What Is Trauma? with Dr. Gabor Maté

Commune with Jeff Krasno

Commune Media

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture

4.6 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Q&A, Dr. Maté explains his fundamental understanding of trauma, untangles common myths about what makes us sick, and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing.

If you want to heal your trauma with compassion, take your power back, and find peace from past pain, watch the first session of Dr. Mate’s new Commune course “A Return to Wholeness” for free at onecommune.com/healtrauma.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Commune podcast. My name is Jeff Krasno. On today's episode, we revisit one of the most profound conversations I've had here on the podcast with the esteemed Dr. Gabor Mate.
0:23.9	With all the division and strife and collective trauma that we have been experiencing as of
0:31.7	late, it feels like a good time to ground ourselves and re-center with these words of wisdom.
0:39.4	Now, in this conversation, we explore how trauma, not the event itself, but the internal
0:44.9	wound that it causes, underlies much of our chronic illness, mental health issues, and
0:51.5	societal dysfunction.
0:53.7	Cabor explains that what society deems normal, isolation, hypercompetition, emotional suppression,
1:01.5	is in fact deeply abnormal from the standpoint of human evolution and needs.
1:07.0	We evolved for communal living, for cooperation, for emotional attunement conditions that are now too absent in modern day life.
1:17.7	Illness is not a static thing that we have, but it is rather a dynamic process that reflects a person's life experience and disconnection from self, processes that are
1:30.1	often set in motion by early childhood trauma. Dr. Mata tells us that a trauma-informed society
1:37.5	across medicine, across education, law, and governance could prevent much of the suffering we
1:44.0	currently see by addressing root causes
1:46.7	rather than symptoms. Before diving in, I'm really excited to let you know about my new
1:52.4	substack, which will serve as the repository of all my writing, ad-free video podcasts,
2:00.3	tons of live interviews and other goodies.
2:02.9	So head over there to jeffcrasnow.substack.com and become a free subscriber.
2:09.4	Okay, without further delay, one of my favorite teachers, mentors, and friends, Dr. Gabor-Mate.
2:15.7	Okay. and friends, Dr. Gabor-Mate. So I find your work in you to be full of intention.
2:35.0	And that includes the title of your book and the words that you have chosen to be in the title of your book.
2:47.0	And as I've had the privilege of excavating the book, the words and the
2:57.6	definitions of the words have undergone a significant upgrade. And I think that upgrade, thanks to your
	...

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