When the Body Says No

by Gabor Maté

In order to heal, you may wish to become your own hero.”

Emotional competence is what we need to develop if we are to protect ourselves from the hidden stresses that create a risk to health, and it is what we need to regain if we are to heal. We need to foster emotional competence in our children, as the best preventive medicine.

It took a life-threatening disease for her to learn that service through self-sacrifice is a dead end.

The microbe is nothing, the ground (i.e., the host body) is everything.]

order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively. Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism.” Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden. Even more fundamentally, not posing those questions is itself a source of stress.

it is not others’ expectations and intentions but the perception we have of them that serves as the stressor.

Compassionate curiosity about the self does not mean liking everything we find out about ourselves, only that we look at ourselves with the same non-judgmental acceptance we would wish to accord anyone else who suffered and who needed help.