--- title: "3 Early childhood Quotes By Gabor Maté" description: "3 Early childhood quotes by Gabor Maté. Plus more from Gabor Maté and more Early childhood sayings from other authors." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/gabor-mat-1410_adult-life_the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises_524562.png" --- > [“The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises-early-in-life-the-brain-s/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/gabor-mat-1410_adult-life_the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises_524562.png) > [“Despite the intervening six decades of scientific inquiry since Selye’s groundbreaking work, the physiological impact of the emotions is still far from…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/despite-the-intervening-six-decades-of-scientific-inquiry-since-selye/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/704/gabor-mat-1410_early-childhood_despite-the-intervening-six-decades-of-s_1077066.jpg) > [“The contrasts between traditional multigenerational cultures and today's North American society are striking. In modern urbanized North America — and in other…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-contrasts-between-traditional-multigenerational-cultures-and/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png) ## Other authors on Early childhood - [ ![](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/uploads/sms4s/authors/processed/b022/author-shakira-84307.jpg) Shakira 8 quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/early-childhood/shakira/) - [ ![](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/uploads/sms4s/authors/processed/b005/author-barack-obama-16275.jpg) Barack Obama 5 quotes ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/early-childhood/barack-obama/) ## More by Gabor Maté > [“As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/as-parents-who-make-every-effort-we-can-to-raise-our-children-in/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-fact-is-we-in-this-society-are-often-quite-removed-from-our-own/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/shame-is-the-deepest-of-the-negative-emotions-a-feeling-we-will-do/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/many-adults-have-not-attained-maturity-have-not-mastered-being/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [Autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/autonomy-is-impossible-as-long-as-one-is-driven-by-anything/) [Gabor Mate](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/if-a-mother-has-eight-children-there-are-eight-mothers-this-is-not/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/without-attachment-the-parent-succeeds-at-most-in-cowing-a-child-into/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Attachment is our connection with the world. In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/attachment-is-our-connection-with-the-world-in-the-earliest/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“So what you've actually got is traumatized children. When children are traumatized that affects how they feel about themselves, which is deeply ashamed because…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/so-what-you-ve-actually-got-is-traumatized-children-when-children-are/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/even-without-world-wars-revolutions-and-emigration-siblings-growing/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“We think that there are people who are normal over here, and then there’s the pathological ones who have depression, anxiety, addiction or schizophrenia…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/we-think-that-there-are-people-who-are-normal-over-here-and-then/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/one-cannot-get-much-more-vulnerable-than-to-expose-oneself/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The areas of the cortex responsible for attention and self-regulation develop in response to the emotional interaction with the person whom we may call…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-areas-of-the-cortex-responsible-for-attention-and-self-regulation/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“Peer-oriented children live in a universe of severely limited and superficial attachments. The quest for sameness being the least vulnerable way of attaching, it…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/peer-oriented-children-live-in-a-universe-of-severely-limited-and/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) > [“The United States contains less than 5 percent of the world’s population but houses nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-united-states-contains-less-than-5-percent-of-the-world-s/) [Gabor Maté](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/gabor-mat/) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/early-childhood/gabor-mat/#itemlist", "name": "3 Early childhood Quotes By Gabor Maté", "numberOfItems": 3, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so are the implicit, unconscious memories that govern our attitudes and behaviours toward ourselves, others and the world. Cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and the other conditions we examined are not abrupt new developments in adult life, but culminations of lifelong processes. The human interactions and biological imprinting that shaped these processes took place in periods of our life for which we may have no conscious recall. Emotionally unsatisfying child-parent interaction is a theme running through the one hundred or so detailed interviews I conducted for this book. These patients suffer from a broadly disparate range of illnesses, but the common threads in their stories are early loss or early relationships that were profoundly unfulfilling emotionally. Early childhood emotional deprivation in the histories of adults with serious illness is also verified by an impressive number of investigations reported in the medical and psychological literature. In an Italian study, women with genital cancers were reported to have felt less close to their parents than healthy controls. They were also less demonstrative emotionally. A large European study compared 357 cancer patients with 330 controls. The women with cancer were much less likely than controls to recall their childhood homes with positive feelings. As many as 40 per cent of cancer patients had suffered the death of a parent before the age of seventeen—a ratio of parental loss two and a half times as great as had been suffered by the controls. The thirty-year follow-up of Johns Hopkins medical students was previously quoted. Those graduates whose initial interviews in medical school had revealed lower than normal childhood closeness with their parents were particularly at risk. By midlife they were more likely to commit suicide or develop mental illness, or to suffer from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease or cancer. In a similar study, Harvard undergraduates were interviewed about their perception of parental caring. Thirty-five years later these subjects’ health status was reviewed. By midlife only a quarter of the students who had reported highly positive perceptions of parental caring were sick. By comparison, almost 90 per cent of those who regarded their parental emotional nurturing negatively were ill. “Simple and straightforward ratings of feelings of being loved are significantly related to health status,” the researchers concluded.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises-early-in-life-the-brain-s/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/gabor-mat-1410_adult-life_the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises_524562.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/gabor-mat-1410_adult-life_the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises_524562.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/gabor-mat-1410_adult-life_the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises_524562.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Despite the intervening six decades of scientific inquiry since Selye’s groundbreaking work, the physiological impact of the emotions is still far from fully appreciated. The medical approach to health and illness continues to suppose that body and mind are separable from each other and from the milieu in which they exist. Compounding that mistake is a definition of stress that is narrow and simplistic. Medical thinking usually sees stress as highly disturbing but isolated events such as, for example, sudden unemployment, a marriage breakup or the death of a loved one. These major events are potent sources of stress for many, but there are chronic daily stresses in people’s lives that are more insidious and more harmful in their long-term biological consequences. Internally generated stresses take their toll without in any way seeming out of the ordinary. For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided. When people describe themselves as being stressed, they usually mean the nervous agitation they experience under excessive demands — most commonly in the areas of work, family, relationships, finances or health. But sensations of nervous tension do not define stress — nor, strictly speaking, are they always perceived when people are stressed. Stress, as we will define it, is not a matter of subjective feeling. It is a measurable set of objective physiological events in the body, involving the brain, the hormonal apparatus, the immune system and many other organs. Both animals and people can experience stress with no awareness of its presence. “Stress is not simply nervous tension,” Selye pointed out. “Stress reactions do occur in lower animals, and even in plants, that have no nervous systems…. Indeed, stress can be produced under deep anaesthesia in patients who are unconscious, and even in cell cultures grown outside the body.” Similarly, stress effects can be highly active in persons who are fully awake, but who are in the grip of unconscious emotions or cut off from their body responses. The physiology of stress may be triggered without observable effects on behaviour and without subjective awareness, as has been shown in animal experiments and in human studies.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/despite-the-intervening-six-decades-of-scientific-inquiry-since-selye/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/704/gabor-mat-1410_early-childhood_despite-the-intervening-six-decades-of-s_1077066.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/704/gabor-mat-1410_early-childhood_despite-the-intervening-six-decades-of-s_1077066.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/704/gabor-mat-1410_early-childhood_despite-the-intervening-six-decades-of-s_1077066.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Despite the intervening six decades of scientific inquiry since Selye’s groundbreaking work, the…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The contrasts between traditional multigenerational cultures and today's North American society are striking. In modern urbanized North America — and in other industrialized countries where the American way of life has become the norm — children find themselves in attachment voids everywhere, situations in which they lack consistent and deep connection with nurturing adults. There are many factors promoting this trend. One result of economic changes since the Second World War is that children are placed early, sometimes soon after birth, in situations where they spend much of the day in one another's company. Most of their contact is with other children, not with the significant adults in their lives. They spend much less time bonding with parents and adults. As they grow older, the process only accelerates. Society has generated economic pressure for both parents to work outside the home when children are very young, but it has made little provision for the satisfaction of children's needs for emotional nourishment. Surprising though it may seem, early childhood educators, teachers, and psychologists — to say nothing of physicians and psychiatrists—are seldom taught about attachment.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Gabor Maté" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/gabor-mat/the-contrasts-between-traditional-multigenerational-cultures-and/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f54/gabor-mat-1410_american-society_the-contrasts-between-traditional-multig_2580847.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The contrasts between traditional multigenerational cultures and today's North American society are…” — Gabor Maté", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/early-childhood/gabor-mat/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/early-childhood/gabor-mat/", "name": "Early childhood Quotes by Gabor Maté", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/early-childhood/gabor-mat/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/651/gabor-mat-1410_adult-life_the-biology-of-potential-illness-arises_524562.png" }, "description": "3 Early childhood quotes by Gabor Maté. 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