Name: Where Shame Comes From (with Dr. Gabor Maté)
Uploaded: 2024-10-17T00:00:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Where Shame Comes From (with Dr. Gabor Maté)' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Where Shame Comes From (with Dr. Gabor Maté)' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-17. Transcript available.

trauma fosters a shame-based view of the self yeah um i'd love to talk a little
bit about shame
man because that was a huge part of my life well tell me about it i just felt
ashamed of myself
yeah i felt ashamed of like yeah i felt ashamed of how i looked i felt ashamed
of like my ears
my nose my face my the way i stood i felt uh
yeah i felt ashamed of my family of my home i just i everything i i i just felt
a ton of it i'm not
i'm not whining about it right now i'm just thinking back but yeah i just felt
a ton of shame
you know i felt like i felt like i think i felt ashamed of who i was at like
the first molecule
almost like the first cell of my you know the dirt under the roots it felt like
i just there was a part
of me that i felt like i was me or anything that had to do with me was gross i
understand you know
and i used the word gross because that's it felt like gross no the only thing i'll
say is um
it's it's not that you felt you were gross it's you believed you were right yes
yeah you're right i
didn't feel it it wasn't like a feeling on the surface of me it was like a knot
someone had tied
a long time ago in the beginning of my time and in there it in that knot it was
in there somewhere
and i couldn't really even access that it was a yeah but shame yeah i want to
hear about shame
did you feel it oh yeah oh yeah um how'd you feel
well um growing up in hungary in eastern europe and i lived there until i was
13 um there's a lot of
antisemitism and my grandparents had died in auschwitz um i almost died as an
infant my mother my father
um that's when your mother gave you to someone else to save you that's right
yeah wow when i was 11 months
of age um but even after the war there was antisemitism and so i'd feel ashamed
of being jewish
i don't anymore but but but i did as a kid so i would kind of then i'd have i
was ashamed of my jewish
looks oh so you have to hide or you have to feel like yeah yeah there's
something different about me
that isn't quite right and you know there was a lot of antisemitism and taunting
in the school that i went
to you know when i look back on it now so yeah and then i i developed body
shame you know i mean yeah
to this day it's kind of it's interesting
but every day i judge aspects of my body oh yeah you know like this is not big
enough or this is too
big or whatever you know yeah this is too big yeah so shame but shame nobody's
born with shame
really no infant is born ashamed of themselves they're totally there yeah that's
true huh if
you saw a little infant that was ashamed of yourselves ashamed of himself it
would break your
heart yeah no they wouldn't even know how to do it how infants get shamed is
when they're not seen
and yeah and what happens then well then or if they're mistreated well let's
say a child is not seen
or or worse is being hurt now they can make two assumptions one is these adults
are stupid
they're incapable they're incompetent i'm all alone in the world or the child
can believe
there's something wrong with me and maybe if i can work hard enough i can fix
it now which belief do you
think is more acceptable for the child the second one the second one so then
they develop this deep
sense that there's something wrong with us we just have to work hard enough or
look good enough or
something and then maybe we can fix so even that shame which comes out from
being cut off from it comes
from being cut off from human contact um the way we need it has a kind of
protective value
really because it makes us at least think that there's something we can do ah
it almost
it irrevert it it gives us hope in a weird way it gives us hope in a weird way
yeah but it just
but here's the thing children are are narcissists young children when i say
notices i don't mean in
a pathological sense i mean in a sense they think it's all about them right and
they don't have any
other choice they're all they know that's all they know so if the parents are
happy and connected and
there's a atmosphere of um loving acceptance and so on and the child thinks hey
i must be pretty good i must
be yeah everything's good yeah i'm okay yeah but if the parents are stressed
depressed traumatized
racially challenged economically challenged um or such terrible things as the
children in gaza
are experiencing right now with the daily bombings and all this kind of stuff
what can they think that there's something wrong with me yeah but how does
shame cause us to lose
compassion for ourselves yeah um let me tell you a story um
i mentioned this in the myth of normal after my book on addiction came out in
the realm of hunger goes
i got an email not an email a letter from a guy in seattle and he said i really
appreciate your book and
showing how trauma causes um is one not
addiction is not the only outcome of trauma but it's one of the outcomes of
trauma one of the potential
outcomes of trauma and i really appreciate all that but he says i can't play my
mother
it's my own fault that i'm a and i thought oh my god you poor guy
you still see yourself that way but lack of compassion because if he actually
understood fully
understood that he was just a baby at some point needing and wanting to be
loved and held and seen and
and and and valued just for being a human being and that didn't happen to him
and that caused so much
pain in him that he escaped into some drug addiction
he's not a he's just a hurt human being yeah but that lack of self-compassion
i see it all the time in my workshops when i do therapy work with people
one of my main tasks is to help them to notice not to criticize them for it but
to help them to be aware
of how they lack compassion for themselves yeah and um it's hard to even notice
that you're getting in
the shame circle it's so hard to even notice that you're in it you can be
living in the center of it
yeah you know that's how i was with self-pity i was living i just didn't
realize it and the self-pity
was manifesting itself like oh you can figure this out you know but by trying
to constantly help
myself figure it out all i was doing was focusing on my own right being not
good enough yeah which
in a way is really just self-pity self-pity but but it's also lack of self-compassion
yeah not
giving myself some grace i remember the first time somebody said hey man give
yourself some grace i'd
never even wow i was like wow because you people find themselves accusing
themselves and talking to
themselves in ways that they would never talk to others yeah yeah yeah that
most people wouldn't
yeah some would yeah but most wouldn't