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Dr Gabor Maté On Childhood Trauma, The Real Cause Of Anxiety And Our ‘Insane’ Culture (humanwindow.com)

 

In this interview, we spoke about a wide variety of topics, ranging from how he believes that most mental health conditions originate from unresolved childhood trauma, to why he describes current Western culture as ‘insane’ because of its failure to meet basic human needs.

He went into detail about what he sees as the root causes of conditions such as anxiety, panic attacks and fibromyalgia. We also spoke about the process of reconnecting with your authentic self.

The origin of the word ‘trauma’ is the Greek for ‘wound’. Trauma is a wound. How I think about it is that if I wounded you, if I cut your flesh, the healing would involve scar tissue forming. If the wound was great enough, you’d get a big scar, and it would be without nerve endings so you wouldn’t feel, and it would be much less flexible than your normal tissue. Trauma is when there is a loss of feeling and there is a reduced flexibility in responding to the world. This is a response to a wound.

Your new book is going to be called ‘The Myth of Normal: Illness and Health in an Insane Culture’. Just how insane is our culture?

Well, it depends on how you want to define ‘sanity’. If you look at sanity as something that’s congruent with human nature and human needs… Human needs for meaning, connection, validation, belonging and transcendence. These are human needs.

That’s what makes it insane. When somebody’s normal in this society, they are conforming to an insane standard, hence the title of the book.

To read more of Martin Caparotta's article, please click here.

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