them as orchids. And I just thought that was so perfect, cuz they are so beautiful and, and delicate, but um, that’s not cool, especially if you’re a 14 year old boy or, you know, I there’s just it’s it’s not, um, something that our society. 

Embraces and welcomes, especially in young people, I think maybe as they get older. So I just thought that orchid description, just to me, it just like, oh, that’s so perfect. 

Gabor: That was after Tom Bo, who’s a pediatrician and, uh, used to be at Vancouver where I live, but now he is in California and he is got a book called old kids in dandelions. I think it’s where I was quite quoting him from, but that same sensitivity dynamic applies so many kids. And, um, It’s challenging to know what to do with these sensitive kids. 

Cause they react so much to whatever happens 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: saying what do I do? But you get this kid that’s overreacting, it’s Bealing to parents who are not [00:16:30] trained to understand that or, or who themselves are threatened by the child’s reactions or, or disturbed by it. You know, and who have to realize is that the child is certain needs. If those needs are met, that’s gonna be okay. But in our society, the essential needs of children are just not met 

Brenda: Yeah, 

Gabor: more sensitive. The child they’re greater the impact. 

Brenda: absolutely. I wonder if I could, um, as kind of a jumping off point, introduce you to a fictional, but not fictional family. Um, and because this is sort of the summation of the people I work with of our personal experience. Cause I’d love to see it through your lens. Um, so we have a pretty average north American family, mom, dad, both work full time, you know, high stress jobs, commuting kids, three kids. 

16 year old has recently started smoking pot every day, taking pills, um, refusing school, uh, angry defiant was diagnosed. A D D in third grade has O D D shoplifting. Won’t engage, you know, just hands off. Um, always been the sensitive kid. Always been a little bit more different, a little bit more difficult. 

Um, other kids are fine. Other kids are totally fine. Uh, parents can’t think of any big trauma. You know, there was [00:18:00] no that they know of. There was nothing, nothing big. Um, and recently mom’s quit her job cuz the stress has just gotten too much. She’s too scared. She thinks her son’s gonna die of a fentanyl overdose and dad’s kind of checked out like you take, you know, mom, you figure this out. 

This is. Kind of the poster child, family that I see in the work that I do. So I would love to get your thoughts on, on this family. 

Gabor: Sure. it’s a very common scenario that you just depicted here. First of all, you told you gave me a lot of information here. So first of all, let’s begin with one observation. No two children grew up in the same family. This kid did not have the same mother and father as his siblings. Because he’s got a different temperament, so he experiences them differently. 

Again, we’re not talking about what the parents provide. We’re talking about what the child receives 

Brenda: big difference. 

Gabor: and the sensitive child receives things differently. That’s the first point. Second thing he sounds like he’s the oldest one. He’s the, he’s the eldest 

Brenda: He’s the oldest. Yes. 

Gabor: The first child doesn’t receive the same parenting as the other children. 

We’re not talking about whether the parents favor or loved one child more than the other. We assume that they don’t. But nevertheless, the first child comes along at a different stage of their parents’ lives. I don’t wanna know how stressed was that mom during the pregnancy and how [00:19:30] stressed was she was in the early years, because I can tell you the ADHD diagnosis tells me that she was stressed because that child’s tuning out is a, is a defensive response. 

It’s a way to protect yourself against. And children is a wonderful spiritual teacher psychologist who said that, um, when the mother’s in pain, the child is in pain, you know, because the baby absorbs their stress to the mother and then they tune out. The brain develops an interaction with the environment. 

As I said earlier, the brain circuits of attention and impulse regulation develop an interaction with the environment and the, this is not, this is just brain science and the essential condition for the healthy development of the brain is, is a consistently available emotion available. Non-stressed non-depressed attuned parenting caregiver. Now if the parents are both have high stress jobs, that already means that they’re bringing their stresses home, whether they want to or not, that’s gonna affect the child. That’s the first point. So I don’t wanna know what were the mother’s emotional states during pregnancy and in the early years of the child. 

And how long was she at home 

Brenda: Right. Not long yeah, not long in our, in our culture, right? 

Gabor: Way off and not long. And then 25% of [00:21:00] American women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth. That’s a massive abandonment of the children. The children can only experience that as abandonment. That’s what they experience it. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: Now that’s the first one. The second thing is, I don’t know what was the parents’ relationship? How much tension and stress was there between them as there was with, you know, my wife and I, as I said earlier, that has an effect on my child then I’d wanna know. And what did, at some point in, in, in, in the book that I co wrote got hold onto your kids. We point out that children have this need to attach to somebody to belong to somebody that’s a biological, psychological inescapable need. 

Cause without that belonging, without that attachment relationship, the child can’t live, but children’s attachments are not nature dictated to belong to the parents because the parents may die. Now, as we evolve as human being. We lived in small band hunter gatherer groups where kids had lots of parents. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: There was the logical parents were the primary parents, but the children had these parental relationship with lots of adults and elders. We’ve lost that 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: when the child. Is away from the parents the whole day, as, as they often are in their society, their brains have this void of attachment. [00:22:30] Now the child’s brain, the amateur brain can’t handle an attachment void. 

They can’t handle it when there’s no way there to attach to. So they’re gonna do what a duckling does when the mother duck is not there. When the mother, when the duckling is born and there’s the mother duck, is there. The duckling will imprint on the mother duck and follow her around. And learn from her and obey her and OB copy her and emulate her and so on. But if the mother duck is absent or goes missing, the duckling will imprint on a moving toy or dog or a horse. Our children are the same when we don’t see our kids the whole day, our kids will imprint on Hoovers. Whoever’s around, who’s around for kids. Most of the day in this culture, other children. So our kids become peer attached and once they become peer attached, their brain has to make a decision. 

Do I attach primarily to parents or to the peers, like given that they spend much more time with their peers in kindergartens and day schools and schools. For a lot of children, the peer attachment has become the primary attachment, which competes with, and even undermines the parental attachment. No other parents lose their power to parent cause the power of parenting doesn’t come from parent intimidating their kids or punishing their kids as many parenting expertss would have you do. 

In fact, can talk about the toxic advice of the parenting industry. The parent’s power comes from the child wanting to attach to the. [00:24:00] When the kid’s attached to the peer group, they start resisting the parent and then we diagnose them with this stupid thing called oppositional define disorder. I’m telling you, Brenda, there’s no such thing as oppositional define disorder. 

Is it okay if I go on for a while? 

Brenda: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s why I figured I’d introduce you as family, and then I could shut up and you to. 

Gabor: okay, well, let’s take this diagnosis of OD. Now, if I had a, if my foot was broken, would it matter that I’m talking to you to the fracture in my foot? Would it be just as broken if I was here by myself, if I was talking to you my foot. Yeah. What if I had a flu, would I have less flu? Cause I was talking to you. 

Brenda: No, 

Gabor: Okay. But let’s take this oppositional defend disorder. Could I oppos somebody if I wasn’t in relationship with. 

Brenda: no. 

Gabor: Yeah. I mean, if anybody doesn’t understand what I’m talking about, I invite you to lock yourself in a room by yourself. Make sure there’s nobody there. Look under the bed behind the curtains, make sure you’re alone and oppose somebody in opposition by definition involves the relationship. 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: Well, if opposition Def depends on a relationship, why are we diagnosing the child? To the disorder. Why are we looking at the relationship with the adult world and what these kids who are diagnosed with O D D what’s actually happened to them? They lost their primary [00:25:30] relationship with the adults. Now they’re no looking no longer looking to the adults for guidance and leadership. 

And when somebody’s pushing on you to whom you’re not looking for guidance and leadership, you’re gonna push. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just raise your left hand, right? The right hand and raise your left hand push with the one hand against the other. The other one will immediately push back. 

That’s automatic resistance that we call counter will opposing the will of the other is very natural. It’s not a disorder. The problem with these O D D kids is that they lost a primary relationship with the adults, and then they push back and. They don’t have a disorder. They have a normal response to their relationships. 

The a D D is a normal re response to stress. When kids are stressed, when their brain is developing, they tune out. In other words, let’s not diagnose disorders. Let’s look at the relational conditions in which our children’s personalities and our brain. Develop and let’s change those relationships and those contexts, I promise you, their brains will respond positively as will they, we can get these kids back, but not if we focused on their behaviors, not if we look focused on their medical diagnoses, but if we actually look at their relational and emotional dynamics and we change our relationship to them, they’re going to [00:27:00] change in response. 

Brenda: Right, which is so difficult to do with a very angry teenager. I have to 

Gabor: Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. But, but, but here’s the thing, what’s the alternative. 

Brenda: Exactly. 

Gabor: Cause the alternative is you listen to all these people that tell you to practice tough love, and I’ll tell you something. I’ve had so many people after my book on addiction came out. Tell me that they listen to the extroverts with the tough love and they lost their kids. There’s no, there’s no tough love. There’s either love or there’s tough. There’s nothing tough about love. Love is soft and it’s tender and it’s intimate and it’s welcoming. The parents were facing an angry child. 

They have to ask themselves, why is the child angry? No. When unions become frustrated. As my core writer and hold onto your kids. Gordon newel says frustration is the engine of aggression. If these kids are aggressive, it’s because they’re frustrated. When do we get frustrated? When our needs are not met? 

What is their primary need of the child attachment relationship with nurturing adults? 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: means we’re their best bet. It doesn’t matter how angry they are with us. Now it’s challenging cause their anger triggers. 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: But let’s look at the word trigger. [00:28:30] It’s a metaphor. Isn’t it? How big of the weapon, how big a part of the weapon does the trigger form? It’s a very part. What else has to be there for that trigger? To set off fireworks, explosive ammunition, expose explosive charge ammunition. We’re carrying that explosive charge. We’re carrying the ammunition. 

Now we could focus on the trigger or we could say, what is the explosive material inside me? And I tell you when my kid triggers me, or when anybody triggers me, I need to ask myself, what is the explosive material in here? And that’s the, and what that is, is usually the infant of my own childhood trauma that I haven’t resolved yet. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: So. This is, I, I agree with you. This is very difficult work, but I ask you what’s the altern. 

Brenda: Exactly it, there is none. And I think the other thing that, um, as, as we talk about this, that always comes to mind is the guilt, the parent guilt. And I know you’re explicit in making sure to talk about the fact that you’re not blaming parents. Um, 

Gabor: I mean, no, I’m in no position. I mean, I’m in no position to cause believe me, I’ve been to the parental guilt myself. Well, here’s what I would ask. Have you felt parental guilt. 

Brenda: A hundred percent. Yes. 

Gabor: [00:30:00] Let me ask you this question. When in your own life, have you not felt guilty? 

Brenda: I, I feel guilty a lot, a 

Gabor: I asked you when in your life have you not felt guilty? 

Brenda: when 

Gabor: Did you, did you sense guilt proceed? You having children? 

Brenda: I don’t think so. I never thought about that. I don’t think so. 

Gabor: Okay. All right. How are your parents’ relationship with each other? 

Brenda: I’m very harmonious. Um, I, I was raised in a, a home with no conflict, 

Gabor: no conflict 

Brenda: no conflict, 

Gabor: that raise that raises problems for me right away. 

Brenda: Yes, it’s difficult. Conflict is difficult for me as an adult because I didn’t see it. Um, and then when I had a child who, you know, really struggled and now I look back and see, you know, now everything’s so clear. 

Um, but he had a very traumatic childbirth. Um, he had prolapse cord. So at the last minute, You know, emergency, um, operation, you know, thrown on a cold, hard metal tray. , you know, app Garve two just, and then I couldn’t, um, I couldn’t walk for the first three months. And so his [00:31:30] father took care of him, brought him to me to nurse and then took him back. 

Gabor: And what was the emotional estate when all that was happening? 

Brenda: Oh, I was, I, I didn’t think I was gonna live. I was in so much pain. 

Gabor: So he was gonna pick up on all that, 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: you know, you did nothing wrong, but he was gonna pick up on all that, you know, now, um, I won’t, I won’t insist on this, but I would say that in, in terms of your own childhood, let me ask you this question. When you, did you ever feel sad, angry, or lonely as a child? 

Brenda: Uhhuh. Yeah. 

Gabor: Who would you speak to? 

Brenda: Our dog, 

Gabor: Okay. 

Brenda: we had a German shepherd 

Gabor: okay. If your child felt sad, lonely, and angry, who would you want them to speak? 

Brenda: to me. 

Gabor: Okay. If you found out that your child was sadly angry, but didn’t talk to you, how would you explain that 

Brenda: They didn’t feel that I was the safe person to do that with. 

Gabor: that was your childhood or so you just told me. Okay. So even in that home where your parents were harmonious and no conflict, you didn’t feel safe. 

Brenda: yeah. Not to talk about, um, yeah, not to talk about sad or scary things. 

Gabor: But that’s exactly when you need kids to talk to parents, isn’t it like the first day that children are [00:33:00] born, donate of them, donated of them, hold back and say, oh, I’m feeling hungry and upset, but I’m not gonna bother mommy and daddy. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: So something happened in your childhood. I’m saying. We don’t need to go into it, but I’m saying something happened in your childhood that made you feel that the role that, that the parents weren’t available for you to talk about some of the things that were most important to you and emotionally speaking, 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: that’s a trauma. 

Brenda: right. 

Gabor: You carry that trauma into your own parenting, 

Brenda: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Gabor: and then we wonder what goes wrong. Well, and something, by the way, happened to your parents. Otherwise, they would’ve created an environment when you did feel totally safe and welcome to express exact. One of the emotional, one of the irreducible needs of children that I talk about in the midst of normal is the capacity to experience all our emotions, pain, anger, pain, anger, fear, grief, whatever it is not having that freedom, not having the welcome for that is traumatic for the. I’m saying in our society, that’s very, very common. And I don’t point fingers at any parents because first of all, it’s multigenerational just as is in your case or in my case. So that didn’t be, there’s a wonderful book called it. Didn’t start with you by mark Oland, who is [00:34:30] about trauma. It did you know this? 

Who, who are you gonna blame Adam and Eve? You know, 

Brenda: right. how far back do we wanna point the 

Gabor: the, the, the first ABA, you know, I mean, you know, 

Brenda: right? 

Gabor: Secondly parents do their best, but their best is limited by their own development and trauma and circumstances 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: the culture that they live in. So the last thing I wanna do is add to any cent, by the way, parental guilt is toxic for the child. 

As my children will tell you, 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: you told me they’re adults stop with the guilt already. Nobody wants to be seen as somebody else’s. 

Brenda: Hmm. 

Gabor: My kids don’t wanna experience themselves as to the eyes of my guilt or you, I screwed them up. They don’t wanna see as human beings with possibility and, and capacity and talent and resilience, you know, but their own challenges, they don’t wanna be carrying the burden of my guilt about how I parented them. 

And you know what, so it took me a long time to get over that parental guilt, but I’m the last one to try and lay it on anybody else. But at the same time, we have to be aware. We have to be aware of what happened. And of what goes on in this culture. Otherwise we’re not gonna change anything. 

Brenda: Well, yeah, I was gonna say, if we, if we don’t look at that, then we can’t then change how we interact with our kids. And, and something that really stood out to me was the attachment and authenticity and that their, that they. Are like a [00:36:00] team effort, right. That they go together. And I think as parents, we sometimes lean heavier on one or the other, but I, I really see in the, in the kids of the parents that I work with, the authenticity piece of it in particular is so difficult because in this culture, um, We have, you know, my kid has to go to this college. 

They have to get into this school. They have to have this kind of a career. And so we, we kind of wipe away their authenticity and say, this is who you’re going to be. This is how our family is. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that combination. That’s so important. 

Gabor: in the book, we quote this, uh, um, episode or anecdote or somebody. I know a mother yelling at their five year old son. Who’s not doing their homework, but first of all, why does a five year old have homework? Anyway, you know, they’re meant to be playing, not doing homework. He is much better for brain development and intellectual development than homework by the. 

If only we knew this. And when I say play, I don’t mean with gadgets. I mean, three creative, spontaneous play out there in nature, but this poor mom is not yelling at her five year old saying, you know, you’re not thinking of your academic future. And we say in the book and the kid, if the only the kid you could yell back saying, and you’re not thinking of my emotional wellbeing, 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: um, there’s so much pressure on parents to put pressure on their kids.[00:37:30]  

It begins very early. For example, we have a two year old who holds the tantrum, which by the way, I hate to tell you, but that’s what two year olds do when they get frustrated. What do I do as a 78 year old? When I get frustrated, my wife tell 

Brenda: we’ll get her on the podcast. Next. 

Gabor: her, how does God war behave when he’s frustrated? You know, I still have a tendency to. Weird towards the tantrum, although I’m much better at it, but a two year old is no, no self-regulation whatsoever. So when they’re frustrated with something they want is not given to them, they just act it out. But then you listen to one of these misguided parenting experts, that’s say, okay, time out the time hunt means, why does the timeout. The timeout works because the child’s biggest need is the attachment relationship with the parent. Without that there’s no life for them. And they know that in their bones and in their hearts, 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: timeout means I’m gonna temporarily withdraw from that attachment relationship. Cause I don’t like your behavior. I don’t like your attitude. I don’t like your emotion of anger. Not the child’s brain, not the child, cause it’s not conscious, but the child’s brain has a desperate decision to make. Do I go for the attachment [00:39:00] with my parent, without which I can’t live or do I go with my authentic feeling, which is anger, but if I go with my authentic feeling, I’m gonna lose the attachment relationship. 

Cause are we gonna be banished well in that tension between attachment and authenticity? Authenticity will lose out every time. And what happens then is the child will disconnect from their emotions in order to belong to the family. And they will suppress their healthy anger, which sometimes will explode out of them, which is what you’re seeing in this teenager that you described is like a well volcano when you suppress it on the ground for so long, it just bubbles over and just. 

You get this explosion flow of love or heart love, or like anger, or if you repress it successfully completely, you get a child who’s depressed and is prone for autoimmune disease and all kinds of other physical disease later on. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: Um, now in this culture, we demand of so many people that they give up their authenticity in order to get the attached. 

If you wanna be accepted, you have to give up who you. And that’s pathological both emotionally, mentally, and physically. So it’s a, it’s a tragic dilemma. As we say in this book, doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways of dealing with the child’s anger that are [00:40:30] creative and loving and accepting, and yet which don’t, um, are not permissive. We’re not talking about letting kids do any old thing. Break the window, hit their siblings, torment the dog. Scream obscenities at us. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about understanding where that anger is coming from making room for the anger, allowing the child to move to the child, to move through it in a loving way, and then teaching other ways of being with their anger. There’s ways to do that. It’s not that difficult, but if we get triggered or if we listen to these printing experts, We squashed the child and we forced them into this dilemma authenticity versus attach. 

Brenda: Yeah, well, and that, that brings up the, um, the very, um, eye opening, um, concept of this suppression of emotions. And especially when I was reading about. Par, uh, caregivers of children with chronic illness or caregivers of people with dementia Alzheimer’s and the connection and the tels. And I’m, you’ll have to explain tels, cuz I, I don’t know, but I know that you need them to be healthy. 

Um, that was very enlightening because so many of us who are mothering or fathering, these kids in particular. [00:42:00] uh, I just, I’m thinking, what is, what is the ripple effect that’s gonna be happening in our own bodies. 

Gabor: Again, what we’re dealing with is a problem of modern society. Um, there’s a friend of mine, an American physician and psychiatrist who was from Lakota Sue background, Louis Mero. His name is, and Louis told me that in his Lakota edition, when somebody got ill, it wasn’t seen as an individual problem. He was seen as a community problem. And the attitude was thank you. Your illness is manifesting some dysfunction and balance in our whole community. Your healing is our healing. 

Brenda: Wow. 

Gabor: And so if there’s a child who’s ill is not just seen as the problem of the individual mother it’s seen as the problem of the community 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: parents have support. And this society we’re isolated, atomized nuclearized, which means. 

The parenting of the caregiving role falls on individual people often without support and very often women, why do women have 80% of autoimmune disease? Cause they’re the designated caregivers. They’re the ones who supposed to suppress their emotions to take care of everybody else. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: Now we know that chronic caregivers who do so without support that stress or caring and suppresses the [00:43:30] immune. Their wounds take longer to heal. They get more frequent colds and the telomeres, which are chromosomal structures that mark chromosomal and cellular health three more fast, more rapidly. So mothers will chronic who have children with chronically ill. Their chromosomal aging is faster than not of other women, their same age, which, which. 

Talks about the need for support. Now, if you look at when, when COVID, there was an article in the New York times during COVID called society’s shock absorbers, and my son, Daniel and I, who co wrote this book, we took that title and made it the chapter of a book about women’s health because women are society shock observers. 

In this patriarchal culture. Women are programmed to absorb not only their own stresses. But the stress of their spouses and of their children and even of their parents. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: And that has an impact on the health of the women. For example, there was a study that looked at recovery after coronary bypass surgery in people under 50 men recover much better than women do. 

They looked at the reason why men, when they recover it, they go back home and they get taken care of by their spouse. Women, when they go back home, they resume their caregiving role.[00:45:00]  

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: You know, 

Brenda: Yes. Can I make you a sandwich while I’m laying in bed? yes. 

Gabor: So in the 1930s, the incidence of multiple sclerosis, for example, which is an autoimmune disease, the immune system turned against the body. The gender ratio was one to one. Now it’s three and a half women to every man. Why? Because women. Are doing what they’ve always done in this culture, take care of the emotional needs of everybody, but now they also have to go out there and make a living. And because of the nuclearization, the atomization of society, there’s less communal support. So you double the stress and you take away this support. Now you have three times the rate or multiple schools than women, then you D and N it’s not an accident, and it’s not nothing to do with genetics. It’s gotta do with the. A acculturated, socially expected caregiving role of women. And that’s why I call it a toxic culture. It creates conditions that make people sick, you know, the relationships and the values and how we raise children. How we just date children, how we give birth to children, the parenting advice that people get, the way the schools are organized. 

They could be all designed to impose stress on people because they do. 

Brenda: Mm-hmm 

Gabor: And then this is then the problem. So these parents that you deal with with the kids who are in [00:46:30] trouble, I would say to them, first of all, don’t blame yourself. Cause you did your best. But look at the actual conditions. Look at your own childhood history. 

Look at how well you learn to take care of yourself. Look at how like you, who did you have to talk to? How attuned were you with your very sensitive child needs? How stressed were you? What was your relationship like? What’s going on right now? And what pain is your child trying to escape? Because my, my mantra and addiction is not why the addiction, but why the pain 

Brenda: Why the pain? 

Gabor: and there’s always pain underneath every a. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: So you mentioned my book in the realm of, from divorce. Those that I, I tell you this, this is almost incredible to believe, but I’ve had, as, as one example, this is only one example. I was in San Francisco coming outta an elevator. This man rushes up to me in the lobby and ones. Can I give you a hug? And I said, sure, why? 

He says my son died of an overdose. And until I read your book, I didn’t understand what happened now in this book, I point out that the basis of addiction is childhood stress and trauma. So to have a parent who lost a child, and I said, I’m surprised you would say that to me because [00:48:00] my message is not easy for parents to hear. 

He said, because I finally understood and I understood how multi-generational it. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: At least I knew what had happened. And that was such a relief. He said, well, I’m saying to people don’t blame yourself, not for a moment, or if you notice that self blaming deal with it, but for God’s sakes, look at the environment and families that are dealing with that addicted family member. 

There’s three things that they can. Two of them are sensible. One is insane. It’s perfectly valid for a parent. I don’t recommend it. And more parents don’t wanna do this, but if you wanna say to a teenage child or an older child, your addiction is too painful to me. I’m not gonna blame you for it. Cause I know that you are trying to suit some pain. And I’m not gonna blame you for that, but it’s too painful for me to be around. I can’t handle it. I’m sorry. I’m gonna withdraw. That’s that’s loving. It’s also very honest, but it’s totally understandable. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: Or you can say your addiction is your attempt to suit some pain. I get that, [00:49:30] that pain didn’t originate with. Didn’t originate with me either. It’s, multi-generational it’s environmental, but that means that you’re the Canary in the mine. You’re that sensitive individual. Who’s downloading the pain of the whole family system, but it’s not your pain alone. It’s all of our pain. And we’re all gonna go to work, to heal our trauma as a family. 

And you are welcome to join us. And if you’re not ready, Then you won’t, we’ll still love and accept you, but we’re gonna do the work anyway. 

Brenda: Hmm. 

Gabor: That’s a beautiful intervention. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: The third option, which is I’m gonna be in your life and Kojo you and threaten you and Badger you and beg you and, and, and bee you to be different than we are. That’s what’s called co dependence. It means that my emotional state depends on you being. 

Brenda: Yeah. 

Gabor: still making the child responsible for the parent feels that’s insanity and you know what it’s gonna get. It’s gonna get resistance. The child’s gonna experience that as a pressure, and they’re gonna push back, even if you’re trying to push them in the right direction, which you are, of course, 

Brenda: right. 

Gabor: but how do we, we spent, how do we, any of us respond to being pushed? put back. 

Brenda: you push back. 

Gabor: We push back. That’s all you’re gonna get. So the LA the last option drop it. And as far as tough love, [00:51:00] don’t even think about it. 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: As I said earlier, there’s love or there’s tough, but there’s no tough love. 

Brenda: Yeah. I wonder who, who is doing this? Well, either as a society, as a community, is there anybody who’s doing this well? That you see from your experience that is supporting parents in the way that they need to be supported so that they can then be there for their kids. So, you know, so that, that cycle is broken. 

Who’s doing it 

Gabor: I don’t see examples too much in this culture. I just don’t. I see a lot of misinformation misunderstanding, um, who used to do it well where indigenous communities believe in what they call restorative justice and the communal circle. But they’ve been so traumatized and so abused in Canada, the high rates of the highest rates of addiction and child suicide and violence are amongst our first nations communities because of the colonial oppression, genocidal, torment of their children. 

So, but in their traditions, there still lives in echo of this communal approach to planting and this communal approach to, um, To what we call pathology. So we have a lot to learn from them. 

Brenda: Yeah, 

Gabor: Uh, who’s doing it. Well, [00:52:30] I wish I could tell. 

Brenda: well, we’ll have to stay tuned, um, on that one, but I think it’s a good. re it’s just a good, um, framework for us to think about. And I liked your three points because sometimes we need somebody to break it down. Like to say, there are many ways that you could approach this and you could, and you could, um, start to work on this and talking with our kids about how it isn’t, you know, they aren’t a bad person cause they think that’s. 

That’s what our default is, is can’t you see what this is doing to our family? Can’t you see what this is doing to all of that, which to date I’ve never had anybody say, oh yeah. My child responded really well to that. 

Gabor: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the children would just, that’s an enormous pressure to put on the child. The child is just man, the child is just manifesting the family function. That’s all they’re doing. I have to tell you that. I’ve had so many parents tell me that my book on ADHD, scattered minds as the Canadian and British title, um, it’s been published in the states. 

So the title scattered, but I much prefer, I much prefer the British Canadian title. It saved their lives because the, because instead of izing the child, authorizing that child that learned how to look at the whole family context, 

Brenda: Yes. 

Gabor: the best letter I ever receiv. And I quote to in the method normal plus from a mother of a four year old, maybe you remember this she’s uh, [00:54:00] I got a letter saying, thank you. 

Uh, because I have this four year old beautiful daughter because of you. And, um, so I read the email and it says my husband used to be an alcoholic and he used to believe that it was a genetic disease and he didn’t wanna pass, pass on the gene to any child. So he had no children until I was 44 and the verge of my, the. Years of my child bearing era. And I, we read your book in a Ram of fungi gross, and he realized it wasn’t genetics at all. It was trauma, his child trauma. And so thanks to you. We have a four year old child and I thought I had to, I had to laugh cause I’ve been ed for saving people’s lives before, but as they say in the book and we’ve been thankful causing one yet long distance, that is you 

Brenda: right. that’s, that’s such a great story. That’s such a great story. And, and what I also wanna offer to people who are listening is there are ways, um, that you give to start healing. And so there’s the four A’s that promote healing that I know we don’t have time to get into now, but what I just wanna make sure and tell people is that this is not like. 

You get through the book and you’re just like, Ugh, there are, there are such great tools that you give to start working through that. Um, uh, oh, I’ve lost the term, the, um, just the critical looking at ourselves. What do you call it? The, um, 

Gabor: Well, the, the self-loading the sub criticism, the, uh, all the burden of the past, you know, and actually [00:55:30] they, we have more chapters on healing than we have anything else in the whole book. So it, 

Brenda: Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s such beautiful work. And so there’s, um, , it’s not, it’s not that you get to the end and just are like, well now what do I do? There’s some very concrete things that we can do. Um, compassionate inquiry. That’s what I was 

Gabor: yeah. 

Brenda: that was what I was looking for, um, that we can do with ourselves and can, can our kids do that as well? 

Gabor: you know, depends how mature the child is and how motivated they are, uh, to actually take on the work of their own transformation. I would say that the most important thing is the most important work that any of us will ever do on behalf of our children is our own healing. 

Brenda: Yeah, 

Gabor: Because we’ll approach them so differently and there’ll be such a burden of their shoulders 

Brenda: right. 

Gabor: for those listeners who are parents of younger children or children to early adolescents or adolescents. 

I highly recommend the book hold onto your kids. That’s been published in 30 languages, if so much feedback on that book, as well as. There’s a huge link between ADHD and addiction, a D and addiction. And not only because they begin with the same three letters, but because the same dynamics that cause the tuning out also lead to the self soothing. 

So add is a major risk factor for addiction. So a lot of parents have told me how much difference that book has [00:57:00] made in their lives. Honestly, I’m not trying to sell well, I’m trying to sell books, but not, not as a merchant, but 

Brenda: Right. 

Gabor: I wrote this book. From my own experience and my own learning. This is what I’m gonna tell the world that there’s a different way of looking at it. 

That’s much more positive and much more proactive than just trying to respond to symptoms and diseases. 

Brenda: Yeah. Well, I know I need to let you go. You probably have 5,000 other interviews to do, but I appreciate so much the time, the insights for these parents who are really struggling and we will await maybe another book, or is this your, is this 

Gabor: you know what? So my son down, I, with whom I wrote this book, I’m the main author, but the next one is gonna be 50 50, and it’s gonna be called. Hello? Hello. Again, a fresh start for adult children and their parents. 

Brenda: Wow. All right. 

Gabor: that’s actually a workshop that we’re doing at omega. And at the end of October, we’ve given that workshop multiple times. 

It’s a powerful workshop, it’s adult kids and their parents. those of you that wanna watch it, just Google, Daniel and gab, or Matt, 2016. 

Brenda: Okay. 

Gabor: And, and you you’ll see, it’s been seen by about close to 400,000 people. We talk about this whole idea of. Child reunion when the child is an adult, it’s never too late. 

Brenda: Awesome. All right. Hello. Again, I will make sure and put links to that in the show notes. Thank you so much. Best of luck on [00:58:30] your, your launch and everything that you’re doing. Thank you so much for your work. 

Gabor: Wonderful to meet you. Thank you for having me. 

Brenda: too. Thank you. Bye-bye 

Gabor: Bye-bye.