Transcript of How Self Talk Can Sabotage You & Questioning What’s “Normal”

Today on Something You Should Know, if your mind is wandering, there's a really good reason to try to stop that. Then self-talk. We tend to be very self-critical, and it really doesn't help.

Even though people assume that they need self-criticism to stay motivated and to accomplish things, the research evidence shows the opposite, that that self-criticism inhibits motivation and self-encouragement improve motivation.

Also, what to say to someone who can't stop talking about themselves. And the myth of normal. Many of the things we think of as normal may need a closer look.

It's very normal for parents to be told not to pick up their infants when they're crying. Now, you tell an orangutan mother not to pick up their babies when they're crying, or you look at any indigenous culture, they always pick up their kids when they're crying. They barely even put them down.

All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Caruthers. Hi, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. If I could have your full attention right now at this moment, let me ask you, what were you thinking about just before I asked you to give me your full attention? The reason I ask is because people spend about 47% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they're doing at the moment. This mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. This is according to a Harvard study. See, unlike other animals, we human spend a lot of time thinking about what isn't going on around us, contemplating events that happened in the past or might happen in the future or may never happen ever, ever, ever. Interestingly, your mind is most likely to wander when you're doing simple tasks or doing nothing at all. It seems your brain needs to keep itself busy. So if you're not fully engaged in the moment, your brain finds something else to occupy itself. It appears the more you allow your mind to wander, the unhappier you are overall.

This is strong evidence in support of what is called mindfulness, that ability to live in the moment and focus on the here and now and on this episode. And that is something you should know. While you're probably not aware of it most of the time, you're almost always silently talking to yourself, sometimes maybe even out loud. And so much of that self-talk, so much of what that voice in your head is saying, tends to be critical and negative and judgmental. Now, you might not think you do it that much or that it isn't that big of a deal, which is why I'd like you to listen to my next guest, Dr. Rachel Goldsmith-Turro. She is a psychotherapist in private practice, a research scientist, an adjunct faculty member at Seattle University, and author of The Self Talk Workout: 6 Science-Backed Strategies to Dissolve Self Criticism and Transform the Voice in your Head. Hey, Rachel, welcome to something you should know.

Thank you so much, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Talk about the self-criticism that we all do that I think happens. It seems like it happens in the background. We're not really aware of it so much, but it's almost constant. It at least for some of us.

I think you're right. That seems to be the experience for a lot of people. People have different levels of awareness for their own self-talk and their own self-criticism. Sometimes it might be really subtle, and sometimes it might arrive suddenly with strong, powerful words like, You idiot, or, You look terrible today. There's different flavors of self-talk, self-criticism, and awareness.

Is the hope that you can turn it off or just put it in its proper place?

I think that's a fascinating question. What are we going to do with this self-taught? How to change it or turn it off? I think there are a lot of misconceptions about this. When I was growing up, I I remember hearing somebody say, Okay, just turn down the volume of the self-taught that's negative and turn up the positive self-taught. It's like, Great. Where's the switch? That seemed really elusive and impossible. I also encounter a lot of titles out there with things like, Silence your inner critic for good, or squash your inner critic, or tame your inner critic. I actually think it's problematic to develop an adversarial relationship with the inner critic Because really, it's just more self-criticism. If you get mad at your sofa beating yourself up, Oh, I did it again. It's terrible. I like to think of effective approaches to self-criticism as having more of a feel of soothing the inner critic or dissolving the inner critic. A lot of times the inner critic is there for an important reason. Maybe you're not acting in a way that reflects your values. For instance, if you're not in touch with your good friends because you feel really busy or if you've been meaning to exercise more, but it hasn't worked out.

I think that those are instances where you could say to the inner critic something like, Hey, I get where you're coming from. These behaviors are really important, but please don't be so mean about it. Maybe there's a way we can work together in a more kind, encouraging, and effective way.

Where does that self-critic come from? People seem to have different levels of self-criticism. Even people in the same families have different levels of self-criticism. Where does it come from and how does it develop?

A lot of times it seems as though it develops because people internalize criticism from other people in their lives. If you think back to seventh grade, what the other kids thought of us really mattered, even if it was really silly at the time, it could get under our skin. There's lots of good evidence out there that parental criticism, if you had critical parents, it really affects people as adults. They carry that criticism around with them and internalize it, and then that forms a very powerful link to anxiety and depression in adulthood. So receiving criticism from other people is a really powerful factor in developing self-criticism.

I like this idea of melting it away, but what does that mean? What does that mean to do that? How do you do that?

Two of the most effective approaches are mindfulness mindfulness meditation and loving-kindness meditation. Those have some very specific directions, which is nice because the intention alone to be kinder to yourself, that doesn't really seem to do very much. A lot of people might say, Oh, I should really be nicer to myself. Great. That's a starting point. But in terms of actually being nicer to yourself, it's more like a workout where you need to do the reps. Mindfulness meditation is a practice that It has a lot of misconceptions about it. People think it means clearing the mind, but actually, it's a type of mental training that's training in both attention and non-judgment simultaneously. The instructions go something like this. You would sit down and try to tune into the sensation of your breathing. Instead of feeling like you've got to hold your mind right there, and if it wanders for a minute, you've failed, the idea is once your mind wanders, you notice it and bring it back swiftly with as little judgment as possible. You're practicing the skill of shifting attention, which it turns out is important for mental health and for self-encouragement, just as important as focusing attention.

You're practicing that skill of shifting attention in combination with practicing the skill of non-judgment and the urge to judge yourself. Oh, I'm bad. My mind wandered. I'm terrible at meditation. This is awful. Those thoughts are really likely to arise for beginners. If they do, please know that you're normal. Don't get discouraged. It's really about doing the reps a thousand times to change a habit. The idea is that you notice your mind wanders and you bring it back fast Meditation, noticing that it went away. That skill of returning your attention without judging yourself seems to be a primary mechanism through which mindfulness meditation improves both self judgment and overall mental health. It's exciting. It's a really efficient workout. Another form of meditation is also very helpful. Research shows that it's extremely effective in reducing self criticism. That type of practice of exercise is called loving-kindness meditation. You don't have to use that name if it seems a little bit corny or mushy. Some people call it training friendliness or cultivating goodwill. Loving-kindness meditation involves the silent repetition of positive wishes towards yourself. A common set of wishes might be something like, may I be safe? May I be happy?

May I be healthy? May I live with ease? You can match those good wishes to the breath. You can do them towards yourself and also towards others. The research evidence is quite strong that practicing those phrases for a period of several minutes for approximately 3-12 weeks in a row results in significant changes in terms of self-criticism and overall mental health and well-being.

Well, let's all do that.

Sounds good. There are training programs that can help you do this. You can sign up online for an eight-week program in mindfulness-based stress reduction or mindful self-compassion or compassion cultivation training. But it's also possible to do this on your own if you prefer.

Just by doing It's what you said. It doesn't sound that complicated. It's more a matter of making sure you do it.

That's really the hard part. It's much like physical exercise. You can't really get stronger abs just by wanting them. You actually have to do something.

There, I think, is this impression, this belief that what you're talking about may be great, but in order to really be successful, you've got to be hard on yourself. I think of if you It's like old military movies where the sergeant is in the face of the private calling him a maggot and screaming at him, that you've got to be really tough on people to strengthen them and for them to have a real backbone and all that. These two things seem very inconsistent.

I agree with you. This is actually a very common misconception about self-criticism. Even though people assume that they need self-criticism to stay motivated motivated and to maintain their standards and to accomplish things, the research evidence shows the opposite, that that self-criticism actually inhibits motivation and self-encouragement, self-compassion improve motivation. I really like to nerd out on the actual data and the actual research when I'm trying to convince people to give these skills a try.

So nerd out on me.

One research study investigated How quickly people got a job depending on whether they were self-critical or self-compassionate. You can imagine that process. It's just so hard when you're looking for a job. It's really tough to write cover letter after cover letter, and it's hard to stay motivated. It can be really discouraging. You can imagine if you're writing that cover letter and saying to yourself, This is terrible. Nobody's going to hire me. I'm really bad at this. I can barely even write a good cover letter, you're unlikely to produce as much effective material and to actually send it out and get it done than if you have a more encouraging attitude towards yourself and say something like, Great, this is really nice start. This is a good sentence. Okay, I'm going to do another paragraph. I'm glad I'm still doing this. Even if it's not my favorite thing in the world, this feels good to get this done. Okay, well done. I finished this cover letter onto the next one. You can see how that encouraging self-taught would actually make it more likely that you would finish the cover letter, send them in, and find a job.

That's exactly what the researchers found.

But it seems that if you're a self-critical person, that saying those things to yourself is so inauthentic. Oh, that wasn't a bad sentence. I think I'll move on. When you're really thinking, This sucks. I hate doing this. It seems like it doesn't jive. It's oil and water.

I hear what you're Honestly, my students report similar experiences. My students at Seattle University, when they first try out some of these practices, they have a lot of resistance. It might feel fake or genuine, not genuine. Some of the students say it's a fake it till you make it thing. It's all right if it feels a little bit uncomfortable or awkward. You can tailor the phrases or the practices to make it as consistent with your own preferences and personality as you like, but you might expect it to feel strange. Just like when you try out a new physical exercise, you might not get it right away or it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but after you practice it, it becomes more comfortable. My students often tell me that they doubt that it's going to work, that they're skeptical, it doesn't feel quite right, but that after a few weeks, it does begin to have a meaningful, positive effect.

We're talking about that voice in your head, the self-talk, the things that you keep telling yourself about yourself. My guest is Dr. Rachel Goldsmith-Turrell, and the name of her book is The Self Talk Workout. If Bravo drama, pop culture chaos, and honest takes are your love language, you'll want All About Terry H. Podcast in your feed.

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When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kradaraki Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxy's inhabited planets. The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake. Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression. Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living, but a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. The Stone Wolves is Season 11 of the Galactic Football League science fiction series by author Scott Sigler. Enjoy it as a standalone story or listen to the entire GFL series beginning with Season 1, The Rookey. Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts. So, Rachel, it occurs to me as you're talking that maybe what people do is it's not just when something goes bad, but when you do something and it was your responsibility and you made a mistake, that it's your fault, so to speak, that there is this internal message that you therefore now need to punish yourself, that you You can't...

That part of your resurrection from this will be that first you must pay penance for screwing this up, then you can work on fixing it, that there's some... Do you know what I'm saying? That there's some punishment involved here, self-punishment.

The evidence doesn't support that idea. Beating yourself up doesn't seem to make things better, and instead, that self-encouragement or rewarding yourself does. There's this one interesting practice practice that I read about offered by Dr. Joel Almeida. It's called Reality-Based Self Congratulations. The idea is to give yourself a constant stream of positive reinforcement for something. Dr. Almeida writes that he was trying to lose weight, and it wasn't working. Even though he was trying to exercise, he was trying to refrain from snacking, nothing was working. Instead, he tried to give himself some positive feedback like, You can do this. It's okay. You're doing great. When he didn't snack every half hour. Anything that he did in a positive direction, like cooking himself a healthy meal, he would give himself just a lot of encouragement, even if it seemed over the top. It was reality-based, so he wasn't just making it up. He writes that for him, that strategy was really effective. It resulted in a substantial weight loss, and he also was able to go off statin medications because he lowered some of his risk factors.

You see, and that gets back to this thing of it seems so wrong to reward yourself when you fail. It just goes against the grain somehow of the way many of us were brought up of that you got to tough it out, do it right, and then when you're successful, then you can have the ice cream cone.

Yeah, I agree with you. It's just not part of our culture. I think we're really We're conditioned to be mean to ourselves and to think that that will be effective. It's really counterintuitive to try the opposite. It's interesting to see what happens when people do try it out. I have this exercise called Spot the Success, where I encourage people to describe 10 actions that they took today that benefited themselves or the world or somebody else, and no item is too small. For instance, taking a vitamin or texting a friend. People do have a hard time with that at first. It seems It's like they're writing down things that are just obvious, things that are easy to take for granted. But what my students tell me is that doing that exercise for several days in a row, for several weeks in a row, actually makes them feel more effective and more motivated because instead of a to-do list or feeling overwhelmed by all the tasks that they haven't done, they start to appreciate what they have done, and it gets them in the zone. It changes their view of themselves so that they think, Oh, I'm a person who does accomplish things.

It's a different mind mindset.

If I'm somebody who really wants to try to start to tame that inner critic, where's a good place to start?

I have what I consider self-taught appetizers. The tiniest taste might be to just breathe in and out while calling yourself your friend. This builds a way of relating to yourself that's more friendly. You might try just saying, inhale, my friend, exhale, my friend. That exercise is just one breath long, doesn't require any special training or skills, and you can do it anytime, anywhere. Another advertiser that I might suggest is that spot the success activity. Students often say that they appreciate writing it down, that it seems more real, and that's the one where you write down the 10 actions you've done today that are beneficial. It might seem weird or strange. People often get stuck around, I don't know, five or six. You might have to dig a little bit deeper for other positive actions to acknowledge. Remember, this is about appreciating and acknowledging, not evaluating how well you did things. This is a done list. That's another one that's fairly simple and straightforward.

It seems like the hard part is really to commit yourself to the discipline of doing it.

I know. That's really the hard part, but it's really about doing the reps. These habits are so powerful, but they that are not determined traits that last forever. These are really habits that can be changed. The evidence is great that you can change these habits, and that the repetition is really important. It might help to really note the research that practicing these types of techniques somewhere between 3 and 12 weeks, most of the days, that's the amount, the dose that's associated with significant effects.

How many times a day? Just once?

Once is great. Absolutely. One session of 5 to 10 minutes would give you a really nice anchor that you could go back to and build upon.

I'm just thinking someone listening to this going, Oh, I could never do that. Well, there's your self critic right there.

I know. I actually work with my students on, Okay, you're busy, but how are you going to do this? Well, we've got technology. I have an alarm on my phone It says self-compassion break at 12: 30 PM every day, and you can do the same. You can set an Outlook appointment. Some people really like to sign up for a group-based practice, and now we have so many of them online. There's a wonderful resource through UCLA. It's called the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center or MARC. They have free meditations online, including really short 3-5 minute guided meditations to reduce self criticism. That's a great option to make part of your daily routine.

What else do we know about the harm that self-criticism causes?

Self-criticism is a transdiagnostic factor influencing mental health. That means that it's not just related to depression, it's not just related to anxiety. There's evidence that it's related to recovery from substance use, from eating disorders, that it plays a role in self-harming. Improving your self-encouragement, self-compassion, and reducing your self-criticism is a really wonderful thing that you can do to promote overall mental health and well-being.

Lastly, talk about the difference between self-esteem and self-compassion, because they sound similar, but they're not the same thing. So explain the difference.

Psychologist Kristin Neff explains It means that self-compassion is about being kind and friendly towards yourself, even in moments of difficulty or failure, it really doesn't matter what happens. It's more about how you relate to yourself. Whereas self-esteem is about evaluating yourself. Okay, I'm good at this. I'm bad at this. How good am I? Am I better than other people? There's this comparison component to it. Self-esteem doesn't really seem to be that wonderful in terms of being a consistent, stable predictor of mental even though it was all the rage in the 1980s, whereas self-compassion seems to be a very stable, helpful predictor of overall mental health. When you're thinking about developing high self-esteem versus high self-compassion, it's really the self compassion that's going to be more beneficial.

Well, for anyone willing to stop and think about it, we all have that voice in our head, that self-critic. It's nice to know there's something we can do about it and maybe, in fact, replace some of that self-criticism with self-compassion. I've been talking with Dr. Rachel Goldsmith-Turro. She's a psychotherapist, a research scientist, adjunct faculty member at Seattle University, and author of the book, The Self-Talk Workout: 6 Science-Backed Strategies to dissolve self-criticism and transform the voice in your head. I'll put a link to that book in the show notes and also a link to that course that she mentioned if you're interested. Thanks, Rachel.

Thank you so much, Mike. All the best to Thank you.

Think about the fact that we do things oftentimes because that's just the way we do things. It's normal, we often say. Normal is what normal people do. There's an assumption in that that whatever is normal is right, it's proper, it's correct. But is it? Well, maybe sometimes, but not all the time. Still, we default to normal. We believe that what is normal is the right thing to do. Here to argue against that is Gabor Mathe. He's an acclaimed physician, speaker, and author. His documentary, The Wisdom of Trauma, has been viewed over seven million times. He recently interviewed Prince Harry about his life and problems. Gabor is author of a book called The Myth of Normal. Hi, Gabor. Welcome to something you should know.

Thanks for having me, Michael.

Let's start with some examples of what you're talking about, of things we think are normal that maybe aren't so great, but they are normal.

Well, for example, we're told or sold, I should say, a certain view of human nature as aggressive, selfish, grasping, and competitive. This is human nature. So when somebody does something selfish or manipulative or greedy, we say, Oh, that's just human nature. Do we ever say that when somebody does something kind or generous or collaborative? Oh, that's just human nature. So our very concept of human nature is quite contrary to how evolution has prepared us. Because evolution over millions of years and hundreds of thousands of years actually made us collaborative, cooperative, communal creatures. Our very concept of ourselves is abnormal. Then in this society, it's very normal for parents to be told not to pick up their infants when they're crying. Now, you tell an orangutang mother not to pick up their babies when they're crying, or you look at any indigenous culture, They always pick up their kids when they're crying. They barely even put them down. Furthermore, it's normal in this society for parents to be told that angry children should be given time out. In other words, separated from the adults, punished by separation. Well, actually, it's an essential need of the human child to experience all their emotions, including anger, and to be held and supported to help regulate and work through that anger.

When we separate our kids from ourselves by the time out technique, we're saying to them, You're not acceptable to me. So these are all normalized behaviors. It's normal in the United States. 25% of women go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, I should say. That's considered normal. But it's an abandonment of the child because the child needs that mother for much longer than that. So a lot of practices and beliefs are normalized, which are actually quite toxic.

And who's to say which of those are and aren't toxic?

What is the impact? If you look at the highly rising rate of childhood suicides, or if you look at the millions of kids being medicated for all kinds of mental health conditions, from ADHD to oppositionality to anxiety and depression and so on, something's going on. If you look at the number of overdoses in the US last year, over 100,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US last year. That means in one year, your country, and I speak from just north of you from Canada, but your country lost almost twice as many people from overdoses as Americans who died in the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghan wars put together. Either there's some reasons for that or they're just random misfortunes. I say there's a reason for it. So that if you say, who's to say what is normal? I'm saying, look at the outcomes.

So how do these things become the norm if they're so harmful?

Well, I give a quote from a great writer, David Foster, Wallace, who was a famous novel, was called Infinite Jest. And he was giving a commencement address at some university in the States. And he said, he gave this anecdote of two young fish swimming along and another older fish comes along and says to them, Good morning, boys. How's the water? The two young fish swim on for a while, and one of them turns to the other one and says, What the hell is water? The point that David Foster-Walves is making is that what we're used to seems normal to us. We get so used to it, we're not even looking at it. So he said, These things that we're not looking at can have fatal consequences. And that's my whole point. When we're used to something, it's been going on for so long, we assume that this is the norm because that's all we know. But we don't realize that in terms of human evolution and human needs, these conditions are not normal at all.

But doesn't it make you wonder where it started? Who said you shouldn't pick up a crying baby? But somebody did, and it stuck. So we're Where did that come from? I mean, all these things had to start somewhere. You wonder how that happened and why they became normal.

Well, there's some specific sources that we can look at. There's the famous Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose book was just like the parenting Bible for decades in the US. He said that the way you deal with the chronic resistance to sleep of the infant is you put him down, you walk out, you shut the door, and you don't go back. Now, Indigenous people have always picked up their kids, and their kids never slept alone. But in North America, specifically, but throughout the Western world, the idea was we train kids to the way we want them to be, and they ought not to cry at night. Why? Because we have to go to work in the morning. These practices were religiously followed for many, many decades. They started even before then with this behavior psychologist in the 1920s who said exactly the same thing. In the book, I do talk about my mother who, when I'm two weeks of age, she writes in her diary, My poor little Gabor, My heart is breaking for you, but you've been crying for an hour and a half to be fed. But I promised the doctor that I would only feed you every four hours.

So my mother, being a dutyful daughter of a physician, was afraid to go against doctor's orders. I used to be one of these doctors, by the way, that used to give that stupid advice to people. I'm not blaming others. I bought into it as well until I didn't. But there's my mom, whose instincts are screaming for her to pick me up, but who won't because she's following social convention and doctor's orders. So these things go back a long ways.

And so what do you do about it? I mean, if they're so entrenched, if they are part of what we... I mean, people still do that. I remember when my son, who's now 18, but when he was an infant, there was always that little nagging voice saying, Don't go in there. He's crying. Let him cry himself to sleep. He'll be fine. Even though I'd already heard that Dr. Spock had been dismissed as baloney. But how are you going to change this?

Well, let me ask you a question, if I may. When your son was crying and you didn't go in, how did you feel?

Horrible.

Okay, that's your gut feelings telling you. That's your parenting instinct. I'm saying to people, listen to your instincts. Listen to your gut feelings. Don't listen to the so-called experts. Because I myself, as a physician, as I said, I was a family physician. I delivered a lot of babies, and until I knew better, that's the advice that I gave. So a lot of people have these gut feelings, but we ignore them for the sake of going on with the social norm. Others are so traumatized that we We actually become disconnected from our gut feelings, and that's even worse. But to begin with, I would say the young parents like yourself at that time, Listen, Michael, listen to your gut feelings. They're telling you what you ought to be doing.

Since you're a physician, and this is, I I find this really interesting that we have this new normal now that people are heavier than they used to be, and it clearly isn't probably very healthy, but it has become acceptable somehow that That is the new normal. What's your view on that?

Well, that's exactly right. If you look at the epidemic of obesity, which, incidentally, is not just an American, but an international phenomenon. In China, it never used to be a problem. It's a major It's a huge problem now. In Mexico, it's a huge problem. In Britain, it's a huge problem. It's a major risk factor, of course, for all kinds of illnesses and ailments. Why do people over eat? Because they're stressed. Like all addictions, because over eating is a way of soothing a stress. It temporarily releases feel good chemicals in the brain. Now, the food companies, very famously or notoriously, I might say, actually hire scientists to figure out which combination of salt, sugar, and fat is going to be the most addictive, create the most craving in people, and they manufacture those junk foods. Now, when people are stressed, they turn to addictions of all kinds, whether it's drugs or food or sex or gambling or pornography or the Internet as a way of soothing their stress. Then the companies provide products that will feed those addictions. Then the more alienation, the more stress there's in societies, the more people are driven to eat unhealthyfully because it temporarily suits the brain.

But again, what are you going to do about it? I mean, food companies are allowed to sell products and to make products that people want to buy because they want to eat them. It's going to be hard to undo that. It's going to be hard to undo a a lot of these things that you're talking about because, as you say, they are part of the new normal.

Well, a Dutch public health official said that America is the drug capital of the world, and he wasn't talking about heroine or marijuana or cocaine. He was talking about sugar. Sugar is a highly addictive substance for reasons I've already talked about. Now, what are we going to do about it? Well, what do we do about any problem? We have to first become aware of it. Both in my work with addictions and other ailments, I look at, well, why are people using them? They're using them to soothe themselves, to get through the stresses of life in a very difficult culture. Can we work with people to become aware of their stresses and their traumas so that they don't just unconsciously soothe themselves, but they actually try to deal with them more openly and more consciously. That's why I speak, and that's why I write.

Talk about trauma. I know you've done a lot work in this area. How does trauma fit into this discussion?

Trauma, first of all, has to be understood. In one sense, we use the word too loosely. Somebody might say, I had a fight with my partner and I was traumatized. No, you weren't. You were just upset. Not every upset is a trauma. Every trauma is upsetting, but not every upset is traumatizing. On the other hand, we don't talk about trauma nearly enough because even though it's been demonstrated to a major risk factor for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, malignancy, autoimmune diseases of all kinds, and of mental health conditions as well. I mean, a British psychologist, Richard Benthal, a member of the British Academy, summed it up very succinctly when he said that the research evidence linking childhood adversity or trauma to adult mental health problems is as strong scientifically as the evidence linking cigarettes smoking to lung cancer. But despite that fact, despite that scientific fact documented in multiple thousands of research papers, the average physician never even hears about it. They don't get a single lecture on trauma in its relationship to addiction or to mental health issues or to physical health issues. The average teacher doesn't hear about it. The legal system doesn't know about it.

So what I'm saying is that on the one hand, we use the word a bit too loosely. On the other hand, we don't use it nearly enough. Now, what is trauma? Trauma. It's very simple. Trauma comes from a Greek word for wound or wounding. Trauma is a psychological wound that you sustained, the imprint of which stays in your nervous system and in your body and in your unconscious memories. And that shapes much of your behavior, much of your cravings, much of your habits, much of what you believe about the world, much of what you believe about yourself. That trauma has a huge impact. The final thing I'll say is that for trauma, you don't have to think of terrible things. I mean, yes, sexual, physical abuse, racism, poverty, these are all traumatic. But the trauma is not what happened to you. The trauma is the wound that you sustained, what happened inside you. You can wound little kids, not just by doing bad things to them, but by not giving them what they need, for example, not picking up when they're crying.

It does seem, though, that people have different tolerances to this, that two people could go through the same trauma and one person really takes a hit and another person somehow gets past it. It isn't a one-size-fits-all, everybody has to be treated this way. It does seem that people have individual differences that they can rally?

Well, it's true. Some people turn out just fine. But if you actually look at, again, the rising incidence of mental health conditions internationally, like There's a rise in depression and anxiety, for example. If you look at how addictive behaviors have become widespread in the society, for example, addictions to the internet, to digital games, to gambling, to all kinds of things, we're not doing so good as a society. And And even some of the people that are very successful might be successful in certain conventional terms in terms of making money and having good reputations. But how are they doing inside, emotionally? How comfortable are they with themselves? I mean, that's a question we all have to ask ourselves. It's not just how... Look, I was a very successful physician in my 40s. I was respected. People sought my services, I were articles for newspapers, and inside, I was depressed and alienated. And inside my family, with my kids, there were a lot of struggles, a lot of strains, and I was in a very conflictual marriage. So if you looked at me from the outside, I was doing just fine. On On the inside, not so well.

And that's a question that only each individual can answer for themselves. If you're doing fine, if you're comfortable with yourself, if you have meaning in your life and purpose and a sense of belonging and inner peace, for God's sakes, keep doing what you're doing. If you're not, it's a good idea to start asking, why not and how come and what could I possibly do about it?

But life has a way of serving. I mean, you can be fine and normal and Everything's going well and life is good, but then life serves up problems and things aren't going good. That's just the ebb and flow of life. Sometimes in your life, you're doing well, sometimes you're not.

Well, that's for me to look at it. If someone wants to look at it that way, I would never argue with anybody. But I would say to them as well, When things are not going well, are you interested in why not? For example, when I was fired from a job as a physician, I could have just seen that as, that's what happens to people. Or I could ask myself, How did I create that? How did I contribute to that? What was my part that contributed to people not wanting to work with me anymore? That was a very useful question, and I learned a lot. When people get ill, whether it was a physical illness or a mental health condition, they can just try and, Okay, this is life. Or they could say, What's inside me that is generating a process that might be contributing to this condition? I've talked to a lot of people who've experienced adversity, who've learned a lot about themselves by looking at the processes in them that could contribute it to the onset. Adversity can be a great teacher if somebody wants to, I don't wish it on anybody, but it can be a great teacher if you want to look at it that way.

Michael, on a more broad social level, I don't find it satisfactory to say stuff happens. I think we have to start asking or ask ourselves very deeply, Is what's happening just random acts of fate, or are there conditions, personal and social, that actually contribute to our suffering? And that's as a physician, as a healer, that's what I'm interested in.

But no matter what you do, people will suffer. People do suffer. Bad things happen to people. You could have gotten fired just because the hospital went out of business, and you could sit there and say, What did I do to cause that? Well, you didn't do anything to cause it. But it still doesn't It doesn't make it happy. It's sad to lose a job, but it doesn't mean you had anything to do with it.

Well, you're absolutely right. Again, I'm not here to answer questions that people don't want to ask. If people are not, I'm not talking to you here personally. I'm saying if somebody is not asking themselves these questions of why do people suffer and how do we create suffering for ourselves and how do we create suffering for each other and how does the culture either promote or undermine human health, If somebody is not asking those questions, then what I have to say is of no interest. But if people are asking those questions, I say there are some answers and they're worth engaging with. That's all.

Okay, but it just seems that part of being a human being, or maybe any creature on the planet, is that there will be times of hardship and suffering, and there will be times of joy, and there isn't too much you can do. Well, maybe there is, maybe there is. But it does seem that that the ups and downs of life are inevitable?

Well, again, that's one way to look at it. It's a legitimate way to look at it. But I go back to what James Baldwin said. You know what he said about that? He said, not everything that faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed that's not faced. And that's where I am at. I'm not saying that we can wave some magic wand and eliminate human suffering from the world and from our society. I am saying that a lot of suffering, however, is not necessary. It's a result of traumatic conditions that affect people in childhood. It's a result of social conditions that impose stress on people. We can actually look at these, study them, understand them, and potentially do something about them. That's what my point of view is.

Well, this discussion is interesting because it makes you question. Again, just because something is normal doesn't mean it's good or it's right or it's just normal. Maybe we need to question normal. I've been speaking with Dr. Gabor Mathe. He is an acclaimed physician, speaker, and author, and the name of his latest book is The Myth of Normal, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Gabor. I enjoyed the conversation.

And thanks so much for talking with me. It's been a pleasure.

Do you know someone whose favorite subject to talk about is them? It can be exhausting. Judith Martin, also known as Ms. Has four words for people like that, How nice for you. If you're stuck with a braggar as a friend or a coworker or a family member or a neighbor, consider sticking to that line and emphasize the word you. So when they talk about themselves, you say, How nice for you. Eventually, they should get the message and realize that the conversation is a little too one-sided and boring for everybody else. And that is something you should know. This is our first episode of 2026. Happy New Year. Thank you for supporting this podcast, and I hope you'll make it your New Year's resolution to help spread the word and tell your friends about it. I'm Michael Brothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.