Gabor Maté – Authenticity vs. Attachment
If you've been paying attention to the recordings, we're playing with what's challenging. Because yes, like we've been talking about these two adventures, and I hope I won't use too many words to talk about this, but in this Phoenix program, we're here to look at, okay, what do we want? Like, what are we here to create? What's our calling? Yes, pay attention to that. Get clear on that. Move on that. Yes, yes, yes. That's what we're here to do.
And there is another adventure called, where is the shit hitting the fan? What's challenging? Where are we just out of balance? And can we be more aware of this, and really see that this is the work? This is where we'll find those unconscious patterns. And if we can learn to be with ourselves, and love ourselves, and really bring in greater acceptance, and compassion, these ways will dissolve. Good luck not doing this. Good luck not saying, yeah, this is what I want. And this is who I am. And the creation is effortless.
So we're here to play with what's holding us back. Where's the shit hitting the fan? And in service to this, this is perhaps one of the most profound videos I've ever watched myself. I can't encourage anyone and everyone to explore the work of Dr. Gabor Mate more fully. He is in a bunch of the advanced resources in the dashboard that I've created.
The spiritual gurus for all of time have been saying, love and compassion is the way. Like that's not new. But the way that Gabor Mate, through his own Holocaust trauma, just through his life and just through the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of patients that he's worked with his understanding of trauma addiction is just profound.
So this one like five-minute video really for me anchors the whole thing. So I hope I haven't built it up too much but I'm just gonna play this video when it'll give us a context. And then we're gonna dive into our own life within this context.
What the heck does that mean? Like how do we unpack it and really start to have greater empowerment, greater authority in our life?
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Gabor Maté Speaking:
When a child is born, the child has two needs. The first need is for attachment. And attachment is contact, connection, love. Without that, the human child does not survive. Any mammalian child or even an avian child doesn't survive.
So that as soon as you get past the level of reptiles, the reptile is hatched, the mother's long gone by then and the reptile infant either lives or dies. But there's no attachment to a parenting figure.
As soon as you get to the level of birds now, the baby bird has to have an attachment with the parents. The parents have to be attached to the baby. Otherwise, the infant simply does not survive.
Mammalians even more so and most so the human because we're the least developed, the least mature, with the least developed brains and the most dependent for the longest period of time of any creature in the universe.
So our attachment needs are enormous and they remain important throughout lifetime because we have to have attachments to form societies, social groups without which we don't survive.
So attachment is a huge need. We have to connect, belong, be loved by and love. That's just a basic human need.
But we have another need as well which is for authenticity. Authenticity is the capacity, as I said earlier, to know what we feel, to be in touch with our bodies and to be able to express who we are and manifest who we are in our activities and in our relationships.
Now, why is that? Well, think of a human being in evolutionary period who's not in touch with their body and their gut feelings. How long do they survive out there in the wild?
So authenticity is another huge survival need.
Great. So far so good.
But what happens to a child where the attachment need is not compatible with the need for authenticity? In other words, if I'm authentic, my parents will reject me.
If I feel what I feel and express what I feel and insist on my own truth, my parents can't handle it. And parents convey those messages unconsciously all the time.
Not because they mean to, not because they don't love the child, not because they're not trying to do their best, but because they themselves are suppressed or traumatized or hurt or stressed.
So I convey that message many times to my children, believe me, without any conscious desire to do so.
In fact, it was the very opposite of what I wish to convey. But that they're not acceptable the way they are with their emotions the way they are, that's the message my kids got when they were small. And most children get that in our society.
Now, what does a child do with that?
Well, if I give up my attachment for the sake of authenticity, I lose my relationship on which my life depends.
Therefore, there's no question. What becomes suppressed is our authenticity, our emotions.
And then we become 25 and 30 or 35 or 40 and we don't know who we are.
And somebody asks us, what do you feel? You say, I have no idea.
And how many times we've all had the experience of having an inkling of a strong gut feeling but we're ignoring it?
We're ignoring it and we get into trouble?
Well, that tells us what happened. What happened was that at some point we found out it was too costly for our attachment relationships to be in touch with our gut feelings.
So then it becomes not our first nature but our second nature to suppress our feelings, to lose touch with ourselves and to suppress our gut feelings.
And then we pay the cost later on in the form of addictions, mental illness or any range of physical illnesses.
But it all began with this tragic conflict that children should never be confronted with but are all the time between authenticity on one hand and attachment on the other.
And even as adults so many people are suffering because they want to be themselves but they're afraid to be because they know or at least they fear that if they're themselves they're going to lose important attachment relationships in their lives.
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So much to unpack in four or five minutes. I hope that was powerful and landed in some way.
And we're going to have some time just for sharing for Q&A but I want us all to kind of like apply it a little.
So we all as human beings we have a need to be authentic to have feelings needs in some way to express who we are. Like we are this divine being of light like we're like a phoenix like we're here to shine that we're here to be that. That's what we're here to do.
And we also no matter how amazing and perfect our parents were and are we didn't get what we needed right? Like they're not perfect robots so we learned particular ways to hide play small not ask for what we need not express big feelings not engage in conflict or many varieties of like self-honoring self-trusting self-authentic behavior. And so we're just here to unpack that.