Gabor Mate

In many children—and I was certainly one—early reactions like these become embedded in the nervous system, mind, and body, playing havoc with future relationships.

The home becomes a place where we unwittingly re-create, as I did, scenarios reminiscent of those that wounded us when we were small.

You slink around your life with a hungry look,” someone close once said to me. Facing the harmful compulsions of my patients, I have had to encounter my own.

No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side.

There is a host of questions to be considered. Among them:

• What are the causes of addictions?

• What is the nature of the addiction-prone personality?

• What happens physiologically in the brains of addicted people?

• How much choice does the addict really have?

• Why is the “War on Drugs” a failure and what might be a humane, evidence-based approach to the treatment of severe drug addiction?

• What are some of the paths for redeeming addicted minds not dependent on powerful substances—that is, how do we approach the healing of the many behaviour addictions fostered by our culture?

he research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control

She grew up believing she had to take care of everybody. “There was never any respite in her,” says Neufeld. “There was no internal resting place.”

the child it is no relief to feel sadness or anger if no one is there to receive those emotions and to provide some comfort and containment

Rage and anguish exist underneath the veneer of niceness, no matter how sincerely a person mistakes the facade for her true self.

It was a multi-layered scenario. As usual, the most public layer was also the most superficial one

“Extreme suppression of anger” was the most commonly identified characteristic of breast cancer patients in a 1974 British study