Are you overreacting?

Trauma is not what happened to you in the past; it’s how you are reacting in the present to what happened to you in the past, says Dr. Gabor Maté in my interview with him.

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At Heart Leap, we explore how to live more simply, how to be more creative, and how to be happier. I have been doing a lot of interviews recently for Metro.co.uk about amazing women triumphing over adversity, and it struck me how traumatic events in our past impact us in such powerful ways and can hamper all efforts to simplify, be creative, and happy.

That’s why I was delighted to interview Dr. Gabor Maté, a renowned medical doctor (now retired) and author of The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, which explores the effects of past trauma on the individual’s mental and physical health. You can read the full interview here.

‘You know when you are in the grips of the past when your reaction is out of proportion to what is stressing you out,’ he said. ‘So if somebody looks at you the wrong way or doesn’t invite you to a party and you feel devastated and life’s not worth living, then you know that this is an old wound that was unbearable when you first sustained it.’

Highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, stress, and childhood development, Gabor is also the best-selling, award-winning author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction and When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection and Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It.

Over four decades of clinical experience working with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness, Maté has come to recognize the impact of trauma and stress and the pressures of modern-day living exert on our bodies and minds at the expense of good health.

Here I talk to Gabor about how we can heal our past so we can create a happier future:

What is trauma?

Trauma is a wound from the past that stops you from growing in the future.

But trauma is not what happened to you in the past; it’s how you are reacting in the present to what happened to you in the past.

The good news is that you can do something about that reaction.

So how do we start to heal our reactions to trauma in the past?

We start the journey by recognising the impacts of trauma in our lives and where it is showing up in the present. If people are experiencing depression, anxiety, or trouble concentrating, if they have significant physical symptoms or chronic physical ailments, or if they’re facing addictions, whether to substances or to work, pornography, gambling, eating, or shopping,? These are all manifestations of trauma.

So, instead of blaming themselves for the symptoms, or behaviours, people need to ask: what pain am I trying to cover? Or what pain is driving me to behave in those ways?

Trauma is a wound from the past that stops you growing in the future.

Often people don’t want to ask for help because they are ashamed of their behaviours or their reactions. How do we handle the shame?

Recognise that shame itself is a sign of trauma. Because when bad things happen to a kid, or the requisite good things don’t happen, the child makes the automatic assumption that they are at fault, defective and there’s something wrong with them.

So shame needs to be recognised as a mark of trauma. But it doesn’t speak to reality, it speaks to a person’s experience of being alone with their pain, and being made to feel responsible.

Shame can feel like a huge barrier to seeking help. But while we remain helpless, it keeps us stuck in the pain and the past. From the point of view of people reading this, they need to know that they’re not alone with that shame. There’s about 10 zillion people out there, doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same reasons.

You talk about curiosity and compassionate inquiry to help us create new ways of behaving – what are some good questions to ask?

If you’re indulging in behaviours that feel destructive, ask yourself – what is that behaviour giving you in the short term? Instead of asking – what is wrong with it, ask what’s right about it? What is it giving you in the short term?

Let’s say you’re drinking too much. This might give you peace of mind, a sense of escape, or make you feel less stressed.

Then ask the next question. How did I lose my peace of mind? What’s happening to me that makes me feel so stressed? What is the emotional pain I’m trying to soothe?

Start asking questions with curiosity. Not with a spirit of self-judgement or self-condemnation.

You talk about the ‘tyranny of the past’ that can trigger us. How do we stop getting triggered?

First of all, don’t be hard on yourself; don’t criticise yourself; don’t say, ‘Oh my god, I screwed it up again’.

Once you’ve calmed down, remember that the trigger is a very small part of the mechanism. For the trigger to set something off, there has to be ammunition and an explosive charge. If I trigger you, who’s carrying the explosive charge and ammunition?

The more you get to know yourself, the less likely you are to get triggered. I recommend using those incidents where you are triggered to learn about yourself and discover why this little trigger sets out this huge explosion.

For example, is it because you’re still carrying this belief that you’re not loveable? Or when somebody is late to meet you for coffee, and you get really upset, is it because there’s belief that you’re not valuable? You’re the one with that belief. The other person is just late for coffee.

I still get triggered by things from my past, but I’m much quicker to recognise them and clean them up afterwards.

The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Dr Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté (Vermilion, £25.00)