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2 Books Set by Dr Gabor Maté [The Myth of Normal & When The Body Says No]
2 Books Set by Dr Gabor Maté [The Myth of Normal & When The Body Says No] *Both books are securely packed together and sent prompt with tracking number*
1100 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
233 people are currently reading
2244 people want to read
About the author
Gabor Maté
71 books8,496 followersDr Gabor Maté (CM) is a Hungarian-born Canadian physician who specializes in the study and treatment of addiction and is also widely recognized for his unique perspective on Attention Deficit Disorder and his firmly held belief in the connection between mind and body health.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, he is a survivor of the Nazi genocide. His maternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz when he was five months old, his aunt disappeared during the war, and his father endured forced labour at the hands of the Nazis.
He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1957. After graduating with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a few years as a high school English and literature teacher, he returned to school to pursue his childhood dream of being a physician.
Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over twenty years. He was also the medical co-ordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. Currently he is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and HIV, or all three.
Most recently, he has written about his experiences working with addicts in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
He made national headlines in defense of the physicians working at Insite (a legal supervised safe injection site) after the federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, attacked them as unethical.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944, he is a survivor of the Nazi genocide. His maternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz when he was five months old, his aunt disappeared during the war, and his father endured forced labour at the hands of the Nazis.
He emigrated to Canada with his family in 1957. After graduating with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a few years as a high school English and literature teacher, he returned to school to pursue his childhood dream of being a physician.
Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over twenty years. He was also the medical co-ordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. Currently he is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and HIV, or all three.
Most recently, he has written about his experiences working with addicts in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
He made national headlines in defense of the physicians working at Insite (a legal supervised safe injection site) after the federal Minister of Health, Tony Clement, attacked them as unethical.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 12, 2025
في كتاب “عندما يقول الجسد لا”, يعلّمنا د. غابور ماتيه أن الصمت عن احتياجات النفس لا يمر بسلام، بل يُسجَّل بصمت في خلايا الجسد. الألم المزمن، المناعة المنهكة، والأوجاع “التي لا تفسير لها”… ليست ألغازًا طبية، بل رسائل روح أُسكِت صوتها.
وفي كتاب “ترانسيرفنج الواقع”, يُخبرنا فاديم زيلاند أن الواقع ليس مفروضًا علينا، بل نحن من “نُبثّه” حسب ترددنا الداخلي. كلما انسجمنا مع نية الروح، تَشَكَّل واقع يشبهنا… وكلما انحرفنا عنها، جذبنا بندولات تستنزفنا وتُبدّد طاقتنا.
كلا الكتابين يتحدثان عن الشيء نفسه من زوايا مختلفة:
الانفصال عن الذات = انهيار في الصحة + فوضى في الواقع
• عندما لا تعبّرين عن غضبك، يختزنه جسدك على هيئة ورم أو تعب مزمن
• وعندما تعيشين دور المُنقذ، لا تخلقي واقعًا متوازنًا، بل تستنسخين مزيدًا من الفوضى والعلاقات المستنزِفة
العودة إلى الذات — احترام الإشارات — إعادة اختيار التردد
فكما أن الجسد لا يكذب، الروح لا تتوه… لكننا من نتجاهلهما.
والواقع؟ لا يعاقبنا، بل يُعيد إنتاج ما نُخفيه في الداخل
وفي كتاب “ترانسيرفنج الواقع”, يُخبرنا فاديم زيلاند أن الواقع ليس مفروضًا علينا، بل نحن من “نُبثّه” حسب ترددنا الداخلي. كلما انسجمنا مع نية الروح، تَشَكَّل واقع يشبهنا… وكلما انحرفنا عنها، جذبنا بندولات تستنزفنا وتُبدّد طاقتنا.
كلا الكتابين يتحدثان عن الشيء نفسه من زوايا مختلفة:
الانفصال عن الذات = انهيار في الصحة + فوضى في الواقع
• عندما لا تعبّرين عن غضبك، يختزنه جسدك على هيئة ورم أو تعب مزمن
• وعندما تعيشين دور المُنقذ، لا تخلقي واقعًا متوازنًا، بل تستنسخين مزيدًا من الفوضى والعلاقات المستنزِفة
العودة إلى الذات — احترام الإشارات — إعادة اختيار التردد
فكما أن الجسد لا يكذب، الروح لا تتوه… لكننا من نتجاهلهما.
والواقع؟ لا يعاقبنا، بل يُعيد إنتاج ما نُخفيه في الداخل
May 5, 2025
While I do recommend this book, it is light in sharing research. Conclusions are reached in some aspects that had me skeptical with some creative license by the author. I personally do believe stress harms the body and breaks down systems creating disease processes but I want the evidence to clarify my belief to understand the mechanism for it. Belief is a starting point but without substantial evidence I remain skeptical that other confounding factors might be the reason.
There were references to some interesting studies regarding physicians only having access to psychosocial questionnaire answers and predicting breast cancer in 97% of cases in Germany and US. In addition an interesting study that ALS patients are subjectively nice and providers in clinics could predict before test completion that someone wasn’t nice enough to have ALS and had to have a different neurological reason to explain their neuro deficits.
Overall I recommend it but keep asking questions and remain skeptical of what the author wrote.
There were references to some interesting studies regarding physicians only having access to psychosocial questionnaire answers and predicting breast cancer in 97% of cases in Germany and US. In addition an interesting study that ALS patients are subjectively nice and providers in clinics could predict before test completion that someone wasn’t nice enough to have ALS and had to have a different neurological reason to explain their neuro deficits.
Overall I recommend it but keep asking questions and remain skeptical of what the author wrote.
February 28, 2024
It's an interesting take on illness, illness a full body issue, mind body and spirit. Take care of them all ❤️
February 11, 2024
This book, while developing on some interesting ideas, tends to be a “trauma is the answer!” regardless of the problems it raises. It’s also very limited in its sample size (largely Western world, empirical study cases rather than sustained research). The ideas, while they might be valuable in principle suffer from the “guru” effect that likes to obsessively preach and borderline just likes the sound of his own voice and arguments. And specifically because this is an interesting field of research it sometimes can be problematic to turn it into an obnoxious read.
Overall, has reasonable ideas worth exploring (and thorough research) but suffers from its own popularity and “when you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” problem.
Overall, has reasonable ideas worth exploring (and thorough research) but suffers from its own popularity and “when you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” problem.
September 1, 2025
A very insightful book which shows us, on various life examples from the patients of the author, that not only your diet, lifestyle and genetics (which I had though would have been a mayor factor, but it's not!) condition our health, but emotional, spiritual and the environment factor are also very crucial.
The style of writing is very much medically-scientific, which I was not super familiar with, but thankfully the author provided the reader with some of brief but to-the-point definitions. He explained the situations and certain paradoxes with easy to understand examples. By the end I was able to kind of predict what was going to happen to the patient or where the author was heading.
What I will take from the book are various things. I think it was the last straw for to finally start thinking seriously about therapy and how important for me it is to actually work trough my emotions rhat had acumulated through my life. Their repression would most definitely result in physical illnesses. Also, I need to set boundaries with people, especially with my mom cause if I keep giving in and letting her dictate my life, I will not develop as an adult person and will withhold anger towards her, that I already feel acumulating now. Another thing that the book described sounded very familiar to me, which was the chronic stress. I literally feel safer under a ton of stress and not necessary at ease when I lack it. I don't want ot get any of the diseases mentioned and it feels like I'm heading do IBD, so the book really gave me the kick to take my health seriously, the physical and the mental health.
"Emotional competence, which is defined as the ability to deal in an appropriate and satisfactory way with one's own feelings."
"I'd spend the past 14 years meeting someone else's deadlines... Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I found myself pushing thirty and facing a deadline of my own... the ultimate decade."(from a patient)
"It took a life threatening disease for her to learn that service through self-sacrifice is a dead end"
"Cancer and ALS and MS and rheumatoid arthritis and all these other conditions it seems to me, happen to peo0la who have a poor sens of themselves as independent persons. On the emotional level, that is - they can be highly accomplished in the arts ir intellectually - but on an emotional level they have a poorly differentiated sense of self. They live in reaction to others without every really sensing who they themselves are."
"Early menses and late menopause increase the risk of developing ovarian cancer, while pregnanices and the birth control pill decrease it." (I thought the pill increased the risk?)
"The historical, social and economical position of black people in U.S. society has undermined cohesion in black communities and black families and has imposed greater psychological stress on African Americans than their Caucasian fellow citizens or that blacks in Africs find themselves under. There is a parallel here in the hogher occurrence of elevated blood pressure among American blacks."
"The child of an unhappy motherwill try to take care of her by suppressing his distress so as not to burden her firther. His role it ot be self-sufficient and not "needy"..."
"Much of 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 withoit regard to his environment, and a response to the environment, a pettern of behaviours developed to ensure survival."
"Whet there is in a "controlling" personality is deep anxiety"
"IBD (Irritable Bowel Disorder) is usually a disease of young people" 15-35 years old
"If I don't know where my own boundries begin and end, I cannot know when something potentially dangerous is intruding on them. The necessary distinctions between what is familiar or foreign, and what is benign or potentially harmful, require an accurate appraisal of self and non-self."
"Social interactions may continue to play an important role in everyday regulation of internal biologic systems throughout life."
"...physical touching induces growth-hormone production, promoting better weigh gain and development. These findings also apply to human beings."
"Future relationships will have as thir temples nerve circuits laid down in our relationships with our earliest caregivers."
"'... In our family you don't talk about difficult issueas, you hide them.' Such lies, however innocently intended, never protect a child from pain."
"Being lied to means being cut off from the other person."
"Inappropriate symbiosis between parent and child is the source of much pathology."
"...one does not get cancer simply from repressing anger or ALS just from being too nice. A system model recognizes that many processes and factor work together int he formation of disease or in the creation of health."
"As Dr. Michael Kerr points out, conpulsive optimis in one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confrontation." "Positive thinking is basen on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enoughbto handle reality."
"Emotional competence is the capacity that enables us to stand in a responsible, non-victimized, and non-self-harming relationship with our environment."
"Heart attacks can follow upon outbursts of rage."
"... the anger doesn't exist in a vacuum by itself. It is incredibly anxiety-provoking and guilt-producing for a person to experience aggressive feelings towards a loved one."
The style of writing is very much medically-scientific, which I was not super familiar with, but thankfully the author provided the reader with some of brief but to-the-point definitions. He explained the situations and certain paradoxes with easy to understand examples. By the end I was able to kind of predict what was going to happen to the patient or where the author was heading.
What I will take from the book are various things. I think it was the last straw for to finally start thinking seriously about therapy and how important for me it is to actually work trough my emotions rhat had acumulated through my life. Their repression would most definitely result in physical illnesses. Also, I need to set boundaries with people, especially with my mom cause if I keep giving in and letting her dictate my life, I will not develop as an adult person and will withhold anger towards her, that I already feel acumulating now. Another thing that the book described sounded very familiar to me, which was the chronic stress. I literally feel safer under a ton of stress and not necessary at ease when I lack it. I don't want ot get any of the diseases mentioned and it feels like I'm heading do IBD, so the book really gave me the kick to take my health seriously, the physical and the mental health.
"Emotional competence, which is defined as the ability to deal in an appropriate and satisfactory way with one's own feelings."
"I'd spend the past 14 years meeting someone else's deadlines... Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I found myself pushing thirty and facing a deadline of my own... the ultimate decade."(from a patient)
"It took a life threatening disease for her to learn that service through self-sacrifice is a dead end"
"Cancer and ALS and MS and rheumatoid arthritis and all these other conditions it seems to me, happen to peo0la who have a poor sens of themselves as independent persons. On the emotional level, that is - they can be highly accomplished in the arts ir intellectually - but on an emotional level they have a poorly differentiated sense of self. They live in reaction to others without every really sensing who they themselves are."
"Early menses and late menopause increase the risk of developing ovarian cancer, while pregnanices and the birth control pill decrease it." (I thought the pill increased the risk?)
"The historical, social and economical position of black people in U.S. society has undermined cohesion in black communities and black families and has imposed greater psychological stress on African Americans than their Caucasian fellow citizens or that blacks in Africs find themselves under. There is a parallel here in the hogher occurrence of elevated blood pressure among American blacks."
"The child of an unhappy motherwill try to take care of her by suppressing his distress so as not to burden her firther. His role it ot be self-sufficient and not "needy"..."
"Much of 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 withoit regard to his environment, and a response to the environment, a pettern of behaviours developed to ensure survival."
"Whet there is in a "controlling" personality is deep anxiety"
"IBD (Irritable Bowel Disorder) is usually a disease of young people" 15-35 years old
"If I don't know where my own boundries begin and end, I cannot know when something potentially dangerous is intruding on them. The necessary distinctions between what is familiar or foreign, and what is benign or potentially harmful, require an accurate appraisal of self and non-self."
"Social interactions may continue to play an important role in everyday regulation of internal biologic systems throughout life."
"...physical touching induces growth-hormone production, promoting better weigh gain and development. These findings also apply to human beings."
"Future relationships will have as thir temples nerve circuits laid down in our relationships with our earliest caregivers."
"'... In our family you don't talk about difficult issueas, you hide them.' Such lies, however innocently intended, never protect a child from pain."
"Being lied to means being cut off from the other person."
"Inappropriate symbiosis between parent and child is the source of much pathology."
"...one does not get cancer simply from repressing anger or ALS just from being too nice. A system model recognizes that many processes and factor work together int he formation of disease or in the creation of health."
"As Dr. Michael Kerr points out, conpulsive optimis in one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confrontation." "Positive thinking is basen on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enoughbto handle reality."
"Emotional competence is the capacity that enables us to stand in a responsible, non-victimized, and non-self-harming relationship with our environment."
"Heart attacks can follow upon outbursts of rage."
"... the anger doesn't exist in a vacuum by itself. It is incredibly anxiety-provoking and guilt-producing for a person to experience aggressive feelings towards a loved one."
March 30, 2025
I think every healthcare provider should read this book to help focus and motivate us to examine the root cause of a patient’s illness, not just treat the symptoms. Even if you are not in healthcare, the author uses language and messages that everyone can understand and benefit from.
September 4, 2024
I whish I had read this book two decades ago. I would have had a chance to work on my
propensity toward lung cancer, and Heart failure. I will be recommended this book to all I interact with.
propensity toward lung cancer, and Heart failure. I will be recommended this book to all I interact with.
December 4, 2025
I wish I could give it like a 4.6. I did really like it and it is helping me be much more consciously aware of stress and to be better at managing it. it's interesting to learn how many parts of our lives and health are potentially effected by stress. I do find it difficult how many times he decides the causal factor is just stress for a disease. he presented evidence but I felt like sometimes there were other contributing factors not mentioned. though I do feel like it plays a high role. I did like that he tried really hard to explain that reason isn't blame because blame is shame not reason. I think it's important to realize how far back family patterns go and that it's hard to ascribe blame to one individual when everyone is just a combination of their circumstances. we are our environment. we are environment.
September 30, 2024
The topic of emotions and health is my bread and butter. I gravitated towards this book mainly because I want to learn more about how the body forms diseases. Is it from our genes, lifestyle, diet, environment or all of the above? This book definitely helped me understand how stress impacts disease and what those symptoms can look like. I give it 3 stars mainly because I needed to skim through some of it because of the jargon. I did get a lot of value from this book. I recommend reading this only if you can look beyond the fluff of reading each patient story and find the nuggets of analogies for stress manifestation and management.
March 16, 2025
I could not finish, and not because it is bad, but because it is not my type of book. The author likes to explain an idea through characters that he has interacted with in his career as a physician. Instead of ever explaining ANYTHING, he basically is just trying to link bad experiences to bad health outcomes. Perhaps at the end he pulls out any data that supports his idea, but I couldn't sit through the 13 hour audiobook about another case study to find out.
December 31, 2024
I read the book over a year ago but I do remember that I didn’t like it very much. The reason it’s only showing the negative possible traumatic reasons for serious illnesses like cancer. Even though it might be important to start explaining those I missed possible ways to improve their lives or even heal. A lot of the people in his stories just died after suffering 🥲
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 24, 2025
deals with problems associated with addictions and does a great job at it. Helps you understand the various motives behind different kinds of addiction even when you might want to change for the better. This book means a lot to me personally and helped me tackle various issues in my life with a different light and intiative.
Read
July 4, 2025“Prescriptions come from the outside, transformation occurs from within.”
“Prescriptions assumed that something needs to be fixed. Transformation brings forth the healing, the coming to integrity, to wholeness of what is already there."
“Prescriptions assumed that something needs to be fixed. Transformation brings forth the healing, the coming to integrity, to wholeness of what is already there."
August 27, 2024
Interesting and alternative theories but doesn’t really match a neuroscientific or traditional therapeutic approach.
November 27, 2024
Not what I thought it would be. More questions than answers...
January 24, 2025
Absolutely brilliant. Gabor Mate has a brilliant insight in how the human mind and body works. A must read
January 28, 2025
An interesting perspective on how our personality, trauma, and childhood shape our susceptibility to illnesses.
May 17, 2025
Must read for everyone wanting to live healthily for the rest of their lives.
July 30, 2025
I loved it, shocking but true. saw a lot of my people in it , including myself....
August 11, 2025
This was a FABULOUS READ for those who feel they are too stressed.
September 8, 2025
Great Book about stress and effects on the body
September 14, 2025
I loved the mini stories with the glimpses of patient encounters and examples to prove each point. Tragedy on a little toward the end. Great insight into the complexity of health.
July 12, 2025
Deeply validating and quietly life-changing
I came to these books at a time when I was trying to make sense of things I didn’t yet have words for. Gabor Maté’s insights into trauma, chronic stress, and emotional repression helped me connect so many scattered pieces—not just intellectually, but on a very personal level.
The Myth of Normal and When the Body Says No both challenged how I think about illness, resilience, and what it means to carry unspoken pain. They gave shape to thoughts I’d been holding for years, especially around the quiet ways trauma lingers in the body and in memory.
I found myself underlining passages and quietly nodding along. I didn’t realise I’d been circling for a long time. Some of those reflections eventually became part of a larger piece of writing I didn’t know I was preparing to create. I’ll always be grateful to Maté’s work for helping me find a language I could trust, especially when I began shaping my own story on the page.
These are the kinds of books that stay with you. I think they’ll speak to anyone who’s lived through something difficult and is still trying to understand the impact.
I came to these books at a time when I was trying to make sense of things I didn’t yet have words for. Gabor Maté’s insights into trauma, chronic stress, and emotional repression helped me connect so many scattered pieces—not just intellectually, but on a very personal level.
The Myth of Normal and When the Body Says No both challenged how I think about illness, resilience, and what it means to carry unspoken pain. They gave shape to thoughts I’d been holding for years, especially around the quiet ways trauma lingers in the body and in memory.
I found myself underlining passages and quietly nodding along. I didn’t realise I’d been circling for a long time. Some of those reflections eventually became part of a larger piece of writing I didn’t know I was preparing to create. I’ll always be grateful to Maté’s work for helping me find a language I could trust, especially when I began shaping my own story on the page.
These are the kinds of books that stay with you. I think they’ll speak to anyone who’s lived through something difficult and is still trying to understand the impact.
October 5, 2024
If you’re into the mind-body connection, want to boost your self-awareness, or, like me, love exploring the link between stress and illness, this book is for you.
“When the Body Says No” - mixes solid research with heartfelt stories, digging into how stress and emotions affect our health.
“When the Body Says No” - mixes solid research with heartfelt stories, digging into how stress and emotions affect our health.
April 12, 2025
Olen alati püüdnud terviseküsimustes leida tõde ida ja lääne meditsiini vahelt. Gabor on doktor, kes on osanud samuti allasurutud emotsioone jm seostada kindlate haigustega. Lõpuks ometi on sild kahe maailma vahele loodud. 🙃 Parim mõte siit raamatust: HAIGUS JUTUSTAB AJALUGU (seda, mis kunagi juhtus)
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews