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.

People would tell me as a child how mature I was. I always thought I was, because in that mode you can seem highly mature. But then when I look at myself emotionally, I’ve been very immature. I’m fifty-eight now and still trying to grow up

I’ve always said that I’m not worried my kids will be angry with me, I’m worried they won’t be angry enough

Psychological factors such as uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, and lack of information are considered the most stressful stimuli and strongly activate the HPA axis

In short, for cancer causation it is not enough that DNA damage occur: 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 those processes

Consummation of such needs abolishes the stress response

In popular mythology, cancer has to be “caught early” before it has a chance to spread. The biological reality is quite different: by the time a tumour becomes detectable, spread has, in many cases, already occurred. “A high proportion of early cancers have already thrown off occult metastases by the time the primary tumour is diagnosed,” the British oncologist Basil Stoll has pointed out.17 However, most metastases either die or lie dormant for a long time

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 unexpressed, her needs are ignored and her gentleness is exploited

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