The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate’ – Book Summary

Patricia Morgan Inner Healing, Resiliency Books book summary, healing, mental health, therapy 0

Book Summary The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.

In September 2022, the renowned Canadian physician, trauma and addiction author, Gabor Maté with his son, Daniel Mate’ released “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.”

In this publication, he challenges our usual take-it-for-granted perspectives about what we settle on as ‘normal’, particularly regarding mental health. Be forewarned, at 567 pages, it is a dense read filled with stories, insightful quotations, research references, and lists of academic sources. However, it is beautifully and courageously written, and if you are interested in the issue of mental health, it is a worthy and enriching read.

Overview of “The Myth of Normal”

Maté argues that society’s definition of normal often leads to damaging biases and stigmas. He emphasizes that depression, anxiety, and addiction are not isolated problems but rather symptoms of deep underlying societal issues. He gives more than ample reasoning for childhood abuse and neglect, along with societal factors such as poverty, racism, sexism and social inequality, being the root causes of masses of people living with trauma. He describes how trauma manifests in physical symptoms and emotional dysregulation, and how individuals often develop coping mechanisms, such as addiction or self-destructive behaviors, merely to survive.

Drawing from his clinical practice, Mate’ discusses how people can begin to heal from trauma by developing self-awareness, building support systems, and engaging in psychotherapy and mindfulness practices.

He daringly criticizes the pharmaceutical industry for advocating the mass use of medication to manage mental health. He advocates for addressing our social and psychological problems as the healthiest solution. He offers profound and compelling reasons to embrace a deeper, more complex, and more compassionate understanding of human behavior and mental health challenges.

Basic Concepts in The Myth of Normal

In many ways, our societal concept of ‘normal’ is skewed, illogical, and contributes to the stigmatization of others while jeopardizing the well-being of all of us. Consider the issues of consumerism, poverty, racism, sexism, and inequality.
Cultural toxicity needs to be named and changed. When we, the citizens, make a public outcry, rally, and call for solutions to societal problems, political will often follows.
Trauma separates us from our bodies, splits us off from our gut feelings, limits our response flexibility, and fosters a shame-based view of ourselves. It also distorts our view of the world and keeps us from being in the present moment.
Acknowledging the body-mind connection is key to our emotional, mental, physical, and societal well-being.
Many common mental health issues, such as depression and addiction, are not isolated problems but symptoms of deeper underlying traumas.
Healing principles include personal agency, acceptance, healthy anger, and compassion as well as five levels of compassion.
Trauma, especially experienced during childhood, plays a significant role in shaping our mental health and behavior later in life.
People often develop coping mechanisms, such as addiction or self-destructive behaviors, to survive and deal with trauma.
The medicalization of mental health often prioritizes pharmaceutical interventions over addressing the root causes of mental illness.
Our minds can create madness or meaning.
Societal factors like poverty, racism, and social inequality can contribute to trauma and exacerbate mental health issues.
Developing self-awareness, self-compassion, building supportive relationships, and engaging in therapeutic modalities are essential steps in healing from trauma.
All of us can contribute to a saner world.

20 Gabor Mate’ Quotes

“Where do we each fit on the broad and surprisingly inclusive trauma spectrum? . . . And what possibilities would open up were we to become more familiar, even intimate, with them?”
“Trauma is a psychic injury, lodged in our nervous system, mind, and body, lasting long past the originating incident(s), triggerable at any moment.”
“We physicians frequently dole out large doses of synthesized stress hormones for inflammations of the skin, joints, brain, intestines, lungs, kidneys, and so on. We do so for a good reason: hormones often alleviate or ameliorate symptoms, albeit with many potentially hazardous side effects.”
“Authenticity. . . it means simply this: knowing our gut feelings when they arise and honoring them.”
“The lack of authenticity makes itself known through tension or anxiety, irritability or regret, depression, or fatigue.”
“The dilemma is this: What happens if our needs for attachment are imperiled by our authenticity, our connection to what we truly feel? . . . Although both needs are essential, there is a pecking order: in the first phase of life, attachment unfailingly tops the bill.”
“I have said that acquired personality traits such as excessive identification with socially imposed duty, role, and responsibility at the expense of one’s own needs can jeopardize health.”
“It is we who are made in the image of our distorted, disordered, denatured world—the better to keep it running, even as it runs us into the ground.”
“The two leading misconceptions: that addiction is either the product of “bad choices” or else a “disease.” Both fail to explain this unrelenting societal plague, just as they hobble our efforts toward remedying it.”
“Diagnoses are abstractions, or summaries: sometimes helpful, always incomplete . . . The psychiatrist, author, and leading trauma researcher Bruce Perry has come to disdain diagnoses almost completely.”
“It’s about our hurting world, manifesting the illusions and myths of a culture alienated from our essence.”
“We know that chronic stress, whatever its source, puts the nervous system on edge, distorts the hormonal apparatus, impairs immunity, promotes inflammation, and undermines physical and mental well-being.”
“Simply put, the more meaningful you find your life, the better your measures of mental and physical health are likely to be.”
“The taboo against vulnerability, in particular, is deeply harmful to men as well as to women. . . Male domination exacts a high price in both directions, and by all indicators, it costs more than it pays.”
“Friedrich Nietzsche wrote somewhere that people lie their way out of reality when they have been hurt by reality.”
“True healing simply means opening ourselves to the truth of our lives, past and present, as plainly and objectively as we can. “
“None of us need be perfect, nor exercise saintly compassion, nor reach any emotional or spiritual benchmark before we can say we’re on the healing path. All we need is readiness to participate in whatever process wants to unfold within us so that healing can happen naturally.”
“Both anger suppressed, and anger amplified out of proportion are toxic. Anger in its natural, healthy form is a boundary defense, a dynamic activated when we perceive a threat to our lives or our physical or emotional integrity.”
“Healing, in a sense, is about unlearning the notion that we need to protect ourselves from our own pain. In this way, compassion is a gateway to another essential quality: courage.”
“There is more to each of us than the conditioned personalities we present to the world, the suppressed or untrammeled emotions we act out, and the behaviors we exhibit. Understanding this allows for what I call the compassion of possibility.”

Conclusion

Gabor Mate’ may have lofty beliefs about healing ourselves and the planet, but as the motivational speaker Les Brown said, ‘Better to aim high and miss than to aim low and hit.” It is better to name problems and suggest well researched and validated solutions that stand by silently or chronically complaining. I commend Mate’s lifelong pursuit to find answers to our personal and societal issues.

My wish for you, whether you read ‘The Myth of Normal’ or not, is to explore your possibilities of living authentically, perhaps seek therapy, and to do what you can to create a more peaceful, kind, and compassionate world.