03/07/2018
Dr. Gabor Maté. Some notes from the weekend workshop in UCC. Gabor Maté
Cork Workshop June/July 2018
Trauma: Depression, Addiction, ADD, Anxiety etc. are solely descriptions of an illness. Ultimately they are all a response to trauma. They are normal responses to an abnormal event. It is neither useful nor scientific to treat a condition in isolation. Childhood events and current stress account for the vast majority of illnesses.
We tend to be able to manage stress on their own and also isolation on its own. But when both are combined this increases the risk of illness 9 fold. He emphasised that most cases of breast cancer are not genetic and that we need to differentiate between ‘predisposition and ‘predetermined’.
Trauma is not what happens to you; it is what happens inside you as a response to an event. Resilience is key in response to trauma. It is like a ball when squeezed coming back to its original shape. Without resilience we become constricted, smaller and less flexible. Personal and communal support is of key importance in promoting resilience. We need to understand what is going on so that we are not reacting without reflection. When we react without reflection and feel hurt and rejected, we are reacting to our original trauma. Trauma is a disconnect from the present moment. We don’t react to what happens to us, we react to our perception of what happens to us. In trauma we end up rejecting ourselves.
If someone doesn’t remember their childhood ask them when was the last time they were upset; that is their childhood trauma. Trauma shapes how we see the world.
Viktor Frankl wrote ‘we cannot choose what happens to us but we can choose how we respond. We need to put in a space between the stimulus and the response, a pause. The essence of trauma work is that it increases that pause…the idea of sleeping on it. Trauma can take away our opportunity to have that pause. He played ‘In Your Mind’ by Johnny Cash. The egoic mind can’t answer what is ‘the’ truth. The workshop only works if it affects the transformative process in your heart. Wherever there is tension it needs your attention.
There is no such thing as difficult clients…you are the one that is having difficulty with the client. You are the one that is being triggered…the therapist needs to take whatever pause they need. In trauma there is constriction, a separation from self, a lack of options and reacting rather than responding.
ADD/ADHD In his book ‘Scattered Minds’ Gabor Maté deals with ADD. The diagnosis does not explain anything…it is merely a description of a particular behaviour. Labels may be helpful as a description but they do not explain the traits and it is not helpful to identify the person with the label. The diagnosis is just a pointer to a previous trauma. The reason is connected to a response to trauma and it is a normal response to an abnormal event. Tuning out occurs when you are in pain and have no support. Your brain will tune out to help with the stress if there is no other option. 90% of the brain develops after we are born. It evolves in relation to the environment. The shame in ADD is the assumption that there is something wrong with me. The mind may not recall but the body remembers. The memory of abandonment can be an implicit memory and you are then reacting to the past and not the present. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qrefjmpvqs Gabor Maté on ADD.
Thich Nhat Hanh said the biggest gift you can give to your children is your own happiness.
We always marry people with the same level of unresolved trauma as ourselves.
When you know the ‘WHAT’ then you know the ‘HOW”
Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard Schwartz
‘It Didn’t Start with You’ by Mark Wolynn (Family Trauma)
Sensitivity is partly genetic. The word comes from the Latin ‘to feel’. If we are very sensitive may feel so much pain that we need to zone out in order to cope. Being sensitive means you may be more artistic. We don’t react to what happens we react to our perception of what happened. As a parent, remember how you see your child is how they will see themselves. Nobody wants to see him or herself as someone else’s failure. Don’t guilt yourself.
Be Compassionate and empathic but also fearless.
Addiction
Addiction is not an inherited disease. Addiction is defined as any behaviour in which a person finds pleasure or relief in the short term despite negative consequences in the long term. The question is not why the addiction but why the pain. Addiction is generally the result of trauma.
Dopamine increases focus for example people with ADD. (Co***ne)
Endorphins induces calm for example people with PTSD. (Opiates)
He**in will give us pain relief, pleasure/reward, sense of attachment.
Without dopamine we have no incentive, not even to eat.
A s*x addict is addicted to his or her own dopamine as is also the case in gambling. It’s not about the s*x; otherwise a s*x addict could just marry another s*x addict. It’s about the chase, the danger.
Impulse regulation. It is the job of the cortex to regulate the impulse not to create it. We see in children they will go to a complete stranger and engage with them as their regulation is not developed. Addiction is not the lack of free will but a lack of a free won’t. Smoking is a stress regulation behaviour in the absence of self regulation.
ACE: Adverse Childhood Experience studies. Check your own score and that of your client.
http://www.theannainstitute.org/Finding%20Your%20ACE%20Score.pdf
‘The understanding of the relationship is far more important than a plan of action’ Krishnamurti. (When you know the ‘what’ then you know the ‘how’).
12 Steps Program. You get your power back by recognizing that you are powerless. It is good to live by the steps but they do not deal with or address the trauma underlying the addiction. A family systems based therapy is very useful.
Ayahuasca, the plant medicine, opened his heart in 30 minutes and he cried tears of joy. It didn’t change him but he saw possibilities.
The quality of your presence is what makes the difference in relationship.
Day 2 Gabor Maté in Cork
Sue Hanisch from Lancashire who lost her legs in the 1981 Victoria Station London bomb told her story of healing when in Africa with Wilhelm Verwoerd and Dan Brown from Derry, and 2 IRA men carried her across the river.
Who do I think I am? What got shut down that you seek it outside now in addiction?
Put your attention on the tension. Then ask what does your tension need?
Try and stand up demonstration. It’s impossible.
Don’t project your guilt on to your children. Notice your guilt but don’t try to change it. Simply notice it.
Healing trauma, what happened inside you, is in connection with the present moment. Ref. Peter Levine somatic work, IFS. Groupwork is very helpful as is yoga and meditation.
Compassion. Only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth.
1. Empathy, ordinary human compassion
2. Understanding
3. Recognition
4. Compassion possibility…wholeness & completion
Judgments, all judgments are only about you.
Recovery: getting yourself back. You lost sight of it but it was always there. It is not rock bottom that the addict needs but the possibility of an alternative. Thomas Merton says we have to have some confidence, some hope of victory and to keep that hope alive we must have some taste of victory. We must know what victory is and like it better than defeat. Victory is being treated like a human being with compassion. The biggest driver of addictive relapse is stress.
If someone in your life is addicted you can
(a) Say I know you are caught in this addictive behaviour and I am going to love you anyway
(b) Say I get it that you are in so much pain that you need this soothing of your addictive behaviour but I can’t be around you right now or
(c) Say I am going to stay with you and try to change you.
Options (a) and (b) are fine but option (c) is insane.
Attachment: The child like the duckling is driven to attach. Animals and humans will not survive without attaching to a carer for protection, food etc. In the absence of the mother the duckling will attach to anything that moves, even a mechanical toy. The child will do the same.
(1) Through the senses; touch, sight, smell (blanket) etc.
(2) Through identification; sameness, sound. (Look and talk like them)
(3) Belonging and loyalty; Marriage, teenage gangs
(4) Sense of importance; you are important to the group.
If there is no attachment the child will say you are not the boss of me. Parents have to re-attach with their kids before they begin to direct them. See Dr. Gabor Maté with his son Daniel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIcppb9mbSc
See also ‘compassionate enquiry’ on-line training with Gabor Maté.
Chronic Illness; M.S., M.E., Motor Neuron Disease, Chronic Fatigue… When you identify as your role you lose yourself as a person. Repression of healthy anger will show up in physical illness. You are not responsible for anybody’s feelings (except kids). You are responsible for what you do. The child will give up authenticity to maintain attachment. They will suppress anger etc. in order to be loved/attached. The danger is that they may carry this into adulthood and deny their anger and become depressed etc.
Elvis ‘Anyway You Want Me, That’s The Way I’ll Be’. This is the story of the child.
Psychoneuroimmunology: The study of the effect of the mind on health and resistance to disease.
Hypertension: The medical term for high blood pressure. The clue is in the name.
Healthy anger is there to protect you.
Un-healthy anger is based in the past. The more you think about it the angrier you get. It’s like drinking poison hoping the other person will die.
Stress: It’s an engineering term originally meaning more pressure than you can handle. The biggest stress of all is not being your true self and being with someone while not being your true self.
Saying No: Check with yourself where in the past week did you not say no when you wanted to say no. What was the impact on you of not saying ‘no’? If you said no what is your belief of what would have happened? Who would you be without that belief? Is it true that a person is …if they say no? Where this week did I not say yes when I wanted to say yes? (to dance, to sing, to walk, to sleep etc.). ‘What is in us must out’; wrote Hans Selye, ‘the great art is to express our vitality through the particular channels and at the particular speed Nature foresaw for us’.
Compassion Fatigue: It is the lack of compassion to yourself. It is not from giving out too much compassion to others.
Epitaph: He joked about having ‘it was a lot more work than I anticipated’ as his epitaph.
Attachment or Authenticity…which do I choose?
The Diamond Approach; by A. H. Almaas… The greatest calamity is not that there was no love or support; The greatest calamity was that you lost connection to yourself.
The Myth of Normal…Illness and health in an insane culture.
