Name: Physician Gabor Mate Gives His Analysis on ADHD and Anxiety
Uploaded: 2022-09-13T19:17:16.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Physician Gabor Mate Gives His Analysis on ADHD and Anxiety' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-13. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Physician Gabor Mate Gives His Analysis on ADHD and Anxiety' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-09-13. Transcript available.

the Joe Rogan experience I was just watching this very disturbing commercial
yeah yesterday with children and it was talking about ADHD and it showed a kid
that was not paying attention in class and it showed these kids like playing
around and doing things they weren't supposed to be doing yes and then they
introduced this medication and then you have the child raising their hand and
then you have everyone clapping and you have a child with a big smile on their
face and you've medicated your child to be a successful and integrated person
in
society should I should I spot off about ADHD for yes please that was my first
book on ADHD it's the American scattered or scattered minds depending on which
edition you get and that was after I was diagnosed with it myself in my 50s hmm
what does it mean ADHD yeah what is it exactly is it real oh it's real but what
does it mean well like if someone has ADHD it's not like you have herpes right
like
you say oh I've got you got a disease well what is it well they that's the
whole
point is that the medical profession and a lot of the so-called experts think
about
it as a disease another one of these inherited diseases in fact they say it's
the most irritable mental illness there is and I say it's neither an illness
nor is
it irritable so the the hallmark are difficulty paying attention when you're
not motivated yeah it's a kind of tuning out like that kid in the commercial
like
me okay poor impulse control so that you tend to act out whatever emotion
arises
mm-hmm and sometimes the hyperactivity difficulty sitting still and then to
fidget and all that and that described me to a T and but as soon as I learned
about the
diagnosis I knew something this is not a disease and it's not heritable despite
the fact that some
of my kids were diagnosed with it what is it so tuning out is not a disease so
let me ask you a
question if I may okay if I were to stress you right now create stress
emotional difficulty or
attention for you right now what would be your options of dealing with that of
dealing with me
what would be your options I could get upset or I could leave exactly yeah you
could fight back
flight or fight yeah mm-hmm but what if you didn't have those options yeah then
you're stuck and now what does the brain do when you're stuck like that it's
distracted it gets tunes out yeah tunes out you want to do other things think
about other things in other words it's a coping mechanism yeah it's normal I
mean
the idea that your child who is you know an eight nine-year-old ball of energy
filled
with you know hormones and life and thoughts and things they enjoy and then
you make them sit down all day in this unnatural state in a classroom with
fluorescent lights and stare at a teacher that's unmotivated and underpaid and
is
teaching something in a very boring and non entertaining way yeah and then if
this
kid doesn't lock in like a zombie we need to medicate them yeah well the other
part of it is that if you look at my infancy and it sounds like yours we spent
our first year or two under very difficult circumstances a lot of stress
infants can't help but absorb the stress of their parents right they can't help
it
what does an infant do could I have escaped or fought back could you have all
we could do is tune out yes but when is this tuning out happening when our
brain is
being developed right in our brain this the part that nobody taught me in
medical
school but it turns out that brain science now teaches us that the human
brain develops under the impact of the environment so the the most salient
feature of the environment that shapes the circuits of the human brain is
actually the relationship with the parents and if the parents are present and
emotionally attuned and available child brains develop properly but the parents
are stressed the child absorbs the stress what can they do with it they tune
out and that tuning out thing is programmed into the brain and then 10 years
later or 50 years later we say you got this disease no you don't you've got a
coping mechanism that's no longer working for you it had a function that first
came
along so this whole idea and and and by the way if a family comes to me with
the
ADHD child I'll say to them what you've got here is a very sensitive child that
sensitive child is picking up on all the vibes energies and stresses in your
family
want to help this child deal with the whole family look at the parental
relationship look at how what stress is there in your life look at how you
react
to the child look at do you understand the child's behavior or the emotions
that
the child is having are you just trying to control the child's behaviors look
at all
that and very often parents will tell me after they've read that book on ADHD
is
they've totally changed their relationship to their child the child
changes what a surprise hmm but you go to the most doctors you got this disease
here's the pill and by the way I took those medications and they helped me
for a while you know so I'm not and when you're in your 50s yeah yeah I'm not
anti-mix ones did you take I took Ritalin um which I can tell you the story
sure so you
know one of the hallmarks of ADHD is poor impulse control right so I found out
about ADHD and even before I was diagnosed I took Ritalin and you know why did
you take it
before you were diagnosed because I'm a doctor and I could hey and also you
diagnosed yourself well they did and and and so you at least assumed that you
had
that yeah I knew I had it and and but not only that also because I had poor
impulse
control I never practiced medicine that way I mean if you came to me for any
problem my first impulse would never be to write your prescription unless it
was
obvious that you needed it for an infection or something I'd sit down with you
and
talk to you about what's going on here but but not me poor impulse regulation
so I went
to a colleague of mine a medical colleague I said hey Bev I think I've got ADHD
can you
some can you give me some Ritalin so she writes me a prescription and then I
took it in the higher
than recommended initial dose and because I mean if a little bit is good then
more must be even
better and again it's not how I practice medicine right but I came to myself
that's a totally different
so I felt immediately present and calm and grounded and yeah and it's a stimulant
and I went well it
calms the ADHD brain then I go home and my wife says you look stoned because
you're calm yeah well
because I got this glassy-eyed expression and and within a couple days the
different the Ritalin
made me very depressed that's one of its potential side effects so I did see a
psychiatrist I was
formally diagnosed and they gave me dexedrine and I took that for a while that's
an amphetamine
yeah it's an amphetamine it's another stimulant and it did help me I became a
much more efficient
workaholic and I could do even work it didn't change any of my emotional issues
but it made me more
focused and so on it helped me write my first book but I haven't taken them for
decades but because also I
know that the brain can change if you treat it right so this is the reliance on
medications that we have
is is a real poverty of the spirit the real poverty of imagination a poverty of
medical education the
average doctor never learns this stuff the average physician never gets a
single lecture on brain
development how the brain develops in interaction with their environment so
when you're seeing and let
alone do they hear about trauma they don't hardly at all right so when they see
an adult with ADHD or
depression or addiction or or or bipolar conditions or or for that matter autoimmune
illness or anything
else they don't think of trauma they just think of this disease and they think
that the diagnosis
explains everything but the diagnosis don't explain anything because think
about it let's say Gabor or Joe
goes to a doctor and uh they diagnosed with ADHD well why is what are the hallmarks
of ADHD well tuning out poor impulse
regulation maybe hyperactivity why does Gabor have poor impulse control uh
hyperactivity and uh tuning out because he's got ADHD
how do we know he's got ADHD because it's got poor impulse control and tunes
out and he's hyperactive why is he
hyperactive tunes that have poor impulse control he's got ADHD how do we know
he's got ADHD you know it doesn't it's
circular it doesn't explain it doesn't explain anything diagnosis describe
things and that there can be helpful that
way but they don't explain yeah one of the things that people get so they get
they get treated for and they get diagnosed with is anxiety yeah and that one
drives me nuts yeah it drives
me nuts because people pretend that anxiety is a disease yeah it's not and I'm
like my god the world
should make you anxious if you're a sensitive introspective person if you're
just looking at the
world itself and you you don't put it in perspective like the world's it's
filled with anxiety the anxiety is
it's future problem solving you're you're thinking about all the things that
can go wrong you're thinking
about your life in a you know potentially uh devastating way and that's not a
disease that's just a way you
look at the world and people getting diagnosed with it well i won't quite agree
with you on that one in
what way i've felt anxious at times the world the world every day is the same
if i the world is the
same but the way you look at it is not the same right that's the whole point
yeah that's what i'm
saying so the world is giving you anxiety no the world is not giving me anxiety
right you're giving
your self anxiety by looking at the world right by how i look at the world yeah
because i look into i
can look at the same world one day and feel grounded and connected and i may
have all kinds of concerns
about what's happening in the world but my nervous system won't be on edge my
adrenaline flowing i won't
be anxious that's my point is that it's not a disease it isn't a disease right
so remember i talked
about those brain circuits of lust and care and rage and uh and and and and
seeking and so on
one of the brain circuits that we have is described by a very prominent late
neuroscientist
yak panksepp is for panic and grief panic and grief are the normal responses of
the young human being
or the young animal when care isn't available so when the parents are stressed
distracted economically or politically or because of their own unresolved
trauma or whatever's going
on in their lives and they don't respond to the child's distress they don't
pick up the car child
when they're crying they make the child be alone when the child is upset the
child's panic circuits get
activated as they should be because when the child's panic circuits get
activated they cry for help yeah
that's so it's necessary for survival a young animal should feel panic when the
adult is unavailable
in a rational world in a sane world
that child would be responded to but when children as in our society are not
responded to
in their distress the panic becomes built into their nervous system and now you
have a lot of anxious
people and that's why more and more kids are being diagnosed you're right it's
not a disease
it's a response to the environment and the thought process of like leaving a
child alone when the
child's crying is that to toughen the kid up is the thought process that you
don't want to encourage
this sort of behavior because then they'll do it all the time and then you'll
develop an indulgent child
like what is the thought process the thought process is that the child's
behavior is the problem
and so we have to fix the behavior by controlling it now actually
the opposite is true because if you pick up the child when a child
has distress physical and emotional distress you're teaching the child that the
world is safe
and they don't have to be they don't have to be anxious about it and they can
just ask for help
and it doesn't entrench kind of crying manipulative behavior
how how it works dr daniel segal who's a psychiatrist at ucla and a very prolific
author and mind researcher
he says in his book the developing mind that the child uses the mature circuits
of the adult brain
to regulate his own immature unregulated circuits so when the adults show up in
a calm loving way
that the child downloads that into his own nervous system
and then he grows he doesn't he's not going to be an infant forever some point
he's going to be a mature
adult who knows how to take care of themselves that's a natural process we don't
have to teach kids
to be independent independent is nature's agenda because the parents are going
to die at some point
the mother bear is going to disappear that bear cup has to be able to look
after themselves in a mature
confident way that's nature's natural agenda what the mother what the mother
bear needs to do is to meet
the the needs of that infant bear so the infant banker matures so if we meet
the child's needs
they're going to mature out of that helpless state with a sense of self-regulation
and calm confidence
in their own capacity but when you don't pick kids up what you teach them is
that the world is not
available that they're alone and that they're helpless talk about a formula for
anxiety
Thank you.

Physician Gabor Mate Gives His Analysis on ADHD and Anxiety

the Joe Rogan experience I was just watching this very disturbing commercial
yeah yesterday with children and it was talking about ADHD and it showed a kid
that was not paying attention in class and it showed these kids like playing
around and doing things they weren't supposed to be doing yes and then they
introduced this medication and then you have the child raising their hand and
then you have everyone clapping and you have a child with a big smile on their
face and you've medicated your child to be a successful and integrated person
in
society should I should I spot off about ADHD for yes please that was my first
book on ADHD it's the American scattered or scattered minds depending on which
edition you get and that was after I was diagnosed with it myself in my 50s hmm
what does it mean ADHD yeah what is it exactly is it real oh it's real but what
does it mean well like if someone has ADHD it's not like you have herpes right
like
you say oh I've got you got a disease well what is it well they that's the
whole
point is that the medical profession and a lot of the so-called experts think
about
it as a disease another one of these inherited diseases in fact they say it's
the most irritable mental illness there is and I say it's neither an illness
nor is
it irritable so the the hallmark are difficulty paying attention when you're
not motivated yeah it's a kind of tuning out like that kid in the commercial
like
me okay poor impulse control so that you tend to act out whatever emotion
arises
mm-hmm and sometimes the hyperactivity difficulty sitting still and then to
fidget and all that and that described me to a T and but as soon as I learned
about the
diagnosis I knew something this is not a disease and it's not heritable despite
the fact that some
of my kids were diagnosed with it what is it so tuning out is not a disease so
let me ask you a
question if I may okay if I were to stress you right now create stress
emotional difficulty or
attention for you right now what would be your options of dealing with that of
dealing with me
what would be your options I could get upset or I could leave exactly yeah you
could fight back
flight or fight yeah mm-hmm but what if you didn't have those options yeah then
you're stuck and now what does the brain do when you're stuck like that it's
distracted it gets tunes out yeah tunes out you want to do other things think
about other things in other words it's a coping mechanism yeah it's normal I
mean
the idea that your child who is you know an eight nine-year-old ball of energy
filled
with you know hormones and life and thoughts and things they enjoy and then
you make them sit down all day in this unnatural state in a classroom with
fluorescent lights and stare at a teacher that's unmotivated and underpaid and
is
teaching something in a very boring and non entertaining way yeah and then if
this
kid doesn't lock in like a zombie we need to medicate them yeah well the other
part of it is that if you look at my infancy and it sounds like yours we spent
our first year or two under very difficult circumstances a lot of stress
infants can't help but absorb the stress of their parents right they can't help
it
what does an infant do could I have escaped or fought back could you have all
we could do is tune out yes but when is this tuning out happening when our
brain is
being developed right in our brain this the part that nobody taught me in
medical
school but it turns out that brain science now teaches us that the human
brain develops under the impact of the environment so the the most salient
feature of the environment that shapes the circuits of the human brain is
actually the relationship with the parents and if the parents are present and
emotionally attuned and available child brains develop properly but the parents
are stressed the child absorbs the stress what can they do with it they tune
out and that tuning out thing is programmed into the brain and then 10 years
later or 50 years later we say you got this disease no you don't you've got a
coping mechanism that's no longer working for you it had a function that first
came
along so this whole idea and and and by the way if a family comes to me with
the
ADHD child I'll say to them what you've got here is a very sensitive child that
sensitive child is picking up on all the vibes energies and stresses in your
family
want to help this child deal with the whole family look at the parental
relationship look at how what stress is there in your life look at how you
react
to the child look at do you understand the child's behavior or the emotions
that
the child is having are you just trying to control the child's behaviors look
at all
that and very often parents will tell me after they've read that book on ADHD
is
they've totally changed their relationship to their child the child
changes what a surprise hmm but you go to the most doctors you got this disease
here's the pill and by the way I took those medications and they helped me
for a while you know so I'm not and when you're in your 50s yeah yeah I'm not
anti-mix ones did you take I took Ritalin um which I can tell you the story
sure so you
know one of the hallmarks of ADHD is poor impulse control right so I found out
about ADHD and even before I was diagnosed I took Ritalin and you know why did
you take it
before you were diagnosed because I'm a doctor and I could hey and also you
diagnosed yourself well they did and and and so you at least assumed that you
had
that yeah I knew I had it and and but not only that also because I had poor
impulse
control I never practiced medicine that way I mean if you came to me for any
problem my first impulse would never be to write your prescription unless it
was
obvious that you needed it for an infection or something I'd sit down with you
and
talk to you about what's going on here but but not me poor impulse regulation
so I went
to a colleague of mine a medical colleague I said hey Bev I think I've got ADHD
can you
some can you give me some Ritalin so she writes me a prescription and then I
took it in the higher
than recommended initial dose and because I mean if a little bit is good then
more must be even
better and again it's not how I practice medicine right but I came to myself
that's a totally different
so I felt immediately present and calm and grounded and yeah and it's a stimulant
and I went well it
calms the ADHD brain then I go home and my wife says you look stoned because
you're calm yeah well
because I got this glassy-eyed expression and and within a couple days the
different the Ritalin
made me very depressed that's one of its potential side effects so I did see a
psychiatrist I was
formally diagnosed and they gave me dexedrine and I took that for a while that's
an amphetamine
yeah it's an amphetamine it's another stimulant and it did help me I became a
much more efficient
workaholic and I could do even work it didn't change any of my emotional issues
but it made me more
focused and so on it helped me write my first book but I haven't taken them for
decades but because also I
know that the brain can change if you treat it right so this is the reliance on
medications that we have
is is a real poverty of the spirit the real poverty of imagination a poverty of
medical education the
average doctor never learns this stuff the average physician never gets a
single lecture on brain
development how the brain develops in interaction with their environment so
when you're seeing and let
alone do they hear about trauma they don't hardly at all right so when they see
an adult with ADHD or
depression or addiction or or or bipolar conditions or or for that matter autoimmune
illness or anything
else they don't think of trauma they just think of this disease and they think
that the diagnosis
explains everything but the diagnosis don't explain anything because think
about it let's say Gabor or Joe
goes to a doctor and uh they diagnosed with ADHD well why is what are the hallmarks
of ADHD well tuning out poor impulse
regulation maybe hyperactivity why does Gabor have poor impulse control uh
hyperactivity and uh tuning out because he's got ADHD
how do we know he's got ADHD because it's got poor impulse control and tunes
out and he's hyperactive why is he
hyperactive tunes that have poor impulse control he's got ADHD how do we know
he's got ADHD you know it doesn't it's
circular it doesn't explain it doesn't explain anything diagnosis describe
things and that there can be helpful that
way but they don't explain yeah one of the things that people get so they get
they get treated for and they get diagnosed with is anxiety yeah and that one
drives me nuts yeah it drives
me nuts because people pretend that anxiety is a disease yeah it's not and I'm
like my god the world
should make you anxious if you're a sensitive introspective person if you're
just looking at the
world itself and you you don't put it in perspective like the world's it's
filled with anxiety the anxiety is
it's future problem solving you're you're thinking about all the things that
can go wrong you're thinking
about your life in a you know potentially uh devastating way and that's not a
disease that's just a way you
look at the world and people getting diagnosed with it well i won't quite agree
with you on that one in
what way i've felt anxious at times the world the world every day is the same
if i the world is the
same but the way you look at it is not the same right that's the whole point
yeah that's what i'm
saying so the world is giving you anxiety no the world is not giving me anxiety
right you're giving
your self anxiety by looking at the world right by how i look at the world yeah
because i look into i
can look at the same world one day and feel grounded and connected and i may
have all kinds of concerns
about what's happening in the world but my nervous system won't be on edge my
adrenaline flowing i won't
be anxious that's my point is that it's not a disease it isn't a disease right
so remember i talked
about those brain circuits of lust and care and rage and uh and and and and
seeking and so on
one of the brain circuits that we have is described by a very prominent late
neuroscientist
yak panksepp is for panic and grief panic and grief are the normal responses of
the young human being
or the young animal when care isn't available so when the parents are stressed
distracted economically or politically or because of their own unresolved
trauma or whatever's going
on in their lives and they don't respond to the child's distress they don't
pick up the car child
when they're crying they make the child be alone when the child is upset the
child's panic circuits get
activated as they should be because when the child's panic circuits get
activated they cry for help yeah
that's so it's necessary for survival a young animal should feel panic when the
adult is unavailable
in a rational world in a sane world
that child would be responded to but when children as in our society are not
responded to
in their distress the panic becomes built into their nervous system and now you
have a lot of anxious
people and that's why more and more kids are being diagnosed you're right it's
not a disease
it's a response to the environment and the thought process of like leaving a
child alone when the
child's crying is that to toughen the kid up is the thought process that you
don't want to encourage
this sort of behavior because then they'll do it all the time and then you'll
develop an indulgent child
like what is the thought process the thought process is that the child's
behavior is the problem
and so we have to fix the behavior by controlling it now actually
the opposite is true because if you pick up the child when a child
has distress physical and emotional distress you're teaching the child that the
world is safe
and they don't have to be they don't have to be anxious about it and they can
just ask for help
and it doesn't entrench kind of crying manipulativ