Dr. Gabor Maté: Self-Improvement Can Be an Attack on Yourself
In a Nutshell
Dr. Gabor Maté explains that self-improvement becomes self-attack when driven by the belief that you're only valuable for what you do, not who you are. The body manifests illness when people chronically say "yes" to others out of fear of judgment or rejection instead of honoring their authentic needs. True growth comes from self-compassion that recognizes all "flaws" as early survival adaptations, then asking "What is true for me?" rather than living in other people's expectations.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Thomas Merton discussed how people live in other people's minds. When concerned about what others think, perceive, judge, love or hate about them, individuals are not living in themselves but in other people's minds.
The human child has an essential need to be seen, just as they need to be held physically, fed, and nurtured. People get to see themselves the way others see them. Love involves being seen by others. When parents cannot see the child for who they are due to their own limitations, the child changes themselves, hides parts of themselves, exaggerates other parts, and creates an image they want the parent to see because the parent cannot see the real person.
Love is not just the feeling one has for another person. Parents may have loving feelings toward their child but be limited by their own traumas from seeing the child for who they are. In this culture, many parents want their child to fit in with the culture, creating a preconceived idea of who the child should be. When parents do not see the child as they want them to be, they become dissatisfied with the child.
Trauma creates new challenges that get passed on to future generations. To break the cycle, something has to happen that causes a person to wonder who they really are and whether everything they manifest, speak, and do is designed to fit other people's expectations or aligns with who they really are. This questioning is often called a midlife crisis.
The way to gift future generations is by working on oneself, not by trying to be better parents. This is how people avoid passing on their issues to the next generation as best they can.
The inner critic keeps people imprisoned by making them believe they are only valuable when busy. People have the idea that they are only as valuable as how they appear or what they do, not for who they are. Peter Levine stated that when he asks himself if he has done enough, the answer is very much yes, but when he asks if he is enough, he still does not know the answer.
When asked if they value Dr. Maté as a human being, people say yes. When asked if they would consider him worthless if he had a stroke and could not speak or move, they say no. This reveals the inconsistency in how people value themselves versus others.
To rewire the mind when the world tells people that what they do is who they are, consider whether you would ever say to a one-day old baby who cannot do anything that they are not enough. The answer is no, so the question becomes why people say this to themselves.
The word stress was coined in Canada by Hungarian physician and researcher Hans Selye at Université de Montréal. He showed in the laboratory the impact of stress on diminishing the immune system, overgrowing the adrenal gland, and ulcerating the intestines. Stress is an essential response to life challenges. When confronting a threat, the stress response activates the nervous system, produces adrenaline for energy and strength, and cortisol for blood sugar to handle the challenge.
In the long term, stress hormones cause high blood pressure, constricted blood vessels, high risk of strokes and heart disease, thinned bones leading to osteoporosis, suppressed immune system or autoimmune disease, depression, belly fat increasing heart disease risk, genes that cause cancer being turned on, genes that protect against cancer being turned off, and inflammation in the body. People make themselves sick because they have taken on the driven values of the culture.
Aeschylus wrote in Agamemnon 2,400 years ago that the gods created humans so that they have to suffer into truth. People often have to experience pain to wake up to reality. The stresses people impose on themselves create pain, illness, and dysfunction that wake them up to the realization that the way they are living is not the way they are meant to live.
When the body says no, it means that when people do not say no, the body will say it for them in the form of illness. The question to ask is where in your life are you not saying no because you are afraid of how the world will perceive you, afraid that people will not like you, or afraid that people might be disappointed in you. The no that is not said becomes a source of stress. There is also the related question of where am I not saying yes.
At one and a half years old, children start saying no. This is nature putting a barrier behind which the child can develop their own self. Before yeses mean anything, a person has to be able to say no. In this society, the terrible twos are called inner stupidity when it is perfectly natural. People start with the word no and then stifle it in people, so at age 45 they do not know how to say no.
The Buddha said 2,500 years ago that with our minds we create the world. If the mind lives in a world where saying no threatens a person, then they are not going to say no. Modern psychology adds that before the mind creates the world, the world creates the mind. If a person grew up in a family where no was not respected and was seen as a sign of disrespect or disobedience that needed to be suppressed or punished, and their acceptance depended on their acquiescence, they will forget how to say no to protect themselves.
Elvis Presley sang a song called Anyway You Want Me where he said he would be anything that you want him to be. He gave up his raw genius and energy and paid a heavy price, dying very young in tragic circumstances.
Compassionate inquiry is a therapeutic method based on the fundamental belief that there is nothing wrong with anybody to start with. Everything that appears as disconnection from gut feelings was an adaptation. The truth is inside each person, and by asking the right questions, the truth will emerge.
Whatever a person thinks is wrong with them at some point served a purpose. Early adaptations become ingrained, and what was helpful in one situation becomes a limitation in another situation. Asking the right questions gets people back to source.
An elderly Indigenous woman at a trauma workshop in Haida Gwaii was ashamed because she forgot her native tribal national language. She was taken to residential school where she made the mistake of speaking her native tongue and was beaten with a stick. Her forgetting her language saved her life at the time. At five years old, she could not escape or ask for help, and fighting back might have killed her. Not fighting back was her organism's wisdom to save her life, not cowardice.
All the things people berate, judge, and criticize themselves for began as adaptations. Compassion needs to be extended to oneself first, then it can be extended to others. Only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche said there are no dead ends, just paths that were not the way to go. Thomas Edison said he did not fail 1,999 times to build a light bulb, he found out there were 1,999 ways not to build a light bulb. People had to do certain things to find out their reality.
The questioner perceives a contradiction between self-improvement and self-acceptance, noting that the desire to improve implies viewing oneself as not enough. The response reframes the question: instead of self-improvement implying an accusation against oneself, one can ask "How can I reach my full potential?" This formulation eliminates the contradiction, removes self-judgment and self-rejection, and becomes a lifelong process without accusation.
A 22-year-old YouTube channel creator feels limited by the belief that they are too young to help people or give guidance. They fear being judged as immature or questioned about their knowledge. The speaker first clarifies that age has nothing to do with capability, citing Mozart who was composing at age 11 and recognized as a genius by 22.
"I'm too young" is identified as a belief, not a feeling. Actual feelings are states like tired, hungry, sad, or angry. The distinction matters because beliefs can be examined and challenged, while feelings are direct experiences.
The speaker asks the questioner whether they would tell a 22-year-old university student writing newspaper columns that they are too young. The questioner acknowledges they would not apply that standard to others. The speaker points out the inconsistency: different rules are being applied to oneself versus others. The recommendation is to treat oneself with the same compassion and standards applied to friends or others in similar situations.
The pattern identified is a lack of self-compassion. The advice is to notice this pattern without judging oneself for it, then make an effort to treat oneself the way one treats others. This approach allows one to contribute without the internal barrier of feeling too young or inadequate.
People may judge you. This is presented as a simple fact of human behavior, not a reason to withhold contribution. The speaker shares personal experience receiving both positive comments and negative ones on YouTube, including being called boring or accused of having dementia over political disagreements. The response to judgment is "So what?" Human beings judge other human beings.
The final recommended thought for people to discuss is the question: "What is true for me?" This question should be asked repeatedly throughout one's life as a guiding principle for authentic living and decision-making.
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