The Trauma Of Abandonment | Dr. Gabor Mate
Summary
TLDRThe speaker, Dr. Gabor Maté, shares his deeply personal experiences of trauma and abandonment from childhood, including being handed over to a stranger at age 1 during World War II in Budapest. He explores how such early stress and emotional deprivation can shape brain development and lead to conditions like ADHD. Maté emphasizes that many childhood disorders stem from the 'biology of loss' rather than solely genetic factors, as the brain's development is profoundly impacted by the emotional environment provided by parents. He advocates for mindfulness and understanding the root causes behind behavioral issues instead of relying solely on medication and behavioral control.
Takeaways
- 😞 The speaker experienced deep emotional abandonment as a child due to traumatic events during World War II, which shaped his brain development and led to lasting psychological impacts.
- 🧠 Brain development is heavily influenced by early childhood experiences and the emotional environment, not just genetics. Stress and lack of attunement from parents can adversely affect brain circuitry formation.
- 🌳 Coping mechanisms developed in childhood to deal with stress, such as dissociation or 'tuning out', can become maladaptive traits later in life if they persist, leading to dysfunctional behavior and pathology.
- 👪 Intergenerational trauma can be passed down through the effects of parental stress on child brain development, creating a cycle of emotional and behavioral issues across generations.
- 🔍 Conditions like ADHD may stem from adaptations to early life stress rather than being purely genetic disorders. A mindful, trauma-informed approach is needed to understand and address the root causes.
- 🩺 The speaker, a physician, developed a workaholic tendency as an adaptation to feeling unwanted, constantly seeking to be 'needed' to compensate for the lack of being wanted as a child.
- 💔 Unresolved emotional wounds from childhood, such as the speaker's sense of abandonment, can manifest in intense emotional reactions to seemingly minor triggers in adulthood, driven by implicit memories.
- 🧘♀️ Mindfulness and self-awareness are presented as key tools to recognize and process these deep-rooted emotional patterns, allowing for understanding and healing rather than unconscious reactivity.
- 📈 The speaker suggests that the rise in childhood developmental disorders may be linked to the biological impacts of attachment trauma and loss being passed down generationally, rather than purely genetic factors.
- 🌐 The script highlights the need for a broader, trauma-informed understanding of mental health issues, moving beyond simplistic genetic explanations and towards addressing the complex interplay of biology, emotion, and early life experiences.
Q & A
What was the traumatic event that happened when the speaker was a baby?
-When the speaker was just 2 months old, the Nazis occupied Hungary during World War II. His Jewish mother was terrorized, depressed, and grieving the loss of her parents in Auschwitz. As an infant, he had to 'tune out' his mother's stress and depression, which impacted his brain development.
What happened when the speaker was around 1 year old?
-When he was around 1 year old, his mother gave him to a total stranger on the street to save his life because she didn't know if she would survive the next day. This left him with a deep sense of abandonment and feeling unwanted.
How did the speaker's childhood experiences affect his brain development?
-The speaker's experiences of his mother's stress, depression, and temporary abandonment during his early childhood impacted the development of his brain circuits and systems. The coping mechanism of 'tuning out' became a long-term trait, leading to difficulties with attention and focus later diagnosed as ADHD.
What is the speaker's view on the genetic basis of ADHD?
-The speaker does not believe that ADHD is a genetic disorder. Instead, he attributes it to the impact of early childhood stress and trauma on brain development, which can be passed down multi-generationally.
How did the speaker's childhood experiences influence his behavior as an adult and parent?
-Feeling unwanted as a child, the speaker compensated by trying to make himself needed, working excessively as a physician and being available to his patients all the time. However, this left him less available for his own children, who then developed their own issues due to the lack of attachment.
What is the speaker's perspective on the increase in childhood developmental disorders?
-The speaker believes that the increase in childhood disorders like autism, behavioral problems, and learning difficulties is a reflection of the "biology of loss" – the impact of disrupted attachment relationships and stress on children's brain development.
What does the speaker suggest as a solution for addressing these childhood issues?
-The speaker suggests that instead of relying solely on medications and behavioral control, we should examine and address the underlying issues of disrupted attachment relationships and childhood stress that are affecting children's brain development.
How does the speaker describe the role of mindfulness in dealing with emotional trauma?
-The speaker suggests that mindfulness can help in recognizing and accepting emotions as they arise, holding them with awareness, and then understanding their roots in past experiences or "implicit memories." This allows for a more mindful response instead of reacting based on those implicit memories.
What is the significance of the speaker's statement that "the emotions and the biology are completely inseparable"?
-The speaker emphasizes that emotions and biology are interconnected, and emotional experiences, particularly in early childhood, can have profound impacts on biological processes, such as brain development and physiological responses.
How does the speaker's personal experience inform his understanding of childhood trauma and its effects?
-The speaker draws extensively from his own experiences of childhood trauma, including his mother's depression and his temporary abandonment, to illustrate how these events can shape brain development, coping mechanisms, and long-term psychological and behavioral patterns.
Outlines
🧠 Early Trauma and Brain Development
The speaker recounts his traumatic childhood experiences, including being handed over to a stranger as an infant to save his life during World War II in Budapest. He explains how early emotional trauma, like the stress and depression his mother experienced, can shape brain development. The implicit emotional memories formed during this critical period, even without explicit recall, can have long-lasting impacts on biology and behavior, such as his later diagnosis of ADHD.
🌱 Intergenerational Trauma and Coping Mechanisms
The speaker describes how the trauma and stress he experienced as an infant due to the war and his mother's depression programmed his brain to develop coping mechanisms like 'tuning out.' This adaptive response became a trait, leading to his ADHD diagnosis much later in life. He also discusses how his workaholic tendencies stemmed from a need to feel wanted and needed. The same patterns repeated with his children, who were also diagnosed with disorders, perpetuating the intergenerational cycle of trauma.
🔍 Understanding Childhood Developmental Disorders
The speaker argues that the increasing prevalence of childhood developmental disorders like autism, behavioral problems, and learning difficulties is not a result of genetics but rather a manifestation of the 'biology of loss.' He suggests that these disorders stem from disrupted attachment relationships and the impact of trauma and stress on brain development. Instead of medicating and controlling children's behavior, he advocates for understanding and addressing the underlying emotional and relational issues.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Abandonment
💡Brain development
💡ADHD
💡Implicit memory
💡Adaptation
💡Mindfulness
💡Multi-generational trauma
💡Attachment relationships
💡Biology of loss
💡Emotional availability
Highlights
When I was a year old, my mother gave me to a total stranger in the street to save my life because she didn't know she'd be alive the next day. I didn't see her for a month, leading to a deep sense of abandonment and not being wanted.
Although I don't recall the actual event of being handed to a stranger, since the hippocampus that encodes recall memory is not developed until later, the emotional implicit memory of abandonment is deep in me.
Emotions and biology are completely inseparable, and what happens on the emotional plane inevitably manifests on the biological plane, affecting brain development.
The speaker became interested in brain development when diagnosed with ADHD at age 53 or 54, followed by two of their kids being diagnosed, which seemed to align with the mainstream medical view of ADHD being a genetic disorder, but the speaker never bought into this view.
The speaker intuited that tuning out or absent-mindedness (characteristics of ADHD) is not a disease but an adaptive response to stress.
The brain develops through interaction with the environment, not solely through genetic programming. The most significant factor shaping brain development is the emotional relationship with the parenting environment.
Optimal brain development requires parents who are emotionally available, consistently available, non-stressed, non-depressed, and mutually responsive or attuned to the child.
The speaker's early life experiences, being born in Budapest during WWII with Jewish parents facing the Nazi occupation and genocide, led to their mother's stress programming the speaker's brain from infancy through tuning out as an adaptive response.
The adaptation of tuning out, which was initially a temporary state, became a trait due to the critical brain development periods in the first year of life.
The speaker's workaholic tendencies as a physician stemmed from the early message of not being wanted, leading to a need to make themselves needed to compensate.
The speaker's children were diagnosed with ADHD, not due to genetics, but as a result of multi-generational trauma and stress affecting brain development, passing on the adaptation of tuning out.
The increase in childhood developmental disorders, like autism and learning difficulties, is a result of the biology of loss affecting children's brain development, often addressed with medications and behavioral control instead of understanding the underlying issues.
Children's actions, such as acting out or displaying behavioral problems, are a manifestation of their lost attachment relationships, rather than inherent disorders.
The implicit memories and emotions that govern us can be addressed through mindfulness, recognizing and accepting the emotions as they arise, and exploring their origins to understand and process them.
The solution lies in mindfulness, but the problem is the implicit memories and their impact on brain development and subsequent generations.
Transcripts
when I was a year old my mother actually
gave me to a total stranger in the
street to save my life
because she didn't know she'd be alive
the next day so I didn't see her for a
month
deep sense of Abandonment not being
wanted
now I don't recall that
I can't recall being handed to a
stranger in the streets of Budapest
because there's nothing to recall with
the brains organ than the brain the
hippocampus that encodes recall memory
is not developed and yet it doesn't
develop till later but the emotional
implicit memory of Abandonment is deep
in me
foreign
emotionally that translates into biology
so it's not that there's biology here
and our emotions here it's that the
emotions and the biology are completely
inseparable
and what happens on the emotional plane
inevitably will have its manifestations
and a biological plane so what you lose
emotionally translates into biological
events in your body and that begins with
brain development I began to be
interested in brain development when I
was diagnosed with ADHD I was 53 I think
54 53 and
[Music]
um
within a couple of months two of my kids
were diagnosed
which seemed to go along with the
mainstream medical view that what we've
got here is a genetic disorder
which I never bought into for a minute
and why didn't I buy into it because
although I didn't know anything about
the brain or how it developed I knew
something
tuning out the absent-mindedness
that characterized is not a disease
inherited or otherwise
what is tuning out
it's an Adaptive response to the stress
so that if I were to stress you right
now but I mean though that is to be
verbally abusive emotionally insulting
domineering
you would go into a stress state
and how could you deal with it well you
could just walk out the door
or you could stand up and say you can't
talk to me like that I will not accept
it and if you couldn't walk out nor did
you have the strength to confront me to
fight back if flight or fight wasn't
available to you there's still a third
thing you could do there are what 100
200 people here in the room with you you
could ask for help
but what if you couldn't
do any of those things then how would
you handle the stress well you wouldn't
your brain would handle it by a number
of defense mechanisms
the Salient of which would be
dissociation
you dissociate all sudden you're not
here now you're not suffering as much so
simply A coping response is all it is
the way we adapt to early stress helps
us endure that difficult period in the
life of the helpless child but those
same adaptations become sources of
pathology threaten your health threaten
the length you know your longevity even
so what's adaptive in one situation
what's meant to be a temporary
state
it becomes a long-term trait and when it
goes from state to a trade know it's a
source of dysfunction and pathology
so that's what I intuited about about
the tuning out but what I didn't know
and this is astonishing
is is the how the brain actually
develops another brain develops it's an
interaction with the environment
so the brain is not genetically
programmed the potentials are
genetically set and the trajectory of
development in terms of what circuits
will develop when that's set generically
but how are they will develop how
successfully they will unfold and
connect and what systems in the brain
will become to dominate that's not a
genetically programmed that depends on
the interaction of that individual with
the environment
the most significant factor
shaping the physiological development of
the brain is the emotional relationship
with the parenting environment
and the necessary condition for optimal
brain development which is so rarely
available in North America are parents
who are emotionally available
consistently available
non-stressed non-depressed and mutually
responsive or attuned to the child
now anything that interferes with the
capacity of the parent to offer those
qualities to the child will have its
impact on brain development
so if you look at my ADHD it's really
easy to understand I was born in
Budapest hunger in 1944 Jewish parents
this is a second world war and when I'm
two months old the Nazis occupy hungry
the genocide had already exterminated
most Jews in Eastern Europe
and I was hungryster
but the day after the Weymouth the
German Army marches The Budapest my
mother forms a pediatrician and I'm two
months old and she says would you please
come and see Gabor because he's crying
all the time and the pediatrician says
of course I can't but I'll tell you all
my Jewish babies are crying
now what are you supposed to be going on
I mean as infants what do we know about
Nazis Hitler genocide Sycamore War
nothing what are responding to
stress of our mothers
and the stress of our mothers program
our brains
now what do you do
as a two-month-old and that was my first
year of my life
when your mother is depressed
terrorized
in grief over the death of her parents
in Auschwitz
the absence of her husband you know
forced labor can
is it two month old is a six-month-old
what do you do with that pain and stress
you tune it out
but when do you tune it out when your
brain is developing when every second
there are periods in the first year of
life when every second in this space of
time millions of brain connections are
being made
guess what that adaptation of tuning out
becomes goes from a temporary state to a
trade
and so 52 years later I'm finally
diagnosed with ADHD
why my kids
my kids grew up in Vancouver no war my
kids weren't abused there was no
substance addiction I wasn't an
alcoholic or anything like that I was a
workaholic physician
why was I a workout like physician
because the message I got from the world
very early on is I wasn't wanted not
because my mother didn't want me but for
the child to feel wanted the mother has
to be happy
the most to be emotionally present and
children when they don't get that it's
all about themselves children are truly
narcissistic in that sense it's not a
pejorative just a statement of reality
they think it's all about themselves
they think it's all about themselves
when you see a narcissistic personality
what you're seeing is a highly
traumatized person who still thinks it's
all about him because he didn't get
those needs met as the child so he's
still trying to get it pay attention to
me
so the personality that we don't develop
actually is an adaptation
and then when I was a year old my mother
actually gave me to a total stranger in
the street to save my life
because she didn't know she'd be alive
the next day
and so I didn't see her for a month
deep sense of Abandonment not being
wanted
now I don't recall that
I can't recall being handed to a
stranger in the streets of Budapest
because there's nothing to recall with
the brains organs in the brain the
hippocampus that encodes recall memory
is not developed and yet it doesn't
develop till later but the emotional
implicit memory of Abandonment is deep
in me
so that when five weeks ago I arrived
home from Vancouver from Philadelphia
from a speaking engagement
I'm feeling really good about myself
I think I'm really centered and grounded
and my wife does not pick me up at the
airport or she texts me saying I'll be
15 minutes late I go into a rage what's
that rage above the woman whom I need is
not here for me
that's an implicit memory and we're
governed by these implicit memories
until we become aware until we become
conscious until I can notice that anger
rising up in me aha anger arising uh-huh
what's that about I take that hand talks
about calming first of all you recognize
that there's an emotion arising inside
you and then he says you accept it
right now there's anger and then you
hold the anger mindfully like you'd hold
a baby
then you look
what is it actually all about
and then the inside comes aha this is
old stuff
well then nothing to be upset about
right
so the the solution is mindfulness
but I'm laying at the problem for you
which is the implicit memories that with
my children and so so since I wasn't
wanted I have to compensate
now how do you compensate for not being
wanted by making yourself needed
they may not want me but they're going
to need me so this is going to be on all
the time and I'm available for all my
patients all the time 24 7. and I'll
never say no to taking on more patients
because that's another sign that I'm
being wanted right
we're needed
where does that leave my kids
with the sense that they're not wanted
because daddy is not around
and mommy is so stressed because Daddy's
not around
so they they tune up
now they're diagnosed with anything
genetic disease nonsense
multi-generational trauma and stress
being passed on as it affects brain
development and if you want to
understand why we're seeing a
preponderance of childhood development
disorders like all these diagnoses
autism 40-fold increase but all these
diagnosis behavior problems the school
problem the learning difficulties you
know what we're looking at we're looking
at the biology of loss as it's affecting
the brains of our children and then how
we respond to it is with medications and
behavioral control instead of saying
what's going on here or what's going on
here is there are children are acting
out their lost attachment relationships
[Music]
thank you
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