Passion creates, addiction consumes. - Gabor Maté

Young children cannot possibly understand the motives of adults. It means little to a young child that the parent feels love for him if that parent keeps disappearing at almost any time. The child experiences a sense of abandonment, a subliminal knowledge that there are things in the world much more important to the parent than he, the child, that he is not worthy of the parent’s attention. He begins to feel, at first unconsciously, that there must be something wrong with him. He also begins to work too hard to get his needs met: demanding contact, acting out or trying to please the parent to gain approval and attention.

(about Occupy Wall Street) among the many inequities in a society are the ones that this protest has brought to light, the inequitable distribution of wealth and power. But what is not so generally realized, that this society also makes people sick. Fifty percent of American adults have a chronic medical illness, and much of that has to do with stress. And if you look at the literature on what causes stress, it’s uncertainty and lack of information and loss of control and lack of expression of self. And the uncertainty that has been forced upon the American population by the recent economic crisis, the loss of control as power has flown into the hands of very, very few people, and the absolute powerlessness of the many in the face of all that, and the lack of expression through the ordinary political process, people are totally disempowered and deprived of their voice. This protest addresses all those issues. So I can only say that this is an extraordinarily healthy thing to happen. People who participate here will be healthier for it as a result, and maybe society, in general, as well. And one more thing, as well. There was a study just this morning that parents who are stressed, they’re not as tuned in to their kids. They’re not as connected to their kids. So when society stresses people, like the current economic uncertainty and crisis does, children are not getting what they need. So this protest, as well, speaks to the needs of children as much as to the needs of adults in general. So that’s why I’m so gratified to see all this.

If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related.