Dr. Gabor Maté: How the Pursuit of Normality Makes Us Ill

Modern society promotes exactly what harms us

Why is that?

It's because we have become alienated from our own nature. I like to compare us to animals in a zoo. If you study the behavior of a zebra or elephant in captivity, you will never understand the true nature of these animals.

It's the same with us humans. Five million years ago, we lived together in small groups as hunters and gatherers. Or take Homo sapiens, who have also been around for 200,000 years. In the timeline, we basically lived in nature as mini-groups until five minutes ago, where each individual would not have survived if they behaved selfishly, in isolation, aggressively, or greedily.

However, modern society promotes exactly these traits: excessive individualism, selfishness, aggression, and competition. And these vices, considered completely normal, make us sick. Just like the animals in the zoo.

Loneliness is a health risk according to Gabor Maté, like smoking

 How can we return to our true nature? Never mind the fact that we keep growing. Humanity is growing rapidly.

We are rapidly increasing and moving physically closer together, yet more and more people are emotionally isolated. In the Western world, there is an epidemic of loneliness. In the United States, the Surgeon General, the so-called Chief Medical Officer, has just published a report on loneliness, concluding that loneliness poses a major health risk comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It goes against our nature.

But to your question: How can we turn back? Even I don't have a patent solution. The most important thing is to recognize that our lives are simply not normal. That we have a problem. That although in the privileged West life is economically very satisfying for some people, even here the gap between rich and poor is growing ever larger. We are increasingly losing our sense of connection and community.

What stress and trauma have to do with diseases like cancer

You see this loss of connection just as much in medicine because Western medicine views the body and mind as separate. Do you follow a holistic approach?

Here, too, we have forgotten how to view the whole person. If you have multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis, with lupus or Cancer going to the doctor, they will focus on the physiological side. The progress of so-called conventional medicine is also extraordinarily far.

Nevertheless, there are studies that show that women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have double the risk of ovarian cancer. That depressions the risk for breast cancer significantly increase, just as stress and trauma do for multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Look at Canada, my home country. There, rheumatoid arthritis only started among indigenous women since colonization. Since then, the risk for these women to become severely ill has increased sixfold.

All these studies prove that we cannot separate emotions from the body. But the average doctor in the Western Hemisphere learns little about these connections. And I'm not talking about intuition or spiritual wisdom. I'm talking about scientifically proven research results.

Then should doctors always first ask their patients about their living conditions and other problems?

When a patient comes to me with an inflamed joint, I certainly don't ask her about her family first. But all studies on the subject stress or trauma, for example, show a connection between very harmony-seeking people, that is, people who put the happiness of others above their own, and certain subsequent illnesses. It would be downright negligent not to ask her about her mental state or family or her life in general.

In your book, you also describe a coherence of repression and addiction.

Addiction manifests itself in any behavior where a person finds temporary relief or joy, then increasingly suffers from the negative consequences, but can't stop. You can become addicted to anything: work, gambling, food, pornography, meditation, the internet...

Only that the addiction is not the actual problem but the result of a deficiency or inner turmoil or a difficult life situation. The addiction is the attempt to solve the problem. That is why it is crucial to find out why someone starts drinking or starving. Body and soul are inseparable. Everything is one.

Actually, this isn't a new approach, is it?

No, Socrates already praised the virtue of mindfulness 2500 years ago. And in 1870, the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who first described multiple sclerosis, called it a stress-related disease. The knowledge isn't new; we just have great scientific insights today.

Small injuries can be just as toxic as major traumas.

You describe two different traumas that befall us: the Trauma with a big T and the one with a small t. What exactly does that mean and how can we avoid them?

The term Trauma means wound, mental wound. And there are severe traumas triggered by drastic terrible events like abuse, a dreadful divorce, or family violence. Ideally, one sees a psychologist and talks about it today.

What is neglected in our society, however, are the traumas with a small t. The everyday little wounds that we also inflict unconsciously. Starting with bullying or ignoring, or by not giving our children the love and attention they need to grow and thrive.

The more consciously we deal with these issues, the more empathy and genuine compassion we feel, the more we can avoid these traumas. In total, the small wounds are just as toxic as the big ones.

Why children need security, not control

 Especially on the topic of education, you have the feeling today that children are rather overprotected. Just think of all the helicopter parents.

You can't overprotect a child. You can protect it or not protect it. You can't give it too much love either. What you're talking about is control. And the need to control a child in every situation arises from fear.

Fear-driven upbringing is certainly not good for a child. But it results from the same poisonous ideas of 'normal' as our other unhealthy behaviors. Instead of trusting ourselves as parents, trusting our children, and thus giving them security and building a secure relationship with them, we try to control everything from above and outside.

 But isn't it all paradoxical? On the one hand, we are all busy around the clock leading our healthiest, fittest, meatless yoga life, and on the other hand, we seem sicker than ever.

Our society is proven to be sicker than ever. That's why it helps to make us aware of how artificial our modern society is and how far we have moved away from our true needs. And how healthy it is to listen to our gut feeling and bring our mind, heart, and gut back into harmony. It's not that complicated.

 Who is the most normal person you know?

A good question. Do you mean in terms of healthy and natural? I am definitely not. I'm still working on it.

 Your wife perhaps? She seems to understand you and your 'abnormalities,' as you call them in the book, very well.

My wife is definitely more grounded than I am. And she has taken on the thankless job of wanting to heal me and my traumas. She saw right through me at our first meeting: 'I see you with all your light and all your darkness,' she said to me.

She has also taken care of her parents. Ultimately, people with similar traumas always find each other. A person without any life fractures wouldn't even be interested in taking on this work.