Episode 67: Gabor Maté: Healing Trauma and Chronic Illness Through Connection (Part 2)

Listen to Episode 67 with Dr. Gabor Maté →

When Survival Becomes Disease

You survived your childhood by disconnecting from unbearable feelings and overwhelming experiences. That disconnection protected you when you had no other options. But now that same protective adaptation drives the chronic illness that's destroying your health decades later.

How do you repair the disconnection that trauma created when that disconnection has become so automatic you don't even recognize it anymore?

The disconnection trauma creates drives disease through mechanisms that conventional medicine never addresses. And reconnection changes everything about your capacity to heal when you understand what disconnection actually means.

Gabor Maté and I continue our conversation in Part 2 of this essential discussion. In Part 1 (Episode 66), we explored the missing biology link between trauma and chronic illness. Now we discuss how trauma disconnects you from yourself and others, and why that disconnection creates the dysregulation that drives disease.

Understanding Disconnection as Adaptation

How can we repair the disconnection from trauma that causes disease decades after the original experiences? Reconnection and regulation are possible when you understand what disconnection actually represents. But you have to grasp what disconnection means at the biological and psychological levels before you can address it effectively.

You disconnected from yourself to survive overwhelming experiences during childhood. Feeling everything would have overwhelmed your developing nervous system beyond its capacity. Shutting down parts of yourself was protective and necessary. That survival adaptation still runs automatically today even though the original circumstances that required it have long passed.

Your body communicates constantly through signals you may have learned to ignore or suppress. Pain tells you something needs attention. Fatigue signals that your system is overwhelmed. Illness expresses what you disconnected from emotionally because your body couldn't hold it silently forever. These symptoms aren't random malfunctions but your body speaking about what you disconnected from to survive.

Understanding the Biology of Trauma® reveals why disconnection creates such profound health consequences. When you disconnect from your internal experience to survive, you also disconnect from the signals that tell you what your body needs. You override hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, and emotional cues. This disconnection from your body's wisdom creates dysregulation that eventually manifests as disease.

Trauma as Internal Response

Gabor's defining insight that has shaped trauma-informed care globally states that trauma isn't what happens to you but what happens inside you as a result. The event itself isn't the trauma. Your internal response to that event determines whether trauma occurs. Your disconnection from yourself represents the trauma more than the external circumstances that overwhelmed you.

I share a personal mistake I made in my early understanding of trauma healing and what I learned from that error. I initially focused too much on processing traumatic events without understanding that the disconnection those events created mattered more than the events themselves. How I misunderstood something important about trauma healing taught me that reconnection comes before processing in many cases.

Why autoimmune disease affects women at rates approaching eighty percent isn't random or purely biological. Women face specific socialization pressures throughout development that require disconnection from themselves in particular ways. They learn to prioritize others' needs over their own, to suppress anger and authenticity, to maintain relationships at the cost of self-connection. Their bodies eventually express this chronic self-abandonment as autoimmunity where the immune system attacks the self that was abandoned emotionally.

The gender disparity in autoimmune conditions demonstrates how socialization creates biological vulnerability through requiring disconnection. When you consistently disconnect from your needs, feelings, and authenticity to maintain relationships or meet external expectations, your body eventually rebels. Autoimmunity represents that biological rebellion against the disconnection that survival or acceptance required.

Relationships, Regulation, and Reconnection

Your relationships with others reflect your relationship with yourself in ways that affect your health directly. How you relate in the world mirrors how connected or disconnected you are from your internal experience. Changing how you relate to others requires first changing how you relate to yourself through reconnection with what you disconnected from.

Changing relationships to heal disease means learning to prioritize your needs, express your authentic feelings, and maintain boundaries that protect your wellbeing. These relational changes support healing because they address the disconnection that created dysregulation. When you reconnect with yourself through honoring your needs and feelings, your nervous system can finally regulate properly.

Gabor shares his own personal practices for staying connected to himself and maintaining that connection daily. This isn't theoretical knowledge for him but lived experience of how reconnection supports health. His practices include meditation, authentic relating in his close relationships, and consistent attention to his internal experience throughout each day.

The dysregulation-disease connection operates through the pathway of disconnection that trauma creates. Disconnection from yourself creates dysregulation because you can't regulate a system you're not connected to experiencing. Dysregulation drives illness through all the biological mechanisms we discussed in Part 1 including inflammation, immune dysfunction, and metabolic disruption. Reconnection allows regulation by restoring your awareness of and responsiveness to internal signals. Regulation supports healing by creating biological conditions where your body can repair and restore function.

The Path to Reconnection and Healing

Understanding how trauma's disconnection drives disease empowers you to address root causes rather than just managing symptoms. Your chronic illness likely reflects decades of disconnection from yourself that created progressive dysregulation. Healing requires reconnecting with the parts of yourself you shut down to survive including your needs, your feelings, your body's signals, and your authentic desires.

Reconnection doesn't happen through insight alone but through practices that rebuild your capacity to feel and respond to your internal experience. Somatic practices that develop body awareness help you reconnect with physical sensations you learned to ignore. Emotional work that processes feelings you suppressed allows reconnection with your emotional life. Relationship work that establishes healthy boundaries supports reconnection with your needs and limits.

The Biology of Trauma® framework provides understanding of how disconnection creates dysregulation at the nervous system level. Your vagus nerve function improves when you reconnect with yourself and practice regulation. Your stress hormones normalize when you honor your needs rather than overriding them. Your immune system rebalances when you stop the internal civil war that autoimmunity represents.

Gabor emphasizes that healing chronic illness requires addressing both the biological dysregulation and the disconnection that created it. You need support for your physical symptoms while you work on reconnection. You need nervous system regulation practices while you process the emotions you disconnected from. You need both medical care and trauma healing for comprehensive recovery from diseases rooted in developmental trauma and chronic stress.

Putting Reconnection Into Practice

The practical application of these principles means beginning to notice where you're disconnected from yourself in daily life. When do you override your body's signals about hunger, fatigue, or pain? When do you suppress your authentic feelings to maintain harmony? When do you abandon your needs to meet others' expectations? These moments of disconnection accumulate to create the dysregulation driving your illness.

Starting with small reconnections builds your capacity for larger ones gradually. Notice one body signal each day and respond to it appropriately. Express one authentic feeling in a safe relationship. Honor one need even when it disappoints someone else. These micro-reconnections begin retraining your nervous system that it's safe to be connected to your internal experience.

Gabor and I both emphasize that reconnection work takes time and support. You didn't disconnect overnight and you won't reconnect instantly. The patterns that protected you developed over years and will require consistent practice to shift. Working with practitioners who understand trauma and support reconnection rather than just treating symptoms provides essential guidance through this process.

This conversation with Gabor represents decades of combined clinical experience observing how trauma creates disease through disconnection and how healing happens through reconnection. The path forward involves both understanding the biology we discussed in Part 1 and doing the reconnection work we explore in Part 2. Together, these create conditions where chronic illness can finally heal at its roots.

This Episode Is For:

✓ People with chronic illness who feel disconnected from themselves 

✓ Anyone who disconnected from themselves to survive childhood 

✓ Practitioners wanting to understand how reconnection heals disease from two physicians who live this work 

✓ Those recognizing that managing symptoms isn't creating actual healing 

✓ Anyone ready to explore the disconnection underneath their illness 

✓ People seeking the path from disconnection to reconnection and healing

What You'll Learn

Listen to Part 2 to understand how trauma's disconnection drives disease and why reconnection and regulation are the path to healing chronic illness. Discover Gabor's personal practices for staying connected. Learn why autoimmune disease disproportionately affects women through socialization patterns that require self-disconnection.

Your chronic illness might be your body's rebellion against the disconnection trauma required you to create.

Listen to Episode 67 with Dr. Gabor Maté →

Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The information shared reflects my clinical expertise and research, but every person's biology and healing journey is unique. Always consult with qualified healthcare providers before making changes to your treatment plan or starting new interventions. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact emergency services or a crisis helpline immediately.

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