Everyone longs for connection, and sometimes this longing is so great that we lose ourselves along the way. In his book The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté shows how that happens and how we can rediscover our authenticity. In this blog post, I explore how the views of Gabor Maté and the ideas of Marshall Rosenberg (the creator of Nonviolent Communication) align with each other.
The price of normal
We use the word normal as if it were the most natural thing in the world. A neutral benchmark that we all take for granted. In reality, normal is often a social construct: what the majority does or expects becomes the norm, even if it harms our well-being.
In our culture, normal is generally equated with continuing to function. We find it normal to keep performing and pushing through, even when your body gives signals that it has had enough. We find it normal to swallow emotions so as not to be “difficult” and to meet the expectations of others instead of being true to yourself.
If we do this, we may appear normal, healthy, and successful at first glance, but the downside is significant. Chronic stress, burnout, depression, and physical illnesses are not individual problems. They are signals of a system in which adaptation is more important than authenticity.
Physician and trauma expert Gabor Maté calls this the myth of normal: we have collectively come to believe that suppressing emotions and ignoring our own needs are part of a regular and healthy life. Yet it is precisely that process that makes us ill.
The fundamental conflict: attachment versus authenticity
As human beings, we have two basic needs:
– Attachment: the connection with others, essential for our survival, and
– Authenticity: staying true to who we really are, including our feelings and boundaries.
When these needs clash, as children we almost always choose attachment. Because without connection to others, there is no safety. In this way, we learn at a young age not to take ourselves seriously, to suppress our feelings, and to cross our own boundaries.
A child who learns that anger or sadness is unwanted develops strategies to maintain love and safety. Think of: pleasing (always satisfying the other), perfectionism (doing everything flawlessly to avoid rejection), or emotional shutdown (pushing feelings away to avoid feeling pain). In adulthood, this leads to a sense of emptiness and alienation. We may “function” well, but we feel cut off from ourselves.
Depression as a signal, not a disorder
The strategies that help us survive in our childhood take their toll in our later lives in the long run. Many adults have become alienated from their inner world and experience fatigue, psychological, or physical complaints without understanding where they come from. We then attach labels to the complaints such as depression, ADHD, ADD, or burnout and try to tackle them with medication. And while that sometimes works well to combat the symptoms, we maintain the underlying causes within ourselves and society.
In our society, we often see depression (and other health complaints) as an individual problem: a deviation or illness that needs to be solved. Gabor Maté emphasizes that depression is often a logical, ‘normal’ response to an unhealthy society. It is a signal that someone has been separated from their feelings and needs for too long. From that perspective, depression is not a sign of weakness, but a call for the restoration of connection – with oneself and with others.
Nonviolent communication as a tool
At this point, Gabor Maté’s vision touches upon that of Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Rosenberg states that violence in our language, our thinking, and our actions arises when we lose the connection with our feelings and needs. Nonviolent Communication offers a profound and simultaneously practical process to reconnect, both with ourselves and with others. It teaches us to distinguish between the observation: what is actually happening, the feeling that it evokes in us, and the needs to which these feelings are connected. With this clarity, we can then look at strategies that can help us meet these needs (requests to ourselves or others), and change the systems and structures around us.
Self-compassion as the key to healing
Both Maté and Rosenberg emphasize that healing begins with self-compassion. Instead of punishing ourselves for “failure,” we may look at our strategies with kindness. Every habit, no matter how destructive, once served a protective function.
Questions that help with this are: What was I trying to protect with this behavior? Where did it hurt? What did I actually need? By looking at ourselves with compassion, space is created to let go of old patterns and rediscover our authenticity step by step.
Toward a new normal
If we take the insights of Gabor Maté and Marshall Rosenberg seriously, it is time to rewrite our definition of normal. Normal is not: hiding your emotions just to keep going. Normal is also not: exhausting yourself to meet expectations. And normal is not: sacrificing authenticity for apparent harmony.
A new normal should mean: living consciously in connection with your feelings. Communicating from honesty and empathy, and having the courage to be true to yourself. With the awareness of our underlying wounds (Maté) and the tools of Nonviolent Communication (Rosenberg), a path to wholeness emerges. A path on which we no longer just survive, but can truly live – in connection with ourselves and with each other.