Name: Give Me 15 Minutes... I'll Save You 25+ Years Of Feeling Lonely, Depressed & Lost | Dr. Gabor Maté
Uploaded: 2026-02-06T14:32:37.000Z
Duration: 15 min 53 s
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Modal verbs - A2

How can somebody escape the victim mindset?

Past continuous

Well, so if I was talking to a person like that, I would say, first of all, I get it, because I've been to that place myself.

Gerund

I mean, I've had moments when I didn't think life was worth living and I imagined my own suicide.

Never that I planned it or I was going to do it, but I kind of fantasized it.

You know, I've been to those places, so I get it.

Secondly, I would say I feel that the world's against me.

If you have that belief, it's because at some point you had that experience, but

you're not having that experience right now.

That experience was that of a child who was helpless and alone.

So what's showing up in your belief system is not your present situation, but your childhood emotional experience.

And like I said before, in the present we can heal.

No matter what happened then we can heal in the present.

So the first thing I would ask a person like that is, are you willing to consider that healing is possible for you, or have you totally given up?

By the way, a person who's totally given up wouldn't be telling you this, because when people talk this way, whether they know it or not, they're asking for help.

If they weren't asking for help, they wouldn't say anything.

They just think off of their own and isolate themselves.

So anybody who speaks the way that you just cited is already, whether they know it or not, they're looking for help.

And if that's the case, then they can be helped.

And so that's the second point is don't try and solve this on your own.

We're creatures that evolved in connection and community.

It may feel like you're alone and you certainly might feel lonely, but you're not, in fact, alone.

And they're not crazy and you're not crazy.

Those beliefs and feelings are normal responses to abnormal circumstances.

So that's how it began, working with the people, with a person with that mindset.

And I guess to take this one step further, you know, I've heard you talk about like that.

One of the main problems with society today is that a lot of people who have mental health struggles and they're struggling with situations like this where they feel stuck and they can't get out of their own way, at times they feel like people are against them.

And then they, you know, they might go see somebody who's not trained in trauma.

Like how can somebody begin to take that path and make sure that they're finding somebody that is trained in that and then also that they're able to self regulate themselves when needed.

Well, that's a huge question because unfortunately, look, I've been through medical training.

And the average physician never hears any of the stuff I just talked about.

The average psychiatrist doesn't get any training in trauma.

They learn something about ptsd, which is a specific form of trauma, but

they don't learn about the traumatic basis of depression and anxiety and adhd.

So that it's very difficult to find good help within the medical system.

Now, many therapists also don't get any such training.

There's a lot of therapists that are designed only to change your beliefs and your behaviors, but

not to address the fundamental reasons for those behaviors.

So a lot of psychologists trained in cbt, cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy, a lot of them are not really, and

They just don't know much about or anything about trauma.

Then they can't help you with the fundamental wound that you're carrying.

They can help you with the manifestations and that's not useless.

But they can't help you heal at your core.

So then there are therapies that are deeper than that.

There is body based therapies such as somatic experiencing, developed by my friend and teacher, Dr. Peter Levine.

There's sensory motor psychotherapy, developed by Pact Ogden.

There's internal family systems or IFS, developed by my friend and colleague Dr. Richard Schwartz.

There's compassionate inquiry, which is based on my work.

There are others, other names I could mention.

There's Larry Heller, Lawrence Heller and his work and his students.

So what you have to look for is somebody who's trauma informed and is willing to work with you not just on your behaviors, but

on your core wounds of which the behaviors are symptoms.

Because like, in my own experience, I mean, I've struggled off and on with my mental health over the years.

I mean, I told you a bit about my story in our last conversation and you know, when I would go, there wasn't like a lot of talk about my childhood.

There was, it was just like, all right, you're having some anxiety.

I would just think, okay, this is going to cure my anxiety.

And then I would realize, like, it's not really.

I'm still struggling, like, what's going on with this?

And it wasn't until I understood, like, my past and my trauma and how that was all related to what I was experiencing in the present that things were able to change.

And so let's just say that somebody has now they found somebody they're comfortable with that's helping them heal their trauma and change their present and their current behaviors and patterns and that sort of thing.

And then they go down, weeks down the road, months down the road, and

they're on the up and up, but get triggered.

Or they experience a situation where they're like, oh, my gosh, like, I thought I was getting better.

What's your advice to people who are dealing with triggers when they're on the road to recovery from trauma?

Well, there's two ways to ask that question that you just raised.

No, when you say, why is this coming up like that, that's not a question, it's a statement.

It's a statement that says, this shouldn't be happening to me.

Now, you ain't gonna learn anything that way, but

if you actually ask it, hmm, I wonder why this is coming up.

If I came to you and said, why are you doing this?

I would probably get defensive, and I would just feel, like, a little ashamed.

But what if I said, hmm, I wonder why you're doing this?

It would force me to think a little bit and practice the pause and say, well, I don't know if it would force you, but