Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture
Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté
I am listening to the audio book. It’s harder for me to catch quotes while listening compared to reading a book.
What have I taken from it:
- Physical health cannot be separated from mental health. It’s all part of an intertwined system. Many physical syndromes come out of stress and trauma.
- The human genome predicts very little. Gene expression changes dramatically based on lived experiences.
- Attachment patterns learned as children persist through life. Attachment is critical for children since survival is dependent on parents/family. Protecting your own integrity must be secondary to preserving relationships to caregivers.
- Nearly everyone has some sort of baggage (little t trauma) picked up while learning attachment strategies to survive as a child. Many of those patterns are not constructive as an independent adult, but made sense when they were learned.
- Maté was dismissive of Jordan Peterson’s assertion that babies/children should be left to cry so that they’ll learn to be more agreeable. They will instead have problems with attachment for life.
- Maté expressed a positive opinion of psychedelic experiences combined with therapy. His view was that the combination was important. Ingesting drugs sans ritual and therapeutic guidance is not sufficient. He referenced Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. I’m interested to read that one when I’ve cleared by current stack.
- In an interesting synchronism, I listened to a chapter where he described a cancer patient connecting with a tree. The same day I was reading Man’s Search For Meaning which also contained a passage about an ill person talking with a tree. I don’t have much deeper thoughts on that. There’s an inherent value to connection with nature? Stop and smell the roses?
- He encouraged written reflection on the following questions:
- What am I not saying “no” to in my life’s important areas?
- What do I miss out on due to my inability to assert myself?
- What bodily symptoms have I been overlooking?
- What is the hidden story behind my inability to say no?
- Where did I learn these stories?
- Where have I ignored the yes that wanted to be said?