When the Body Says No

by Gabor Maté

Rage and anguish exist underneath the veneer of niceness, no matter how sincerely a person mistakes the facade for her true self. “My mother is still alive, and I love her dearly,” says the sister of a man diagnosed with ALS two years ago, “but she is very domineering, superficial in her understanding of emotions and insensitive to other people’s needs and wants. She does not allow you to have your own self. It was very difficult to find your own identity with my mother. When I consider my brother’s illness, I think we all did our work to figure out how to become separate individuals. It’s been hard, but we did—except my brother, who somehow didn’t. He said to me last time I was there—I’m fifty-four now, and he’s forty-six—‘I hate Mom.’ And yet, he is the one who is the nicest to my mother of us all. He will go there—he has ALS and can hardly walk—but he will take soup to her. When he is in my mom’s presence he will be a cute little boy—the good little kid he always was, and I was not.”