The Myth Of Normal Book Review | Dr. Gabor Maté

Reviewed: August 2024

Quick Take: The Myth of Normal exposes how our “normal” culture is actually toxic, creating the chronic stress and disconnection that fuel epidemic levels of disease. Co-written with his son Daniel, Dr. Maté challenges us to see illness not as individual failure but as the body’s alarm system signalling a sick society.

Trauma is not what happens to you but what happens inside you

– Dr. Gabor Maté

Key Takeaways:

Chronic illness is often a response to toxic cultural conditions, not personal failure.
Everything we’ve potentially accepted as “normal” could be making us chronically unwell
Social isolation poses health risks equal to smoking 15 cigarettes daily
Self-limiting beliefs learned in childhood manifest as physical disease
Healing requires addressing systemic factors, not just individual patterns
Women and marginalised groups suffer disproportionately from stress-related illness
Medical authority tends to overlook the mind-body connection, treating physical illness as separate from emotional wellbeing, divorced from social context.
An introduction to the Five R’s to support personal insight, change and healing.

The Sickness Is In The Culture

In The Myth of Normal, Maté’s central theme is stark: we live in a toxic culture, and our bodies are keeping score. The book examines how capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and class structures create chronic stress that literally gets under our skin. A lack of control in oft promoted ‘free’ societies, combined with epidemic levels of disconnection, creates the perfect conditions for disease.

The book presents sobering evidence; social isolation inhibits the immune system comparably to smoking 15 cigarettes daily; women suffer disproportionately higher rates of autoimmune conditions due to patriarchal culture; racism creates measurable physiological harm across generations.

The Stories That Bind Us

What makes this book particularly powerful is its exploration of the beliefs we carry – often learned before we could speak. “I am not enough.” “My needs don’t matter.” “I must earn my right to exist.” These stories become self-fulfilling prophecies, creating the chronic stress responses that manifest as physical disease. Maté writes that these narratives “are neither objective nor accurate, yet always internally consistent with our behaviour and our experience.”

The book offers practical frameworks for working through these self-limiting beliefs, emphasizing that healing cannot be purely individual when illness is systemically generated. We need authenticity in a culture that commodifies it, agency in systems designed to limit control, and the ability to express healthy anger in a society that demands perpetual niceness – particularly from women and marginalised groups.

Disease As A Teacher, Not An Enemy

Perhaps the most radical reframing in this book is viewing disease not as an external attacker but as a messenger. Our body is communicating with us. Our symptoms are the body’s way of alerting us that we’ve strayed too far from our authentic core. As Maté notes, “The creativity in us must be able to emerge; otherwise we may explode at the wrong places or become hopelessly hemmed in by frustrations.”

The book shares numerous stories of people who experienced remarkable healing – not through medical intervention alone, but by fundamentally changing their relationship with themselves and the cultural scripts that were killing them. These aren’t miracle cures; they’re examples of what becomes possible when we stop forcing our bodies to absorb the stress of a toxic culture.

Work pressures, multitasking, social media, news updates, multiplicities of entertainment sources—these all induce us to become lost in thoughts, frantic activities, gadgets, meaningless conversations. We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present

– Dr. Gabor Maté

The Five R’s – A Practical Framework (Chapter 29)

I particularly appreciated Chapter 29 which introduces a targeted framework for working through self-limiting stories: the Five R’s. This approach requires self-discipline, courage, and determination, but offers genuine transformation and is a concept I sometimes use in my sessions with clients.

RELABEL: Learn to identify the automatic thoughts and feelings that arise from old trauma. When you notice yourself thinking “I’m not good enough” or feeling unworthy, simply name it: “This is the old story speaking.”
REATTRIBUTE: Understand where these beliefs originated. They’re not truths about you; they’re adaptations you developed to survive circumstances where authentic expression felt dangerous. The question shifts from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?”
REFOCUS: Deliberately shift attention away from the compulsive patterns these stories generate. Rather than getting caught in rumination or self-criticism, redirect your awareness to present-moment experience or activities aligned with your authentic needs.
REVALUE: Re-evaluate the worth of holding onto these beliefs. What do they actually cost you? How do they serve you now versus when you first developed them? Often we discover these stories extract an enormous price whilst offering nothing in return.
RE-CREATE: The authors see enormous potential in this final step: “The more you relabel, reattribute, refocus, and revalue, the freer you will be to re-create”—both in the sense of creating anew and of playfully relaxing. This is about authoring a new narrative that honours your authentic self.

Who Should Read The Myth Of Normal?

This is one of my highly recommended reads for all new clients, anyone experiencing chronic illness, healthcare practitioners, therapists, people-pleasers, and those interested in trauma-informed approaches to health. It’s particularly valuable if you’re questioning why individual healing efforts haven’t worked or want to understand the social determinants of health.