Dr. Gabor Maté’s When the Body Says No was published 15 years ago, when I was in 7th grade (sorry boomers). At that point in my life, I had given my childhood very little critical thought, except that I should for sure have a later bedtime. In my mid-twenties, I find myself thinking about my childhood all the time, for the first time. And, as something of a hypochondriac, the title of this book caught my eye. So with that, it became the first tick on my Goodreads list for 2020. *pats self on back*
The main idea of the book is that there is a direct link between stress and disease, especially chronic disease. Dr. Maté provides examples via interviews with his patients who suffer from such conditions as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and irritable bowel syndrome, and he asks them not just about their physical symptoms, but also about their home lives. How is your marriage right now? What is your relationship like with your parents? What was your childhood like? Through these interviews, Maté makes the argument that the dis-ease of our bodies manifests by way of accumulating stress throughout our lives. So, not great news for anyone. Also not surprising.
What made me dog-ear pages was not the argument that I already agreed with, but Maté’s discussion of generational stress and disease. In summarizing an interview with Barbara, a breast cancer patient who discussed her troubled childhood with an absent father and abused mother, Maté asserts, “It was Barbara and her aunt who died of an overdose and her alcoholic uncle and her brave mother, Betty, and all Betty’s children, who, to one degree or another, suffered for the demanding immaturity of Betty’s father and for the lack of true assertiveness by her mother. And these parents, too, were suffering and carrying the burden of generations. There is no one to blame but there are generations on generations who had lived to bear a part in the genesis of Barbara’s breast cancer.”
Emotional repression, Maté says, is the psychological mirror to autoimmune disease — turning on one’s self. This coping mechanism begins early.
Not one of the many adults interviewed for this book could answer in the affirmative when asked the following: ‘When, as a child, you felt sad, upset, or angry, was there anyone you could talk to — even when he or she was the one who had triggered your negative emotions?’ In a quarter century of clinical practice, including a decade of palliative work, I have never heard anyone with cancer or with any chronic illness or condition say yes to that question. Many children are conditioned in this manner not because of any intended harm or abuse, but because the parents themselves are too threatened by the anxiety, anger, or sadness they sense in their child — or are simply too busy or too harassed themselves to pay attention. ‘My mother or father needed me to be happy’ is the simple formula that trained many a child into lifelong patterns of repression.
Negative emotions don’t just disappear of course, but turn inwards.
It’s this emotional repression-turned-stress that adds to our bodies’ capacity to develop disease. Again, this is not good news. None of us have had perfect childhoods with perfect levels of self-expression, I would assume. Some of you are parents and may be wondering how you’re doing in all of this. Maté explains,
“Parenting, in short, is the dance of generations. Whatever affected one generation but has not been fully resolved will be passed on to the next. Lance Morrow, a journalist and writer, succinctly expressed the multi-generational nature of stress in his book Heart … ‘The generations are boxes within boxes: Inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandfather’s violence, and inside that box (I suspect but do not know), you would find another box with some such black, secret energy — stories within stories, receding in time.’”
As Maté asks later in the chapter, “Whom do we accuse?” Knowing our wills are bent towards selfishness, that sin infects our whole world and all of our hearts, we answer that question: “None is righteous; no not one.” The dance of generations continues, we pray to God for help, and if we can afford it, we find ourselves in therapy facing our demons.
To conclude, Maté describes what he calls “The Power of Negative Thinking.” He explains, “The power of negative thinking requires accepting that we are not as strong as we would like to believe. Our insistently strong self-image was generated to hide a weakness — the relative weakness of a child. Our fragility is nothing to be ashamed of… We cannot do all that we thought we could.” In other words, we are not God. Someone Else is. We are children, and to heal, we must first remember that we are children.
Our bound wills have made us act in ways we wish we hadn’t, and it did the same to our parents and to theirs. Our desire to always seem strong was born of imperfect childhoods and being more of an adult than we ought, which has repressed our emotions and led to a facade of positivity that is physically hurting us. This is suffering, generation by generation. This is suffering in our smallest cells, our most exhausted organs, and our most painful family relationships.
Thank God — where there is death, there is also resurrection.
Death happens in that moment of giving up, desperately recognizing our need for help, remembering again that we are children and admitting, “I cannot handle the pain of this disease — body, mind, or spirit.” Resurrection follows with Jesus’ words, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”
7 comments
Matt Johnson says:
Jan 27, 2020
Great read! I’ve not picked up Gabor’s books but have heard him on several podcasts. The one the stands out to me is the interview he did with Russell Brand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQwP0XRBjq4 He makes good sense of the mind / body connection and it makes more and more sense as I get older and consider my own origins.
CJ says:
Jan 28, 2020
Definitely has me considering the interplay of all of this and “original sin” — how comprehensive that term can be. Also, I appreciate how Gabor puts into words “The Power of Negative Thinking.” So true. Not to negate the power of positive thinking, but both can be helpful to degrees…i’m thinking…
Thanks, Amanda!
Tommy says:
Jan 28, 2020
Really enjoyed this Amanda–thank you. I recently finished reading “The Body Keeps the Score”, which I might also recommend.
Sarah says:
Jan 29, 2020
This is so interesting to me. Thank you for writing about it!
Bryan J. says:
Jan 29, 2020
I think there’s a lot of good things here to ponder, especially the power of “negative thinking” and the mind/body connection But I wonder what dangers might lurk here too. I have a close family member with M.S., and I’m working through an initial negative response to Mate’s teaching (not, of course, a negative response to your post Amanda- thank you for sharing an allowing me to interact with Mate’s work!).
If autoimmune diseases have as their cause poor genetics, cosmic bad luck, or some other uncontrollable mystery of the universe rooted in causes before our birth, then they are fundamentally out of our control. The diagnosis is simply a loss in the great cosmic lottery, so to speak. But if autoimmune diseases have as their cause or trigger inter-generational family trauma, anger, and stress, we can’t necessarily say that the development of an autoimmune disease is beyond our control. I’m hesitant to walk through the implications of theory. Is it possible that two decades of family stress and trauma caused by my relative’s M.S. could have been avoided if this family member had gone to therapy, took anti-anxiety pills, or sought out spiritual inner healing? In that light, autoimmune diseases take on a dimension of moral failure alongside chronic body decay. We could truthfully offer this statement for consideration: “if the person with the disease had properly taken care of themselves, then they would have saved themselves and their family connections from decades of deep physical and psychological pain.” That’s not to say Mate’s theory isn’t true, but the implications of that truth are profound in a way that makes me uncomfortable, (and let’s be clear- that discomfort is my issue, not Mate’s).
Perhaps I should read the book myself instead of shadowboxing with a summary. And I should continue to go through this with my therapist. Thanks for offering me this tidbit to chew on.
Amanda McMillen says:
Jan 29, 2020
You make a great point, and this is where Mate’s research isn’t really conducted in light of the gospel – there’s a conversation about low anthropology here, but not the sin that infects the whole world, which we can’t just wiggle our way out of if we’re smart enough or moral enough. I think for the sake of argument we could say that if we could be better people and better parents, *maybe* there would be less chronic disease in the world, but I don’t think we become better by saying we should, so it’s sort of a moot point. Although that might be exactly the point that Mate is ultimately trying to make – that we ought to be better. In which case, I’d agree and follow with “Lord have mercy”
Wendy says:
Feb 2, 2020
I appreciate this very much. Thank you!