What Lies Beneath the Surface?

Many of us learn how to keep going. We become productive, responsible and capable. We meet expectations, care for others and adapt to environments that may leave little room for rest, vulnerability or emotional honesty.

From the outside, we may appear to be functioning well. Beneath the surface, the body and mind may be carrying a very different story.

In The Myth of Normal, Dr. Gabor Maté, writing with Daniel Maté, asks readers to reconsider how we understand health, trauma and illness. Rather than viewing distress only as an individual problem, the book invites us to examine the environments in which people live: families, workplaces, communities and cultures that may reward disconnection while calling it success.

The book offers a wide and sometimes challenging perspective. It does not need to become the only lens through which we understand health in order to raise worthwhile questions. What stays with me is its invitation to become curious about what a person has carried, how they learned to cope and what their ways of surviving may have cost them.

Looking beyond what happened

When we hear the word trauma, we may think first about a particular event. Maté invites readers to look not only at what happened, but also at what happened within a person as they adapted to it.

A child may learn to suppress emotion to preserve an important relationship. An adult may become exceptionally independent because relying on others once felt unsafe. Someone may remain constantly busy because stillness brings difficult feelings closer to the surface.

These responses may once have served a protective purpose. They may have helped a person belong, cope or continue through circumstances they could not change. The difficulty arises when an old way of protecting ourselves continues long after the conditions that shaped it have changed.

The question begins to shift from:

What is wrong with this person?

to:

What might this person have lived through—and what did they learn to do in order to manage it?

This shift does not remove personal responsibility, and it does not explain every behaviour. It introduces context, compassion and the possibility of responding with greater awareness.

When adaptation begins to feel like identity

We often describe ourselves in fixed terms: controlling, overly sensitive, fiercely independent, unable to slow down or responsible for everyone else.

Yet some qualities we regard as personality may also carry the imprint of experience. Perfectionism may have created a sense of predictability. People-pleasing may have protected connection. Emotional distance may have reduced the risk of being hurt. Constant achievement may have offered worth, recognition or safety.

Recognizing the possible purpose of a pattern does not mean excusing harm or remaining trapped within it. It gives us another place from which to begin. Instead of meeting the pattern only with shame, we can ask what it once made possible—and whether it is still serving us now.

Healing does not require rejecting the person we became. It may begin by appreciating how that person tried to protect us, while gently considering what is no longer needed.

The body is part of the story

Another important theme in Maté’s work is the relationship between mind and body. Stress is not experienced only as a thought. It can also involve sleep, attention, energy, muscle tension, heart rate, digestion and other physiological processes. Research continues to examine the many pathways through which prolonged stress may affect physical and psychological health.

This idea deserves careful handling.

It does not mean that illness can always be explained by trauma. It does not mean that people are responsible for becoming unwell, or that reflection alone can treat a medical or mental-health condition. Health is complex. Biology, environment, social and economic conditions, relationships, access to care and lived experience can all matter.

The invitation is not to reduce illness to a single cause. It is to widen the lens through which a person’s experience is understood.

Questions beneath the symptom

Alongside appropriate medical or mental-health care, compassionate curiosity may open questions such as:

• What pressures has this person been carrying?
• Where have their needs repeatedly been set aside?
• What situations feel threatening, uncertain or unsafe to them?
• What support, rest or connection has been missing?
• What has “being strong” required them to hide or suppress?

These questions are not diagnostic tools. They are reminders that a symptom, behaviour or coping pattern exists within a larger life.

Rethinking what we call normal

A behaviour can be common without necessarily being healthy.

Exhaustion may be normalized in the workplace. Emotional suppression may be praised as strength. Constant availability may be interpreted as commitment. Disconnection may be disguised as independence. Living in a permanent state of urgency may be treated as ambition.

When enough people adapt to difficult conditions, the adaptation itself can begin to look normal. Maté’s cultural critique asks whether suffering belongs only to the individual—or whether it may also reflect the expectations, relationships and structures surrounding them.

This question reaches beyond the book. Public-health perspectives similarly recognize that wellbeing is shaped not only by personal choices, but also by the conditions in which people are born, grow, learn, work, live and age. Income, housing, discrimination, community belonging and access to care can all influence health.

Understanding context does not make us powerless. It helps us place responsibility more honestly. Some changes belong to the individual; others belong to families, workplaces, communities and systems.

Healing as awareness and choice

Healing is not about locating someone to blame for every wound. Nor does it require endlessly examining the past. It may involve understanding how the past continues to organize parts of the present—and gradually creating more awareness and choice.

That process can look different for different people. It may include noticing bodily signals, naming emotions without immediately judging them, recognizing protective patterns, establishing boundaries or allowing trustworthy relationships to challenge old expectations. It may also include professional care, practical support and changes to circumstances that continue to cause harm.

And sometimes it includes making room for needs that were pushed aside: rest, play, creativity, belonging and the freedom to be more honest about what we feel.

What lies beneath the surface?

Perhaps the most meaningful question inspired by the book is not simply, “How do we eliminate what hurts?” It may be, “What might this pain be asking us to notice?”

Not every struggle should be attributed to trauma, and a symptom is not a complete explanation of a person. Yet approaching distress with curiosity can help us see beyond a label, behaviour or coping pattern. It can help us encounter a life in fuller context.

Maybe health is not merely the absence of symptoms or the ability to continue performing. Perhaps it also includes the capacity to feel, connect, rest, express ourselves honestly and live without continually abandoning our own needs.

And perhaps healing sometimes begins when we stop demanding that people function normally within conditions that are hurting them—and begin creating the safety, compassion, support and connection in which something healthier can emerge.

A pause for reflection

You might sit with one of these questions:

• Is there a quality I judge in myself that may once have helped me cope?
• What does functioning well sometimes conceal in my life?
• Where might I need more support, honesty or choice—not simply more endurance?

There is no need to force an answer. Noticing may be enough for today.

This article offers general reflection and education. It is not a clinical assessment, medical advice or a substitute for individualized medical or mental-health care.

Written and reflected upon by Diljeet K. Jandu