COVER STORY

HOW TO SURVIVE IN A TOXIC WORLD

“The moment you know how your suffering came to be, you are already on the path of release from it.” Image credit: HAPPY SURANI on Unsplash.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

Gabor Maté and his son Daniel participated in a talk with André Picard as part of the 43rd Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA).  They were there to discuss their new book, The Myth of Normal.

In his introduction to the book, Maté writes that we are seeing more and more chronic physical diseases and mental illness and addiction.

One passage, many pages in, makes me sit up:

“The more we understand about disease, the less clear it becomes when you have it and when you don’t. Within the myth of normal, of course, this kind of nuance is barely comprehensible: You’re either ‘sick’ or you’re ‘well’ and it should be obvious which camp you’re in. But really, there are no clear dividing lines between illness and heath. Nobody all of a sudden ‘gets’ an autoimmune disease or ‘gets’ cancer – though it may, perhaps, make itself known suddenly and with tremendous impact.”

Maté was greeted by an enthusiastic woo-hoo! from the audience that packed Fleck Theatre at Harbour-front Centre.

It was a lively exchange between father and son, and a frank one. Each shared their experience of trauma and their own take on it as well as ways of dealing with it. Both underscored the fact that trauma is not the event that takes place, but what is embedded in us as a result.

And in that, lies hope. Giving his own example, Maté shared the story of being handed over by his mother to a stranger on the street when he was barely 11 months old.

As an adult, he knows it was to keep him safe – his mother, a Hungarian Jew, knew she could not keep her baby safe in a Nazi regime and gave him to a Christian woman. But as a baby, all he absorbed was the separation from his mother. Which impacted him and his future relationships deeply.

The mind is a meaning-making machine, he writes. It will generate stories that make “sense” of the emotions that, at a vulnerable time, it could not contain and perhaps still cannot.

“If we treat trauma as an external event, something that happened to or around us, then it becomes a piece of history we can never dislodge. If, on the other hand, trauma is what took place inside us as a result of what happened, in the sense of wounding or disconnection, then healing and disconnection become tangible possibilities.”

However, the intention of looking at the past is not to dwell on it, Maté cautions. “The moment you know how your suffering came to be, you are already on the path of release from it.”

He writes about a Harvard study on ovarian cancer which showed that “women whose PTSD symptoms had abated, perhaps due to effective psychotherapy, had less risk for malignancy than women with active symptoms”.

But what, exactly, is trauma, asked Picard.

“I was at a Starbucks and the young lady in front of me was talking about her recent experience. ‘I asked for a latte with soy milk and they used almond milk. It was so traumatic!’” he recounted, tongue in cheek.

Trauma is a word that is overused and at the same time not used enough, said Maté. Pain, stress, being upset, that’s not trauma. Trauma is something that stays inside, impacting your life in many ways unless you deal with it.

In his talk, as in his book, he differentiated between small t and big T trauma.

Small t being attributed to bullying, casual but repeated harsh comments by a well-meaning parent or even absence of an emotionally nurturing environment for a child.

Big T is caused by life altering events such as the loss of a parent, the break-up of a relationship, a terminal illness, abuse, etc.

And trauma, t or T, distorts our view of the world, writes Maté, quoting from the Dhammapada, the collection of Buddha’s saying. “Everything has mind in the lead, has mind in the forefront, is made by the mind”.

Buddha also said, writes Maté, that the world is woven of interconnected threads. This is because that is...this dies because that dies.

Which is borne out by recent studies: “It has been consistently shown that parents in an unfavourable mental health state such as depression, anxiety, stress or chronic irritation may predict a poorer status for the child’s asthma.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, he informs his readers, described the Buddha as “that profoundest physiologist”.

But long before modern science connected these dots, Indigenous People knew the importance of protecting the unborn.

Maté shares the story of how a member of a First Nations group told him that in their clan an angry or upset person wasn’t even allowed to go near a pregnant woman. “We didn’t want you inflicting your troubles on her baby”.

In a masterful connecting of thoughts and ideas, Maté also quotes from the Bhagavad Gita in which Krishna declares, “They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them”.

Chronic illness – mental or physical – is to a large extent a function or feature of the way things are and not a glitch, a consequence of how we live and not a mysterious aberration.

He cites disturbing statistics. In Canada, up to half of all baby boomers are on track for hypertension within a few years if current trends continue.

Among women there’s disproportionate elevation in diagnoses of potentially disabling autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis.

Depression and anxiety are the fastest growing diagnoses.

“Such trends immediately rule out the go-to of medical explanations, genetic causes... genes do not change in such a short period of time.”

Maté proceeds to make a strong case for something more than our genetic material being the culprit.

Experience determines how our genetic potential expresses itself. Environmental factors are enflaming our bodies, he writes, while explaining that “environmental” in this case refers to more than air pollution or cell phone radiation. He’s talking about biopsychosocial factors.

The biology of the brain is shaped by life, as he said in his talk.

“Describing the systemic founts of loneliness, the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote: ‘Our twenty-first century world demands that we focus on pursuits that seem to be in constant competition for our time, attention, energy and commitment.’”

Which would explain the skewed gender distribution of autoimmune diseases – about 70 to 80 per cent of sufferers are women.

In his book, Maté encourages readers to ask themselves this question: In my life’s important areas, what am I not saying no to?

I read that and think – though Maté doesn’t make the gender distinction here – that this again might apply more to women. Many of us are hardwired to be everything everywhere all at once (to borrow the title of the popular quirky movie), putting everyone’s needs above our own.

Something about the way we’re living is making us sick, said Maté in his talk.

In his book, he dissects how race, poverty and gender intersect to impact the health outcomes of people all over the world.

“In short, it’s racism, not race itself, that threatens the lives of African American women and infants.”

In Canada, “the lifespan of Indigenous people is fifteen years shorter than that of other Canadians. Infant mortality two to three times higher, and type-2 diabetes four times more widespread: this among a population that knew no diabetes a little over a century ago.”

So again, environmental factors, not genetics alone.

He also describes the Type C personality, first flagged by psychologist Lydia Temoshok in 1987, which has traits strongly associated with the onset of malignancy.

The scary part? These are all traits women the world over are taught to emulate.

Cooperative and appeasing, unassertive, patient, unexpressive of negative emotions, particularly anger, and compliant with external authorities.

He provides his own list of personality features most often present in people with chronic illness.

Among them, harbouring and compulsively acting out two beliefs: I am responsible for how other people feel and I must never disappoint anyone.

“Why these features and their striking prevalence in the personalities of chronically ill people are so often overlooked – or missed entirely – goes to the heart of our theme: they are among the most normalized ways of being in this culture.” Regarded as admirable strengths rather than potential liabilities.

Children who learn to hide their feelings to get the basic care their need, following the “good girls don’t cry” theme, then add layers to this persona as a coping mechanism.

“If we’re not made to feel important for just who we are, we may seek significance by becoming compulsive helpers.”

And “What is considered normal and natural are established not by what is good for people but by what is expected of them, which traits and attitudes serve the maintenance of culture.”

Gabor Maté and his son Daniel participated in a talk with André Picard as part of the 43rd Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA). Image credit: BRIAN MEDINA/TIFA.

Maté lists some of those traits.

But isn’t seeking validation hardwired in us? I am me because I am recognized by others to be me.

Social expectations to fit in, the drive for peer acceptance and a socially induced, pervasive anxiety about one’s status are all mechanisms for estranging people from themselves in Maté’s book

The new normal becomes our literal second nature, he writes, and here he provides a startling example. Hillary Clinton.

There’s more on her and Donald Trump, and Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, too. Insights into behaviour patterns of these very public figures that we know so little about, really.

Included are many case studies and examples from lives of famous and not-so-famous people. Ulf Caap, former vice-president of human resources for IKEA North America; writer-actor Lena Dunham; Canadian hockey legend Theoren Fleury; Alanis Morissette; Ashley Judd, Jamie Lee Curtis and Robin Williams. “Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it,” his wife revealed after his death. “He kept saying, ‘I just want to reboot my brain’.”

Leslie, a 40-year-old was plagued by insomnia, cried uncontrollably and could not maintain relationships. But the woman who had made over a dozen suicide attempts since the age of 17 is now a therapist herself and is pursuing MA in psychology.

One knows of debt counsellors who learned valuable lessons through their own personal bankruptcy and went on to help others. Maté presents the astounding stories of countless people who suffered like Leslie and are now helping others find better health.

Maté himself has been treated for ADHD and depression. “ADHD is a coping mechanism,” he said.

In the book, he outlines the story of his own use of Prozac. The benefits he perceived and how he weaned himself off.

In response to Picard saying the phrase “Your mind is not your enemy” from the book stood out for him, Daniel shared his diagnosis of cyclothymia, a milder form of bipolar disorder, characterized by ups and downs.

“I realized my mood swings were not my adversaries, they came along to carry me through childhood in one piece. I grew up with a dark, glowering father and a stressed-out mother who was fiercely loyal to him. I learned survival techniques.”

Daniel described these techniques as a LEGO spaceship people assemble. “We have to learn to disassemble the personality traits we layered on to survive.”

Maté explores the ways modern Western culture’s idea of “normal” undermines parenting, debunking practices first proposed by that expert several generations of new parents followed to the word – Benjamin Spock. He also takes on Jordan Peterson, who in his bestselling 12 Rules For Life proposes “gestural and physical intimidation” to bring “little monsters” under control. Contrast that with what a Cree woman told him about not letting infants’ feet even touch the ground until they were two – they were always in a loving adult’s arms.

“When children spend much of their waking time away from caring adults, their brains are compelled to choose between competing attachments: the natural call of parental connection or the siren song of the peer world.”

Perhaps the most startling message in the book for me was the way Maté says we should be looking at addiction and mental health.

As Metis writer, professor and former inmate Jesse Thistle, author of the memoir From the Ashes, tells him, substance use gave him access to friends, and power and confidence.

It’s worth asking: Who has ever heard of a “disease” that makes you “feel normal”?

An addiction is anything we turn to for temporary relief, something that takes us out of what we’re feeling in the moment. It could be to drugs, shopping, sex, it could be work habits...anything that gives us a sense of being in control.

Maté asked his audience to raise their hands if they had experienced any of these habits.

Almost all hands went up.

“Well, there are always a few liars!” he deadpanned, of the few that remained down.

“What’s true of physical illness is just as true of addiction: genes are turned on and off by the environment,” writes Maté. And with this, he comes to the widely held belief that a chemical imbalance alone is responsible for mental illness.

I used to think that the most compassionate, the modern way of looking at mental health was to see it through the chemical imbalance lens, something eminently fixable once diagnosed.

But this is what Maté has to say:

“Contrary to what I, too, used to believe, a diagnosis like ADHD or depression or bipolar illness explains nothing. No diagnosis ever does.”

As the British psychologist Lucy Johnston told him, “In psychiatry, it’s simply a circular argument, isn’t it? Why does this person have mood swings? Because they have bipolar disorder. How do you know they have bipolar disorder? Because they have mood swings.”

He goes on to describe the baffling Oppositional Defiant Disorder or ODD. Did no one stop to think that this, at least, was caused by factors outside of the person diagnosed with ODD? For, as Mate points out, while one may have a cold in isolation, one cannot oppose anyone unless there’s someone – some outside factor – to oppose.

“Don’t look at their brain scans,” said Maté. “Look at their lives,” circling back to how life events and circumstances shape our minds. “Look at Indigenous Peoples. They have the highest rates of addiction compared to other populations in Canada. It wasn’t so before colonization. They carry intergenerational trauma.”

While there is hope, this is how Maté sees it: “In my experience, we are never as close as we hope, and never as far as we fear.”

Addressing the audience that was lapping up every word he said, “The sooner we get disillusioned with what we have, the sooner we can change things. It is our opportunity to seek the truth and work together, to seek different dynamics.

“Will trauma stay with us? Depends on how quickly we wake up. If we introduce courses in medical school on trauma, if teachers recognize signs and don’t label kids as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, if law enforcement authorities and courts recognized trauma, we’d see huge changes.”

A member in the audience asked a poignant question.

People who’ve experienced trauma may choose not to have kids for fear of passing it on, or conversely, have kids because they want to fix it – which was correct?

Maté’s response was insightful and kind.

“Guilt is not appropriate, taking responsibility is. Had I read books on the subject, had I known better, Daniel here would be telling a different story.”

“And you might have had a grandchild!” interjected Daniel.

This line stayed with me long after I had turned the last page: Look within bravely, the better to look out and around honestly.

The healing principles and compassions he lists are a good place to begin that journey.

Maté brings his decades of medical expertise to investigate our overall well-being, childhood development, the traumas and toxicity inherent in our culture, and how healing is both necessary and – with his compassionate and practical advice – possible.

Someone I know uses the expression “dhakkan gul” to describe a wondrous discovery. The literal translation is “lost the lid,” but it connotes a mind-blowing experience.

This is one dhakkan-gul of a book, one that is currently the #1 bestselling non-fiction book in Canada.

The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté is published by Knopf Canada, $35. 

Fun fact: The Cree word wetiko refers to a creature, spirit or mindset of greed and domination that cannibalizes people and drives them to exploit others. In the Quechua language of the Peruvian Andes, there’s a similar entity called pishtako. In Hindi, the words used to describe these are betal and pisach.

Fun fact: Gabor Maté attributes Woodwide Web to Peter Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees). But Wohlleben himself attributes it to Canadian scientist Suzanne Simard!