1. How I found him
I had reached a point where something no longer felt right. Not in what I did, but in how I lived. My body was sending signals I could no longer ignore: fatigue, tension, resistance to things I used to do without hesitation. My mind didn’t understand, but my system was quietly screaming: something has to change.
I wasn’t looking for a solution. I was looking for language. And that’s when I came across Gabor Maté.
2. Who he is
Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-Canadian physician, author and trauma expert. He worked for many years with people dealing with addiction, chronic stress and emotional pain. What makes him unique is his ability to look beyond behavior. He listens for what lies underneath — to the story the body tells when words are no longer enough.
He wrote books like When the Body Says No, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and The Myth of Normal. His voice is clear, gentle and radically honest.
3. What he says — and how it landed with me
“It’s not what happened to you. It’s what you had to suppress in order to survive.”
When I read that, I felt it immediately. It was about me. About how I had learned to adapt. To sense what others needed. To be responsible. To be strong. And to quietly silence my own emotions — my grief, my exhaustion, my limits.
“Addiction is not a weakness. It’s a way of soothing pain.”
I had never thought of myself as addicted. But as I read on, I saw how behavior itself can be a kind of numbing. Performing. Controlling. Helping. Always understanding. Always available. All ways to avoid feeling what lies underneath.
“The body doesn’t lie. It speaks the language of what was never allowed to be said.”
My body had been protesting long before I understood what was wrong. It wasn’t betraying me — it was trying to protect me. An inner alarm system that whispered: you’re no longer living in alignment with your truth.
4. What I didn’t want to hear — but needed to
At first, I read his words with curiosity — but also resistance. What if it was true? What if the patterns that had helped me survive were now the very things keeping me from myself?
The idea that my illness, my exhaustion, my over-responsibility might stem from what I had been forced to repress… it hit hard. And yet, it made painful sense.
At first, I tried to analyze, to intellectualize. But Maté invites something else: to feel. To slow down. Not to fix — but to be present. And that was something I hadn’t done in a very long time.
5. How my story wove into his words
Reading Gabor Maté felt like everything clicking into place. My experiences gained context. My patterns gained meaning. Not as faults, but as traces of what was once necessary to survive.
I saw myself in his words. In the child who felt invisible. In the adult always trying to be useful. In the body quietly whispering: “But what about me?”
And something shifted. Not all at once. But gradually. Layer by layer.
I stopped seeing my exhaustion as a failure — and started seeing it as a signal. My resistance as a compass. My patterns as protectors — ones I could thank, and gently release.
6. Why it gave me space again
What moved me most in Maté’s voice was his compassion. No diagnoses. No labels. No judgment. Just the quiet truth: there’s a reason you do what you do. And you’re allowed to understand it — not to fix yourself, but to come home to yourself.
That gave me space. To be honest. To slow down. To feel without needing to explain it all.
I no longer need to call survival what has quietly become absence. I can choose presence. Softness. Alignment.
7. Why I’m sharing this
Because I know I’m not the only one wondering why everything feels so heavy — even when life looks “fine” from the outside.
Because I believe there’s power in language that resonates. And in stories where we see ourselves reflected.
And because I now know: healing doesn’t begin with understanding. It begins with recognition.
With listening to what your body has known all along.
Reflection on what Gabor Maté awakened in me
1. What I learned to recognize
What Gabor Maté helped me see is that much of what I thought were choices were actually reflexes. Strategies. Forms of protection shaped by experience — not intention.
- Always being available — because I believed my worth depended on being needed.
- Understanding and controlling everything — because feeling had once become too dangerous.
- Helping before feeling — because I had learned that love must be earned through service.
Maté speaks of “adaptive behavior”: the things we do to stay safe when our emotional truth wasn’t welcome. And at some point, it’s the body that says: “Enough.”
2. Psychological understanding
In psychological terms, this is often about:
- Attachment patterns — especially anxious or avoidant styles rooted in early emotional unpredictability.
- Trauma-based coping — behaviors not chosen freely but formed in response to emotional neglect or overwhelm.
- Self-erasure — the internal belief that you must disappear to deserve love or connection.
What I value in Maté’s work is that he doesn’t shame these patterns. He sees them as intelligent responses to real pain — survival tools that protected us until they began to cost us ourselves.
3. Spiritual perspective
From a spiritual lens, Maté’s message echoes something many traditions speak of:
- Christianity speaks of “putting off the old self” to be reborn in truth.
- Buddhism teaches that attachment is the root of suffering, and freedom begins in letting go.
- Sufism points to returning to the Source through surrender of the ego.
- In Judaism, teshuvah means returning — not to a place, but to your essence, to who you truly are.
They all say, in their own way: letting go is not failure. It’s return. Not collapse — but clarity. Not weakness — but truth.
For me, this process wasn’t dramatic. It was quiet. A slow unburdening. A gentle reclaiming of what I had put aside for so long, just to get through. And now, I can come back. Softly. Steadily. Fully.
4. Maybe this sounds familiar to you
Maybe your body has also been saying no, while your mind tries to push through. Maybe you’re tired of performing something that no longer fits.
What I’ve learned is this: that voice inside doesn’t want to break you. It wants to bring you back. It wants to show you what’s real.
Listening to that voice isn’t the end of your strength. It’s the beginning of your truth.
And maybe that’s what healing really is: not fixing anything — but finally feeling what’s been true all along.