I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how relevant this book is specifically to my research paper – but it was a very important book for me to read personally – because it elaborates on the physical health impacts of trauma, abuse and emotional repression. I first came across Dr. Gabor Maté on TikTok (the platform is not all bad!) and I have been so inspired by his work and can relate so much to his message. As a Holocaust survivor, medical physician and spiritual healer – he really knows his stuff on holistic health care. And given the constantly growing list of health issues I seem to suffer from (inflammatory conditions, autoimmune disease and recurring infections), it was really important for me to read his book and to gain an understanding of how trauma and stress may be the underlying cause. I especially love the title of this book because, as a perpetual people pleaser, ‘no’ is a word I struggle with a lot.
Quotes
‘Many of us live, if not alone, then in emotionally inadequate relationships that do not recognise or honour our deepest needs. Isolation and stress affect many who may believe their lives are quite satisfactory.’ (page 7)
‘Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.’ (page 12)
‘Excessive emotional involvement with a parent, a lack of psychological independence, an overwhelming need for love and affection, and the inability to feel or express anger have long been identified by medical observers as possible factors in the natural development of the disease [MS]. A study in 1958 found that in nearly 90 per cent of cases, “before the onset of symptoms…. Patients experienced traumatic life events that had threatened their security system”.’ (page 16)
‘I was the little girl too good to be true. It means that you subjugate your own wants or needs in order to get approval. I was always trying to be who my parents wanted me to be.’ (page 18)
‘Of Stephen [Hawkings]’s father, White and Gribbin write that he was a remote figure, “significant in Stephen’s childhood and adolescence by his absence”. According to Jane, the Hawkings regarded “any expression of emotion or appreciation as a sign of weakness, as loss of control or a denial of their own importance… Strangely, they seemed ashamed of demonstrating any warmth”.’ (page 56)
‘The body’s hormonal system is inextricably linked with the brain centres where emotions are experienced and interpreted. In turn, the hormonal apparatus and the emotional centres are interconnected with the immune system. These are not four separate systems, but one super-system that functions as a unit to protect the body from external invasion and from disturbances to the internal psychological condition. It is impossible for any stressful stimulus chronic or acute, to act on only one part of the super-system.’ (page 61)
‘”Extreme suppression of anger” was the most commonly identified characteristic pf breast cancer patients in a 1974 British study.’ (page 64)
‘Betty had one final question. “Why can’t parents see their children’s pain?”“I’ve had to ask myself the same thing. It’s because we haven’t seen our own”.’ (page 80)
‘When the woman is married to an immature man, she is also a mother to her husband, so she hasn’t got the openness and the energy for her kids. So your real rival for your mother’s affection wasn’t your sister, it was your Dad.’ (page 83)
‘In short, for cancer causation it is not enough that DNA damage occurs also necessary are failure of DNA repair and/or an impairment of regulated cell death. Stress and the repression of emotion can negatively affect both of these processes.’ (page 92)
‘The patterns of how we eat or don’t eat, and how much we eat, are strongly related to the levels of stress we experience and to the coping responses we have developed in face of life’s vicissitudes. In turn, dietary habits intimately affect the functioning of the hormones that influence the female reproductive tract. Anorexics, for example, will often stop menstruating.’ (page 95)
‘Under conditions of chronic stress, the immune system may become either too confused to recognise the mutated cell clones that form the cancer or too debilitated to mount an effective attack against them.’ (page 97)
‘In numerous studies of cancer, the most consistently identified risk factor is the inability to express emotion, particularly the feelings associated with anger. The repression of anger is not an abstract emotional trait that mysteriously leads to disease. It is a major risk factor because it increases psychological stress on the organism. It does not act alone but in conjunction with other risk factors that are likely to accompany it, such as hopelessness and lack of social support.’ (page 99)
‘The way people grow up shapes their relationship with their own bodies and psyches. The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood. There is an important distinction between an inherent characteristic, rooted in an individual without regard to his environment, and a response rooted to the environment, a pattern of behaviours developed to ensure survival.’ (page 127)
‘Repression, the inability to say no and a lack of awareness of one’s anger make it much more likely that a person will find herself in situations where her emotions are inexpressed, her needs are ignored and her gentleness is exploited. Those situations are stress inducing, whether or not the person is conscious of being stressed.’ (page 127)
‘The emotional contexts of childhood interact with inborn temperament to give rise to personality traits. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.’ (page 127)
‘The nervous system is deeply influenced by emotions. In turn, the nervous system is intimately involved in the regulation of immune responses and of inflammation. Neuropeptides, protein molecules secreted by nerve cells, serve to promote inflammation or to inhibit it. Such molecules are found in heavy concentration in the intestines, in the areas most vulnerable to IBD. They are implicated both in the regulation of local inflammation and in the body’s stress response.’ (page 138)
‘Functional refers to a condition in which the symptoms are not explainable by any anatomical, pathological or biochemical abnormality or by infection. Doctors are accustomed to rolling their eyes when faced with a patient who has functional symptoms, since functional is medical code for “all in the head”.’ (page 139)
‘Role reversal with a parent skews the child’s relationship with the whole world. It is a potent source of later psychological and physical illness because it predisposes to stress.’ (page 172)
‘In autoimmune disease, the body’s defences turn against the self. In the life of a society – the body politic – such behaviour would be denounced as treason. Within the individual organism, physical mutiny results from an immunologic confusion that perfectly mirrors the unconscious psychological confusion of self and non-self. In this disarray of boundaries, the immune cells attack the body as if the latter were a foreign substance, just as the psychic self is attacked by inward-directed reproaches to anger.’ (page 173)
‘The less powerful partner in any relationship will absorb a disproportionate amount of the shared anxiety – which is the reason that so many more women than men are treated for, say, anxiety or depression.’ (page 195)
‘For the adult, therefore, biological stress regulation depends on a delicate balance between social and relationship security on the one hand, and genuine autonomy on the other. Whatever upsets that balance, whether or not the individual is consciously aware of it, is a source of stress.’ (page 198)
‘Where parenting fails to communicate unconditional acceptance to the child, it is because of the fact that the child receives the parent’s love not as the parent wishes but as it is refracted through the parent’s personality. If the parent is stressed, harbours unresolved anxiety or is agitated by unmet emotional needs, the child is likely to find herself in situations of proximate abandonment regardless of the parent’s intentions.’ (pages 211-212)
‘Since stress escalates as the sense of control diminishes, people who exercise greater control over their work and lives enjoy better health.’ (page 225)
‘Discarding blame leaves us free to move toward the necessary adoption of responsibility’ (page 225)
‘Genes are turned on or off by the environment. For this reason, the greatest influences on human development, health and behaviour are those of the nurturing environment.’ (page 229)
‘We have seen that stress is the result of an interaction between a stressor and a processing system. The processing apparatus is the human nervous system, operating under the influence of the brain’s emotional centres. The biology of belief inculcated in that processing apparatus early in life crucially influences our stress responses throughout our lives.’ (page 231)
‘The nineteenth century saw a heated debate on this subject, conducted for decades between two outstanding figures in the history of medicine, th pioneering microbiologist Louis Pasteur and the psychologist Claude Bernard. Pasteur insisted that the virulence of the microbe decided the course of illness. Barnard tht vulnerability of the host body was most responsible. On his deathbed Pasteur recanted. “Barnard avait raison,” he said. “Le germ n’est rien, c’eat la terrain qui est tout.” [Barnard was right. The microbe is nothing, the ground (i.e. the host body) is everything.]’ (page 242)
‘The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what is called positive thinking.’ (page 244)
‘Emotional competence is the capacity that enables us to stand in a responsible, non-victimised , and non-self-harming relationship with our environment. It is the required internal ground for facing life’s inevitable stresses, for avoiding the creation of unnecessary ones and for furthering the healing process.’ (page 263)
‘The difference between the healthy energy of anger and the hurtful energy of emotional and physical violence is that anger respects boundaries. Standing forward on your own behalf does not invade anyone else’s boundaries.’ (page 274)
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