--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. You know, when I started this podcast, I sat down and I made a list of dream guests, and I am so excited that you chose to listen to this episode because today, one of those dream guests is sitting here in our Boston studios. His name is Dr. Gabor Maté.
--:-- Now, Dr. Maté is a five-time New York Times bestselling author. He is one of the world's most respected and prolific experts on childhood development, trauma, and the impact that it has on who you become as an adult. And his work has profoundly changed my life. Around the world, he is considered the people whisperer because when he talks about the connection between your childhood and the things you struggle with right now as an adult, you're going to feel so seen and so understood.
--:-- And today, he's here to share a very provocative opinion. Dr. Maté believes that you are not born with conditions like ADHD or addiction or an autoimmune disorder or the inability to say no or being a people pleaser. Dr. Maté says, these are conditions that are created by your childhood experience.
--:-- Now, one of the things that I love about his work is that not only does he bring the science, he also removes the shame. None of what you experienced and how it impacted you is your fault. And when you understand the factors in your childhood that create people-pleasing, ADHD, addiction, and health issues, and all the research and science that supports it, you are going to have a completely different roadmap to your own healing. In fact, you're gonna leave this conversation with five questions that Dr. Maté will tell you you need to ask yourself that are going to help you take the very first step.
--:-- Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so excited that you're here with me today. It is always an honor to be able to spend some time with you, to be together, to learn together. If you're brand new, I want to take a moment and welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Super excited that you're here. And because you chose to listen to this episode, I know something about you. You're the type of person who values your time. And you're also interested in learning about simple ways that you can improve your own life. And I absolutely love that.
--:-- And you know what I also love? I love that you and I are gonna get to spend time today learning from the extraordinary Dr. Gabor Maté. He's a world-renowned physician and New York Times bestselling author and a renowned addiction expert who dives deep into childhood development and the impact of physiological and psychological trauma and how it shapes our mental and physical health over your lifetime. And today specifically, you and I are going to dive deep with Dr. Maté into how ADHD, people-pleasing, addiction, your inability to say no, and autoimmune disorders are not things that you're born with. They were created by your childhood.
--:-- So please help me welcome Dr. Gabor Maté to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It is such an honor to sit down with you and spend some time together today. Thank you. I'm really excited about the topic today and your work around how childhood conditions and experiences in your childhood are connected to ADHD, addiction, and autoimmune diseases and disorders. And I have so many questions I want to ask you. Why don't we start with just your definition of what you're talking about when you mean childhood conditions so that as the person is listening to us today and spending time with us together, we're all using the same words and concepts and we kind of start on the same page.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So child conditions include the physical conditions: nutrition, housing, comfort, protection. But they also include the emotional conditions, which has to do with a child's sense of being accepted or being loved—not just love, but actually being seen, understood. And also the parents' emotional states. Are the parents stressed? Are the parents struggling with economic difficulties? Are the parents carrying traumas that they hadn't worked through yet, like I had when I was a young parent? Are the parents in a marriage that's relatively peaceful? Is there a lot of conflict? Is there instability? Is there unpredictability? What kind of community support is there? Is there an extended family that can spell off the parents and give them some kind of emotional support? Are they rather isolated? Are you a single parent struggling to make a living and raise a child? All these conditions affect the personality and the brain development of the child.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I know you wrote the original book on childhood development and ADHD, *Scattered Minds*, 25 years ago. It is still on the bestseller list when it comes to ADHD topics. I don't know if I'm going to say this correctly, but is it fair to say that your opinion is that your childhood and the conditions and the experiences that you have directly create or cause ADHD, addiction, and autoimmune issues?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes, along with certain genetic predispositions.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: But I can talk about genetics later. What I want to say about them now is that a predisposition is not a predetermination. You can have predispositions, but then depending on the environmental conditions, those predispositions can be expressed one way or another way. You can have animals with the same genes, or humans with the same genes, that have very different outcomes depending on the kind of conditions under which their early years were spent. So that's what I'm saying, yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The first recognition of that in my life came when I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 53 or 52. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 46 when our son, Oakley, was going through the process of neuropsych evaluations for schools and IEPs. And as they were doing his evaluations, I started going, "Oh, wait a minute. That's a lot like me." And then I went through the formal process of being evaluated and diagnosed: dyslexia, ADHD. And I had never, ever, ever heard anyone connect your childhood and adverse conditions or conditions where you didn't get your needs met as being a contributing factor or a cause of ADHD. How is that even possible?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Well, it's possible because Western medicine separates the mind from the body. So they tend to look at things purely from a biological point of view. So ADHD is considered to be a genetic disease that you inherited. Here's the problem with that. Number one, if that's the case, why are the numbers going up? Genes don't change in population over 10, 20, or 30 years. So something's going on in the environment that's affecting child development.
--:-- Number two, even if you look at the physiology of the child's brain, what's not understood by most physicians—because it's not taught in medical schools, but it's firmly, completely, unequivocally, and uncontroversially established in brain science—is that the brain is a social product. The brain development of the child depends on the emotional conditions under which the child lives, from in utero onwards. The very circuitry of the child's brain is programmed by the action of the environment on the genes. Different environments work differently on the same genes.
--:-- Now, if you look at ADHD, what's the medication that we give?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I took it for a while. Stimulants.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: What do stimulants do? They elevate the level of a chemical called dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is essential for motivation and therefore for focus. That's what Ritalin, Dexedrine, Adderall, and all these medications elevate. Now, the dopamine circuitry of the child's brain develops in interaction with the environment. This is what most people who deal with ADHD just don't look at, even though it's a pure scientific fact. A summary from Harvard University pointed out that the child's brain develops in interaction with the environment, especially the emotional relationship with the nurturing adults.
--:-- Dopamine is a brain chemical. We have receptors forming in our brain. Receptors are molecules where the dopamine can land and do its job. The number of dopamine receptors in a child is affected by stress on the mother already in pregnancy, let alone afterwards. If you take mice and you isolate them, the number of dopamine receptors will go down. If you bring them back into companionship, the number of dopamine receptors will elevate. In other words, the brain is a social organ. It's interactive with the environment all our lives, and therefore environmental conditions affect the brain, especially during its phase of early development. It's just pure science. It's not even controversial.
--:-- The problem here is the tendency of the medical profession, in which I was trained, to separate the mind from the body and to look at brain biology in isolation from the life circumstances that shape that brain biology.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I'm going to try to distill what you just said because I've never heard it explained quite like that. And I believe you. What you're saying is that your brain is a social organ that is developed in partnership with your relationship to the adults around you. When you're literally inside your mother's womb, all the way until you are developing as a little kid. And if you are in a condition—whether it is the condition of being inside your mother's womb and your mother is depressed or experiencing racism or abuse or poverty or any of these things that create chronic stress on a human being—it impacts the development of your brain.
--:-- And what you're also saying is that ADHD and the way that it is treated is typically through prescription drugs that flood the brain with dopamine. And that is what helps your underdeveloped brain, or the brain that's been impacted by stressful conditions during your childhood or your development in the womb. And that the stressful conditions are what has interfered with the brain development and continues to now.
--:-- Can I ask you a quick question?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I understand that when, as a human being, you're experiencing stress, or you are experiencing a threat, or you're feeling isolated and lonely and like you're invisible or nobody cares about you, your body naturally switches from being present and in the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala taking over. And you're now in fight or flight. When you're in fight or flight and you're in that stress response state, does it interfere with dopamine?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: It interferes with dopamine. It interferes with cortisol. It has an effect on the memory centers in the brain like the hippocampus. It affects the amygdala. All those things. And if you look at children in poverty or who experience racialized circumstances, they're more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. The children of women with postpartum depression are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. The children of women who are stressed during pregnancy are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.
--:-- And there's this myth about it being genetic because it tends to run in families. Like you were diagnosed, your kids were diagnosed. I was diagnosed, a couple of my kids were diagnosed. But it's not because the so-called disease—it's not even a disease—but it's not because the so-called disease was passed on, but because the conditions that created your brain were also then repeated in your children's childhood, as in mine. So something running in a family says nothing about genetic causation.
--:-- Going back to the fight or flight thing: if a child is feeling stressed—and by the way, I think there is something genetic here, and what is genetic here is sensitivity. The more sensitive kids are, the more they feel what's going on around them. So if the parents are stressed, the child feels the stress. Can the child escape or fight back? No. What do they do? They tune out. But when do they tune out? They tune out when their brain is developing, so that gets wired into the brain. And now they're told, "You got this genetic disease." No, you don't. It's an adaptation that began as an adaptation. And as with many of these sheltered adaptations, later on they create problems. So they served their purpose, but now they are wired in.
--:-- Not to mention, if you look at the traits of ADHD—the absent-mindedness, the tuning out—and then the other traits of ADHD are poor impulse regulation. That means when you want to do something, like I might have an impulse to do something, there's nothing wrong with the impulse, but there's something wrong with me acting out the impulse. Impulse regulation depends on certain circuitry in the brain. No baby has any impulse regulation. It has to develop. For anything that's developmental, the conditions have to be right. If a plant in your backyard wasn't growing the way you expected it, you'd look at what's missing here: nutrition, sunlight, irrigation. It's the same with kids. When they've got these challenges, let's look at the conditions that shape their development.
--:-- Impulse regulation is another brain circuitry that doesn't develop well in people with ADHD. And incidentally, in people who are addicted, which is why there's such a great link between addictions and ADHD. And then the third one is hyperactivity, which is sometimes not always there. It tends to be there more in boys.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Boys, not girls.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yep. And the regulation of the body is a function of the midfrontal cortex. That has to develop. So under conditions of stress, given that the brain is a social organ and it's also a historical organ—does the name Bruce Perry mean anything to you?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is he in Wisconsin?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I don't know where he is, but he's a well-known child trauma psychiatrist.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, I believe he's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I think. But don't quote me on that. Did he write the book with Oprah Winfrey?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah, he wrote the book *What Happened to You?* And he says the brain is a historical organ. It stores the impacts of life experiences. So when we look at brain biology, let's not think that the biology is somehow distinct and separated from life experience. There's no fault-laying here. And sometimes I do get accused of blaming parents. It's the last thing I want to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't hear you blaming parents. I hear you talking very factually.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: No, but there's a very well-known ADHD psychologist who goes on YouTube and says I blame parents. And I don't. I think parents do their best. They love their kids. But their best is limited by their own particular challenges and limitations. There's no parent blaming here. But we have to recognize the importance and the impact of early experiences.
--:-- So what I'm saying is that ADHD is a result of all that stress and its impact on the brains of especially genetically sensitive kids. That's what's inherited: the sensitivity. But if there was only the sensitivity and optimal conditions, they'd never have ADHD. So it's not the ADHD that's inherited, it's the sensitivity.
--:-- That's the good news. If you were a parent with a kid with ADHD, and if I was a doctor and I said to you, "Madam, your kid's got this genetic condition, brain biology, nothing we can do about it, but here's some medication," or if I said to you, "Mel, your child's got this condition. Your child's very sensitive, very responsive to the environment. And even now at age eight or age 16 or whenever, if we can go into different conditions, the brain can still develop in different ways." Which message would you rather go with?
--:-- Mel Robbins: The second.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah, of course. This is a much more optimistic and much more science-based attitude. But unfortunately, again, given the dominance of pharmaceutical companies and the biological mindedness—what they call biological psychiatry, which is just fixating on the biology and fixing it, rather than looking at the conditions that shaped the biology—we're very much stuck in a state where hundreds of thousands and millions of kids are being medicated. And I'm not against medications. I prescribe them, I've taken them, but they're not the answer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's fascinating is that when you really wrap your brain around it, it makes a lot of sense. I'm sure you're familiar with that metaphor—it's not the most elegant metaphor—that the genetics loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger. Which means you come into this world predisposed to certain things, but it's the environment that either deactivates or activates what you're predisposed to. So that makes perfect sense.
--:-- And the other thing that makes perfect sense in terms of my lived experience is being diagnosed with ADHD late in life and also having a son and two daughters that have ADHD. We were in Boston in a very competitive public school system, in the go-go-go, both spouses working, running to the club sports, doing this, doing that, busy, busy, busy, busy. When we moved to southern Vermont, open space, amazing things change. You change because the environment changes. If you just think about being on vacation, you leave the go-go-go of your day-to-day and your work and your social and all that stuff, and you step away to a space that typically has a little bit more open space and a different pace to your life, you change.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I feel—because I was about to ask you, "Why does this matter to know this?"—but I feel that it matters deeply because if environmental conditions can shape your brain as a child, and we know that the brain develops and grows and changes through neuroplasticity through your entire life, then environmental changes, I suppose, also help you change and address these conditions.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Absolutely. So when a family with an ADHD child would come to me, once I had this recognition, I would say, "Well, we can consider medication in the short term if we need to, but it's not the first step. It never should be the only step. Can we look at the family atmosphere? Can we look at the relationship between the parents? Can we look at the stresses in the family? Can you understand the child's behavior in a way that doesn't blame the child?" Because these kids tend to be blamed a lot for how they behave.
--:-- Now, we talk about this phrase "acting out." Kids are acting out, which usually means they're being obstreperous, oppositional, defiant, or non-cooperative or rude or something. It means they're not doing what the parent wants them to do. But let's look at the phrase "acting out." In English, we act something out when we don't have the language to say it in words. In a game of charades, we're not allowed to speak. What do you have to do? Act it out. These kids' behaviors are simply acting out their emotional needs and dynamics. It's up to the parents to understand that, rather than just to respond or react to the behavior in a controlling or punitive way. Let's understand what is being acted out.
--:-- That's one of the reasons I wrote that book: I want parents to understand what is being acted out in this child's behavior. And if you change the relationship to the child, the child's behavior will change. So it's not behavior control. It's actually promoting different conditions that'll support the child's healthy development.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, this reminds me of something that's always really just made me feel very heartbroken about the state of society in the world, particularly in the United States. When I was going through this experience where my husband and I were having our son go through the process of all the evaluations, the school kept saying, "This is behavioral, behavioral." And we were like, "I don't think so. I don't think so." And so we were in a position to be able to have him tested here in Boston at Mass General, outside the school.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And just three years prior, we would not have been able to afford to do that.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I understand.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that diagnosis and understanding that his brain and the way that he learned and the development of his brain was just different—
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: —changed the trajectory of his life and my life. And before I did what I do now, earlier in my career, I was a public defender in Manhattan.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah, I read that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Doing criminal defense work. The statistics of people who are incarcerated—
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes, with ADHD.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, with ADHD, with learning differences who were never diagnosed. Who, when you trace it back to what you're saying—childhood conditions, a parent who is absent, chronic racism, which is a form of trauma—
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Absolutely.
--:-- Mel Robbins: —it makes very depressing and sad and unfair sense. And I think a lot about the fact that it's simply because we were able, at that moment in our lives, to afford a test that sent him in one direction, when kids who don't have that are sent in a different one.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: We're actually hurting people for having been hurt. And then they act out that hurt. And then we blame them for it rather than understand what that's all about. Let me say something else. The diagnosis doesn't explain anything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you mean the diagnosis doesn't mean anything?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So Mel or Gabor have ADHD. How do we know? Well, they're absent-minded. They have poor impulse regulation and they're hyperactive. Why are they absent-minded and have poor impulse regulation? And why do they have activity? Because they have ADHD. How do we know they have ADHD? Because they're hyperactive, they tune out, and they have poor impulse control. Why do they? It's circular. It's not an explanation. It's a description. And medical practice tends to mistake descriptions for explanations. They're not. If you want to know why they're hyperactive or lacking impulse regulation or tend to tune out, you've got to look at their lives as those lives acted on their genes. That's the explanation. The diagnosis describes something, but it doesn't explain anything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But understanding this helps you also understand the role that environment and how this happened. I think descriptions are helpful.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: We just mustn't mistake them for explanations. That's all.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That makes a lot of sense. Dr. Maté, let's take a quick pause. I would love our sponsors to have a chance to say a few words. And while you're listening to the sponsors, please share this episode with somebody that you care about. Absolutely every human being that you know and love deserves this information because once you kind of understand things, you are now empowered to make them better. And don't go anywhere because we're going to be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's Mel. I'm coming in here with my own ad. I am beyond excited to tell you that my new book, *The Let Them Theory*, is available for pre-order. Holy smokes, I have never worked harder on anything in my entire life. I have never been more proud of something that I have done. I wrote every single word in this book. It's about the most powerful tool I've ever discovered: The Let Them Theory. Right now, go to letthem.com and pre-order your own copy. This book is going to change how you think about your entire life and finally stop you from getting in your own way. LetThem.com, you won't regret it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back, it's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are spending time with the extraordinary Gabor Maté, and we're learning all about how your childhood impacted who you became as an adult. So I have another question for you. You know, you mentioned addiction.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And there is a lot of research that shows a direct link between ADHD and addiction.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what does your research and experience show about your childhood experience and conditions and the connection to addiction?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So for 12 years, I worked in Vancouver, British Columbia's downtown Eastside, which is North America's most concentrated area of drug use. We have more drug users there in a few square blocks than anywhere in the States or anywhere else in Canada, in fact, anywhere in Europe.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I was there for 12 years. And a significant percentage of my patients clearly had ADHD that had not been diagnosed. Now, let's look at the commonalities. First of all, both addicts and people with ADHD lack impulse control. As somebody said about addiction, the problem in addiction is not lack of free will, but lack of a free won't.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Lack of a free won't?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Won't. They have nothing to say no with because that circuitry didn't develop. Number one. Number two, addictions all work on the dopamine system, which is what is affected in ADHD as well. So stimulant addicts—crystal meth addicts, cocaine addicts, nicotine addicts, caffeine addicts—they're literally boosting their dopamine levels, which is precisely what's the issue in ADHD as well. If you look at the studies, something like about 30% or more of stimulant addicts actually are diagnosable with ADHD. But again, this is studied and reported, but not much is done with it in medical practice.
--:-- Furthermore, all addictions, no matter what they are, work on the dopamine circuitry. I will define addiction for you: it is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences as a result and doesn't give it up despite the harm. Craving pleasure or relief in the short term, harm, inability to give it up. That's what an addiction is.
--:-- Now, let me just go sideways a little bit.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Let me ask you a question. And you've already answered it, but according to that definition, notice I didn't say anything about drugs. I said any behavior. Now, if I speak to a room of a thousand people and I give that definition and I say, "According to that definition, which is not controversial, if you ever had an addictive pattern in your life, just raise your hand." Out of a thousand, 999 will raise their hands, and there's one liar who won't. But basically, it's almost everybody.
--:-- Now, here's the second question. And I don't care what your addictive patterns were, whether they were to alcohol, which you mentioned, or to whatever else. Know what was wrong with it, but what was right about it? What did it give you in the short term that you wanted?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, well, with alcohol, it was like a sense of belonging and relief and it was a way to turn my brain off.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Okay. And to escape.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: When do people need to escape? When they're stressed. When they're suffering. So the addiction wasn't the disease that you had. It wasn't your primary problem. It was an attempt to solve the problem of emotional pain and isolation. So my mantra on addiction is: don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And if you want to understand the pain, look at the person's life rather than just their genes.
--:-- Both people who are addicted and people who have ADHD often share these genes for sensitivity, which means they suffer more when circumstances aren't right. So obviously those conditions will go together. Furthermore, to go back to dopamine: the shopping addict, the gambling addict, the pornography addict, the social media addict—and I've had my behavior addictions—the gaming addict, the busyness addict. You know what they're after? They're after a hit of dopamine in the brain, which they get through seeking that behavior.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then you feel bad, though, that you did it.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Well, yeah. And I had my behavior addictions. But what I'm saying is, it's all based partly on the dopamine circuitry.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Which didn't develop.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Which didn't develop the way it should have.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because of your childhood.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Exactly. So now you have to get your dopamine hit through pornography. And if you do brain scans on pornography addicts, they get multiple spikes of dopamine hits in their brain when they're engaged.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Just like a drug addict.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah, yeah. It makes absolutely perfect sense.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you—what do you do if you're listening to this and you either yourself are recognizing this is you, or you're like, "You are describing my spouse or my adult child or my parent or whomever in my life"? What do you do with this particular information of the connection between childhood conditions and development and ADHD and addiction?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: May I just say one more thing about the brain?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Please.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Opiates. People get addicted to heroin or OxyContin or Dilaudid, hydromorphone or codeine or whatever—fentanyl, unfortunately, which is a very dangerous one. These are opiates. They come from the opium plant in Afghanistan or they're human-manufactured copies of the same molecule. Now, why do opiates—why does a plant from Afghanistan work in the human brain here in the States?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't know.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Well, because the opiate molecule—we have receptors for it in our brains, which means we have our internal opiate system. This is just pure brain science. The opiate system is called endorphins. Endorphin means endogenous, internal morphine-like substance. So we have an opiate system in our bodies, which affects many functions in our body from the gut to the immune system. But what do they do in the brain?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: If we understand opiate addiction, we have to understand what endorphins do in the human trajectory. First of all, they provide pain relief, both physical and emotional pain relief. Internal endorphins do that. We have to have pain in life because without pain we don't survive because we can hurt ourselves, but we also have pain relief. So endorphins relieve pain, but not just physical pain, also emotional pain. Because the part of the brain where people experience physical pain—the suffering of physical pain—it is also the experience of suffering of emotional pain. So the endorphins, the opiates, work there. That's their first role.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: The second role, along with dopamine, is to give you a sense of pleasure, elation, and joy. That's rather important in human life because human life is difficult. So we have to have some expectation of pleasure, joy, relief. That's what the opiates do.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: The third thing they do: they facilitate a little thing called love. Endorphins help you feel connected to other people. Particularly, they help parents feel connected to their kids, without which the child doesn't survive. If you take little animals and knock out their opiate receptors, they will not call for their mothers on separation. What would that do to them? It would kill them in the wild. That's how important the opiates are.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Now, who are these people that develop opiate addictions? People whose lives have undermined their opiate circuitry. I had a sex trade worker in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. I asked her, "What did the heroin do for you?" She said, "The first time I did heroin, it felt like a warm, soft hug." Just like the alcohol which gave you a sense of belonging, it gave you a sense of being loved, a sense of warmth. That's why people get addicted. It's because they suffer that early pain and are trying to escape from it. Because the brain circuitry was affected by adverse conditions, these circuits didn't develop optimally. Now they have to substitute.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So that's a summary on addiction. It's not an inherited disease. It's a response to the environment. And it's not genetic, contrary to what 99% of physicians believe.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The reason why this is so important is because there is so much shame and self-blame when you have an addiction or something you're struggling with like ADHD. When you understand the brain circuitry and the connection to brain development and human development and childhood conditions and experiences, and how that has a direct impact on the working and wiring of your brain, you can separate yourself as a human being from the thing that caused this. That's the whole point. And then that allows you, from that moment of separation and detachment and objectivity, to go, "Oh, wait a minute. I'm not to blame for this."
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: This is a circuitry and a conditioning problem. It's my responsibility. And now it's my responsibility to do what I need to do with this to heal it and make it better.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Exactly right. And to go back to your question about what we do with this information: if you are parents of a child who's been diagnosed with ADHD, make a considered decision about whether you want a kid medicated or not. Medications can sometimes help. Sometimes they cause side effects. No child should be forced to be on medication, because no child at any age should get the message that they're only acceptable to the adults when their brain is sedated. You don't want to give that message to any child. But they can help sometimes to mitigate symptoms. They do nothing for brain development in the long term.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So the question is: can we create in this family better conditions for that child's brain to develop in more optimal ways? And yes, we can. That has a lot to do with the emotional atmosphere in the family and the degree of understanding and connection. Not love, because that's already there, but actual understanding and connection between the parents and the child. That book's been out 25 years, and I've been told so often that it totally changed the family just to read that book, and it totally changed their children.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's very empowering because I think if you're the person struggling with the addiction or ADHD or a condition like that, you feel deficient. You feel that you've done something wrong. And you can never heal while you're punishing yourself at the same time. And the world is punishing you.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Teachers are punishing you.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's true.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Your parents are exasperated with you.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yes. When it comes to treating addiction, it's very complex, but the person again needs to understand there's nothing wrong with them. They weren't born with any kind of disease. Addiction is a perfectly normal response to abnormal circumstances. Look at all the veterans who are traumatized and become alcoholics or opiate addicts. And then there's the opposite study about the veterans from Vietnam who were using opioids in Vietnam, but then came home to a supportive environment.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Exactly.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: And were not addicted. I quote that study in my book on addiction because it's such a salient fact. It's been done with laboratory rats, too. They took laboratory rats and exposed them to different environmental conditions and tried to get them addicted to opioids. Those rats that were stressed and isolated and under adverse conditions easily became addicted to opioids. The rats with good conditions—you couldn't even make them addicted to opioids. It doesn't matter how much you gave them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The main thing is that if the environment is actually creating the conditions in your brain and body for addiction and ADHD, then the environment is a huge piece of you healing this and growing in new ways and figuring out new adaptations for how to heal.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Well, and I think it's not an individual process. It should be, for the most part, but you need the social help. That's what the 12-step groups are. I have my critiques of them, but the 12 steps themselves, I think, are wonderful. And the group process is wonderful, where people can share themselves and be heard compassionately and not be shamed. They can declare their so-called dysfunctions and be accepted. So I think it's not just an individual process. But what's missing from the 12-step groups, unfortunately, is awareness of trauma. Bill W., the original founder, was an abandoned child, highly traumatized. For some reason, trauma hasn't entered the conversation of the 12-step movement as much as I'd like to see it done. But again, healing should not be seen as just an individual process. It should be seen as a social process. People that deal with addictions need to understand trauma.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gabor, I've never heard it explained like that. That makes so much sense. And this feels like a good time to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. While you're listening to our sponsors, take a moment and share this with somebody that you care about, because there's no doubt in my mind that this can help change somebody else's life. And don't go anywhere because we have so much more to dig into with you. We're going to be waiting for you after a short break. So stay with us.
--:-- [Pause for sponsors]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are with the extraordinary Dr. Gabor Maté. So Dr. Maté, I have another question. What do you think is missing from the conversation that women need to know when it comes to diagnosing and supporting women who are largely getting late-in-life diagnoses of ADHD?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I'd have to think here. I think what happens is when we get older, they tend to get a bit less repressed. The tendencies that are in them that they've tried to control in order to be acceptable and to fit in become intolerable for them, particularly perimenopausally. It becomes a chore for them to continue to fit the stereotype in which they were molded. So I think whatever's in them is more likely to show up. I would say to them what I say to anybody: get curious about what is being manifested in this condition.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In your book *Hungry Ghosts*, you mention your own struggles with addictions to praise, even to classical music. Not to the music, sorry—to shopping for classical music.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: There's a distinction.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I love the music, but that doesn't make me an addict. That just makes me a music lover. It's the shopping. I would drop $3,000 in a music store and go back two hours later because I had to get the next one. Typical addictive behavior. So it's the shopping that I was addicted to—not the having, but the acquisition. And when I was in the classical music store, I had no ADHD. I had high dopamine levels. I was focused. I can almost remember which record I bought in which store, which CD. So just to make the distinction: it's not the music, it's the shopping I was addicted to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that distinction because I can relate to it. I think in the biggest moments of crisis in my life—facing bankruptcy, literally about to lose it all—if I had a tiny bit of money, I would go to the mall as an escape. Given that daily addiction, whether it's the mom pouring a couple glasses of wine at night, or scrolling for three hours, or mindlessly shopping, whatever it may be, what strategies have you found most effective in controlling or managing through these tendencies or patterns of behavior that so many of us have?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Here's where we have to make a distinction between drug addictions and behavior addictions. Drug addictions become a very chemical problem, and people go into withdrawal, and that has to be managed. Behavior addicts also go into withdrawal, but it's less noticeable. With my work addiction, my workaholism, when I was at home I'd be irritable and depressed. That's withdrawal because the dopamine wasn't flowing. But obviously, it's more easily manageable.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So I say two things. One is: let's look at the need that it is serving in your life. What is the need it is serving?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Doom scrolling for me—the need is to tune out.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: No, that's not the need. What is the need for tuning out serving in your life?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh boy.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: You have no joy, play, or relaxation.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So you don't know how to be comfortable with yourself. You can't just be. You have to be doing, and your attention has to be external. That goes back to childhood. It means you weren't comfortable, and you didn't develop that comfort with yourself. You didn't develop that sense of your own goodness and validity. So when you're alone and not doing something, there's distress, and your mind is going all over the place. So that's the need it's serving. So then you say, "It's meeting this need to escape from myself. How can I learn to be with myself?" There are ways to do that. I have many suggestions in my books. But essentially, it's recognizing the need that's being met—not invalidating the need, validating the need—but recognizing that the behavior itself only temporarily soothes it but doesn't meet the need well.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I feel like I've been fixing the wrong problem because I'm focused on "Don't drink the drink. Don't pick up the phone." What you're saying is, "No, you're over here looking at this thing. There's a deeper issue about learning to be with yourself, about learning to be in the 5 to 7 p.m. time zone and be okay with all that comes up and know that you can move through it without pouring a drink."
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's the whole point. There's nothing wrong with saying "Don't drink." It's only that it doesn't deal with the fundamental need. So let's recognize the need. Those needs are valid. Your need for social contact, for not being isolated. Social isolation, which you interpreted as rejection—your husband points out you're not being rejected, it's just something else. But your childhood programming tells you it's rejection.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's true.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So does everything come back to our childhood?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Pretty much. That's when we're shaped. Have you ever had a puppy dog?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. Two.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: How you treat that puppy will define, to a significant degree, what kind of creature they're going to be.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's true.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Human beings are infinitely more complex than puppy dogs, and it's totally true. So what I'm saying is: recognize the need, validate the need, but then ask the question, "How can I meet that need in ways that are not harmful?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: One of the things you're talking a lot about is the connection between childhood conditions and experiences, how they shape you, and the significant rise in autoimmune disorders and diseases in women. 80% of people—80% of autoimmune disease, which are diseases where the immune system attacks the body it's supposed to protect. What are a few examples of an autoimmune disease?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus, probably fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, autoimmune eczema, scleroderma. I could go on and on. There are about 100 of these, and 80% of them happen to women. Why?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: In my medical practice, I began to notice. My advantage over my specialist colleagues is that they know a lot more about certain body parts and systems, as they should, but they don't know the patient. I knew people before they got sick. I knew them in their context of their families of origin and the extended family very often. So I got to see who got sick and who didn't. When I was in palliative care, again, I saw who ended up in palliative care and who didn't. These people had four significant characteristics.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: One: they tended to put other people's emotional needs ahead of their own and ignore their own. Number two: they tended to identify with duty, role, and responsibility rather than the needs of the self. Number three: they tended to be very nice, which means they repressed healthy anger. Healthy anger is a boundary defense. And these people tended to be very nice. Number four: these people tended to believe that they're responsible for how other people feel—a point you address in your book *Let Them*. They had this belief that they must never disappoint anybody.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Those beliefs lead you into not saying no to the demands of the world. You're constantly taking on stuff and stress. Other people's stress becomes your stress. That stress undermines the immune system, which then turns against you. I could explain the physiology. The immune system, the hormonal apparatus, the nervous system, and the emotional system are one system. They're not separate. They're wired together in a whole lot of chemical and neurological ways. I'm not making this up. This is science. It's called psychoneuroimmunology—psychology, neurology, immunology, and endocrinology, the hormones. It's all one system.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: People who repress healthy anger are suppressing their immune system biologically. If you understand it's all one system, ask why. What is the role of healthy anger? It's a boundary defense. What is the role of the immune system? It's a boundary defense. It's meant to let in what is good and nurturing and keep out what is toxic and dangerous. When you're suppressing your emotions, you're also messing with the immune system because it's all one. It's like you're training your immune system not to protect you from the outside. That's what happens. And it turns against you. Anger that you repress turns against you in the form of depression or self-loathing. The same way your negative thoughts—where you think you're to blame for all the stuff going on when you're a child that is not your responsibility—turn into negative self-talk aimed against you. The same way, the immune system turns against you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. That's the whole point. It makes so much sense.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Physiologically, it's just a fact.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why is it women?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Who in this culture is programmed to always look after everybody's emotional needs, take on everybody's stresses, identify with duties and their role, be nice all the time, not be angry in a healthy way, and take responsibility for other people's feelings? It's women. It's not a gender issue. It's a cultural issue. The more stress the woman experiences, the greater the risk of autoimmune disease. If you look at minority women, they have a higher percentage because they're women and they're a minority.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was just about to ask you whether there were studies for minority women and people in first responder roles.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Many studies. In Canada, an indigenous woman has six times the rate of rheumatoid arthritis than somebody else. This is in a population that never used to have rheumatoid arthritis. And again, are we blaming people here? No, we're not. We have to look at what happened here. The child is born with all these emotions wired into their brains, but the child has two big needs. The need for attachment, for belonging, for being held, for being accepted, supported, and so on. That's a need that is not negotiable. Without it, as an infant, as a young child, you die.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You die.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So there's one need. But you have another need as well, which I call authenticity—being connected to your emotions and your gut feelings. In any audience, when I ask people, "Have you had the experience of having a strong gut feeling about something, ignoring it, and being sorry afterwards?" most people put their hands up. Gut feelings were programmed into us by evolution. We evolved out in nature for millions of years. How long does any creature in nature survive if they don't pay attention to their gut feelings? Not until the end of the day. You're a goner.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So we have these two needs: attachment and authenticity—being connected to ourselves. If the child gets the message that being authentic with their emotions is not acceptable to the environment, guess what? There's a contest between the two.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You get trained to not trust your instincts.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: And you're trained to disconnect and push down your feelings. So we give up authenticity for the sake of attachment. In your book, there's an example of a guy about to get married. It's called his misgivings. There's a failure of what everybody else will think. You're wishing he would say no to the wedding. What's going on? He's stuck in this tension between attachment—the need to be acceptable—and authenticity—being himself. Women are caught in that trap in this society. So are many men, of course. It's not just a gender issue. But overwhelmingly, it's women who have to choose the attachment of being acceptable over authenticity. That's why they have much more autoimmune disease.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Often, for a lot of us, we choose attachment rather than staying connected to ourselves. As a child, you have no choice. The question is, as an adult, can we develop that choice? Do I have to keep choosing attachment over authenticity?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You also hear doctors say that all of these autoimmune disorders flare up in moments of stress, in moments of overwhelm. And the main thing they're treated with is...
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Steroids.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, and "take better care of yourself."
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Typically for these conditions, we give cortisol—a stress hormone. If you go to the dermatologist with inflamed skin, they give you steroid cream, cortisol. If you go to a gastroenterologist with an inflamed intestine, they'll at some point give you cortisol, a stress hormone. If you go with an inflamed nervous system, multiple sclerosis, they give you a stress hormone, cortisol. I could go on. But we never ask ourselves, "Gosh, we're giving stress hormones to people. Is it possible that stress may have something to do with their condition?" Doctors know that in cases of acute stress, that can flare up a disease. That's clear. What they don't recognize are those emotional patterns I'm talking about, which stress people chronically but in less dramatic ways. What's it like to always have to repress your anger, to be pleasing other people?
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's the whole point. That's the stress that I think often instigates. You've abandoned yourself, and now your body function is abandoning you.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's the whole point.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is there good news here?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: The good news is if you change these patterns, you can actually significantly affect the course of your illness. I know lots of examples of that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How can someone find the root cause of the emotional pain? How do you begin the process of healing? You've painted this landscape that helps us understand the connection between childhood experiences and conditioning, how that shapes your body, brain function, physiology, immune system, and how continued environmental stress and continued abandonment of self for the sake of being accepted by other people. When you see all this, it's incredibly empowering. What is one step you would want someone to take if they're having an awakening, or they've been sent this episode by somebody who loves them, and they're like, "This is me"?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Let's take one example, very simple. Prior to your awakening and transformational journey that you undertook sometime in your 40s, how easy did you find it to say no to other people's expectations?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, I couldn't.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So you couldn't say no.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I ask people this question: where in your life do you have difficulty saying no?
--:-- Mel Robbins: It shows up in two areas: work and personal life.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: The second question I ask people is: what's the impact on you of having difficulty saying no?
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's exhausting. I don't like my own behavior.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: So it's shame.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Lack of control.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Lack of control. Anger. Blaming other people and making it their fault that you can't say no. Loss of control is one of the most significant triggers for stress, according to the stress literature.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That makes sense because we have a biological hardwired need for safety.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Exactly. Which we try to achieve by controlling everything and everyone around us. Only because we learned in childhood that if we didn't, there'd be no safety. If we learned that there was safety, we would trust the world a lot more and we wouldn't have to control. Nobody's born a control freak. It's an adaptive trait. So going through this exercise: you identify some impacts. Could also be frequent colds, illness, and so on. The third question is: what's your belief that keeps you from saying no? When you had trouble saying no, what was the story? What was the belief?
--:-- Mel Robbins: That I would get fired from my job, and then we wouldn't be able to pay our bills, and then we would lose our house, and on and on and on. Or they wouldn't like me, or my mother would be mad at me, or this would happen or that would happen. The weight of the world on my shoulders.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Exactly. The fourth question is: how did you develop that story—that if I say no, I'll be rejected? Where did you learn that?
--:-- Mel Robbins: For me, even though I don't quite remember, it was that it was my job to make sure everybody was okay in the house and that everybody was happy.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: As you learned it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that made me feel safe.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: In other words, you learned it when you were two or three or four or five years old. And now you're an adult, as you say in my book.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's why this has been such a game changer. When I say "let them," I separate someone else's emotions and their expectations from what's my responsibility.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: You're choosing authenticity over attachment. That's what you're doing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, I love that. You're right. I'm staying connected to myself.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's the whole game. That's what I'm talking about here. Once you understand that you learned the story when you were hypnotized into it—three or four-year-olds are in hypnotic states. That's why they believe that when they're playing monsters, they're actually monsters. Those hypnotic influences are really powerful. They stay with us. So the next question is: who would you be if you didn't believe that you mustn't say no? Who would you be then?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Exactly. Do that exercise once a week. Five questions to freedom. It's in *The Myth of Normal*. There's a chapter on it. There's a sixth question.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What is the sixth question?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Where are you not saying yes?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God. Everywhere. To free time, to play, to joy, to creativity, to rest.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That not saying yes is as harmful as the not saying no. Those two little words—that little exercise, you do that once a week, it changes people's lives.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The sixth question—"What are you not saying yes to?"—that one made my heart contract a little. Because that's where I really saw what I'm missing out on.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Where are you not saying yes to play and rest?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm much better than I used to be. Five years ago, I was in London giving a talk on my book *When the Body Says No*. I was very articulate and adept on stage, but personally I was irritated. I was working too hard, driving myself too hard. I was not kind to my wife. Her name is Rae. She said to me, "Buddy, you've written a book called *When the Body Says No*. You better write one called *When the Wife Says No*." Part of what's helped me draw up these patterns—and I'm still working on it—is because I love this relationship when I'm in it. I don't want to be this person who is not saying yes.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: When you look at the top five regrets of dying people—that book written by a palliative care nurse who worked with dying people—the top regret was "I didn't have the courage to be myself." The third regret was "I didn't have the courage to express my emotions." The fifth regret was "I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I had played more. I wish I had given more scope for the creativity and playfulness and childlike self that I am." So I'm still looking for that one to develop it more. I'm a whole lot better than I used to be.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're a whole lot better than we used to be because of what we're learning from you.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gabor Maté. Wow. Any final things you want to say?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Everybody's got the capacity to heal. As long as there's consciousness, there's the capacity to heal. And for some people it's tougher because they don't have the resources. But you can go on YouTube—lots of my talks on YouTube, people have told me that's changed their lives for the better. That didn't cost a penny. And not just my talks, by the way. Talks by other wonderful teachers, some of my colleagues, some spiritual teachers. That doesn't cost any money to watch. You can take books out of the library. That doesn't cost a penny, and they can be very helpful.
--:-- You can learn to meditate and be with yourself and observe your mind. That can be very helpful. There's free meditation instruction online or in many books. For those people that can afford therapy, if it's the right kind of therapy, they can address these issues. They can connect with nature. Nature has a huge healing capacity, as our Indigenous people really know. We can learn a lot from them about connecting with nature. Those people that have the capacity to get out of the city, or even go to a park and connect with the plants and the trees and the flowers—that sounds hokey, but it's hugely healing.
--:-- Exercise, giving your body what it needs, eating the proper food if you can afford it. Most people may not be able to afford the best foods, but they could probably afford to eat better than they do if they paid attention to themselves. So all those things are not inaccessible. In other words, healing is possible. It's available to all of us, and it just takes the decision to embark on that path.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you've empowered us to make the decision today.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Oh, thank you. It's amazing to spend time with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, thanks. There are so many people that I want to share this episode with. I feel empowered and excited for you, and so I just want to thank you for listening all the way to the end and sharing this with people that you love. And I also wanted to be sure to tell you, in case no one else tells you, that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And listening to this today is certainly going to help you take the steps to create it. And I will be waiting for you in the very next episode. I'll see you there.
--:-- [Sound of a helicopter passing overhead]
--:-- Mel Robbins: So, Doctor, oh my God. Okay. And then I look at the bottom and it's like, wow, wow, wow. Thank you. Wow.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: I'm the one that says fantastic, right?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Do you need me to do those?
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: Okay, great, great.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great, great, great. Wait a minute. Yeah. Okay, hold on. I'm sorry, there's a helicopter there.
--:-- Dr. Gabor Maté: That's okay, we're in it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was like, all of a sudden I'm like, wait, wow. You're fantastic. We did it. You got it done. You like that? Okay, great. All right, that's it. We're wrapped. Well done.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
