People in Britain are beginning to realise they paid a huge price internally for all those suppressed emotions.” “With rising inequality and all the other problems there are right now,” he says, “people are having to question how they live their lives. But once the empire crumbled, lips quavered. Boarding school culture and traumatic childhoods played out into dominance of other countries and cultures, giving the “buttoned-up” approach inherent value. Born of our imperial past, he says, it was maintained for as long as there was something to show for it. The infamous British stiff upper lip is something Maté has watched with fascination over the years. He applauds the new approach: “I think they are right to be leading and validating that sense of enquiry, without which life is not worth living.” William and Harry opening up about their mother’s death is something the Queen’s generation would never have done There’s a generational conflict here, he says, around being open about past trauma: he cites Princes William and Harry opening up about their mother’s death, and says it’s something the Queen’s generation would never have done. Well-known in Canada, where he lives, he gives some interesting reasons why Britain is “just waking up to me” and his bestselling book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Maté, a wiry, energetic man in his mid-70s, has his own experience of both childhood trauma and addiction, more of which later.
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