Radiohead Member Credits Gabor Maté Book for Breakthrough on Childhood Trauma

What was said

"I was reading this and he was giving examples of case studies. And I was reading it, so I'm going, I was like, 'Well, that's like my childhood.' And I'd never allowed myself to go, I'd never allowed myself to use that word trauma. It feels like such a heavy word. Trauma was something that was, you know, if like Gabo Mate, for instance, his parents, and his grandparents were in concentration camps. That felt to me like trauma."

Ed O'Brien revealed that reading Gabor Maté's 'When the Body Says No' during his depression was transformative, helping him recognize his own childhood trauma despite feeling it was indulgent to claim trauma compared to Holocaust survivors. This epiphany unlocked his ability to process unmet emotional needs from his British Gen X upbringing, where nothing was processed emotionally, leading to his eventual healing and the creation of his album Blue Morpho.