Dr. Gabor Maté: Why the Desire for Normality Makes You Ill

At first glance, the thesis sounds almost paradoxical that the famous Canadian doctor and trauma researcher Dr. Gabor Maté puts forward in his new bestseller "The Myth of Normal" (Kösel Verlag): Paradoxically, in our health-focused, indeed almost mindfulness-obsessed world, not only chronic physical ailments but also mental illnesses are increasing more and more. Countless studies prove this: In the United States, already 60 percent of adults suffer from a chronic disorder. Two-thirds of all Americans regularly take at least one medication. Among young people, more and more cancer cases Diagnosed, attention disorders such as ADHD are rapidly increasing, as is obesity worldwide. Even China has alarmingly quickly arrived in the age of obesity, Maté describes. And in Europe, mental illnesses such as depression or addiction are among the greatest societal challenges of the 21st century.

But what makes us so sick? This question is pursued by the expert on topics such as addiction, stress and child development, and comes to the conclusion that it is precisely our notion of normality that not only brings about all these ailments but actually fuels them. Where normal is equated with healthy and natural. In fact, there is hardly anything natural about our toxic culture anymore.

You say that it is precisely the "normal" that makes us sick. That we live in a toxic society. How do you define normal?

As Doctor I am trained to understand the limits of life. There is a normal range of blood pressure. If it is too high, you die. If it is too low, you are also in danger. It is the same with body temperature or certain pH values. Here, what corresponds to the norm is healthy and natural. It is quite different in our society. What we accept as normal values, beliefs, and practices has long ceased to be healthy and natural.
it is with body temperature or certain pH values. Here, what corresponds to the norm is healthy and natural. It is quite different in our society. What we accept as normal values, beliefs, and practices has long ceased to be healthy and natural.

Why is that?

This is because we have alienated ourselves from our own nature. I like to compare us to animals in zoos. If you study the behavior of a zebra or elephant in captivity, you will never understand the true nature of these animals. It is the same with us humans. We lived together in small groups as hunters and gatherers five million years ago. Or take Homo sapiens, which has also existed for 200,000 years. In terms of time, we have been living in nature as a mini-group until about five minutes ago, where no individual would have survived if they behaved selfishly, isolated, aggressively, or greedily. However, modern society promotes exactly these traits: exaggerated individualism, selfishness, aggression, and competition. And these vices, which are considered completely normal, make us sick. Just like the animals in the zoo.

How can we return to our true nature? Not to mention that we are growing more and more. Humanity is growing rapidly.

We are rapidly increasing and physically coming 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, also known as the chief medical officer, has just released a report on loneliness, concluding that loneliness poses a major health risk comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It contradicts our nature.

“Inequality is growing and we are increasingly losing our sense of connection and community.”

But to your question: How can we reverse this? I don’t have a patent solution either. The most important thing is to recognize that our life is simply not normal. That we have a problem. That although things may be economically very satisfying for some people in the privileged West, even here the gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening. We are increasingly losing our sense of connection and community.

You see this loss of connection in medicine as well, because western medicine views body and mind as separate from each other. You, on the other hand, pursue a holistic approach?

Here, too, we have forgotten to consider the whole person. If you go to the doctor with multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis, with lupus or cancer, they will focus on the physiological side. The progress of so-called conventional medicine is also extraordinarily advanced. Nevertheless, there are studies that show that women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have double the risk of ovarian cancer. That depression significantly increases the risk for breast cancer, just as stress and trauma do for multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Take Canada, my home country. There, rheumatoid arthritis among indigenous women only began with colonization. Since then, the risk for these women to suffer severely from it has increased sixfold.

"Women with severe post-traumatic stress disorder have double the risk of ovarian cancer."

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 here. I’m talking about scientifically proven research findings.

Shouldn't doctors always first ask their patients about their life circumstances and other problems?

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

You also describe in your book a coherence between repression and addiction.

Addiction manifests in any behavior where a person finds temporary relief or pleasure, then increasingly suffers from the negative consequences but can't stop anymore. You can become addicted to anything: work, gambling, food, pornography, meditation, internet... It's just that addiction isn't the actual problem, but the result of a lack or inner turmoil or a difficult life situation. Addiction is the attempt to solve the problem. Therefore, it is crucial to find out why someone starts to drink or starve. Body and soul are inseparable. Everything is one.

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

No, even Socrates praised the virtue of mindfulness 2500 years ago. And in 1870, for example, the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who was the first to describe multiple sclerosis, called it a stress-related disease. The knowledge of this is not new, only today we additionally have great scientific findings.

You describe two different traumas we experience: the trauma with a capital T and the one with a lowercase t. What exactly does that mean and how can we avoid them?

The term trauma means wound, mental wound. And there are the severe traumas, triggered by drastic terrible events like abuse, a horrible divorce, or violence in the family. Ideally, you would go to a psychologist and talk about it today.

In total, the small wounds are just as toxic as the large ones.

What is neglected in our society, however, are the traumas with a lowercase t. The everyday small wounds that we also unconsciously inflict on ourselves. 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 true compassion we feel, the more we can avoid these traumas. In total, the small wounds are just as toxic as the large ones.

Especially when it comes to upbringing, one rather has the feeling today that children are pretty much overprotected. Just think of all the helicopter parents.

You can't overprotect a child. You can protect or not protect it. You also cannot give it too much love. What you're talking about is control. And the need to control a child in every situation arises from fear. A fear-driven upbringing is, of course, not good for a child. But it results from the same poisoned ideas of 'normal' as our other sick 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 one hand, we're all busy around the clock leading our healthiest, fittest, most meatless yoga life, and on the other, we seem to be sicker than ever.

Our society is demonstrably sicker than ever. That's why it helps when we realize 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 to bring our mind, heart, and gut back into alignment. It's not that complicated.

Who is the most normal person you know?

A good question. You mean in terms of healthy and natural? I'm certainly not. I'm still working on it.

Maybe your wife? 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 through me at our first meeting: 'I see you with all your light and all your darkness,' she said to me. She has also already taken care of her parents. Ultimately, people with similar traumas always find each other. A person without breaks in life wouldn't have the interest to take on this work.