“The salient stressors in the lives of most human beings today — at least in the industrialized world — are emotional. Just… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The primary culprit is assumed to be peer rejection: shunning, exclusion, shaming, taunting, mocking, bullying. The conclusion reached by some experts is… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what is called positive thinking. Too many… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“While all of us dread being blamed, we all would wish to be more responsible—that is, to have the ability to respond… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Our immune system does not exist in isolation from daily experience. For example, the immune defences that normally function in healthy young… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Interactions with other human beings — in particular, emotional interactions — affect our biological functioning in myriad and subtle ways almost every… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Social support helps to ameliorate physiological stress. The close links between health and the social environment have been amply demonstrated. In the… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Central to any understanding of stress, health and disease is the concept of adaptiveness. Adaptiveness is the capacity to respond to external… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Emotional competence requires the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; the ability to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The repeated finding that people with happier, less troubled thought patterns can suffer more illness seems to defy common sense. The general… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“As parents who make every effort we can to raise our children in loving security, we do not need to feel more guilt than… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality.” — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Many adults have not attained maturity — have not mastered being independent, self-motivated individuals capable of tending their own emotional needs and of respecting… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“If a mother has eight children, there are eight mothers. This is not simply because of the fact that the mother was different in… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Without attachment, the parent succeeds at most in cowing a child into obedience, at the price of grave damage to the relationship and to… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“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.… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“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… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“Even without world wars, revolutions and emigration, siblings growing up in the same home almost never share the same environment. More accurately, brothers and… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“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… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image
“One cannot get much more vulnerable than to expose oneself psychologically. To share oneself with another and then be misunderstood or rejected is, for… — Gabor Maté Copy Share Image