When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Mary had been Gabor Maté’s patient for eight years before he thought to ask her about her life. She had scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that hardens skin and organs, and every doctor treating her — himself included — worked strictly on the tissue. When he finally booked an hour just to listen, out came a childhood of abuse and foster homes: a seven-year-old huddled in an attic holding her sisters while her drunken foster parents fought below. “I was so scared all the time,” she told him. “And no one protected me.” She had told no one, not even her husband of twenty years, and described herself as incapable of saying no. Maté wrote about her in a 1993 column: “When we have been prevented from learning how to say no, our bodies may end up saying it for us.” That line is the whole book.

Gabor Maté on SummaryShelf

When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress