THE MYTH OF NORMAL by Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté

The fundamental message behind Dr Maté’s last book is that we live in a society which is in direct opposition to our biological needs. He points out that our core needs are attachment and authenticity and they both have ultimately to do with our survival, being in touch and acting on our awareness of self.

Now, given the society that we live in today, we see this tension between being our true selves and conforming to society’s standards. In other words, we crave connection, belonging and serving a purpose greater than just ourselves while our civilisation revolves around individualism, competitiveness and hesitation to trust and help one another.

“What matters is not who you are but how you are valued by others”

Dr Maté believes we’ve all been exposed to some degree of trauma, be it transgenerational, parental or through popular culture. Here, he makes the connection between illness and trauma. Disease is not an isolated phenomenon. It is contextually and culturally constructed - “Idealising individualism and destroying social context, inevitably leads to a society that generates pathology. “

Disease is a manifestation of how people live their lives, because the mind and body are inseparable, just as the individual is inseparable from the environment.

The many case studies he presents in the book explore the factors behind the rise of ‘trauma-related illnesses.’

Those factors are most often deep anxiety, deferred hope, disappointment and depression. Stress, Mate says, plays an “incendiary role” in whether or not a genetic predisposition will result in illness.

“Experience, in other words, determines how our genetic potential expresses itself.”

But not all hope is lost because according to Dr Maté, ‘trauma is not the terrible things that happened to us but it’s the wound that we sustained in our being’ which means, it can be seen, accepted and healed.

Trauma is when we are not seen and known. — Bessel van der Kolk

The healing process can be supported by therapy, practices that put us in touch with our body and emotions and, by introspection, recognising a potential teacher in the illness.

We can begin by acknowledging that how we live might be the norm but it’s not healthy nor normal. There is an intelligence in nature and creation, developed around community, contact, compassion and safety and aligning with it is the way we are meant to be.

Going back to basics, together with having a trauma-educated society, would translate into a society that is more compassionate overall.

“If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related.”