In "The Myth of Normal", Dr. Maté makes an argument that's quietly radical: compulsive niceness, chronic conflict avoidance, and emotional suppression aren't virtues. They aren't even personality traits, not really. They're survival adaptations, strategies a smaller version of us built a long time ago, back when disappointing the people who loved us felt more dangerous than disappearing ourselves.
💔 When the Mouth Won't Say No, the Body Sometimes Does
Here's the part of the book that tends to stop people mid-sentence. Dr. Maté points to a consistent pattern he's observed clinically, linking chronic emotional suppression and conflict avoidance to real physical cost: elevated inflammation, autoimmune conditions, cancer, chronic fatigue, and long-term strain on the cardiovascular system.
And the pattern isn't evenly distributed. Women, Maté notes, carry a disproportionate share of this cost, accounting for close to 80% of all autoimmune disease cases. He connects this directly to socialization: girls are taught earlier and more thoroughly than boys to prioritize everyone else's comfort over their own, to soften their anger, to keep the peace at almost any personal cost. The body, it seems, keeps a ledger, even when the mind has been trained not to.
To be clear, this isn't about blame, and it's not a diagnosis for any single person's illness. Bodies are complicated, and no one pattern explains everything. But it's a serious enough thread, observed across enough patients, to be worth taking seriously: sometimes what the conscious mind refuses to voice, the body eventually finds another way to express.
💔 The Quiet Cost of Being "Good"
Somewhere early on, many of us absorbed a rule that never got said out loud: 𝘐 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭. It sounds almost noble, until you notice what it actually demands, an endless, automatic tending to everyone else's emotional weather while your own goes entirely unwatched.
That's not generosity.
That's a trade, authenticity handed over in exchange for acceptance.
And like most trades made under pressure, the terms were never really fair.
💔 The Anger Nobody Was Allowed to Feel
There's another piece of Maté's work worth sitting with. He doesn't treat anger as a flaw to be managed. He treats it as biology, a built-in boundary system whose entire job is to say 𝘥𝘰 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦.
But a child who learns that anger threatens their bond with the people who keep them safe learns something else too: to override it. Swallow it. Perform calm instead. And that override doesn't just vanish once the moment passes. It goes somewhere. Into the nervous system. Into the body. Waiting.
💚 The Way Back: Maté's 4 A's
Maté doesn't leave us stranded in the diagnosis. He offers a framework for coming home to yourself:
🔥Authenticity — reconnecting with what you actually feel, instead of performing the role you learned to play
🔥 Agency — reclaiming real ownership over your choices, rather than defaulting to what keeps the peace
🔥 Anger — letting yourself feel the in-the-moment, protective kind, the kind that simply says 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳
🔥 Acceptance — seeing yourself clearly, without the harsh judgment that usually keeps this whole cycle running
None of these arrive overnight. But each one is a place to start.
🤔 Questions to Sit With
✨ Where in your life are you still performing "fine" long after it stopped being true?
✨ Whose disappointment are you most afraid of, and what would happen if you risked it, just once?
✨ When was the last time you allowed yourself to feel angry without immediately apologizing for it, feeling guilty or regretting it?
✨ What has your body been trying to tell you that your mouth hasn't said yet?
✨ If being "good" wasn't the goal, what would you actually choose?
If any of this stirred something, that's worth paying attention to, not pushing past. Reconnecting with the parts of yourself that got quietly negotiated away isn't something most people do alone, and it isn't something that has to be figured out overnight.
If you're ready to start that conversation, I'm here for it.
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