More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gabor Maté
Read between
February 13 - April 9, 2023
The verbal-thinking cerebrum has arrogated to itself the honor of being the only brain, falsely so. Actually, it shares the distinction with the gut and the heart. In other words, the heart knows things, just as surely as a gut feeling is also a kind of knowing.
Without that heart- and gut-knowledge, we often function as “genius-level reptiles,” in someone’s apt phrase.[*]
The contribution of modern psychology and neuroscience has been to show how, before our minds can create the world, the world creates our minds. We then generate our world from the mind the world instilled in us before we had any choice in the matter.
Sue Hanisch
“I’ve noticed how it’s the connections that I make with people that are actually the thing worth living for, and nothing else, really. It’s the connections that make me feel I am here and that also make me want to be here.
The lack of authenticity makes itself known through tension or anxiety, irritability or regret, depression or fatigue. When any of these disturbances surface, we can inquire of ourselves: Is there an inner guidance I am defying, resisting, ignoring, or avoiding?
A distinction must be made between accepting and tolerating. Being with something and putting up with something have precious little to do with each other.
James Doty[*]
Anton Chekhov wrote, “It is compassion that moves us beyond numbness toward healing.”
We can learn a lot about our own emotional-injury history by observing in what situations, and toward whom, our naturally open and supple hearts tend to harden and shut down.
To take pity on you, I have to first cast us in unequal roles, looking down on your misfortune from some imagined perch.
Until we recognize our commonality, we create more woe for ourselves and others:
When we face all the ways we have numbed ourselves, pain will inevitably emerge—in fact, it has been waiting a long time to do so.
The compassion of truth recognizes that pain is not the enemy.
And without safety, the truth cannot do its healing work.
“In order to gain possession of ourselves, we have to have some confidence, some hope of victory,” wrote the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. “And in order to keep that hope alive we must usually have some taste of victory.”[5]
Surviving breast cancer redefined who and how I am . . . Until then, I’d spent a lifetime being a caretaker for everyone around me. From then, I started to put myself first. I had voices at the back of my head telling me whatever I did wasn’t good enough. Now, finally, I’ve silenced them. —Sheryl Crow[*]
Symptoms and illness are the body’s way of letting us know when we have strayed from that core.
What we need to die well is also what we need to live well. That’s what the disease taught me.”
Ours is a culture wholly averse to death and even aging; think of how many products are geared toward erasing or “reversing” the signs of oncoming infirmity, the physical reminders of life’s finitude.
Healing has no choice but to ripple out when we are real with ourselves and with others.
a. Your personality is not you; you are not your personality.
b. The personality is an adaptation.
c. Our bodies do keep the score.[*]
d. The personality, and the loss of our essential nature, is not personal.
Unlike feelings, which come and go of their own accord, attitudes can be invited, generated, and nurtured in the face of any emotional state.
When self-judgments arise—as they inevitably do—we can stay curious about their origin without believing their content.
Without judgment doesn’t mean without vigilance. Our personalities are adept at throwing up roadblocks of rationalization when they sense we may be trying to unfasten or even question their hold.
Question #1: In my life’s important areas, what am I not saying no to?
People tend to find this dynamic present in two major realms: work and personal relationships.
More generally, ask yourself: With whom and in what situations do I find it most difficult to say no?
“What do I miss out on in life as a result of my inability to assert myself?”
In our culture of mind-body bifurcation, many of us have become accustomed to ignoring the body’s messages.
Question #4: What is the hidden story behind my inability to say no?
necessary. In truth they sprout from limiting core beliefs about ourselves. Most often we are not aware that they are stories. We
“What must I believe about myself to deny my own needs this way?”
Some examples of familiar stories:
Question #5: Where did I learn these stories?
“The moment you know how your suffering came to be, you are already on the path of release from it,” the Buddha said.[3]
What is the belief keeping me from affirming my creative impulses?
“What is in us must out; otherwise we may explode at the wrong places or become hopelessly hemmed in by frustrations,” wrote that wise medical scientist János Selye in The Stress of Life.[4]
Healing cannot occur if we do not accept our worthiness—that we are worth healing, even if doing so might shake up our view of the world and how we interact with others. —Mario Martinez, Psy.D., The MindBody Code
Delta waves, the brain’s lowest frequency, predominate in our first two years, then theta waves ramp up until we are about six.
“Theta is a hypnotic state, and it’s how you absorb all this stuff for seven years. Just as under the spell of a hypnotist, you believe whatever messages you get.”
The road to hell is not paved with good intentions; it is paved with lack of intention.
Far from a one-and-done proposition, returning to ourselves is a road we choose, with all the twists and turns and seeming cul-de-sacs that come with following—or indeed, forging—an uncertain path.
Everything within us, no matter how distressing, exists for a purpose; there is nothing that shouldn’t be there, troublesome and even debilitating though it may be.
Chronic guilt, like the rest of the mind’s “stupid friends,” is just a guardian past its prime.
Caught in a time warp, this overstaying friend cannot discern between then and now: it interprets every present-day interaction—be it with a spouse, child, parent, friend, doctor, neighbor, stranger—through the filter of your earliest relationships.
When we give guilt a seat at the table, it no longer needs to ransack the entire house.
