Actual Doctors Help Patients Heal Themselves | A Pathway to Decoding Your Issues, Illnesses and Addictions (feat. Gabor Maté)

One of the most profound insights I have gathered when it comes to mental health and demystifying the causes of illness and addiction is the work of Gabor Maté, medical doctor of the unconventional sort.

It's been years since I followed up on his work ever since I got introduced to his insights through the third Zeitgeist movie back in the day. Recently though I have found an amazing interview that put him right back on my radar and the moment I saw it I knew I wanted to share it with my tribe on Steemit.

The man radiates a soothing quality and his insights can greatly help you out if you have no idea how to work on your issues or overcome behavioral patterns that seem too monumentous to ever overcome, regardless if we are talking about illnesses, psychological problems or addiction patterns that are robbing us of our spirit... If you want to jump straight into the interview you will find it at the end of this article.

A heartwarming interview

The interview I want to relay to you today is so amazing because it really is a dialogue. A mutual back and forth of insights, questions, answers and considerations that is largely missing from the public debates on health, illnesses and addiction today. Where many people seem to be demanding a single-payer healthcare system, or want to somehow improve upon the existing drugs the system is selling us to temporarily treat the symptoms instead of the illness the debate never goes deep enough for me, precisely because the prevalent methods of healing are largely outdated and do not take into consideration even the most solid studies done in this field in recent years by 'prestiguous' institutions and medical research facilities. You know I am not one to blindly refer to any established institution but in this case the reasoning behind the correlations and causations Maté refers to is solid to say the least.

Maté's work not only constantly refers back to these insights into human health but also draws on his own experience as a doctor, a man who leads by example in helping patients overcome their deeply ingrained mental barriers and roadblocks through fostering insight in the patient, insight about their own story and path in life. And as he never gets tired to mention: Most of the issues we carry have their roots not in choice, neither in genetics but rather in the way we have been brought up and been imprinted upon through our environment, our social surroundings and most of all - our parents.

Childhood trauma as the root of illness

It may not seem to be a big secret at first - our childhood issues get carried over into our adult life in many aspects. But the degree to which this influences our current health and view of the world we are living, the way it influences our brain chemistry and our health overall is stunning to say the least.

Maté explains from experience how patients who have been abandoned as children have an imprint in their brains of a world that cannot be trusted, a world that needs to be defended against so that we will never feel the painful emotions of loss and abandonment ever again. And for this, human beings develop all sorts of coping mechanisms that are biologically intended to help us deal with these drastic situations. A useful biological program until they become the basis of our existence and are tough to overcome. what started as a coping mechanism has become a burden too heavy to carry any longer...

Unfortunately, due to the lack of understanding for the effect of these early memories we have collected, we may end up in a place where we ourselves feel solely responsible for our probelms, health issues and addictions.

Some of the most prevalent opinions and myths peddled on the subject of addiction today purport addicts to be "people who chose their addiction themselves" or people who are "genetically predetermined to develop certain addictive behavioral patterns or illnesses". As Matè points out: While genetic predispositions for certain conditions do exist, the vast majority of human mental and body issues go back to the way we have been raised, even from the time before we were born. He explains this through studies that have been done showing an increased likelihood for babies in the womb that are flooded with the mother's stress hormones like cortisol to be extremely more likely to develop corresponsidng conditions later in life. And that there is no fault of their own involved because these earliest experiences make and shape our minds and bodies for the rest of our lives.

This article is not meant to condense and summarize the work of Maté in its entirety, but rather to give a few examples of what the man has taught me and how beneficial it is to spend some time to dive into this seldomly explored microcosm of human biology, psychology and conditioning that is still largely flying under the public radar today, despite all the evidence researchers have collected over the decades and all the work Maté has brought into the public realm.

Compassionate inquiry

Among many things one of the most important if you want to get closer to the root of your suffering is taking a different stance on your situation altogether. Far from playing a passive victim role it is Maté's conviction and experience that you are in fact a powerful being who is able to overcome even the most severe of conditions if you allow ourselves to step out of the role you have been talked into by society and our conditioning.

Your past cannot be changed but as he will be happy to tell you you DO have the power to make a choice today and - with a bit of knowledge and insight - reframe your condition as something helpful to show you the way back to health, rather than something terrible that can't be changed. A form of sensible biological program that wants to teach you about yourself, coming from the most caring part in yourself that communicates to you through your mental hangups and challenges you find yourself in. Only, we really have never been taught about this causation and are always told by the mainstream media, politics and our culture that anyone with a problem in life is solely responsible for any and all of it. I no longer believe this to be the case. If we exclude our environemtn from our situation we have a profound lack of insight into the interdependecy of inner and outer, of mental and physical, of individual and societal factors.

We can never get closer to the root of our suffering as long as judgments, guilt and shame are in the way.

Psychedelic healing

As part of the interview relays: Maté has been doing a lot of work with psychedelics as well, specifically in regards to healing patients who carry the most severe addictions and challenges with them anywhere they go. We get to hear about traditional Ayahuasca ceremonies and how they can be of great help to those who choose to undertake them in a controlled and guided setting to work on their fears, doubts and conditions with the help of well-chosen guides and psychologists who have recognized the potential of these compounds to open up our minds and our vulnerabilities so that we may get to the root of our sufferings.

Maté has also written extensively about ADD and ADHD and its causes that are seldomly mentioned or taken into consideration within the field of 'conventional' medicine where - as he puts it in the interview - merely the symptoms are being worked on instead of the causes, leading to even more suffering and addiction instead of laying open the connection to our own story that has brought us to where we are today and enabling us to overcome them.

Explore!

So before I write any more about his work, please do check it out and draw your own conclusions. I can almost guarantee you it will leave you with a sense of ableness and hope that these conditions can be changed and overcome if we find the actual cause for them inside of us. The interview is soothing and heartwarming and has given me a lot when I found it, despite my familiarity with Maté's' work.

If you have a loved one who is suffering any kind of condition, medical, psychological or physical this interview may not only have huge potential to give them back their power in working on these problems, it may also have the potential to heal and propel those people forward in a way that big pharma and the medical establishment CAN'T be interested in. After all, a healed patient is no longer a paying patient.

If you find yourself in a situation where you use substances or any other kind of addiction to cope with your pain (work, sex, shopping, video games, etc.) know that it is OK and that it does have its reasons for being in your life. The addiction was never the problem, instead the pain is the cause of our suffering we are radically trying to numb ourselves to or get away from if we have been taught consciously or unconsciously that the world is a dangerous place.

As Maté relays: It is THROUGH the pain, that we get back to ourselves, that we find our inner greatness and become able to ditch any and all dependencies that are slowly grinding away at our life spirit every day. Paths are many, but the considerations shared in this amazing interview will be of great service to all those who consider it.

Thank you Gabor for all you have done for humanity and for your continued work to help all those who are willing to listen so that they may start to heal themselves. And special thanks to you Tim for making this awesome and insightful interview happen <3

Here is the interview:

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Thanks for stopping by <3