The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Maté explains that there is no blueprint or “road map” (374) for healing, as each individual’s healing comprises a distinct journey. Nevertheless, there are four general healing principles, “each corresponding to a human need” (375), that can assist with the process but that have generally been repressed in modern culture. The qualities are authenticity, agency, anger, and acceptance. Authenticity means being open to and acknowledging our own feelings, rather than repressing them because they are inconvenient. Agency means taking responsibility for how we respond to events. Healthy, as opposed to unhealthy, anger is about a defensive reaction to things and people that threaten our physical or emotional wellbeing. Lastly, acceptance means not just passivity but rather an active acceptance or recognition that things cannot be other than how they are in a specific moment. In this way, self-acceptance is very different from tolerating an intolerable situation.

Maté describes how disease, rather than being a scourge to be “avoided, suppressed, or combated” (390), is in fact a sign and an agent of healing. To illustrate his point, Maté tells the story of a woman, Julia, and her rheumatoid arthritis. Maté explains how, for Julia, this disease saved her by allowing her to come to terms with her rage and anger and the childhood sexual abuse at its root. She now has her rheumatoid arthritis under control and regularly describes having “conversations” with it when it flares up, allowing it to teach her something new about herself each time.

Even though Maté says that diseases can be a prompt and a teacher, compelling us to listen to our inner selves, we do not necessarily have to wait for their onset before making changes in our lives. Instead, as Maté outlines in this chapter, there are “some simple but potent practices” (408) that can modify the mind to “become more sensitive and responsive to these calls from within” (408). A key part of this practice involves looking at ourselves with nonjudgmental honesty and compassion and, on a daily basis, asking ourselves certain questions. Principle amongst these is the question of what I am not saying “no” to and how I am stifling aspects of myself to appease others.

Maté argues that of all the narratives we tell ourselves that hold us back and inhibit our healing, the narrative of our own unworthiness is the most damaging. It is a belief rooted in infancy and is therefore lodged deep in our psyches. This chapter suggests exercises to dispel this belief and repair our sense of worthiness. The main way to do this, says Maté, is by relabeling the belief by gaining conscious awareness of it and rejecting the idea of its certainty. When the belief arises, we should just “rest with” it and make no assessment regarding its truth. The next step is to “re-attribute” the belief. We acknowledge that it is not a reflection of reality but a reflection of something imposed upon us as children.