Lately, I’ve found myself in a full-blown obsession with Dr. Gabor Maté – the gentle, truth-bomb-dropping trauma whisperer whose voice I now hear in my head more than my own internal monologue. And honestly, I’m not mad about it.
The more I dive into his work, from The Scattered Mind to his soulful interviews, the more I am captivated by the undeniable link between psychological healing and spiritual awakening. These two paths aren’t just parallel. They’re braided, like your childhood friendship bracelets. You tug one end, and the other tightens too.
First, Let’s Talk Definitions (Bear With Me)
Let’s demystify this a bit.
Psychological growth isn’t just “going to therapy”, it’s the deep work of understanding our patterns, healing our inner wounds, and making friends with our nervous system (yes, even when it’s in full-blown fire-drill mode). It’s learning how to stop reacting from old survival strategies and start responding from your real self.
Spiritual enlightenment, on the other hand, is a bit trickier to define without sounding like a hippie-dippy, woowoo (which to be fair, I am kinda am). Think: presence, peace, ego dissolution, oneness, or even that moment in yoga when you forgot you had emails. It’s not about floating off into the cosmos, it’s about becoming deeply present.
What draws me to Gabor Maté, is that he doesn’t sell enlightenment. What he does is walk people toward it, through the smoke and mirrors of trauma.
The Wounded Ego and the “False Self” (AKA: Why We Can’t Just Be Chill)
According to Gabor (yes, we’re on a first-name basis now), trauma isn’t just the awful thing that happened to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result. It’s the internal split, the disconnection from your authentic self in exchange for safety, belonging, or survival.
That split? It creates the false self – the overachiever, the people-pleaser, the rebel, the tough guy, the one who says “I’m fine” while inwardly Googling “how to cry without looking puffy.”
And that false self? It’s a major blocker on both the therapy couch and the meditation cushion.
Therapy as a Spiritual Practice (No Incense Required)
What I’ve come to realize, between emotional flashbacks and a frankly inappropriate number of Maté videos, is that therapy is spiritual work.
Because when you do the deep psychological digging, when you start sitting with the wounded inner child rather than running from her, you’re not just healing trauma.
You’re also dissolving the ego.
You begin to sense, beneath all the pain and protection, a you that feels older than pain. A presence. A stillness. And you realize – oh hey, maybe that’s the real me.
Enlightenment isn’t about bypassing the mess. It’s about getting cozy in the middle of it.
Speaking of Bypassing… Let’s Not.
Here’s the trap: jumping to spirituality to avoid the emotional grunt work. “I’m not angry, I’m just sending them love and light.” Sound familiar?
Gabor Maté gently (and by gently, I mean with the precision of a psychic scalpel) warns against this: spiritual bypassing. When we skip therapy in favor of transcendence, we’re not ascending – we’re avoiding. And avoidance, my friends, is just trauma in fancier clothes.
You can’t meditate away your childhood…. you can, however, hold your inner child’s hand during meditation. That’s the difference. The Beautiful, Messy Integration
So, what’s the takeaway here?
- To truly heal we must embrace both spiritual enlightenment and psychological growth/mind work.
- Your tears are just as holy as your mantras.
- And healing isn’t linear — it’s more like a spiral, with lots of tea breaks.
When we heal psychologically, we soften into our spiritual selves. When we awaken spiritually, we create more space for that healing to deepen. One supports the other, endlessly.
And maybe, just maybe, as Gabor says, the goal isn’t to become “better,” but to become more ourselves – raw, present, and fully alive.
Final Thought (Before I Download The Next Gabor AudioBook)
If you’re on a path of healing, know that every uncomfortable moment, every panic attack, every aha in therapy, every awkward boundary you set, is a step toward something bigger than you.
Not bigger in a grandiose way.
Bigger in a truer way.
It’s not about becoming enlightened. It’s about remembering you already were.
