Gabor Mate Quotes

Biography: Gabor Maté is known for his expertise in addiction, stress, and child... more Biography: Gabor Maté is known for his expertise in addiction, stress, and childhood development. A retired physician, he spent over 20 years in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside working with patients suffering from addiction and mental illness. Maté is also a best-selling author and sought-after speaker on trauma and its impacts on health. less

"Addiction is mostly about emotional pain; it is an attempt to escape the suffering that comes with being human""Self-compassion asks us to understand and accept ourselves with the same gentleness and care we would offer to a friend""When we are not distracted, we have the chance to come face to face with what needs our attention""Healing is the restoration of relationships between the parts that are fragmented""When we are not ourselves, we are cut off from love""Trauma is not what happens to you; it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you""Understanding the sources of our pain can be the first step towards healing""Children need the emotional presence of their caregivers to thrive""Without the ability to say no, human beings cannot say yes""Healing requires recognizing the pain that needs to be healed""The essence of emotional trauma is a disconnection from the self""It takes real courage to be vulnerable and open to love""Nature designed us to need nourishing relationships to survive""A child’s brain needs healthy experiences to develop properly""The modern mind is overstimulated and the modern body is understimulated and overfed""The primary events of trauma rarely end when the traumatic experience itself ends""The very same brain centers that interpret and process emotional pain are the ones that interpret and process physical pain""Children don’t get traumatized because they get hurt; children get traumatized because they’re alone with the hurt""Authenticity is, at its heart, the recognition of what you truly need""The more we stress, the more likely we are to be hung up on behaviors that relieve stress in the short term"

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