Dr. Paul Conti: How to Improve Your Mental Health

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab guest series,

00:00:02.480 | where I and an expert guest discuss science

00:00:05.160 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:07.360 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:09.320 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.360 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.640 | Today's episode marks the second episode

00:00:16.720 | in our four episode series with Dr. Paul Conte

00:00:19.480 | about mental health.

00:00:20.840 | The first episode in the series dealt with how to understand

00:00:23.720 | and assess your level of mental health.

00:00:25.940 | Today's episode is about how to improve your mental health.

00:00:29.400 | I do want to emphasize that you do not need to have heard

00:00:32.200 | or seen the first episode in order to understand

00:00:35.080 | or glean important information from today's episode

00:00:37.400 | about how to improve your mental health.

00:00:39.180 | But I do encourage you to go and listen to the first episode

00:00:41.600 | at some point if you have not already.

00:00:43.960 | Today's episode deals with several topics important

00:00:46.120 | to all of us, as well as protocols

00:00:48.140 | to improve one's mental health.

00:00:49.620 | For instance, you will learn how to guide yourself

00:00:52.080 | through a process of self-inquiry

00:00:54.000 | in which you address certain key questions

00:00:56.000 | about your drives, your level of aggressive drive,

00:00:58.980 | pleasure drive, and the so-called generative drive.

00:01:02.160 | These are essential things to understand about oneself

00:01:04.960 | if you want to guide yourself toward your aspirations,

00:01:07.920 | and if you want to understand

00:01:09.540 | how your subconscious processing is influencing your thoughts

00:01:12.860 | and your behaviors and your feelings

00:01:14.240 | in ways that sometimes serve your aspirations

00:01:16.920 | and in other ways that can hinder your aspirations.

00:01:19.920 | Dr. Conte shares with us a way

00:01:21.560 | of assessing our internal narratives,

00:01:23.620 | as well as a way of creating a constructive self-awareness

00:01:27.560 | and an understanding of where those narratives

00:01:29.780 | and that self-awareness stem from in our childhood

00:01:32.460 | so that we can navigate forward

00:01:34.000 | with the greatest sense of agency.

00:01:35.940 | We also talk about how to move past common hindrances

00:01:38.480 | to improving one's mental health,

00:01:39.960 | such as overcoming intrusive thoughts.

00:01:42.180 | And perhaps most importantly,

00:01:43.840 | today's episode provides information and protocols

00:01:46.260 | that anyone can use to cultivate their generative drive,

00:01:49.400 | which is a hallmark of mental health.

00:01:51.480 | Just a reminder that Dr. Paul Conte

00:01:53.140 | has generously provided a few diagrams

00:01:55.900 | that we include as PDFs in the show note captions.

00:01:58.140 | They are completely zero cost to access,

00:02:00.180 | and they can help you understand some of the material

00:02:02.300 | that was discussed in the first episode of this series,

00:02:04.720 | as well as the current episode

00:02:06.020 | about how to improve your mental health.

00:02:07.620 | And while those simple PDF diagrams

00:02:09.660 | are certainly not necessary

00:02:11.140 | in order to understand the material in today's discussion

00:02:13.900 | or in the other discussions of this series,

00:02:15.780 | many people find them useful.

00:02:17.080 | So I encourage you to check out those links

00:02:18.740 | in the show note captions.

00:02:19.980 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:22.580 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:25.240 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:27.380 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:29.900 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:02:32.420 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:33.580 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:36.400 | Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

00:02:38.580 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:02:40.420 | with a licensed therapist carried out online.

00:02:43.180 | I personally have been doing weekly therapy

00:02:44.940 | for more than 30 years.

00:02:46.500 | And while that weekly therapy was initiated

00:02:48.900 | not by my own request,

00:02:50.380 | it was in fact a requirement for me to remain in high school,

00:02:54.340 | over time, I really came to appreciate

00:02:56.140 | just how valuable doing quality therapy is.

00:02:59.500 | In fact, I look at doing quality therapy

00:03:02.120 | much in the same way that I look at going to the gym

00:03:04.800 | or doing cardiovascular training such as running

00:03:07.600 | as ways to enhance my physical health.

00:03:09.580 | I see therapy as a vital way to enhance one's mental health.

00:03:13.700 | The beauty of BetterHelp is that they make it very easy

00:03:15.640 | to find an excellent therapist.

00:03:17.340 | An excellent therapist can be defined as somebody

00:03:19.760 | who is going to be very supportive of you

00:03:22.340 | in an objective way with whom you have excellent rapport with

00:03:25.620 | and who can help you arrive at key insights

00:03:28.080 | that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to find.

00:03:30.260 | And because BetterHelp therapy is conducted entirely online,

00:03:33.780 | it's extremely convenient and easy to incorporate

00:03:36.240 | into the rest of your life.

00:03:37.620 | So if you're interested in BetterHelp,

00:03:39.000 | go to betterhelp.com/huberman

00:03:41.700 | to get 10% off your first month.

00:03:43.740 | That's BetterHelp spelled H-E-L-P.com/huberman.

00:03:47.600 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

00:03:50.640 | Waking Up is a meditation app that offers dozens

00:03:53.060 | of guided meditation sessions, mindfulness trainings,

00:03:55.840 | yoga nidra sessions, and more.

00:03:58.240 | By now, there's an abundance of data showing

00:04:01.200 | that even short daily meditations can greatly improve

00:04:04.000 | our mood, reduce anxiety, improve our ability to focus,

00:04:07.560 | and can improve our memory.

00:04:09.540 | And while there are many different forms of meditation,

00:04:11.920 | most people find it difficult to find and stick

00:04:14.460 | to a meditation practice in a way

00:04:16.040 | that is most beneficial for them.

00:04:18.200 | The Waking Up app makes it extremely easy

00:04:20.220 | to learn how to meditate and to carry out

00:04:22.720 | your daily meditation practice in a way

00:04:24.980 | that's going to be most effective and efficient for you.

00:04:28.080 | It includes a variety of different types of meditations

00:04:30.480 | of different duration, as well as things like yoga nidra,

00:04:33.660 | which place the brain and body into a sort of pseudo sleep

00:04:36.880 | that allows you to emerge feeling

00:04:38.480 | incredibly mentally refreshed.

00:04:39.920 | In fact, the science around yoga nidra is really impressive,

00:04:42.580 | showing that after a yoga nidra session,

00:04:44.860 | levels of dopamine in certain areas of the brain are enhanced

00:04:47.720 | by up to 60%, which places the brain and body

00:04:50.160 | into a state of enhanced readiness

00:04:52.280 | for mental work and for physical work.

00:04:54.760 | Another thing I really like about the Waking Up app

00:04:56.800 | is that it provides a 30-day introduction course.

00:04:59.440 | So for those of you that have not meditated before

00:05:02.040 | or getting back to a meditation practice, that's fantastic.

00:05:05.520 | Or if you're somebody who's already a skilled

00:05:07.580 | and regular meditator, Waking Up has more advanced

00:05:10.260 | meditations and yoga nidra sessions for you as well.

00:05:12.960 | If you'd like to try the Waking Up app,

00:05:14.840 | you can go to wakingup.com/huberman

00:05:17.600 | and access a free 30-day trial.

00:05:20.120 | Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman.

00:05:23.040 | And now for my discussion about mental health

00:05:25.080 | with Dr. Paul Conte.

00:05:26.880 | Dr. Conte, welcome back.

00:05:28.400 | - Thank you.

00:05:29.420 | - In the first episode of this series,

00:05:31.500 | you laid out for us in a very structured way

00:05:34.980 | what true mental health looks like,

00:05:37.160 | essentially what we should all be aspiring to.

00:05:39.920 | And you touched on these themes of agency and gratitude

00:05:43.560 | as verb states, really ways of being in the world

00:05:47.800 | that allow everybody to have some sense of wellbeing,

00:05:52.220 | to have some sense of themselves in a way

00:05:54.720 | that is kind to themselves and to others,

00:05:57.840 | and really to feel good and do good in their life.

00:06:01.160 | And without question, this is what people want, right?

00:06:04.800 | You also spelled out for us these two pillars,

00:06:06.860 | the structure of self and the function of self

00:06:10.320 | that consists of a number of different things

00:06:12.680 | that from which guys are up or kind of, you know,

00:06:15.480 | give rise to these feelings of empowerment, humility,

00:06:18.200 | agency, and gratitude.

00:06:20.120 | And reminded us several times that when we are challenged,

00:06:24.800 | when we're not doing as well as we would like,

00:06:27.020 | that we need to look back to the structure of self

00:06:29.280 | and the function of self and ask specific questions

00:06:32.360 | in order to arrive or re-arrive

00:06:35.860 | at the sense of agency and gratitude.

00:06:38.540 | - Yes.

00:06:39.560 | - I think it would be wonderful for us

00:06:40.760 | if you could just recap the overall model

00:06:43.920 | because it has the components that I just mentioned,

00:06:46.840 | but there's some subtlety and some really key aspects

00:06:50.520 | of these pillars, structure of self and function of self.

00:06:54.480 | I think if people keep in mind for today's episode,

00:06:56.860 | which is about challenges that people commonly face,

00:06:59.880 | and even if you will,

00:07:01.520 | phenotypes that we see commonly out there.

00:07:03.520 | For people that haven't heard of phenotypes,

00:07:04.880 | phenotypes are the typical appearance of something.

00:07:08.920 | So there is the phenotype of the anxious person,

00:07:11.940 | the phenotype of the person who just can't seem

00:07:15.120 | to get out of a rut.

00:07:16.040 | There's the phenotype of the traumatized person.

00:07:18.620 | And these things play out differently

00:07:20.200 | in different individuals, men and women, boys and girls.

00:07:23.040 | But we're going to visit many of the most common phenotypes

00:07:26.340 | out there and think about how to do better, be better,

00:07:31.220 | feel better through the lens of the model

00:07:33.700 | that we spelled out in episode one.

00:07:36.240 | And of course, if people have not seen or heard episode one,

00:07:40.040 | today's discussion will still be entirely accessible to them.

00:07:42.460 | So in keeping with that,

00:07:43.360 | if you could just give us an overview

00:07:45.660 | of what this structure of the healthy self looks like

00:07:49.040 | as a roadmap for where we're all headed today.

00:07:52.440 | - Thank you, thanks very much.

00:07:53.940 | Revisiting the pillars is I think the best place to start

00:07:59.000 | because there really are routes to understanding.

00:08:01.560 | And if we understand, then we can strategize,

00:08:05.060 | we can make change, we can make things better.

00:08:07.680 | So the first pillar of the structure of self

00:08:10.880 | starts with the unconscious mind, right?

00:08:12.760 | This incredibly complicated biological supercomputer

00:08:16.600 | that's firing a mile a minute underneath the surface in us

00:08:20.800 | and is throwing up to the surface all sorts of thoughts

00:08:23.840 | and ideas and states

00:08:25.640 | that then the conscious mind apprehends

00:08:28.000 | and our awareness comes into play.

00:08:30.080 | And then we have defense mechanisms

00:08:31.900 | that sort of rise up from the unconscious mind

00:08:34.520 | and they circle and sort of gird themselves

00:08:37.840 | around the conscious mind,

00:08:39.460 | which they can do in an unhealthy way

00:08:41.440 | or in a healthy way or anything in between.

00:08:45.120 | And then the character structure

00:08:46.880 | is sort of the nest around all of that.

00:08:49.680 | And it's from the character structure

00:08:51.500 | that we are engaging in the world

00:08:54.420 | in the ways that we're engaging, right?

00:08:56.240 | It's our active engagement with the world around us.

00:08:58.760 | And the idea is that the self grows out of that.

00:09:01.320 | It grows out of that nest

00:09:02.800 | sitting on top of the unconscious mind

00:09:04.760 | to the conscious mind rising above the defense mechanisms

00:09:07.520 | and the character structure.

00:09:09.040 | And if we go back to that

00:09:10.920 | when we're trying to understand ourselves,

00:09:13.400 | trying to understand states of health

00:09:14.960 | as well as states of unhappiness

00:09:16.760 | or states that aren't healthy,

00:09:19.480 | by going back and looking at the structure,

00:09:21.820 | we can learn a tremendous amount.

00:09:24.080 | And the other side, the other pillar,

00:09:26.360 | is the function of self.

00:09:28.540 | And it really starts with the self-awareness, right?

00:09:30.940 | The awareness that, hey, there is an I, right?

00:09:33.080 | I am in the world, right?

00:09:34.520 | These 24 hours in the day are gonna pass today

00:09:36.720 | and I'm gonna be doing one thing or another.

00:09:38.520 | I'm to some very significant extent

00:09:41.260 | deciding how am I gonna engage in the world around me

00:09:43.840 | during that time, right?

00:09:45.200 | So on top of that are the defense mechanisms in action.

00:09:48.520 | So defense mechanisms, remember, are unconscious.

00:09:51.060 | So there's a lot then going on inside of us

00:09:53.680 | that's determining sort of the field set of options, right?

00:09:56.680 | There may be a lot of automaticity

00:09:58.800 | that narrows down the set of options

00:10:01.280 | of what we may entertain, what we may be aware of,

00:10:04.020 | what we may decide.

00:10:05.100 | And that could happen for better or for worse,

00:10:07.020 | depending upon the health of the defense mechanisms.

00:10:10.140 | But on top of that lies salient.

00:10:12.800 | So the idea then we would next visit,

00:10:15.020 | okay, what are we paying attention to, right?

00:10:17.500 | What's coming from inside, what's coming from outside?

00:10:20.300 | And we have to not pay attention

00:10:22.040 | to many, many, many, many things

00:10:23.700 | in order to pay attention to

00:10:25.380 | whatever our attention is alighted on at the moment.

00:10:27.920 | So it's a complex process

00:10:29.560 | and it's worth looking at very closely

00:10:33.080 | if we wanna understand ourselves.

00:10:34.960 | So after thinking about the defense mechanisms in action,

00:10:38.340 | right, the unconscious aspects

00:10:40.440 | of how we're engaging with the world,

00:10:42.900 | then next to consider is salience,

00:10:45.300 | which is sort of where does the mind arrive at at rest,

00:10:48.660 | right, where does the mind trend towards?

00:10:50.640 | Is it something internal, is it something external?

00:10:53.340 | What are all the things we're not paying attention to

00:10:55.380 | in order to pay attention to something?

00:10:57.860 | And is that thing healthy, is it not healthy?

00:11:00.660 | Is it serving us well?

00:11:01.980 | So there's so much to understand about salience.

00:11:04.860 | And then the next step beyond that

00:11:06.620 | is understanding behavior, right?

00:11:08.120 | How are we engaging with the world around us?

00:11:10.900 | What are our behavioral choices?

00:11:12.320 | What are our automatic behaviors?

00:11:14.500 | And then sitting on top of all of that are our strivings.

00:11:17.980 | So we have a sense of wanting something

00:11:21.060 | in the world around us, like what is that

00:11:22.900 | and how are we trying to get to it

00:11:24.220 | and how does it make us feel?

00:11:25.940 | So if we look at the 10 elements, right,

00:11:29.220 | the five under the structure of self

00:11:31.260 | and the five under the function of self,

00:11:33.360 | then what we're really looking at is

00:11:35.340 | sort of like looking at 10 cabinets, right?

00:11:37.500 | And if we're trying to understand ourselves,

00:11:39.820 | whether we're trying to just generally understand ourselves

00:11:42.120 | or we're trying to get at a problem, right,

00:11:44.340 | then looking in all 10 of those cabinets makes sense, right?

00:11:47.440 | Some of them will be bare,

00:11:48.540 | meaning that they may seem to have very little to do

00:11:51.800 | with the problem we're bringing.

00:11:53.020 | And we kind of maintain an open mind, right?

00:11:54.700 | We may be led back to that cabinet

00:11:56.220 | and there may be something there.

00:11:57.900 | But what usually happens is if we look in all 10 places,

00:12:01.020 | we find a couple where there's some rich material to explore

00:12:05.220 | sort of the X marks the spot

00:12:06.620 | and then we go and we dig there to sort of mix metaphors.

00:12:09.400 | We dig in the cabinet

00:12:10.740 | where we're gonna find something, right?

00:12:12.380 | And then it leads forward a process of understanding.

00:12:15.960 | And if we're bringing those things into line

00:12:18.220 | where we have a healthy structure of self

00:12:20.560 | and a healthy function of self

00:12:21.900 | and we're aware of all of this and we're working on it,

00:12:24.660 | we're self-aware and we're paying attention

00:12:26.500 | to everything built on top of that,

00:12:28.660 | then what we end up with is a sense of humility

00:12:32.020 | because one cannot be anything but respectful,

00:12:35.940 | compassionate, understanding the complexity of all of this

00:12:39.900 | and understanding how does it manifest itself in us

00:12:42.620 | and just the very fact that we can wake our ways

00:12:45.300 | in the world, right, is so impressive.

00:12:48.580 | And in a way, I think it brings to us a respect,

00:12:51.740 | just a respect for being here, navigating the world,

00:12:55.060 | and I think of that respect is born humility,

00:12:57.760 | the complexity of us,

00:12:58.820 | the fact that millions of things

00:13:00.620 | are going on underneath the surface,

00:13:02.020 | millions of neurotransmission and endocrinological function,

00:13:06.980 | all of this is going on under the surface.

00:13:08.380 | I'm not even aware of it

00:13:09.380 | and then it kicks up to the surface,

00:13:11.340 | generates a tremendous amount of respect for the complexity

00:13:14.980 | and also the diligence and perseverance it takes us

00:13:18.180 | to navigate through the world.

00:13:19.400 | And I think built upon that understanding

00:13:21.740 | is a sense of humility and a sense of empowerment

00:13:24.840 | and the humility and empowerment in action, right?

00:13:27.860 | So expressed, right, become agency and gratitude

00:13:32.040 | and agency and gratitude, as you said at the beginning,

00:13:34.660 | we're seeing as verbs, right?

00:13:36.560 | That's like how we're living life.

00:13:39.200 | It's through the lens, so to speak,

00:13:41.200 | of agency and gratitude that we're actively living.

00:13:44.860 | And again, I would put forth

00:13:46.280 | that when we look at measures of human happiness, right,

00:13:49.120 | across disciplines and across time,

00:13:51.580 | this is always what we see,

00:13:53.300 | is some way of describing how agency and gratitude

00:13:56.640 | together as verbs manifest and then create happiness.

00:14:00.320 | It's the state that we're seeking to be in, right?

00:14:03.360 | Because from that state of active agency

00:14:06.380 | and active gratitude, we achieve what it is

00:14:09.420 | that I think we're really searching for.

00:14:11.180 | And there are by infinite words throughout human history

00:14:15.240 | to describe what that is,

00:14:17.080 | we might choose to use words like peacefulness,

00:14:20.740 | a sense of peace, a sense of contentment,

00:14:23.840 | being delighted by things, like just being amazed

00:14:26.920 | and impressed by things in the world around us.

00:14:29.480 | Like this is a state that we're striving for.

00:14:32.400 | And I think when people talk about happiness

00:14:34.240 | and what we're really trying to get to, it's this, right?

00:14:37.500 | But it's not that these things are passive, right?

00:14:40.560 | These things are coming from the active agency,

00:14:43.880 | the active gratitude, and they're then interacting

00:14:47.040 | with a generative drive within us.

00:14:49.960 | We have an aggressive drive, we have a pleasure drive.

00:14:52.600 | Like this has been thought about now for a long, long time

00:14:55.740 | within mental health and validated in a lot of ways.

00:14:58.680 | But what hasn't been validated

00:15:00.080 | is that they're the only things, right?

00:15:02.000 | We see human beings striving.

00:15:03.860 | We see human beings wanting better for themselves

00:15:06.400 | and for the world around them.

00:15:08.040 | We see acts of kindness that seem to be rooted

00:15:10.860 | to nothing other than the act of kindness.

00:15:13.780 | We have within us a drive to know, to understand,

00:15:17.900 | to learn, to make better.

00:15:19.700 | And that has been described

00:15:20.940 | as many, many things across human history.

00:15:23.260 | But I think the words we might choose are generative drive,

00:15:26.000 | a drive to create and to make better.

00:15:28.440 | And it's the generative drive

00:15:30.780 | as something active within us, right?

00:15:33.620 | That is then aligning with agency and gratitude, right?

00:15:37.780 | The active ways in which we express ourselves.

00:15:40.700 | And then that altogether brings us the peace,

00:15:44.180 | the contentment, the sense of delight.

00:15:46.160 | Sometimes that may exist in us in a state of rest, right?

00:15:49.460 | But very often it's existing in us in a state of activity.

00:15:53.460 | And that's why people find the quote unquote happiness

00:15:56.980 | of what people are seeking, not just in meditation.

00:16:00.840 | Sometimes we can find it there,

00:16:02.060 | but people also find it in action, right?

00:16:05.140 | They find it in doing that thing that they love to do

00:16:07.340 | or taking care of someone and learning something.

00:16:10.300 | So when we look at all of this,

00:16:12.120 | we can then have a route of understanding

00:16:16.340 | what is going on inside of us

00:16:18.120 | and how we can make the changes

00:16:20.460 | that let us be in this state,

00:16:22.880 | which is really the state that we're seeking.

00:16:25.640 | - I really appreciate that you highlight

00:16:27.180 | that agency and gratitude are verb states

00:16:29.880 | from which peace, contentment and delight emerge.

00:16:34.020 | And also the way that you explain the generative drive

00:16:37.340 | that is distinct from aggressive drives

00:16:41.140 | and pleasure drives that exist in all of us.

00:16:43.400 | I'm smiling because a number of examples

00:16:47.660 | of peace, contentment and delight

00:16:50.100 | while in action come to mind.

00:16:51.720 | I mean, for me, podcasting and in particular,

00:16:54.680 | preparing for a podcast and mine the literature

00:16:57.980 | and figure out where the gems reside

00:17:00.600 | and where the confusion could emerge

00:17:02.980 | and all of that brings about such peace, contentment

00:17:05.860 | and delight for me, but it's anything but passive.

00:17:08.280 | It's, likewise, yesterday I had the experience

00:17:13.280 | of running into a puppy.

00:17:15.020 | It's been a while since I've owned a dog

00:17:16.420 | and dogs are delightful.

00:17:18.620 | Puppies are particularly delightful.

00:17:19.820 | - I had the experience of seeing you light up

00:17:21.680 | when you ran into the puppy.

00:17:23.620 | - And you did, and I'm still buzzing

00:17:26.780 | from that short interaction with the puppy downstairs,

00:17:29.500 | the way we're in our puppy.

00:17:31.620 | It's just that, I don't know why,

00:17:33.260 | but I just delight in animals of most all kinds,

00:17:36.700 | not a fan of reptiles, sorry, reptile fans, so much,

00:17:40.060 | but I just drive so much energy from it

00:17:42.300 | and it felt like life energy

00:17:43.520 | and the way the animal is sort of intentionally scattered

00:17:46.500 | is amusing to me as compared to the dog

00:17:48.900 | that he will eventually be,

00:17:50.300 | which is going to be more linear in his thinking.

00:17:52.420 | It encapsulates so much of the other things I love,

00:17:55.020 | like brain development, et cetera.

00:17:56.620 | Anyway, I highlight those examples

00:17:58.580 | because there's nothing passive about it.

00:18:01.580 | It's pure delight and joy for me

00:18:03.620 | and it intersects with other delights and joys.

00:18:08.580 | And I think that as you describe agency and gratitude,

00:18:11.980 | peace, contentment, and delight in these generative forces,

00:18:16.020 | as well as other forces that exist in us,

00:18:18.100 | I think it's really critical that people understand

00:18:21.760 | that these are not states that you sit down

00:18:24.220 | and place yourself into,

00:18:25.900 | although perhaps one could through reflection or meditation

00:18:29.640 | or waking up from a really great night's sleep,

00:18:31.840 | things of that sort,

00:18:32.960 | but that these are things

00:18:34.620 | that we can find ourselves awash in

00:18:37.220 | if we are doing the right things.

00:18:39.420 | And those things can oftentimes be very challenging.

00:18:41.980 | So assuming I understand

00:18:44.740 | the way the model is spelled out correctly,

00:18:47.020 | I'm more and more delighted at the fact

00:18:50.980 | that this is not just accessible in one domain,

00:18:53.560 | but is accessible in many, many different domains

00:18:56.540 | for everybody, right?

00:18:57.680 | This is not something unique to my experience,

00:18:59.260 | even though I give examples from my own life,

00:19:02.320 | but that we really all do have access to this

00:19:06.620 | if we're looking in those cupboards, those 10 cupboards,

00:19:09.700 | and asking the right questions.

00:19:11.880 | - And to maybe comment even a little further

00:19:13.900 | on the experience of you and the dog, right?

00:19:17.580 | So it was an experience of delight, right?

00:19:21.860 | And you enjoyed it and brought a sense of peace

00:19:24.980 | and contentment, like all of that happens, right?

00:19:27.700 | But think about what that's linked to,

00:19:29.220 | like I believe there's a strong sense of agency in you

00:19:32.700 | that you are enacting.

00:19:33.860 | There's a strong gratitude in you that you're enacting.

00:19:36.140 | You're handling your life in a way.

00:19:38.660 | And also for all of us,

00:19:40.380 | good things always come with good fortune,

00:19:42.060 | but it comes with our strivings and our achievements

00:19:44.820 | that you're in a place to delight in that, right?

00:19:47.260 | If you're unhappy, like, "I don't like what I'm doing.

00:19:49.620 | "I'm angry, I'm frustrated," right?

00:19:51.340 | Then there's no room in you to find the delight, right?

00:19:54.540 | And the delight that you find is also very much linked

00:19:58.640 | to the generative drive, right?

00:20:00.420 | It makes me think of how you loved and nurtured Casello,

00:20:04.140 | right, so you have it in you to love and nurture a dog,

00:20:06.960 | and you have done that in a really wonderful way,

00:20:10.060 | and that generative drive is part and parcel

00:20:12.380 | of the delight you feel when you see a dog,

00:20:15.440 | because you love dogs and you think about nurturing,

00:20:17.580 | and it all comes together.

00:20:19.060 | The agency and the gratitude expressed as verbs

00:20:23.660 | puts you in a position to have that sense of delight,

00:20:26.100 | which is so intertwined with your generative drive,

00:20:29.180 | with a sense of caretaking,

00:20:30.420 | a sense of creating the beyond self,

00:20:33.520 | because although you enjoyed and loved Casello,

00:20:35.760 | you enjoyed and loved his happiness, right?

00:20:38.260 | So it all comes together, and I think it's interesting

00:20:41.260 | because in some ways it's a simple example,

00:20:43.300 | but like, that's life.

00:20:44.380 | You know, life has its big moments,

00:20:46.920 | but so much of our lives are the smaller moments

00:20:49.740 | that link together, and I think that smaller moment

00:20:52.700 | becomes a big example.

00:20:54.140 | - Well, I appreciate that you mentioned Casello.

00:20:57.140 | For listeners of this podcast

00:20:58.700 | that have tuned into early episodes,

00:21:00.740 | Casello was the source of the background snoring.

00:21:03.380 | For those of you that haven't, you can go check.

00:21:04.840 | He was a 90-pound English Bulldog Mastiff

00:21:07.700 | who had many skills, the best of which was snoring.

00:21:12.040 | [laughing]

00:21:14.320 | So in addition to the generative drive,

00:21:16.140 | which is something that we certainly want

00:21:17.700 | to talk more about today, you mentioned these other drives,

00:21:21.700 | aggressive drives and pleasure drives,

00:21:24.220 | and much of what we're talking about today

00:21:26.180 | is going to be where people can go wrong

00:21:29.100 | or where people struggle.

00:21:30.840 | We are also, of course, going to go deeply

00:21:33.460 | into where people succeed, and in particular,

00:21:36.820 | where people can ask questions of themselves,

00:21:39.420 | in particular, what is working for them and why

00:21:45.020 | as a route to understanding how to sift

00:21:47.500 | through those cupboards and understand what's not working

00:21:51.060 | and why and come up with real actionable answers

00:21:54.580 | and then the ability to move forward.

00:21:57.140 | So if you would, could you tell us a little bit more

00:22:00.340 | about drives generally?

00:22:02.540 | Like, you know, when I hear drives,

00:22:04.480 | I can't help as a neuroscientist, but default to,

00:22:07.000 | okay, the dopamine circuit or the endogenous opioid circuit

00:22:11.520 | or the serotonergic circuit, but, you know,

00:22:14.620 | how do you conceptualize drives within us?

00:22:17.660 | And then perhaps you could tell us

00:22:20.500 | what the nature of aggressive drives

00:22:22.920 | and pleasure drives and generative drives.

00:22:26.580 | - So the concept of a drive, the definition of a drive

00:22:30.020 | is something that's intrinsic to humans.

00:22:33.500 | So we could look at it as a motivation, right?

00:22:37.100 | I mean, we don't just lie on the ground

00:22:40.700 | and do nothing until we passively die, right?

00:22:44.660 | So something is going on inside of us that is driving us

00:22:48.740 | to do something other than that.

00:22:51.260 | And historically, the thinking in the field arising

00:22:54.260 | from early psychodynamic principles,

00:22:56.660 | the theory in the field that has really dominated the field

00:23:00.980 | either directly or indirectly in so many ways

00:23:03.760 | has been that there are two drives within us,

00:23:06.820 | that there's aggression and pleasure.

00:23:10.140 | And again, these are just words, right?

00:23:12.140 | So we could apply many, many words,

00:23:14.020 | which is why, of course, we wanna define

00:23:15.340 | what that means, right?

00:23:16.820 | So aggression, even though we're using that word for it

00:23:19.460 | because the word for it is commonly used, right?

00:23:22.260 | But it means sort of forward, active engagement, right?

00:23:27.260 | So a good, healthy amount of aggression

00:23:32.380 | using that word for the drive

00:23:33.940 | would be a strong sense of agency, right?

00:23:36.540 | So too little aggression can be a problem, right?

00:23:41.020 | Then the person isn't bringing themselves to bear, right?

00:23:43.560 | So there's too little in the way of self-determination,

00:23:47.500 | forward movement, empowerment, agency, right?

00:23:50.980 | And in the same way, too much of this drive

00:23:54.580 | becomes actual aggression.

00:23:56.180 | So the idea that I want more,

00:23:58.380 | and if I can't get it in certain ways,

00:24:01.040 | I'll just take it, right?

00:24:02.340 | So it starts to become what we more map

00:24:06.460 | to the word aggression,

00:24:07.460 | which would be something negative in most cases.

00:24:10.620 | - Like a desire or a tendency to harm.

00:24:14.020 | - Sure, as aggressive drives get higher,

00:24:16.640 | which you see why they're in us

00:24:18.280 | because let's say we're defending ourselves

00:24:20.600 | or you're defending a family member, right?

00:24:23.100 | Or like an entire family, right?

00:24:25.200 | Then it makes sense to have high levels of aggression

00:24:28.500 | if your family is threatened, right?

00:24:30.120 | So those drives are in us

00:24:31.860 | with potentially those high levels for a reason,

00:24:35.280 | but we certainly access very high levels of aggression

00:24:38.740 | without the indication of preservation of life

00:24:41.980 | or preservation of safety.

00:24:44.220 | So the thought is that's a drive in us

00:24:48.020 | and that gets us up and off the ground, so to speak, right?

00:24:51.320 | And that the other drive then is pleasure,

00:24:54.020 | which again, doesn't just mean

00:24:56.080 | that we all wanna be hedonists, right?

00:24:58.800 | So pleasure could be even the pleasure

00:25:01.300 | of relief and safety, right?

00:25:03.660 | Like we're all back in the cave together

00:25:06.020 | and we roll the stone in front of the door.

00:25:08.140 | Ah, we're safe.

00:25:09.660 | Throughout human development,

00:25:11.600 | pleasure comes in a lot of ways.

00:25:13.140 | It can come through the pleasure of food or other people,

00:25:17.020 | friendship, romance, sex.

00:25:18.500 | There are a lot of ways we can achieve pleasure.

00:25:20.940 | It can be relief of things that are unpleasant,

00:25:23.660 | relief of pain, but there's a drive towards this in humans,

00:25:27.540 | which again, really does make sense.

00:25:29.840 | And too little of it, again, can be problematic

00:25:32.620 | 'cause the person then isn't motivated to sort of seek things

00:25:36.160 | because they're not anticipating or don't receive

00:25:38.560 | gratification and too much of a drive for pleasure

00:25:41.900 | can also create problems.

00:25:44.400 | So we can kind of see how these two drives,

00:25:48.080 | like, okay, they get us up and off the ground, so to speak.

00:25:51.580 | But the question is, do they explain everything, right?

00:25:54.400 | And it's a very important question

00:25:56.280 | because if they explain everything,

00:25:59.040 | then there's not really, there's not room

00:26:04.280 | for behaviors and choices that are beyond the self, right?

00:26:09.280 | There's not an explanation for the person who,

00:26:12.460 | I'll give you an example of a person I've taken care of

00:26:16.820 | who's just a very strong swimmer,

00:26:19.740 | knows how to swim, has swam throughout his life,

00:26:22.040 | who was in a place, I saw video of it,

00:26:24.480 | where there'd been a hurricane

00:26:25.940 | and the waves were so frightening.

00:26:29.180 | They were just huge, this huge surf.

00:26:31.220 | And there were people who had gotten dragged out

00:26:35.360 | and you just see him, he runs into the water, right?

00:26:39.740 | He runs in and he goes and he was really at risk.

00:26:43.060 | He needed to be saved himself, but he saved them.

00:26:46.200 | And I do not believe you can explain that

00:26:49.940 | through these drives.

00:26:51.060 | I don't think you can say, well, he was aggressive.

00:26:52.940 | He wanted to go and do something

00:26:54.840 | that was imposing himself on the world,

00:26:56.480 | or he got pleasure in thinking,

00:26:58.880 | ah, I'm strong enough to go do this.

00:27:00.560 | I mean, I think we're really gyrating,

00:27:03.700 | we're contorting ourselves, right?

00:27:05.060 | In order to explain it that way.

00:27:07.220 | If we think there's a goodness in that man's heart,

00:27:09.740 | like I know there's a goodness in that man's heart,

00:27:11.200 | I know him, right?

00:27:12.040 | And that goodness sees him in the moment

00:27:14.860 | and he knows that maybe he can save them.

00:27:18.640 | Maybe he can't, he's not sure, but maybe he can.

00:27:21.100 | So the next thing you know, he's in the water.

00:27:22.980 | And I think things like the love and nurturing

00:27:24.980 | of other people, of children,

00:27:27.740 | love and nurturing of animals, of plants, right?

00:27:30.060 | Like there are things inside of us

00:27:31.460 | that we can't explain with those two drives.

00:27:33.760 | And I think they have led to a very sort of darker way

00:27:37.880 | of just conceiving of humans.

00:27:39.520 | You know, I think it's a reason why now, you know,

00:27:43.380 | you look at us in the modern day and age,

00:27:45.520 | we come at humans through the lens of pathology, right?

00:27:48.220 | I mean, there's a very, very thick book

00:27:50.360 | that if a person is assessing another person,

00:27:53.780 | you know, is thinking about like,

00:27:54.820 | okay, what numbers in that book apply, right?

00:27:57.420 | Which is like, that's not the way to go

00:27:59.080 | about understanding humans.

00:28:01.040 | And I think if we just think there are those two drives,

00:28:03.600 | we're not doing justice to humans, right?

00:28:05.660 | One, I think it's not true.

00:28:06.980 | I think it's evident that it's not true.

00:28:09.060 | And then if we're framing it in a way that's not true,

00:28:11.840 | we are not appropriately respectful of humans.

00:28:14.780 | And if we come from what I believe to be the truth,

00:28:18.560 | that there is a generative drive in us,

00:28:20.780 | a drive for the beyond self,

00:28:23.620 | a drive to make things better,

00:28:25.580 | whether it has anything really directly to do with me

00:28:27.740 | or not, and as with the other drives,

00:28:30.020 | you know, there can be more or less in people,

00:28:31.980 | you know, combination of nature and nurture.

00:28:34.020 | You know, what genetically is in us,

00:28:36.500 | a predisposition, you know,

00:28:37.640 | based upon the genetic lineage that comes down to us

00:28:40.180 | and the recombination.

00:28:41.260 | And now we're a unique person with a unique set of drives,

00:28:44.080 | but they are impacted by the genetics.

00:28:46.860 | And then they're impacted by life experience,

00:28:49.380 | a more strongly formative life experience, right?

00:28:52.660 | So the younger the person,

00:28:53.660 | the sort of deeper the impact of events,

00:28:56.340 | they have nurturing versus abuse, right?

00:28:58.620 | On the array, on the relative weighting of drives

00:29:02.800 | within people.

00:29:03.720 | But ultimately we get to these three drives

00:29:07.900 | and how they're functioning in a person

00:29:10.740 | being a way of understanding and assessing

00:29:13.540 | like how healthy or not healthy the person is.

00:29:17.660 | And then we look back to those 10 cupboards, right?

00:29:22.580 | For the answers, if we're finding things that we don't like,

00:29:24.860 | those drives are out of balance

00:29:26.300 | and here are the problems they're causing.

00:29:28.540 | So very, very concrete issues, right?

00:29:30.900 | Of problems in people's lives.

00:29:32.880 | We can look and see where is that out of balance?

00:29:36.260 | And if it's out of balance,

00:29:37.500 | there's something in those pillars

00:29:39.460 | that are not in the right place.

00:29:41.060 | We can then go back and look in all those cupboards

00:29:43.160 | for like, oh, where do we dig to find the answer, right?

00:29:45.560 | We learn things, we bring things more into balance, right?

00:29:49.200 | So the pillars are in a healthier place.

00:29:51.260 | And then what sits on top of it

00:29:53.180 | is you use the word geyser, right?

00:29:54.580 | The geyser that then comes up

00:29:55.860 | and floats everything on top of it

00:29:57.540 | can do that in a healthy way.

00:30:00.820 | - Yeah, during episode one,

00:30:02.260 | we touched on some of the similarities

00:30:04.120 | between understanding the self

00:30:05.740 | and building towards a healthy or healthiest version of self

00:30:10.740 | where agency and gratitude

00:30:12.220 | are these states that are being expressed.

00:30:14.820 | And one of the themes there was this idea,

00:30:18.480 | people perhaps want to be healthy

00:30:21.940 | so that they live a long time,

00:30:23.300 | but presumably they also want to be healthy

00:30:25.040 | so that they can walk up flights of stairs,

00:30:27.380 | pick up their kids, move objects, not get injured,

00:30:30.380 | perhaps even do sport.

00:30:31.980 | And of course, some people want to be healthy

00:30:35.200 | for aesthetic reasons as well.

00:30:37.220 | And if we were having a discussion about physical health,

00:30:39.700 | we could address the major pillars there,

00:30:43.060 | which were items within the cupboard.

00:30:45.220 | Most people want some ability to have endurance or stamina

00:30:50.540 | to walk some distance or maybe even run some distance.

00:30:53.380 | As I mentioned before, walk up a flight of stairs,

00:30:54.900 | have some strength, some degree of flexibility,

00:30:57.360 | certainly some mobility,

00:30:59.060 | maybe even dynamic mobility, et cetera.

00:31:01.360 | And in order to address those or improve upon those,

00:31:04.500 | they could look in those covers and say,

00:31:06.180 | well, how much running, swimming,

00:31:09.380 | long form cardiovascular exercise am I doing per week?

00:31:12.180 | How many steps am I taking per day?

00:31:14.300 | How many times a week do I lift objects

00:31:16.000 | that are slightly heavier

00:31:17.620 | than is comfortable for me to lift, et cetera?

00:31:19.580 | It's very tangible, very concrete.

00:31:22.340 | Here, you're making the psyche and the self

00:31:25.980 | and mental health very much concrete

00:31:29.740 | in some of the same way,

00:31:30.900 | saying there are 10 cupboards that one can look in.

00:31:33.260 | And these drives, as you refer to them as generative drive,

00:31:36.780 | aggressive drive, and pleasure drive,

00:31:38.620 | you'll probably tell us in a few minutes,

00:31:41.740 | can be expressed to varying degrees in different people

00:31:44.940 | and how that shows up and what that looks like.

00:31:47.340 | And I just want to frame this in people's minds

00:31:49.140 | as very similar to addressing whether or not,

00:31:51.780 | okay, if somebody can run very long distances,

00:31:54.020 | but they're always having aches and pains

00:31:57.680 | or they feel weak or they are weak.

00:32:01.340 | There are good reasons for that.

00:32:02.540 | They're overemphasizing one form of exercise.

00:32:05.500 | The expression is more along the lines

00:32:06.880 | of endurance and stamina, not strength or vice versa.

00:32:10.700 | The power lifter who can lift 750 pounds from the floor

00:32:14.480 | in a deadlift, but walks up two flights of stairs

00:32:17.560 | and is belly breathing and has to stop

00:32:19.820 | at the top of the stairs.

00:32:21.700 | It's obvious in the physical realm.

00:32:23.440 | It's slightly more cryptic or more cryptic

00:32:27.240 | in the psychological realm,

00:32:28.940 | but here it's becoming concrete for us.

00:32:30.600 | So I think it's very interesting and very ironic, right?

00:32:34.920 | So the field that I'm in, the field of psychiatry

00:32:37.700 | has historically wanted to be sort of part

00:32:41.600 | of the rest of medicine or like the rest of medicine.

00:32:44.160 | And what I believe it's ended up doing

00:32:46.660 | is glorifying a taxonomy, right?

00:32:49.220 | Glorifying a category, a mechanism

00:32:52.540 | of understanding human beings.

00:32:54.300 | So in the way that if, okay,

00:32:57.100 | if I'm practicing general medicine

00:32:59.180 | and you come in and you're congested

00:33:01.340 | and I determine like, oh, you have bacterial sinusitis,

00:33:06.060 | right, so now I've made a diagnosis

00:33:09.380 | and now I know what I'm gonna do about that, right?

00:33:12.140 | So the, okay, I'm gonna prescribe an antibiotic.

00:33:14.200 | Now, the thought comes in of like what antibiotic, right?

00:33:17.360 | But the identify sinusitis, now you need an antibiotic

00:33:20.620 | is like kind of how medicine works, right?

00:33:22.840 | So the thought was psychiatry

00:33:24.640 | is gonna categorize everything, right?

00:33:27.040 | So we'd say, okay, I've listened to you.

00:33:28.680 | Like, ah, I know your number or your numbers, right?

00:33:31.460 | And then once I've given you the numbers,

00:33:33.380 | now I know what to do.

00:33:34.320 | I prescribe this medicine, that medicine,

00:33:36.220 | these many sessions of a certain kind of psychotherapy.

00:33:39.240 | And like, that doesn't work, right?

00:33:41.660 | It doesn't work in mental health.

00:33:43.020 | It may, I mean, it's not that it never works,

00:33:46.040 | but if you're gonna try and understand people,

00:33:48.700 | like it's different, the problem of self,

00:33:50.980 | like if I have a lack of confidence in one area of life

00:33:54.620 | and not in others, right, that's a significant issue.

00:33:57.900 | It is not like bacterial sinusitis where then, you know,

00:34:01.560 | okay, arrow goes to prescribe antibiotic.

00:34:04.420 | And I think what is ironic is that this route of approach,

00:34:11.860 | right, actually does bring psychiatry or mental health

00:34:16.660 | into line with the rest of medicine, right,

00:34:20.080 | which is why you can make that parallel.

00:34:22.700 | And, you know, it fits well, right,

00:34:23.980 | when you're making the parallel to physical health

00:34:25.800 | and to, I wanna be healthy.

00:34:27.340 | Okay, what are the components of that?

00:34:28.820 | What am I doing to achieve that?

00:34:30.500 | If something's not the way I want,

00:34:31.760 | let me go back and look at those components.

00:34:33.900 | I mean, it may be, because it's more tangible,

00:34:36.600 | it's sort of essentially easier to comprehend, right?

00:34:40.340 | 'Cause it's more concrete.

00:34:42.160 | But I don't, in a sense, see it as cryptic,

00:34:45.600 | just less obvious, right?

00:34:46.940 | But if we go and we look at it and we say,

00:34:49.220 | oh, like that really makes sense, right?

00:34:52.000 | And in a sense, it makes sense that it makes sense, right?

00:34:55.980 | If there's a mechanism of understanding

00:34:57.860 | that applies to lots and lots of things

00:34:59.660 | that are more concrete,

00:35:01.120 | why would a similar kind of mechanism,

00:35:03.420 | like understand what the components are,

00:35:04.960 | understand what's built on top of them.

00:35:06.940 | Like this, I believe, is how psychiatry

00:35:10.640 | actually fits with the rest of medicine,

00:35:12.540 | not by glorifying a taxonomy,

00:35:14.700 | but by coming through the lens of understanding.

00:35:19.020 | - Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

00:35:20.240 | And I think that what's so reassuring

00:35:23.940 | is that both in terms of creating physical health

00:35:28.500 | across the various domains of heart health, lung health,

00:35:31.780 | endurance, strength, et cetera, cognitive health,

00:35:35.180 | as well as mental health is verbs.

00:35:38.140 | It comes back to action items

00:35:39.780 | that we each and all should engage in

00:35:42.080 | in order to arrive at the states and ways of being

00:35:45.900 | that we all want to be in, right?

00:35:47.300 | We want to feel healthy, look healthy, et cetera.

00:35:49.880 | We want to be happy, right?

00:35:52.460 | I know very few people who don't want to be happy.

00:35:54.940 | I mean, certainly there are people who give up,

00:35:56.660 | but we'll talk about that today and routes out of that.

00:36:00.060 | But at the end of the day,

00:36:01.420 | it's all about looking in those bins,

00:36:04.180 | asking specific questions,

00:36:05.420 | and then moving forward in specific actions

00:36:08.500 | to get to the place of empowerment, humility,

00:36:11.740 | agency, gratitude, peace, contentment, delight, et cetera,

00:36:15.340 | as opposed to simply using words and understanding

00:36:20.320 | to arrive at insight and then stopping there

00:36:22.700 | and expecting everything to change.

00:36:24.340 | And I think that's where a lot of people are confused

00:36:26.260 | about psychology, therapy, and psychiatry.

00:36:28.880 | And as you mentioned, psychiatry has its own shadow

00:36:32.720 | if you will, within it, where the use of drugs,

00:36:37.720 | which certainly can be very useful, even life-saving,

00:36:41.480 | oftentimes is seen as a fix-all

00:36:45.080 | that somehow could reorder everything within the cupboards

00:36:48.680 | and make the recipe just right.

00:36:50.140 | When in fact, as we'll talk about today,

00:36:51.680 | that is generally not the best route.

00:36:55.320 | But again, with the understanding

00:36:56.640 | that drugs can be very powerful tools.

00:36:58.840 | - They can play a role, right?

00:36:59.920 | - But it's important we understand what role is appropriate

00:37:03.040 | for them, and that's where we often go astray.

00:37:06.180 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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00:38:32.660 | So as we move forward here in defining

00:38:36.000 | and helping people gain, for lack of a better word,

00:38:40.380 | agency over their own mental health and self-understanding,

00:38:43.920 | and defining for them what action items to take,

00:38:47.120 | you know, I'd like to ask you about some of the things

00:38:49.840 | that I observe in the world and hear a lot about,

00:38:53.240 | in particular from the audience of this podcast.

00:38:55.960 | You know, it's obvious to me that people vary

00:38:59.600 | in terms of their level of aggressive drive,

00:39:02.320 | pleasure drive, and presumably generative drive as well.

00:39:06.100 | One common question is, how do I become more motivated?

00:39:12.860 | Right, you know, and of course,

00:39:15.720 | that opens up a bunch of other questions,

00:39:17.240 | like are people afraid of failure,

00:39:19.760 | and that's why they're not motivated,

00:39:22.040 | are people afraid of success?

00:39:23.800 | Is that why they're not motivated?

00:39:24.960 | Is there some underlying childhood trauma

00:39:26.920 | or unconscious process that's driving that fear and so on?

00:39:31.720 | But if we were to take the psychiatrist perspective,

00:39:34.760 | your perspective, if someone comes to you and says,

00:39:37.560 | you know, I just don't really feel like trying.

00:39:42.420 | It's, you know, school's hard,

00:39:44.600 | school loans are, you know, are excessive,

00:39:47.320 | which is true, by the way, you know,

00:39:49.640 | it's not even clear that with a degree I can do much,

00:39:52.040 | you know, or I had a series of failures in the work domain

00:39:55.720 | or in the relationship domain,

00:39:57.000 | and they're just feeling weighed down

00:40:00.000 | as if it's not worth trying, you know,

00:40:03.280 | what does that tell you in terms of where to look?

00:40:06.240 | And what does that tell you in terms of their drives?

00:40:08.200 | I mean, do we conclude something

00:40:09.480 | about their innate level of aggressive drive

00:40:11.640 | or their pleasure drive or their generative drive?

00:40:15.080 | I mean, I think there are many such people out there,

00:40:17.880 | and then we'll consider some other kind

00:40:19.760 | of phenotypic examples.

00:40:21.560 | - Right, so it's a great example

00:40:23.160 | because sort of any good clinician, right,

00:40:27.400 | could hear that story and then have thoughts about it,

00:40:30.920 | right, that could and would hopefully be helpful, right,

00:40:35.320 | without necessarily referring to drives, right?

00:40:38.880 | So I think you can anchor any set of assessments,

00:40:43.720 | any evaluation, any attempted understanding to drives, right?

00:40:47.600 | But it doesn't have to be that way.

00:40:49.200 | So for example, you might ask that person more questions

00:40:53.360 | about what they're doing, how they spend their time,

00:40:56.500 | because you're telling me about someone

00:40:58.560 | who's not getting enjoyment or gratification

00:41:01.600 | out of anything, right?

00:41:03.160 | And that then becomes of interest to me, right?

00:41:06.680 | Is there something this person does enjoy, right,

00:41:10.060 | or something they'd rather be doing?

00:41:11.260 | Like, did they go to college and take on a bunch of loans

00:41:15.040 | because they thought that was better,

00:41:16.840 | because they thought they were gonna do something

00:41:19.040 | that now they actually don't wanna do, right?

00:41:21.560 | Or that opportunity isn't there and now they're frustrated.

00:41:24.060 | Like, what is inside this person

00:41:26.480 | that might seem different than that?

00:41:28.840 | And again, the answers could be complicated.

00:41:30.760 | It could be maybe that person enjoys what they're doing,

00:41:33.840 | but the cost of living where they are is so high

00:41:36.940 | that they still feel miserable.

00:41:38.280 | There's a sense of privation.

00:41:39.840 | And then that gets back mapped to like,

00:41:41.960 | I'm not getting any pleasure out of anything, right?

00:41:44.080 | So the answer could be as simple

00:41:45.420 | as you strategize with the person of,

00:41:47.900 | for example, does a person like that move,

00:41:49.820 | move to a different area?

00:41:50.780 | So there's so many ways of looking at this

00:41:53.380 | and so many ways of understanding this,

00:41:55.600 | but you're describing someone to me

00:41:57.920 | who is kind of really complaining

00:42:01.080 | that nothing is feeling good, right?

00:42:03.100 | Nothing's providing a sense of enjoyment or of pleasure,

00:42:07.660 | right?

00:42:08.500 | So I would probably be interested in that first

00:42:10.340 | and think maybe the pleasure drive

00:42:12.800 | is higher than what's being fulfilled, right?

00:42:15.960 | Maybe the pleasure drive is low

00:42:18.620 | and that's an issue in and of itself,

00:42:20.120 | but we sort of learn those things, right?

00:42:21.980 | Maybe the aggressive drive is low

00:42:24.300 | and if that person just put a little more energy into it,

00:42:27.960 | right, like they could be in a different place, right?

00:42:30.300 | So you try and help the person understand themselves

00:42:33.580 | so that you can make change.

00:42:35.380 | And again, that understanding doesn't have to be anchored

00:42:38.360 | to the drives, but I do believe the drives

00:42:41.620 | are at the root of all understanding

00:42:44.040 | because if you sit with that person

00:42:45.720 | and you talk to that person,

00:42:47.360 | then you're gonna be able to understand

00:42:49.400 | what is out of balance, right?

00:42:51.700 | Either in the actual array of the drives

00:42:55.660 | or in how they're being experienced.

00:42:58.920 | Because again, if you have a high pleasure drive,

00:43:01.740 | for example, and it's not gratified, right,

00:43:04.160 | like that represents a problem, right?

00:43:06.540 | - Yeah, what about people who can experience some pleasure

00:43:10.620 | or can keep busy, say for instance,

00:43:12.880 | on social media or playing video games?

00:43:15.380 | And I should also say, perhaps it's bringing them

00:43:17.300 | to a place of peace, contentment and delight.

00:43:19.900 | But in some sense, it's not really generative, right?

00:43:23.580 | I'm not going to cast judgment and say that video games

00:43:26.160 | and social media are all a waste of time.

00:43:28.060 | I mean, I'm on social media trying to provide value

00:43:30.260 | to people and learnings and I derive value and learnings

00:43:33.900 | from other accounts as well.

00:43:36.260 | But there are these milestones, if you will, in life.

00:43:40.780 | I mean, not that everyone has to go to college

00:43:43.360 | and get married and have a family.

00:43:45.800 | I mean, there are a lot of different paths through life

00:43:47.380 | that I would consider successful.

00:43:49.820 | But in some sense, there are milestones.

00:43:53.100 | Like we want to move forward.

00:43:54.260 | There's this phenomenon nowadays of a lot of young people,

00:43:57.980 | so-called failure to launch.

00:43:59.780 | Like they're not leaving home

00:44:01.540 | or they're not finding a vocation.

00:44:03.420 | They're not feeling as if they're good at anything

00:44:06.620 | or they have the sense that unless you're going to be

00:44:09.340 | like top 1% in something, it's not worth trying.

00:44:12.260 | But they can still find what most people

00:44:15.820 | would describe as pleasures.

00:44:16.860 | Like they might enjoy food, maybe a little too much.

00:44:20.380 | They enjoy alcohol, maybe a little too much.

00:44:22.900 | They enjoy social media or video games,

00:44:25.140 | maybe a little too much.

00:44:25.980 | And I say a little too much because it's providing

00:44:28.460 | more or less a sync or a reservoir for their aggressive

00:44:33.460 | and pleasure drives that's not moving them forward

00:44:36.900 | in the standard milestones of life.

00:44:40.420 | I hear about that a lot.

00:44:42.180 | I see that a lot.

00:44:44.100 | So it's a slightly more complex phenotype

00:44:48.620 | than described before as just simply the amotivated

00:44:51.900 | or non-motivated person.

00:44:53.580 | But what do you think of the phenotype I just described?

00:44:58.580 | - Because we're unique, right?

00:45:03.020 | Each person is unique, although we fit categories, right?

00:45:05.980 | So there are categories a person there could fit

00:45:08.820 | that could be different from what I'm saying, right?

00:45:11.500 | But I think most people just say on balance, right?

00:45:15.300 | What is most prominent, right?

00:45:17.700 | I think what is most prominent in that situation

00:45:20.900 | is there's something out of balance

00:45:24.260 | in the generative drive, right?

00:45:25.660 | And what you see a lot of times

00:45:27.420 | is the person has a generative drive in them

00:45:31.020 | that's higher than their ability to realize that drive.

00:45:35.100 | The generative drive then is frustrated.

00:45:37.180 | So I'll give an example, and this is a real true story

00:45:40.340 | of a person who had worked very, very hard,

00:45:42.540 | gone to school for a long time,

00:45:44.060 | and it achieved a very high-paying job.

00:45:46.180 | And that was the goal, right?

00:45:47.660 | It's a prestigious job, it's a high-paying job.

00:45:50.220 | And the person for a while was doing quite well at it.

00:45:54.460 | And things went relatively rapidly in a negative direction.

00:45:59.460 | So maybe for a little while the person's doing okay.

00:46:03.020 | Then the person becomes very negligent of themselves

00:46:06.340 | and their environment when they're not at the job.

00:46:09.220 | So the house is a mess, things are dirty,

00:46:12.540 | the person is wasting time with things.

00:46:14.420 | So this is a person who enjoys,

00:46:16.460 | it wasn't exactly video games, right?

00:46:18.820 | Let's say it could have been, right?

00:46:20.340 | Well, enjoys them to a certain degree

00:46:22.940 | and can really gain pleasure

00:46:24.260 | and feel good about the time spent, right?

00:46:27.020 | But starts spending too much time, right?

00:46:28.860 | Now what was pleasurable

00:46:30.860 | starts becoming a distraction mechanism, right?

00:46:34.140 | And then what that transitioned to

00:46:35.980 | was overuse of alcohol, right?

00:46:37.820 | So now you have either something that is actually destructive

00:46:42.020 | and was negative to job performance, right?

00:46:44.220 | Towards the person,

00:46:45.260 | this wasn't a person who was drinking a lot before,

00:46:47.580 | and this is a person who was miserable

00:46:49.700 | when they were drinking,

00:46:50.740 | or they were sort of wasting their time, right?

00:46:53.260 | And were aware of all of this.

00:46:54.780 | Well, there's a very clear problem,

00:46:58.140 | which is that that person had no interest

00:47:02.380 | in what they were doing, none whatsoever.

00:47:05.980 | It felt like the majority of waking hours

00:47:08.460 | were spent in an automaton-like way,

00:47:12.340 | but being awake and aware of the tedium of it,

00:47:15.700 | the frustration of it.

00:47:17.780 | - The professional side.

00:47:18.780 | So they essentially had very little intrinsic curiosity

00:47:23.140 | or desire to do the job that they were successfully doing.

00:47:26.020 | - Right, which comes out only after exploration,

00:47:28.420 | because it seems like,

00:47:29.260 | well, what's going on with this person?

00:47:30.700 | This person has a good job

00:47:31.740 | and their life was going really, really well,

00:47:33.540 | and they're doing well financially.

00:47:35.300 | And is this person trying to now overly indulge themselves?

00:47:40.300 | Like, is that why they're drinking?

00:47:41.780 | What's going on, right?

00:47:42.940 | And what you feel is that this person

00:47:44.660 | had a strong generative drive.

00:47:46.540 | And it wasn't met one little bit by what he was doing,

00:47:50.780 | which was creating such frustration inside

00:47:53.980 | that the person was either taking himself online

00:47:56.020 | or doing something that was punitive and self injurious.

00:47:58.860 | And like, this is a real story.

00:48:00.220 | The person exchanged that job for a job

00:48:04.100 | that paid a 10th of what the job they had paid.

00:48:09.020 | And the change in the person's life was amazing.

00:48:11.900 | Like, I didn't know this guy could smile, right?

00:48:14.300 | He became happy.

00:48:15.140 | He loved what he was doing.

00:48:16.700 | He sold the larger house, bought a smaller house,

00:48:19.140 | kept it beautifully.

00:48:20.140 | Like, he was happy, right?

00:48:22.060 | That's what he needed to be happy,

00:48:23.900 | because then the generative drive in him,

00:48:26.140 | he loved what he was doing, right?

00:48:27.420 | Gets enacted, it gets expressed.

00:48:29.460 | And then other things can come then into line, right?

00:48:32.780 | He's not being over-aggressive towards himself

00:48:34.940 | and drinking too much, you know,

00:48:36.700 | because he's saying, oh, to hell with you,

00:48:38.300 | to the world around him and to himself, right?

00:48:40.860 | He's not taking something that serves a purpose in his life.

00:48:44.260 | Like again, if the example had been video games,

00:48:46.140 | it would be like, yeah, great.

00:48:47.260 | You enjoy doing that X amount of time

00:48:50.140 | and like go do that and get gratification from it,

00:48:52.500 | as opposed to then over-relying on it.

00:48:54.540 | And then it's not providing gratification.

00:48:56.460 | It becomes a distraction.

00:48:57.500 | So those things came back into balance in his life,

00:49:01.700 | but there had to be the understanding.

00:49:03.140 | And I think there's a lot of that in people

00:49:04.740 | who have a generative drive in them

00:49:06.340 | that they feel is frustrated by a world around them

00:49:09.860 | that isn't cooperating.

00:49:11.300 | Now, do I think we can understand that and change that

00:49:14.140 | in the vast majority of people who are in that place?

00:49:17.020 | Yes, but it has to be looked at first, right?

00:49:19.660 | 'Cause when it's not always that,

00:49:21.060 | it's just that a lot of the time, right?

00:49:23.460 | So it has to be understood, what is it in that person?

00:49:26.380 | And then how do you go back to those pillars

00:49:28.580 | and look at what's going on that the person is in that place

00:49:31.940 | because the world can bring us a lot of difficulties, right?

00:49:35.260 | And that person who now is saddled with a lot more loans

00:49:38.120 | than they expect.

00:49:38.960 | Like I have tremendous compassion for that

00:49:41.620 | and sympathy for that, like that's real, right?

00:49:44.180 | So people can be up against a lot of things

00:49:46.300 | and that's just one of them, right?

00:49:47.780 | But it doesn't mean that life can't be okay, right?

00:49:51.360 | It doesn't mean that.

00:49:52.700 | But the person has to feel that there's some way,

00:49:55.940 | they have to understand enough about themselves

00:49:59.100 | is okay, this is what this is.

00:50:00.460 | And I kind of see what this is and why and how I'm here.

00:50:03.740 | And from there, I can start to plot a route

00:50:06.460 | to something that is better because yes,

00:50:09.160 | we have our difficulties and we can have a lot of them, right?

00:50:11.720 | But for the vast majority of us,

00:50:14.160 | it's not like they're not surmountable.

00:50:16.300 | We have to just understand them.

00:50:18.280 | And let's say if that person goes and says,

00:50:20.280 | I'm gonna get some help.

00:50:21.600 | And they go and someone says, okay, right,

00:50:23.480 | you get 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy.

00:50:25.800 | And you're trying like, how can that person

00:50:27.400 | think differently than they'll feel differently?

00:50:29.120 | Look, cognitive behavioral therapy has its place, right?

00:50:32.340 | But it's not gonna solve that, right?

00:50:34.760 | Like that person needs to understand something

00:50:36.280 | about themselves, not redirect their thoughts

00:50:38.200 | to better places, right?

00:50:39.680 | So if the person gets a reflex,

00:50:41.960 | because that reflex works well for the system, right?

00:50:45.000 | It reflex works well for the system

00:50:46.700 | that's treating that person, for the medical system,

00:50:48.680 | the insurance system, that person isn't helped one bit,

00:50:51.960 | right?

00:50:52.800 | And maybe a medicine can help, right?

00:50:54.840 | Maybe a medicine helps to just take down the anxiety

00:50:57.520 | and the tension in the person.

00:50:58.660 | Then the person can sort of think more about it.

00:51:00.720 | And truly, medicine did help this person

00:51:02.660 | because the idea of leaving the job,

00:51:04.960 | I'm leaving the prestige, I'm leaving the money,

00:51:06.680 | is that okay to do?

00:51:07.500 | Like it generated a lot of anxiety

00:51:09.140 | and it helped to kind of bring the temperature down

00:51:11.180 | a little bit of that so that he could think about it,

00:51:13.640 | engage in therapy, ultimately navigate

00:51:15.560 | to where he wanted to be.

00:51:16.800 | Then we could back away from the medicine.

00:51:18.300 | So like medicine has a role, but if he just got medicine,

00:51:22.420 | I mean, what are the odds of that helping?

00:51:25.520 | Like zero, right?

00:51:26.600 | 'Cause it's not gonna make the answers

00:51:28.680 | unless somehow the person feels a little bit better

00:51:30.680 | and figures it out on their own.

00:51:32.440 | I mean, it's not how it works, right?

00:51:33.660 | So medicine has its place, but a kind of therapy

00:51:38.660 | that recognizes the limitations of medicine

00:51:40.880 | in most situations and is designed

00:51:43.240 | to really help the person understand,

00:51:44.880 | like that's what we need.

00:51:46.940 | - Well, the example you gave is a spectacular one

00:51:49.400 | because as you mentioned, medication had its place,

00:51:52.560 | perhaps even redirection of thought in some sense

00:51:56.040 | had its place because as I recall,

00:51:58.280 | under the pillar of function of self,

00:52:00.660 | one of the key items is salience,

00:52:04.720 | what we pay attention to internally or externally,

00:52:06.800 | what our internal narratives are.

00:52:08.600 | But in staying with the example of this individual,

00:52:11.520 | again, as a phenotypic example for everybody

00:52:15.280 | to learn something from,

00:52:16.880 | the asking of better questions about oneself

00:52:22.760 | is really what leads to the understanding.

00:52:26.200 | So like better forms of inquiry, right?

00:52:29.080 | To me, these are the better forms of inquiry,

00:52:33.060 | better questions are really the cardiovascular exercise,

00:52:37.440 | the strength training, the flexibility training,

00:52:40.280 | the mobility training, coordination training

00:52:42.960 | of physical health just translate to mental health, right?

00:52:47.900 | - It's so interesting, right?

00:52:48.920 | Because think about it in the example I gave,

00:52:51.640 | both the therapy part through the system, right?

00:52:54.980 | The CBT has a place, right?

00:52:57.680 | And the medicine part also had a place.

00:53:00.280 | So both of those things have their role,

00:53:02.440 | but if we build the whole story of like,

00:53:05.200 | this is what this is and this is how you're going to be

00:53:06.800 | helped around those things,

00:53:08.840 | we don't help that person at all.

00:53:10.640 | In fact, we ultimately, if you take on balance,

00:53:13.320 | you take all comers, we end up doing harm.

00:53:15.680 | - Well, in some ways, if we stay with the analogy

00:53:18.600 | of physical health, it would be like the person

00:53:20.360 | who wants to get in shape and then they get a,

00:53:22.600 | I'm not picking on Peloton as a brand,

00:53:24.960 | but just a stationary bike and they pedal every morning

00:53:28.360 | and they lose weight, their blood pressure goes down,

00:53:30.300 | they're doing better.

00:53:31.260 | But then at some point, we know with certainty

00:53:34.480 | that if you just do the same form of exercise

00:53:36.160 | over and over again, like sooner or later,

00:53:37.400 | you're going to get overuse injury.

00:53:38.600 | So then there's like the lower back piece and another piece

00:53:40.800 | and you become out of balance, right?

00:53:42.920 | There's just, but I guess this is stealing

00:53:45.480 | from the Lance Armstrong book,

00:53:47.280 | but it's not about the bike, right?

00:53:48.920 | I mean, it's not about the bike,

00:53:50.640 | it's about the elevation of heart rate.

00:53:52.680 | It's about the whatever other healthy activities

00:53:55.520 | go along with exercising first thing in the morning

00:53:57.520 | and all the things that you're not doing

00:53:58.720 | as a consequence of exercising in the morning.

00:54:01.580 | So it seems to me that these better lines of inquiry

00:54:05.440 | as the path to better mental health,

00:54:08.680 | a better life that sit under these pillars

00:54:12.800 | of structure of self-function of self are really the key.

00:54:16.240 | - So in this example, right?

00:54:18.220 | The parallel that you made is even more dramatic, right?

00:54:21.440 | It wouldn't be the stationary bike, right?

00:54:23.960 | Because a stationary bike is achieving a lot of ends, right?

00:54:26.980 | It would be more like telling the person,

00:54:29.240 | you know, you should walk more briskly

00:54:31.260 | when you're going upstairs, right?

00:54:32.760 | Like that's a good idea,

00:54:34.800 | but that's not gonna make the change, right?

00:54:37.120 | So the idea that some CBT, some medicine makes sense,

00:54:40.660 | it's more like that, right?

00:54:42.020 | It's not that walking more briskly up the stairs

00:54:44.480 | isn't a good thing, it's that we can't build the story

00:54:48.000 | around your whole health is gonna change

00:54:50.600 | based upon that.

00:54:51.880 | And then that's a problem then if the person thinks

00:54:55.360 | just walk more briskly up the stairs and you'll be healthier

00:54:58.160 | because when it doesn't work, now they've failed, right?

00:55:01.320 | And this gets used a lot in mental health.

00:55:02.960 | That person failed this therapy, failed that medicine, right?

00:55:06.440 | And I think it's so also ironic

00:55:08.720 | because that's often what the person internalizes.

00:55:11.580 | Well, they failed because we set them up 100% for failure,

00:55:18.560 | right, because we took things that have their role,

00:55:22.280 | at least potentially have their role

00:55:23.760 | and we built the whole story around them

00:55:26.360 | because that story is convenient for the systems

00:55:31.360 | that are providing the care.

00:55:33.080 | It's convenient for the healthcare systems,

00:55:35.400 | it's convenient for the insurers.

00:55:37.260 | CBT packages very nicely and you could see how,

00:55:40.840 | you know, if you start changing thoughts

00:55:42.400 | and how they make you feel like, you know,

00:55:44.320 | you can get some movement on the surface

00:55:46.960 | even if there's no movement underneath, right?

00:55:49.120 | And again, I'm not saying CBT is bad,

00:55:51.560 | but to see it as the whole answer

00:55:54.120 | guarantees failure in so many situations.

00:55:57.040 | Same thing with the medicine.

00:55:58.300 | If you build the whole story just 'cause it's convenient

00:56:00.640 | and by and large medicines are cheaper than people, right?

00:56:04.440 | So you can prescribe medicines very reflexively.

00:56:07.160 | Psychiatrists with 15 minutes with a patient

00:56:10.640 | that they can't then see back for a couple of months,

00:56:13.180 | like how does that go well?

00:56:15.480 | The answer is it only goes well

00:56:16.960 | the way a broken clock is right a couple of times,

00:56:20.300 | you know, twice a day, right?

00:56:22.060 | I mean, look, sometimes it goes well

00:56:23.600 | where it just somehow it works out

00:56:24.840 | and that person could do a little bit of therapy

00:56:26.680 | in 15 minutes and choose the right medicines,

00:56:28.800 | but by and large, we do those things

00:56:31.200 | because they're convenient for the systems

00:56:33.280 | even though that's why like people don't get better,

00:56:36.800 | like we think they would.

00:56:38.120 | That's why they stay in systems.

00:56:39.440 | That's why they come in and out of emergency rooms.

00:56:41.680 | That's why they're not able to stop the drugs

00:56:43.520 | that end up only being stopped when the person dies.

00:56:46.760 | Like this happens all the time and we don't stop it

00:56:51.480 | because we're coming from a perspective that is so limited.

00:56:55.780 | It's not saying let's take a step back

00:56:57.480 | and look, can we really like help someone?

00:57:00.480 | Can we really help that person understand?

00:57:02.380 | Can we help that person make change?

00:57:04.380 | Which ultimately would be, of course,

00:57:06.600 | so much better for the person

00:57:08.600 | and so much better for society,

00:57:10.680 | but is also better if we just look at bottom line dollars

00:57:13.960 | and cents, right?

00:57:15.140 | Because the short-term view of it is cheaper today

00:57:18.400 | to have a psychiatrist at a 15-minute appointment

00:57:20.320 | reflexively prescribe a medicine, that is cheaper today.

00:57:23.720 | Is that cheaper across time?

00:57:25.780 | When that person is utilizing more resources

00:57:27.820 | or they're in and out of emergency rooms,

00:57:29.640 | it's so short-sighted which fits with many ways

00:57:33.120 | in how our society works, right?

00:57:35.060 | That we want gratification and we want gratification rapidly.

00:57:38.160 | That's why a person would accept that their problems

00:57:40.240 | could be changed by a medicine, right?

00:57:42.120 | We're kind of conditioned that way.

00:57:43.720 | - Well, and then of course there's the cost we don't see

00:57:46.160 | which is that person doesn't get the opportunity

00:57:48.640 | to express their generative drive

00:57:50.680 | and so the consequence of that is incalculable.

00:57:54.480 | - Right, yes.

00:57:56.120 | And if we take a step back and we look at that,

00:57:58.780 | I think that what we will see is that we have,

00:58:02.280 | it's not quite like painted ourselves into a corner,

00:58:04.960 | but it's like the idea that if there's a beautiful tapestry

00:58:07.760 | that's the size of the wall, right, that you can see that

00:58:10.680 | only standing back from it, right?

00:58:12.680 | I mean, this goes back, I think a couple thousand years,

00:58:15.540 | like this sort of thought and idea,

00:58:16.980 | but if you come up too close to it,

00:58:18.600 | then you can't see what it means anymore.

00:58:21.280 | And we're up so close to it that we're thinking,

00:58:24.380 | well, okay, how could one parameter change

00:58:26.320 | and can this person get a 15 minute visit

00:58:29.280 | sooner rather than later?

00:58:30.320 | Or how about this medicine instead of that?

00:58:31.920 | And then it's like our noses are right up

00:58:33.640 | against the tapestry and we don't see that.

00:58:36.360 | We're not doing right by individual people

00:58:40.040 | a lot of the time.

00:58:41.720 | And we're not doing right by society,

00:58:44.560 | which then if you stop and think about it,

00:58:46.200 | we're not doing right by us,

00:58:48.200 | because any one of us could be in that position.

00:58:51.620 | And many of us have been in that position

00:58:53.880 | being on the other side of things and really needing help

00:58:56.800 | and needing to understand.

00:58:57.840 | So any of us can be there.

00:58:59.860 | So if we're failing a lot of individual people

00:59:03.100 | and we're failing the society,

00:59:04.680 | it doesn't matter who we are listening to this,

00:59:07.360 | ultimately we're failing ourselves.

00:59:10.420 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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01:00:31.260 | Let's therefore talk about what does work, you know?

01:00:35.120 | And again, placing on the shelf

01:00:37.120 | the fact that medications can help

01:00:39.160 | and CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, can help,

01:00:41.540 | but they are just but two components

01:00:44.120 | of a much larger picture.

01:00:45.520 | The map that we described briefly

01:00:49.880 | at the beginning of today's episode,

01:00:51.440 | and that is, by the way, available as a downloadable PDF

01:00:54.580 | in the show note captions

01:00:55.800 | if people want to look at it visually,

01:00:57.420 | and that was described in a lot of detail in episode one,

01:00:59.920 | which I hope people will take the time to listen to

01:01:02.460 | because it's so rich with depth of understanding,

01:01:05.420 | and I'm certain everyone will learn

01:01:07.160 | a ton about themselves and others

01:01:09.180 | simply by listening to your words.

01:01:11.360 | I'm absolutely certain of that.

01:01:13.020 | That map provides essentially a description

01:01:17.840 | of the bins, the cupboards to look in

01:01:20.800 | to arrive at better answers,

01:01:22.360 | and even the sorts of questions that one might ask.

01:01:25.620 | If we could just talk about that

01:01:28.740 | in the context of the example that you gave

01:01:30.880 | of this person who made this really incredible choice

01:01:34.540 | to move away from this higher paying job.

01:01:36.660 | They were overindulging in certain maladaptive behaviors,

01:01:41.840 | and again, we will use this example,

01:01:43.980 | but this example is but one of an infinite number

01:01:48.200 | of examples that we could use

01:01:49.240 | of a person who's in a struggle, right?

01:01:52.080 | They're doing something that's not working for them,

01:01:54.260 | and they're also not doing things

01:01:55.880 | that they know they ought to be doing, okay?

01:01:59.160 | This is important for people to understand

01:02:01.360 | because there are gonna be people out there

01:02:03.500 | that are thinking, oh, like this poor guy,

01:02:04.840 | like he's making tons of money, poor him,

01:02:06.860 | but he was experiencing deep lack of satisfaction,

01:02:10.700 | so it could have been the reverse example,

01:02:12.380 | like the person isn't in a job

01:02:14.060 | that brings about enough wealth for them to thrive,

01:02:17.060 | 'cause there are financial realities to life.

01:02:19.300 | So it's just one example, right?

01:02:21.900 | But it's a good one, I think,

01:02:23.100 | because the person left the money, right?

01:02:25.340 | So it's like, well, what would make you leave that, right?

01:02:27.680 | And it's, well, what would make you leave that

01:02:29.080 | is if you're miserable in the situation with that

01:02:32.200 | and you're happy in the situation without it.

01:02:34.160 | - Right, so it's about leaving misery and finding happiness.

01:02:38.000 | So if you'd be willing to share with us

01:02:40.040 | a little bit of your mindset during those sessions,

01:02:44.000 | meaning the sorts of questions you asked him

01:02:45.800 | about the structure of his self

01:02:47.540 | or to reveal the structure of his self

01:02:49.140 | and the function of his self that allowed the both of you

01:02:52.280 | to eventually set him down this far better course,

01:02:56.160 | what's better than moving away from frustration

01:02:58.680 | and overindulgence and maladaptive behavior

01:03:00.660 | to deep satisfaction, peace, contentment, and delight,

01:03:03.600 | and to become a generative human being?

01:03:05.780 | - Right, so we can look in each of those 10 cabinets, right?

01:03:08.900 | So let's say we look in the unconscious mind cabinet.

01:03:11.780 | There's not much there, right?

01:03:13.360 | When the person was growing up,

01:03:14.760 | it was very clear that having more money

01:03:17.380 | and having a job that impressed people

01:03:18.900 | was an important thing.

01:03:20.580 | He internalizes some of it, so some of it's unconscious,

01:03:23.820 | but by and large, he's aware of it.

01:03:25.340 | - And then that was real to you how?

01:03:27.660 | You know, you would ask him a question about,

01:03:30.380 | you know, like, tell me about your upbringing,

01:03:32.080 | and he would say, yeah, like, you know,

01:03:33.260 | money was important to my family,

01:03:34.500 | but I always felt like we had, you know, enough.

01:03:37.020 | He wasn't super wealthy, but had enough.

01:03:38.760 | And so when you say there wasn't a lot there,

01:03:41.080 | do you mean that there was no kind of like X marks the spot

01:03:44.480 | or like blinking red light, like, whoa,

01:03:46.720 | there's something really in his unconscious mind

01:03:48.660 | that's in his way, do I have that right?

01:03:50.920 | - Well, more because it was conscious, right?

01:03:53.120 | So he was aware that it was very much like beat into him,

01:03:56.960 | right, like this is the only way to be okay, right,

01:03:59.640 | is to have a prestigious job that makes a lot of money,

01:04:02.120 | right, but he's aware of it.

01:04:04.040 | If he weren't aware of it,

01:04:05.160 | we have to bring that to light, right?

01:04:06.940 | But he was aware, he's like, look,

01:04:07.780 | it has a big impact on me.

01:04:09.560 | It makes it hard to step away.

01:04:10.680 | Like, I know I don't really care that much about the money,

01:04:13.020 | but I also kind of do, you know?

01:04:14.600 | - Sure, money, I always say money can't buy happiness,

01:04:17.560 | but it certainly can buffer certain stressors in life.

01:04:20.040 | I mean, nobody, you know,

01:04:21.960 | sometimes you hear people who have a lot of money saying

01:04:23.760 | like money can't buy happiness,

01:04:25.040 | 'cause you know, there are a lot of miserable rich people,

01:04:26.960 | but it's like, you know,

01:04:28.240 | it's very different to have two night nurses

01:04:30.600 | to take care of a baby than to be the person

01:04:32.580 | who has to stay up all night taking care of a kid,

01:04:34.560 | especially, or a single mother versus a mother

01:04:37.300 | that has a partner who's willing to pitch in, right?

01:04:40.200 | You know, you just can't compare.

01:04:42.040 | - And while that's absolutely true,

01:04:44.280 | in this case, we're just looking at money as money,

01:04:47.200 | like as an end point, right?

01:04:48.280 | The idea that no matter what, right,

01:04:50.720 | how secure and safe, like is more money better, right?

01:04:54.480 | And he had an intrinsic overvalue of that, right?

01:04:57.700 | So it made it harder to step away from it

01:04:59.640 | because he was overvaluing it.

01:05:01.800 | He knew he was overvaluing it just in and of itself,

01:05:04.660 | not even for what it gets you, right?

01:05:06.520 | But for the psychological meaning of it, right?

01:05:09.360 | Then we look at his defensive structures.

01:05:11.520 | If we look in that cupboard,

01:05:12.840 | you see that they've really shifted, right?

01:05:15.160 | They shifted from healthy places.

01:05:16.760 | Now they're sort of twisted and distorted,

01:05:19.040 | and he's doing a lot of denial, a lot of avoidance,

01:05:22.760 | a lot of rationalization, right?

01:05:25.120 | He's enacting a lot of aggression towards himself,

01:05:28.100 | and he's doing a lot of projecting, right?

01:05:31.080 | He's harming himself with the alcohol.

01:05:33.340 | He's punishing himself.

01:05:34.820 | So his defensive structure, it can be healthy.

01:05:38.000 | We know that because it was healthier, right?

01:05:40.920 | But then we see that it is so twisted.

01:05:43.080 | So we learn a lot from that, right?

01:05:44.680 | A lot is conscious in this person.

01:05:46.600 | The defensive structure can be healthy

01:05:48.420 | because it was healthy, but it's-

01:05:50.120 | - Eventually it was healthy.

01:05:51.940 | - Well, it was healthy before.

01:05:53.720 | - I see.

01:05:54.560 | - It was healthy before.

01:05:55.380 | So you know that it can be healthy again, right?

01:05:58.360 | He has it in him to have healthy defenses.

01:06:00.320 | They just started getting away from him

01:06:02.240 | as he felt less and less satisfied with his job

01:06:05.260 | and more and more angry with himself

01:06:06.860 | and more and more miserable.

01:06:08.920 | - This is a really key point for me

01:06:10.460 | and everyone else to understand.

01:06:12.560 | Throughout the years of high school and college and friends

01:06:16.240 | and things of that sort, I would hear this.

01:06:18.260 | Like, I used to be really good at fitness, or I used to,

01:06:22.800 | you know, if I had a dollar for every time someone said,

01:06:24.880 | you know, you should have seen me in high school,

01:06:26.800 | you know, like the person who lets themselves go

01:06:29.680 | and arguably is very busy with professional duties

01:06:33.120 | and family duties.

01:06:34.060 | And you can understand why their time is more compressed

01:06:37.080 | than it was when they were in high school.

01:06:38.400 | But nonetheless, you hear these sorts of things

01:06:41.680 | all the time.

01:06:42.520 | Like I used to have this sense of like, I could do things

01:06:44.980 | or that like things could work out or that,

01:06:47.880 | and then it's as if there was a previous version

01:06:50.220 | of themselves that is completely atrophied

01:06:53.140 | and the new version of themselves

01:06:54.660 | or the later version of themselves, rather,

01:06:57.100 | it just simply like doesn't have access to that anymore.

01:07:00.700 | - Right, and that's the impact of trauma.

01:07:02.320 | - Yeah, okay.

01:07:03.740 | - Whether it's big trauma or it's a big event

01:07:07.000 | or it's multiple things like,

01:07:08.760 | oh, the world, this isn't rewarding me.

01:07:10.240 | I'm trying, the world's not rewarding me.

01:07:11.500 | I'm trying, the world's not rewarding me.

01:07:13.100 | Then people become dispirited, right?

01:07:14.800 | Demoralized, right?

01:07:16.180 | So it's the trauma of that that takes away

01:07:19.700 | the sense of self, the sense of agency.

01:07:21.780 | Like I thought I could do things before.

01:07:23.260 | Now I don't think I can do things, right?

01:07:25.420 | But nothing has really changed in me.

01:07:27.740 | I mean, that's a problem, right?

01:07:29.980 | And it's a problem the vast majority of times

01:07:32.180 | it's born of trauma.

01:07:33.940 | - Does that necessarily mean early childhood trauma

01:07:37.180 | or I suppose it could be later life trauma.

01:07:40.260 | I mean, one of the things that I like

01:07:42.000 | about what you're saying so much is that, you know,

01:07:46.140 | you the psychiatrist hears,

01:07:48.820 | I used to be able to do something well or feel well.

01:07:52.620 | And that's like, it sounds like is a signal.

01:07:55.820 | It's really a beacon of health

01:07:57.420 | that still exists in the person,

01:07:59.200 | but that they're out of touch with.

01:08:00.660 | I think for most people, when they think about themselves

01:08:04.780 | or people who talk about how they used to be functional

01:08:07.860 | in some domain and they're no longer functional

01:08:09.820 | in that domain any longer,

01:08:11.140 | it sounds as if like things are fundamentally broken.

01:08:14.260 | Like is this of a piece of them that was functioning

01:08:17.580 | like drifted out of their body and left, right?

01:08:20.100 | But I love the optimism, right?

01:08:22.020 | Because I think so much of what we're interested

01:08:23.540 | in covering today is not just what's not working and why,

01:08:27.320 | but also what's working and why,

01:08:29.180 | and what used to work and why.

01:08:31.300 | And the idea that, you know, within these cupboards,

01:08:34.340 | there can be the discovery of problems.

01:08:37.720 | Clearly that's why one goes to the cupboards, right?

01:08:40.100 | As we're defining it.

01:08:41.140 | But that there are a lot of answers.

01:08:43.340 | There are the ingredients for success

01:08:46.420 | already exist within us.

01:08:48.220 | - Right, especially if we know

01:08:50.060 | we've had that ability before, right?

01:08:52.060 | Because we know that we had it before.

01:08:53.300 | So think about in this man,

01:08:55.100 | he felt that he couldn't make change.

01:08:58.260 | Like now he's stuck, right?

01:08:59.980 | Like I got a lot of things done.

01:09:01.820 | I was able to get myself into this school and achieve this

01:09:04.740 | and you know, and then get this job.

01:09:06.360 | Like he could do all of those things,

01:09:07.920 | but now he feels like he can't do anything

01:09:10.500 | to make himself happy.

01:09:12.020 | So like we know he could do that.

01:09:13.420 | He had a strong sense of agency.

01:09:15.340 | He does it now, right?

01:09:17.080 | And like people often do, they feel a sense of loss.

01:09:20.620 | Like naturally I've had this happen in myself.

01:09:22.780 | Like it feels like something's cut out of you

01:09:24.860 | and there's something hollow.

01:09:25.900 | I had that thing and now I don't, right?

01:09:28.820 | Hence the I'm broken, I'm hopeless.

01:09:30.600 | The things that we hear over and over and over again.

01:09:33.160 | So think about the shift in this person

01:09:35.400 | to like what's actually going on,

01:09:37.140 | which isn't that hard to discern.

01:09:38.620 | We just pay attention to it.

01:09:40.160 | So then if we run up the structure of self,

01:09:42.100 | we say, okay, not a lot of it is rooted

01:09:44.180 | in the unconscious mind, right?

01:09:46.460 | There are problems of overvaluing certain things,

01:09:49.840 | but they're in the conscious mind.

01:09:51.200 | - He knows like in his household over dinner,

01:09:53.600 | it was, you know, dad or mom, you know,

01:09:56.840 | being proud of some dollar amount that they had achieved.

01:09:59.920 | So that narrative exists and he's like,

01:10:02.260 | yeah, like money was a big deal in my family kind of thing.

01:10:05.000 | By the way, I'm not speaking about my family,

01:10:06.400 | but rarely were there discussions about money.

01:10:08.300 | There were discussions about other things, of course.

01:10:10.080 | But in this hypothetical.

01:10:11.560 | - And he knows-

01:10:12.400 | - Not a real patient, sorry.

01:10:13.880 | - He knows he overvalues it, right?

01:10:16.060 | He knows it independent of what money buys

01:10:17.880 | and what he needs and all that.

01:10:18.880 | He just puts too much importance in money

01:10:21.080 | and he knows that, right?

01:10:22.580 | So, okay, they're conscious mind issues.

01:10:25.000 | He's pretty aware of them

01:10:26.960 | and they're pretty kind of set in him.

01:10:28.400 | Like those are the issues and they're there.

01:10:30.160 | Okay, we learned that.

01:10:31.400 | Then we go look at his defensive structure.

01:10:33.560 | Boy, that's very, very helpful to talk about.

01:10:35.680 | Wow, like you had a very healthy defensive structure.

01:10:37.720 | What were you doing before?

01:10:38.660 | You had a lot of sublimation, right?

01:10:40.500 | - Could you explain sublimation?

01:10:41.860 | - Yeah, take anxiety, tension or something,

01:10:43.840 | something negative in the self or that could be negative

01:10:46.420 | and you channel it towards something positive, right?

01:10:48.740 | He channeled that energy towards learning, right?

01:10:51.080 | He channeled some of the aggressive drive, right?

01:10:53.080 | Into a sense of agency that got achievement.

01:10:55.380 | So, he looked and he said, right?

01:10:56.720 | Those, that network, right, of defense mechanisms

01:11:01.720 | that comes up out of the unconscious mind

01:11:03.700 | was like looking pretty good, right?

01:11:05.200 | It was pretty clear.

01:11:06.100 | Light was coming through it in a way that wasn't distorted.

01:11:10.120 | And now we can look at,

01:11:11.040 | wow, things are pretty different now, right?

01:11:14.760 | As he's saying, no, it's okay.

01:11:16.800 | Like, what do you mean?

01:11:17.680 | I spent 10 hours of my weekend utterly wasting time.

01:11:21.320 | And what's wrong with that, right?

01:11:23.040 | Or he's rationalizing even that he likes to drink

01:11:27.480 | when he doesn't because he so mattered himself.

01:11:30.100 | Like the defensive structure now is twisted, right?

01:11:33.680 | So, we can say, okay, that's a big observation, right?

01:11:37.420 | And then the character structure, when we look at that,

01:11:39.660 | we find a person who's pretty good at figuring out

01:11:43.060 | and understanding things

01:11:44.500 | and coming right up to the precipice of change,

01:11:47.200 | but has a long history of then difficulty

01:11:50.020 | making the change, right?

01:11:51.660 | I know it and I'm on the verge of it,

01:11:53.380 | but I don't, I can't bring myself to do it.

01:11:55.460 | Like that's in his character structure.

01:11:57.300 | - By the way, it's such a common thing.

01:12:00.720 | I mean, people that know better, know they know better.

01:12:04.840 | Sometimes you almost have to wonder

01:12:06.620 | whether or not it's like a medication in the pocket.

01:12:10.260 | Like they could take it if they wanted to,

01:12:12.100 | that might even give them some comfort,

01:12:14.320 | but they just don't do it.

01:12:16.100 | They just don't engage in the proper actions

01:12:18.380 | to move their life from one place to the next.

01:12:20.740 | - Right, and if we look then at the level of strivings,

01:12:23.180 | like he does know what he wants.

01:12:24.500 | Like he wants a feeling of contentment,

01:12:26.140 | it's really what he wanted,

01:12:26.980 | was a feeling of contentment,

01:12:28.520 | a feeling of like, I'm taking good care of myself.

01:12:31.980 | I'm doing something that's of value, I'm enjoying doing it.

01:12:35.100 | Like he wanted those things.

01:12:36.660 | And even when we talked more,

01:12:38.780 | he had ideas of what jobs would do that.

01:12:41.160 | In the beginning, he said he had no ideas.

01:12:43.020 | What he really meant that he said to me,

01:12:45.920 | but was also saying to himself is I have no ideas

01:12:48.620 | of jobs that would meet these requirements for me

01:12:50.880 | that pay as much as the one I have, right?

01:12:53.700 | So, but within him, which we got to,

01:12:56.360 | where he knew that there were jobs

01:12:58.860 | that would make him happy,

01:12:59.780 | he just had to get over that they were lower paying.

01:13:02.160 | So think of what we learn about that.

01:13:04.300 | There's nothing lost in this man.

01:13:05.700 | There's nothing cut out of him, but he's not damaged.

01:13:08.500 | He's not hopeless.

01:13:09.460 | And now he can understand that,

01:13:11.940 | that he understands himself actually pretty well, right?

01:13:14.180 | And his conscious mind is apprehending pretty well

01:13:17.380 | what's going on and where he wants to go.

01:13:20.060 | But boy, as he hasn't taken good care of himself,

01:13:22.700 | the defensive structure gets sort of warped

01:13:24.980 | and then it makes it a lot harder to take care of yourself.

01:13:27.800 | It starts making other problems in life.

01:13:29.980 | And he starts like feeling lousy about himself.

01:13:32.900 | Like maybe I can't do much of anything, right?

01:13:34.800 | Why? Because work isn't going as well,

01:13:36.380 | because he's drinking too much

01:13:37.860 | and role performance goes down, right?

01:13:40.020 | So we can see that.

01:13:41.100 | And then, you know, what's of most interest there

01:13:44.000 | is that there's a character structure

01:13:45.460 | that can come right up to the precipice,

01:13:47.700 | but not pull the trigger, so to speak,

01:13:50.240 | on what the thing the person wants to do,

01:13:52.580 | because now we start getting, okay,

01:13:54.980 | an understanding of what's actually going on, right?

01:13:57.980 | And then if we look at function of self,

01:13:59.740 | let's look in those cabinets too, right?

01:14:01.620 | To help him be more aware of, there's an eye here,

01:14:05.180 | which he was pretty well aware of, but not enough.

01:14:07.820 | Like there's a person here I'm shepherding through

01:14:09.540 | 24 hours in the day, right?

01:14:11.060 | Like I am an eye and I'm aware of what's going on

01:14:13.540 | inside of me and it can make me happy

01:14:14.900 | or it can make me miserable.

01:14:15.880 | Like let's be more aware of that.

01:14:18.260 | - How did he go about doing that?

01:14:19.560 | - Because I find this first step

01:14:22.960 | within addressing the function of self, you know,

01:14:25.320 | self-awareness and really understanding

01:14:27.280 | that there's an eye, there's a me,

01:14:30.040 | and I'm moving myself through life.

01:14:31.840 | I find this to be so interesting.

01:14:34.720 | And on the one hand, kind of obvious, like, okay,

01:14:37.240 | there's an eye, there's a me, like tangible thing.

01:14:38.960 | You look in the mirror, you see yourself,

01:14:40.680 | but at the same time, it's a bit abstract, I think,

01:14:44.140 | to me and to many people out there.

01:14:45.480 | Like how does one go about building up a sense of self

01:14:49.720 | in a way that provides positive agency in the world?

01:14:52.920 | Is it to tell, you know,

01:14:54.000 | we hear all the time about these like affirmations

01:14:56.080 | and I'm sure there are people who look at themselves

01:14:57.520 | in the mirror and say, you are enough.

01:14:59.120 | And these, and I'm not making fun of these people, right?

01:15:01.620 | I actually have my own internal list that I tell myself

01:15:05.840 | on waking every morning,

01:15:07.400 | which has nothing to do with positive affirmation.

01:15:09.360 | It's just actually defining the different roles that I play.

01:15:12.100 | I don't know why this is useful to me,

01:15:13.600 | but I find it incredibly useful to me.

01:15:16.240 | It reminds me who I am.

01:15:17.280 | It also reminds or at least reassures me

01:15:19.320 | that I don't have any dementia yet.

01:15:22.140 | So, you know, we'll see going forward, but hopefully not.

01:15:27.140 | But yeah, let's talk about this line of inquiry

01:15:30.200 | within the category of self-awareness that people can do,

01:15:34.260 | regardless of whatever challenges they might be having

01:15:37.560 | or not having, what does that look like?

01:15:39.680 | And what do you think that accomplishes

01:15:41.280 | at the level of self-understanding

01:15:43.400 | and agency in the world?

01:15:45.320 | - So one way of looking at that is,

01:15:47.120 | and this is not the words I would use,

01:15:49.240 | but like what's pervading a person

01:15:50.880 | and sort of setting the stage, right?

01:15:53.420 | Which you can discern by inquiry.

01:15:55.800 | So for example, in this case, the person,

01:15:59.340 | so there's a person, right,

01:16:01.260 | who would really not think this is okay, right?

01:16:04.220 | This person taking a job at 10% of the previous pay

01:16:06.920 | and the job has less prestige, right?

01:16:09.360 | There's a person who would be very unhappy about that

01:16:12.040 | and very faulting of that and talk to this person,

01:16:15.960 | my patient, through the lens of it,

01:16:17.440 | he should feel shame for that.

01:16:19.280 | That person's not alive.

01:16:20.740 | The person is not alive.

01:16:23.980 | So one way of looking at it is,

01:16:25.060 | what master are you serving, right?

01:16:27.240 | And a lot of like the givens, right,

01:16:29.480 | the automaticity in him was as if,

01:16:32.480 | like that person was alive inside of him,

01:16:34.940 | really telling him like how this wasn't okay,

01:16:37.880 | like he was fighting that, he wasn't aware that,

01:16:40.040 | hey, that's some other person's voice.

01:16:42.080 | It was like, he's like,

01:16:42.920 | no, I'm very, very conflicted about this.

01:16:45.800 | Actually, he wasn't very conflicted about this.

01:16:47.520 | When he starts focusing on the I,

01:16:49.420 | like what do I actually think?

01:16:51.240 | What do I actually think?

01:16:52.840 | I don't care if I make 90% less, like I don't care.

01:16:55.880 | My needs are met, I put some money away, I wanna be happy.

01:16:58.700 | I'm not conflicted.

01:17:00.400 | But in order to get there, we have to look at the I.

01:17:04.040 | How much is the I at center stage, right?

01:17:07.480 | In all that, I don't mean in some way

01:17:09.080 | like paying too much attention to the self,

01:17:10.640 | but like we're all acting through the lens of the I,

01:17:12.440 | no matter what we're choosing, right?

01:17:14.280 | So to be aware of that,

01:17:15.920 | and do I wanna be impacted

01:17:17.920 | by the opinions of this other person?

01:17:19.600 | 'Cause I can let someone else's opinions very much,

01:17:22.640 | I mean, we all do, right, very much impact my thoughts,

01:17:26.260 | but I wanna kind of decide that.

01:17:28.080 | Do I really value that person's opinions?

01:17:30.120 | I don't want them automatically inside my head

01:17:32.760 | telling me how I feel about myself.

01:17:35.080 | - I can't tell you how many people I know

01:17:37.880 | come to me in a place of struggle,

01:17:40.560 | even though I'm not a clinician.

01:17:42.160 | And as I listen to what they're struggling with,

01:17:44.880 | it's so clear that they know

01:17:47.240 | the best answer and route forward,

01:17:50.200 | but that they're dealing with some internal oppressive voice

01:17:54.320 | about whether or not they are a good person or a bad person,

01:17:57.200 | whether or not the choice they want to make

01:17:58.760 | is really a good choice at all.

01:18:01.000 | Sometimes those voices are the voices of parents,

01:18:06.600 | you know, in these particular examples,

01:18:08.180 | or the voices of peers.

01:18:10.720 | And so I think, if I understand correctly,

01:18:12.880 | what you're talking about is getting really firmly rooted

01:18:16.640 | in who a person is for themselves and what they really value

01:18:21.640 | and what they really know to be true for themselves

01:18:25.440 | and really trying to not necessarily quiet those voices,

01:18:28.040 | but see those voices truly as other,

01:18:30.200 | even though they come from within their head.

01:18:32.440 | - Yeah. - Is that right?

01:18:33.680 | - Yes, yes, to stop and think, what voices do I want inside?

01:18:38.440 | So maybe I want the voice of a kind mentor

01:18:42.480 | who still held me to account for a very high standard, right?

01:18:47.480 | It's a good voice to have inside of me.

01:18:49.540 | - I get a few of those and they, you know.

01:18:51.160 | - Right, but what might not be a good voice

01:18:52.960 | is like say a not so kind mentor

01:18:55.320 | for whom you could never do anything good enough.

01:18:57.760 | That's not so good.

01:18:58.960 | Or maybe you take part of that and you leave part of that.

01:19:01.260 | But the earlier and more formative the voices are,

01:19:03.740 | the more they're in our head automatically.

01:19:05.460 | Like think about it, that man thought

01:19:06.760 | that he was deeply conflicted.

01:19:08.240 | Absolutely, a hundred percent, like you're talking about.

01:19:10.460 | And then he was, right?

01:19:12.140 | Like his experience was to be deeply conflicted,

01:19:14.320 | but when you go in and dig, there's actually,

01:19:16.780 | if you just dig and you get to like,

01:19:19.140 | okay, the I is gonna assess this.

01:19:21.380 | He's not conflicted at all, right?

01:19:24.220 | Which is why then if you're coming up

01:19:25.980 | the function of self ladder, right?

01:19:27.540 | And you look at defense mechanisms in action, right?

01:19:30.240 | And what's on top of that, salience, right?

01:19:32.400 | Now is when it creates an immediacy, right?

01:19:35.000 | So defense mechanisms and actions

01:19:36.800 | sort of inform the process and say,

01:19:38.780 | hey, the defenses are shifting to denial, acting out, right?

01:19:43.040 | And that's what sort of gives us a time horizon.

01:19:45.080 | Like this thing, this is not gonna be okay, right?

01:19:47.560 | That if he kept down this path,

01:19:50.120 | what was very clearly gonna happen,

01:19:51.800 | you don't have to roll the tape forward that much

01:19:53.800 | to see that he's gonna lose his job, right?

01:19:56.200 | He's gonna feel very ashamed of that.

01:19:57.680 | Like a bunch of negative things are gonna happen.

01:19:59.720 | So it helps the person apprehend

01:20:01.520 | that like there's something going on here.

01:20:02.760 | Like I'm changing, right?

01:20:04.400 | Because like in some way I'm thinking now that it's okay

01:20:07.100 | that I'm wasting 10 hours on something

01:20:08.780 | that I could really enjoy if I spent 90 minutes on it.

01:20:11.520 | Like, well, I'm kind of losing

01:20:13.020 | a little bit of perspective there, right?

01:20:15.140 | So it adds a sense like it frames the situation, right?

01:20:18.000 | And the salience of it.

01:20:19.160 | - Could you elaborate a little bit

01:20:20.400 | on this defense mechanism in action of acting out?

01:20:24.200 | You know, I think we covered in episode one

01:20:26.260 | and I'm sure it will come up several times more

01:20:28.300 | during today's discussion about things like denial,

01:20:31.580 | projection, displacement, et cetera.

01:20:34.740 | Those defense mechanisms

01:20:36.140 | seem to have their own intrinsic definition,

01:20:39.160 | but you know, acting out is something

01:20:41.300 | that we hear more and more about these days.

01:20:42.920 | Like they're acting out.

01:20:44.180 | What is acting out?

01:20:47.260 | Is it acting out of some conflict?

01:20:51.460 | Is it trying to, you know, demolish a struggle

01:20:56.680 | by going and doing something else?

01:20:58.600 | - Yeah, we can think of it as by and large

01:21:00.800 | an unhealthy manifestation of a lot of aggression,

01:21:05.440 | which could be a very high aggressive drive

01:21:07.640 | or an aggressive drive that's not too high,

01:21:10.060 | but is then furthered, its powers furthered

01:21:12.880 | by a negative situation, right?

01:21:14.780 | Say like this one, right?

01:21:16.500 | Because the acting out,

01:21:17.920 | what was going on here inside of this person

01:21:19.980 | is he was very, very mad, right?

01:21:23.100 | And this isn't a person who expressed a lot of anger, right?

01:21:26.900 | So he had outlets for it, right?

01:21:28.420 | He wasn't going and running 10 miles, right?

01:21:31.100 | This was all inside of him.

01:21:32.340 | He wasn't getting it out in one way or another.

01:21:34.480 | So what he starts doing is he starts acting out the anger.

01:21:37.720 | Now he's angry at the world around him

01:21:40.180 | because he's unhappy in it

01:21:41.400 | and it's not giving him more choices.

01:21:43.100 | Now, of course, this is about him

01:21:44.660 | and not the world around him, right?

01:21:46.460 | But he's feeling an anger towards the world

01:21:48.680 | that won't cooperate, right?

01:21:50.220 | And he's angry towards himself, right?

01:21:52.420 | Because like he can't make himself happy.

01:21:54.300 | Like look at all of this, look at all that he did

01:21:56.100 | and look how miserable he is, right?

01:21:58.100 | So a way of acting out then is the drinking, right?

01:22:02.100 | Because the drink is to hell with the world, right?

01:22:04.000 | You think I shouldn't be drinking at night

01:22:05.980 | and come into work, come over, I'll do it anyway, right?

01:22:08.380 | To hell with the world.

01:22:09.200 | It's a way of snubbing his nose at the world, right?

01:22:11.300 | He's also snubbing his nose at him, right?

01:22:14.060 | To hell with me, right?

01:22:15.460 | The guy who now doesn't come across the way he did before

01:22:18.940 | because I'm showing up at work,

01:22:20.420 | not in the responsible way I showed up before,

01:22:22.700 | but in a way it's a little disheveled,

01:22:23.960 | function is lower, to hell with me, right?

01:22:26.420 | So form of self-denigration,

01:22:27.820 | like let people think worse of me, right?

01:22:29.460 | 'Cause why, because I'm so mad at myself

01:22:31.340 | that I think it's justified, right?

01:22:32.940 | And then there's also the inviting of,

01:22:35.140 | hey, if I really have an addiction problem here,

01:22:37.340 | I lose my job, it's like, fine, I deserve that too, right?

01:22:39.980 | Like, you know, there's an acting out against the self

01:22:42.260 | that if the person doesn't stop and look at that,

01:22:44.820 | that can become true, right?

01:22:46.660 | 'Cause that person didn't really,

01:22:47.820 | wasn't built to say to hell with the world and with me,

01:22:50.500 | or to not even understand it,

01:22:51.700 | what's to hell with the world mean?

01:22:52.980 | It also means to hell with me

01:22:54.180 | and it's not good for the world or me, right?

01:22:56.160 | But he was able to understand that

01:22:57.760 | because we would look at like, wow, what's shifted in you?

01:23:00.400 | This is a person who did a lot of sublimation before

01:23:02.460 | who now all of that's going into acting out.

01:23:04.820 | So they're not taking negative energy

01:23:06.380 | and doing something good with it.

01:23:07.980 | They're taking negative energy

01:23:09.460 | and doing things that are bad with it.

01:23:11.020 | Why?

01:23:11.860 | Because there's too much, there's a lot of negative energy.

01:23:14.620 | It's overwhelming everything else.

01:23:16.920 | And then it's going down these pathways

01:23:18.780 | where the unhealthy defenses are always beckoning us.

01:23:21.940 | Send the energy down here.

01:23:23.660 | It's easier to avoid than it is to face something

01:23:26.780 | and figure it out, right?

01:23:28.200 | It's easier to just act out

01:23:29.660 | than it is to hold what's inside of us

01:23:31.740 | and then think about why it's there.

01:23:33.800 | So the unhealthy defenses are beckoning us.

01:23:36.620 | And for him to see,

01:23:38.220 | hey, you have had a healthy defensive structure.

01:23:41.260 | Like you can be healthy again, you're not broken, right?

01:23:44.340 | But to also see the way these defenses are going

01:23:47.480 | is bringing real risk to your ability to even be happier.

01:23:52.200 | You get further down the shame and loss path.

01:23:54.440 | It can be hard, sometimes impossible

01:23:56.680 | for the person to get back.

01:23:58.280 | So it sets the stage like this is very, very important

01:24:02.240 | to what these defenses are, how they're being enacted.

01:24:05.500 | And for him to be able to see that like,

01:24:07.300 | oh, this could be healthy, but it's not now.

01:24:10.800 | - Yeah, these slow degrading forms of acting out

01:24:15.800 | and self-sabotage and sabotage of others,

01:24:20.520 | I think are the particularly dangerous ones

01:24:23.600 | because they're slow.

01:24:25.680 | And sometimes the change is imperceptibly slow.

01:24:29.400 | And then one day somebody arrives at a place

01:24:31.800 | where, as you said, they unfortunately can't get back

01:24:34.040 | or it requires going into residential treatment

01:24:37.520 | or things that really, big departures in order

01:24:42.360 | to get back into life.

01:24:43.560 | And I would never wish for somebody to choose to act out

01:24:46.880 | by driving off a cliff instead.

01:24:48.400 | But there are other forms of acting out

01:24:50.300 | that immediately wake people up.

01:24:52.920 | But it seems like people don't often select those.

01:24:55.120 | They select these more subtle forms of acting out

01:24:57.460 | where they don't get caught

01:24:58.960 | or no one's calling them out on it

01:25:01.640 | because plenty of people have five or six drinks

01:25:05.360 | at happy hour, right, as opposed to 50, right?

01:25:08.840 | So it's slow self-sabotage

01:25:12.040 | as opposed to immediate self-destruction.

01:25:15.120 | And again, we're talking about alcohol,

01:25:16.400 | but we talk about food, video games, social media,

01:25:19.300 | arguing with spouse, I mean, all of these kinds of things

01:25:23.520 | that build up over time to eventually deliver people

01:25:25.620 | to a place of real problems.

01:25:28.940 | I'm curious for this particular individual you worked with,

01:25:32.960 | sounds like that's not what happened.

01:25:34.740 | They started this process of self-inquiry

01:25:37.680 | around self-awareness.

01:25:39.140 | And did you see that the salience,

01:25:43.300 | that is what they paid attention to internally

01:25:45.400 | and externally immediately shifted

01:25:47.600 | and the defense mechanism of acting out

01:25:50.980 | immediately dissolved?

01:25:52.020 | I mean, what was the kind of contour and time course?

01:25:55.400 | - There was less.

01:25:56.440 | If we're looking in the cabinets,

01:25:57.560 | there's a lot in the defense mechanisms and action cabinet.

01:26:00.820 | There's not as much in the salience cabinet

01:26:03.280 | because this is the major thing on his mind.

01:26:06.320 | Above all else, he was having intrusive thoughts about it

01:26:08.900 | and his self-talk was about it,

01:26:10.220 | but we kind of already knew that,

01:26:12.280 | just like we knew it was in the conscious mind.

01:26:14.660 | So if you think where's the money at,

01:26:16.760 | it's not as much in that realm because he's aware of it.

01:26:19.580 | If he thought, "Oh, this isn't bothering me very much."

01:26:22.480 | And then he said,

01:26:23.320 | "Well, all his internal dialogue is about it."

01:26:25.500 | Then like, okay, there's a lot to achieve there.

01:26:28.360 | But just as he brought a lot that was unconscious

01:26:30.400 | into the conscious mind, was aware of it, it was salient.

01:26:34.160 | There's less to do there, right?

01:26:36.120 | Because the things to understand and change

01:26:40.260 | are not residing so much there.

01:26:43.660 | - For people that are no doubt,

01:26:45.940 | everyone is thinking about their own internal processes

01:26:48.320 | and where they could ask better questions

01:26:51.080 | and arrive at better answers to help themselves along.

01:26:54.380 | Perhaps you could elaborate a little bit more

01:26:57.380 | on this salience covered under function of self.

01:27:01.440 | To me, salience is what's most apparent.

01:27:05.660 | And as you talked about yesterday and again today,

01:27:10.040 | there's this internal narrative,

01:27:11.520 | like what's on my mind often, or what kind of jumps to mind.

01:27:15.640 | I've started doing this recently

01:27:16.840 | based on our discussions here.

01:27:18.460 | And I've noticed that under different states of arousal,

01:27:22.600 | and here I'm talking specifically about sleepiness

01:27:26.120 | versus alertness type arousal.

01:27:27.920 | Like when I wake up in the morning

01:27:29.960 | or when I'm tired in the evening,

01:27:32.280 | where my mind is at, where it defaults to,

01:27:36.000 | and what I'm paying attention to throughout the day,

01:27:39.400 | is that just asking myself to notice,

01:27:41.740 | and I've certainly noticed some patterns.

01:27:45.240 | For instance, I've noticed that anytime

01:27:48.380 | my overall state is elevated,

01:27:50.160 | more alertness or in the middle of exercise,

01:27:52.080 | my mind goes to some not so pleasant thoughts.

01:27:56.280 | And it's interesting to me.

01:27:58.040 | It's like, wow, this is strongly correlated

01:27:59.720 | with states of internal arousal that are healthy.

01:28:01.700 | Exercise within a limited frame is,

01:28:05.440 | or exercises in general, if done in a healthy way,

01:28:07.960 | is healthy.

01:28:09.440 | And when I'm sleepy, those thoughts never come about.

01:28:12.440 | When I wake up in the morning,

01:28:14.620 | certain thoughts tend to leap to mind, other thoughts, no.

01:28:17.020 | So sort of categorization of different types of thoughts,

01:28:19.640 | depending on my internal state.

01:28:21.360 | Is that the sort of line of inquiry

01:28:23.400 | that you're suggesting or describing here?

01:28:26.840 | - Yeah, I think it's quite half the picture, right?

01:28:29.280 | 'Cause half the picture would be

01:28:30.880 | what's going on in your mind

01:28:32.280 | when your mind is sort of at rest, right?

01:28:34.160 | What is then starts playing itself right in your mind, right?

01:28:38.560 | The other side of it is what comes to the fore

01:28:42.120 | when there's a lot of competition for attention, right?

01:28:44.520 | So I'm sort of making this up,

01:28:45.920 | but the idea that if he stubbed his toe really badly,

01:28:49.400 | he'd still be thinking about this, right?

01:28:51.880 | 'Cause it has so much power.

01:28:52.960 | Now, again, maybe if, God forbid,

01:28:54.320 | he has a badly broken bone, there's a lot of pain,

01:28:56.280 | like he's gonna think of that first, right?

01:28:57.440 | But it takes a lot of other stimulus

01:29:00.740 | to be more salient than this, right?

01:29:04.360 | So you can look at what's coming in your mind

01:29:06.140 | when your mind is sort of free and open.

01:29:07.480 | That's very, very important and relevant.

01:29:09.280 | And then what's winning out

01:29:10.460 | when there's maybe a high arousal state

01:29:12.480 | and a lot of competition for attention.

01:29:15.640 | - That's very helpful.

01:29:17.540 | Again, I think that along with this self-awareness piece,

01:29:22.960 | the asking of oneself,

01:29:26.480 | what is happening in my mind

01:29:30.260 | when I'm in different states or throughout the day?

01:29:33.660 | And as you're describing now,

01:29:35.300 | also including when there are other things

01:29:40.020 | available to think about.

01:29:41.620 | Like, does that include how often I'm distracted

01:29:44.340 | by a particular thought?

01:29:45.780 | Like how many times throughout the day

01:29:47.100 | my mind goes from the conversation

01:29:49.300 | I might be in to something else?

01:29:50.700 | - Yes, yes, yeah.

01:29:52.980 | - Does it hijack your attention?

01:29:54.880 | You know, there's one way of putting that.

01:29:57.580 | - A lot of people mentioned to me

01:30:00.300 | challenges with intrusive thoughts.

01:30:02.220 | What can be done about those intrusive thoughts

01:30:06.500 | or is it simply a matter of paying attention

01:30:08.940 | to the fact that they're there

01:30:10.700 | and then thinking about the origins of those thoughts?

01:30:14.500 | - Right, absolutely.

01:30:15.860 | One example, you could have intrusive thoughts

01:30:17.620 | because there's trauma in your background,

01:30:20.220 | maybe very clear trauma

01:30:21.420 | that you're not facing and addressing,

01:30:23.540 | and then you have intrusive thoughts and say, I'm not safe.

01:30:25.900 | Okay, go look for what's still in the unconscious mind

01:30:28.980 | or when it comes out a little bit,

01:30:30.740 | you push back into the unconscious mind.

01:30:33.120 | That would be, it's a very different scenario

01:30:35.440 | than like in this case,

01:30:36.940 | this man was having intrusive thoughts

01:30:39.080 | about his job situation, his overall situation,

01:30:41.980 | and it made sense that he was having those intrusive,

01:30:44.460 | they were markers of the acuity of it, right?

01:30:47.220 | Of like, you have to do something about this

01:30:49.800 | or something very bad is gonna happen.

01:30:51.620 | So the intrusive thoughts there, this has made sense, right?

01:30:54.580 | Like this is not going well

01:30:56.180 | and your mind is sort of forcing you to pay attention to this

01:30:59.500 | because time really kind of is of the essence,

01:31:01.700 | you're at real risk now.

01:31:03.640 | So intrusive thoughts can be anything from,

01:31:06.660 | as they often are, they can be markers of something

01:31:08.820 | that is traumatic, something that's underneath the surface,

01:31:10.840 | something that is really bothering us that we shoved down,

01:31:13.820 | that's making guilt, shame, distress, vulnerability.

01:31:16.620 | That's very often the case,

01:31:18.820 | but sometimes intrusive thoughts are a marker of like,

01:31:21.400 | oh, right, that's a thing to pay attention to.

01:31:23.700 | - And once we identify the intrusive thought,

01:31:27.900 | I mean, how do we eradicate it?

01:31:29.920 | I mean, how do we work with it?

01:31:32.480 | I mean, we're talking about trauma now, you know,

01:31:35.880 | of course it might map back to a childhood experience,

01:31:40.140 | some internal narrative,

01:31:41.260 | but is there some roadmap for moving intrusive thoughts

01:31:46.820 | from a place of intrusive and disturbing

01:31:49.380 | to simply there and kind of meh?

01:31:52.180 | I mean, it'd be wonderful to hit a delete switch,

01:31:55.100 | but obviously we don't work like that.

01:31:57.620 | - Let's take a look if we could at this example, right,

01:32:00.100 | which is a little bit different.

01:32:01.740 | If we run through this example of the person in the job,

01:32:04.120 | because then we should talk about trauma-driven

01:32:07.300 | intrusive thoughts, which is, I think in many ways,

01:32:09.300 | the biggest topic about intrusive thoughts.

01:32:12.020 | But think of this person here, if we go up from salience,

01:32:16.500 | we look at behaviors, right?

01:32:17.660 | And behavior actually now is very, very important, right?

01:32:20.520 | This person is drinking.

01:32:21.540 | They're still going to that job they don't want.

01:32:23.460 | They haven't gone and interviewed for the jobs they want.

01:32:26.700 | So we start looking at the behaviors

01:32:29.060 | that are making problems,

01:32:30.940 | the changes in behaviors that could make things better.

01:32:33.900 | And then on top of that, we arrive at strivings.

01:32:36.060 | And I think when I was talking about structure of self,

01:32:38.420 | I think at least one time I misspoke

01:32:40.840 | and said striving instead of self.

01:32:42.980 | At the top of these pyramids,

01:32:45.000 | self and striving have a lot of overlap, right?

01:32:47.720 | Because if you're growing a healthy self

01:32:50.820 | out of the sort of top of the structure of self pyramid,

01:32:55.140 | then that self is gonna be aware of strivings

01:32:57.480 | and it's gonna be better able to enact them.

01:32:59.660 | So his sense of self was shaken here,

01:33:03.060 | but he was aware of the strivings for a better life, right?

01:33:05.940 | So now let's see the roadmap.

01:33:07.780 | It's interesting, right?

01:33:08.620 | 'Cause the roadmap is his roadmap, right?

01:33:11.620 | If we look in those 10 cupboards,

01:33:13.820 | we come up with a roadmap

01:33:15.720 | and the roadmap doesn't have a spending very much time

01:33:18.120 | in like unconscious land, right?

01:33:20.000 | Because he doesn't really need that, right?

01:33:21.760 | If we look at what makes the difference for him,

01:33:24.960 | what did we do, right?

01:33:26.560 | We really cultivated the self-awareness,

01:33:29.620 | the I that is making decisions for him.

01:33:32.400 | We looked at how his defensive structure had changed

01:33:36.320 | and the things he didn't want to be there now

01:33:39.040 | and the good things that were there before

01:33:40.680 | and how could he get back some of that?

01:33:42.340 | How could he trend back towards what was working before?

01:33:45.700 | So we start to really look at that

01:33:47.840 | and then we go from there really to changing behaviors.

01:33:50.920 | Like it requires a behavioral change,

01:33:52.800 | which is not to walk up to the precipice

01:33:54.660 | of doing this each day, but to actually do it, right?

01:33:58.520 | Because it was very clear,

01:33:59.520 | all the vectors so to speak inside of him

01:34:01.200 | were pointing towards doing it

01:34:02.760 | and that that was consistent with the self being healthier,

01:34:06.080 | that garden growing on top of the structure

01:34:08.420 | and the strivings then being realized.

01:34:10.780 | So for him, that was the roadmap and the salience, right?

01:34:15.400 | Wasn't really part of it because the intrusiveness,

01:34:18.500 | the salience bias inside of him made sense.

01:34:21.520 | And then like, of course it went away

01:34:23.360 | once he made the decisions, right?

01:34:24.960 | Because the intrusive thoughts of like,

01:34:27.240 | you have to figure this out, you have to figure this out,

01:34:29.520 | weren't there anymore.

01:34:30.480 | Along with the intrusive thoughts of,

01:34:32.320 | you'll never figure this out, right?

01:34:33.680 | Like it goes away because he made the change,

01:34:36.280 | but he made the change 'cause we looked at self-awareness

01:34:39.160 | and we strengthened self-awareness,

01:34:40.600 | we looked at defense mechanisms,

01:34:42.360 | how they could be versus how they are.

01:34:44.680 | We looked at the behavioral change,

01:34:46.380 | which was really necessary.

01:34:47.900 | And then also referencing a character structure

01:34:50.100 | that has difficulty, right?

01:34:52.100 | Coming across the precipice, right?

01:34:54.660 | So we say, okay, that's a baseline characteristic of him,

01:34:57.480 | we kind of understand that,

01:34:58.860 | but how do we help him change the behaviors anyway?

01:35:01.820 | When he does that,

01:35:03.120 | the self is in a better, happier, healthier place,

01:35:05.520 | the strivings are realized.

01:35:07.100 | This person that stops drinking in the way they were,

01:35:10.940 | they start doing the enjoyment aspects of their life,

01:35:14.140 | they start doing them within reasonable bounds again,

01:35:16.200 | they're taking care of themselves.

01:35:17.700 | Person smiling and now think the generative drive

01:35:21.460 | is much more fulfilled.

01:35:22.840 | So what comes on top of those pillars, right?

01:35:26.380 | Is that person has a sense of humility, right?

01:35:29.060 | Enough humility to say,

01:35:30.380 | I'm gonna walk away from this job.

01:35:32.540 | It's okay that the people in the job will think I'm crazy,

01:35:35.320 | how could you leave that?

01:35:36.260 | And like it triggers something in me in some way,

01:35:38.460 | but like, it's okay, right?

01:35:40.020 | Like I don't have to, you know, I'm not out there for that.

01:35:43.380 | I'm not out there for the big thing

01:35:44.580 | that everybody is guiding.

01:35:46.060 | I can have the humility to go to the job

01:35:48.160 | that I know makes a difference and feels good to me, right?

01:35:50.500 | He's empowered to make change.

01:35:52.500 | He's moving away from the disempowerment

01:35:55.560 | to the alcohol and the avoidance, right?

01:35:57.580 | So there's empowerment and humility.

01:35:59.300 | And absolutely, if you talk to that person

01:36:01.980 | on the other side of it,

01:36:03.180 | like shortly as he was enacting it, right?

01:36:05.400 | Getting just to the other side of it,

01:36:07.040 | there was so much empowerment and so much humility,

01:36:09.820 | which were then brought to bear through a sense of agency

01:36:13.500 | that made the changes, right?

01:36:14.960 | That changed the job, that stopped drinking,

01:36:16.540 | that dealt with the people who thought negatively of it,

01:36:18.860 | right, through a sense of gratitude of,

01:36:20.780 | it's not awful that I'm gonna go make less money.

01:36:23.640 | A lot of people said that to him, like, how could you do it?

01:36:25.780 | It was so terrible.

01:36:26.740 | He's like, it's not terrible, right?

01:36:28.520 | I'm grateful, like, you know what I'm gonna do?

01:36:29.820 | I'm gonna go make an amount of money

01:36:30.900 | that that's all that I need, right?

01:36:32.820 | So it was like, that's what helps a person do that thing,

01:36:35.400 | and that's actually true, right?

01:36:38.160 | That's what mattered to him.

01:36:39.920 | So an activated, an active, a verb sense of agency

01:36:44.440 | and gratitude then leads him to the place

01:36:46.440 | where there was a peace, contentment, delight.

01:36:49.560 | He was delighting in the job that he chose,

01:36:53.040 | and his generative drive was in accord with it.

01:36:55.860 | You know, then we stopped at some point working together.

01:36:59.120 | He didn't need me anymore.

01:37:00.480 | He could always come back, but he didn't need me anymore.

01:37:02.940 | And you look at how were those last sessions.

01:37:04.980 | A lot of the last sessions were him, like in an excited way,

01:37:08.980 | telling me what he was doing, right?

01:37:11.060 | Like, oh, and then we did this, and like, I did this,

01:37:12.800 | I figured this out.

01:37:13.680 | Like, he was so happy about it.

01:37:15.400 | And you can see that man's generative drive,

01:37:17.560 | which naturally, naturally is quite high in him,

01:37:20.680 | but was being squelched, right?

01:37:22.020 | That brings him out of balance.

01:37:24.020 | Now the generative drive was in quite a good place,

01:37:26.560 | and he had enough aggression or assertion, right,

01:37:28.640 | to go and do that job and to do that well,

01:37:31.000 | and even enough to counter anybody

01:37:32.960 | who would still kind of rise up and say

01:37:34.500 | that wasn't a good idea.

01:37:35.800 | He could counter all that.

01:37:37.000 | He was getting pleasure from it.

01:37:38.480 | He didn't need to seek pleasure by what?

01:37:41.120 | Not even pleasure because alcohol was pleasurable.

01:37:43.920 | No, pleasure because harming himself

01:37:46.280 | and saying to hell with you, to the world,

01:37:48.020 | and to him was pleasurable, right?

01:37:49.720 | He's not getting pleasure that way.

01:37:50.780 | He's getting pleasure in healthier ways,

01:37:52.600 | taking care of himself, doing the job he loves,

01:37:55.040 | doing his leisure activities.

01:37:56.260 | Like, the man comes into balance,

01:37:58.200 | and then, like, life is good.

01:37:59.960 | And we say, yeah, okay, come back in a couple months.

01:38:02.640 | Like, comes back in a couple months,

01:38:04.200 | maybe in six months comes back one more time,

01:38:05.680 | I don't see him again.

01:38:06.840 | That's great.

01:38:07.880 | He totally doesn't need me again,

01:38:09.040 | and I atrophied, right, from his life.

01:38:12.120 | Great.

01:38:12.960 | That's the success state of it.

01:38:15.400 | - He eventually arrived at being truly wealthy, right?

01:38:18.760 | - Yeah.

01:38:19.600 | - With all the components of mental health

01:38:21.400 | and peace, contentment, delight.

01:38:24.020 | As you describe his story, which is a remarkable one,

01:38:28.820 | it occurs to me that the narratives that we hear as children

01:38:33.500 | end up being so powerful.

01:38:36.420 | - Yes.

01:38:37.260 | - And I'm sure there are people out there

01:38:39.580 | that receive such direct messages

01:38:41.940 | from their mother and/or father.

01:38:44.120 | Like, you have to do this, you cannot do that.

01:38:47.520 | But often, we get messages through observing

01:38:51.540 | and overhearing, right?

01:38:53.900 | The way that our mother talks about our father

01:38:57.020 | when he's out of the room.

01:38:59.060 | The way that our father talks about our mother

01:39:01.100 | when she's out of the room.

01:39:02.020 | And some of this could be nonverbal,

01:39:03.680 | like a rolling of the eyes or somebody saying,

01:39:06.440 | "Yes, yes," agreeing, and then they walk out

01:39:08.580 | and they just, you know, and kind of blowing them off, right?

01:39:12.060 | I mean, kids are, we are all so aware

01:39:15.860 | and integrating all of that all the time.

01:39:18.360 | And I do think those messages get woven into us

01:39:21.540 | at a very deep level.

01:39:22.860 | - Absolutely.

01:39:23.860 | And then, of course, there are the conscious narratives

01:39:27.040 | that we build up as we go through,

01:39:29.300 | in particular, I think elementary and middle school

01:39:31.240 | and high school.

01:39:32.080 | I mean, I can still remember a negative comment

01:39:35.020 | somebody made about a jacket that I was wearing

01:39:36.780 | in like the third or the fourth grade.

01:39:38.600 | I forget everything else that happened that year.

01:39:40.980 | Remember that?

01:39:42.260 | Yeah, and I'm not, you know,

01:39:43.940 | I'm not insecure about the clothing that I pick, you know?

01:39:46.180 | I mean, obviously, it's a black button-down shirt.

01:39:49.100 | I've had similar shirts since the first grade,

01:39:50.740 | just kidding.

01:39:52.100 | But, you know, the fact that that's embedded

01:39:55.320 | in my memory systems is like just speaks to the salience

01:39:59.300 | of negative, of insults, basically.

01:40:03.300 | It was an insult.

01:40:04.280 | And I'm sure I've insulted plenty of kids

01:40:07.140 | coming up, you know, as a teenager and back and forth.

01:40:09.840 | And so, but these narratives get so deeply embedded

01:40:14.580 | and the idea that one could pick a different path

01:40:17.380 | of vocation or like you'll miss the opportunity

01:40:20.100 | to be truly happy at a deep level based on these narratives.

01:40:24.500 | I mean, on the one hand, it's obvious.

01:40:26.160 | On the other hand, you just go like, whoa,

01:40:28.500 | this is not good.

01:40:31.040 | This is a flaw in the design, right?

01:40:35.780 | And yet you're giving us a roadmap to understanding

01:40:38.880 | and to overcoming it.

01:40:40.700 | - Right, let's say we take your examples

01:40:42.720 | and we look, they're great examples,

01:40:44.120 | and we look at them, right?

01:40:45.580 | The person making fun of the coat in third grade, right?

01:40:49.020 | We're assuming it hasn't harmed you.

01:40:50.380 | It hasn't changed the course of your life, right?

01:40:52.060 | What does it tell us?

01:40:52.900 | It shows that negative stimuli are very salient, right?

01:40:56.900 | I'm sure you got a lot of compliments in third grade too,

01:40:59.320 | right?

01:41:00.160 | But it's the negative that stands out,

01:41:01.360 | which just shows that there's a salience bias in us

01:41:04.400 | towards the negative.

01:41:05.240 | And that's probably about survival and threat sensing.

01:41:07.700 | Like in some ways it makes sense around human survival,

01:41:12.160 | but it doesn't make sense around human trauma, right?

01:41:15.300 | So then, so you had given the example

01:41:17.380 | of what gets communicated to the child

01:41:20.420 | when say mother says something negative about father,

01:41:23.420 | when father's out of the room,

01:41:24.440 | father says something negative about mother

01:41:25.940 | when mother's out of the room,

01:41:26.820 | just to give an example, right?

01:41:28.340 | So children, because the complex cognitive mechanisms

01:41:32.560 | haven't been formed yet, right?

01:41:34.980 | The natural way that the brain functions

01:41:37.260 | is in a self-referential way, right?

01:41:39.900 | So the child generally doesn't have the capacity

01:41:43.020 | to say like, oh, mom and dad aren't really getting along

01:41:46.780 | well in this certain way.

01:41:49.340 | So when dad's not here,

01:41:50.820 | mom vents a little bit about something about him by saying,

01:41:53.860 | the child isn't thinking about that, right?

01:41:55.660 | Then what the child will often internalize is,

01:41:58.860 | okay, there's me and there's mom and dad,

01:42:00.900 | and mom says dad is bad and dad says mom is bad,

01:42:05.100 | and I must be bad too, right?

01:42:07.460 | Because in general, if your parents are bad,

01:42:10.220 | then the child takes that on themselves.

01:42:12.560 | Now, again, I'm giving a simple example

01:42:14.060 | and I'm very much extrapolating it.

01:42:15.640 | I mean, imagine if that were very, very aggressive

01:42:17.760 | where the mother, when this happens, right?

01:42:19.600 | Just tells the child how awful the father is

01:42:22.120 | and the father does the same.

01:42:24.440 | Someone's not gonna come out the other side of that

01:42:26.120 | being like, you know what?

01:42:27.140 | Maybe they're both awful, but I'm not.

01:42:28.960 | That's not how that goes, right?

01:42:30.660 | So the lessons, the traumatic lessons of childhood

01:42:34.420 | get internalized, right?

01:42:36.180 | And they don't even always have a solution state.

01:42:38.680 | So you think about the man who knew like,

01:42:41.160 | okay, you have to go get this job

01:42:42.460 | and like all those things he internalized,

01:42:43.920 | you might say, well, I mean,

01:42:45.560 | he got to a good place for him, right?

01:42:48.000 | So for better or for worse,

01:42:50.180 | at least there was a place to go, right?

01:42:52.160 | To like to go work hard, go succeed, go check this box.

01:42:54.960 | You've been told you're supposed to check.

01:42:56.820 | But oftentimes there is no solution state.

01:42:59.200 | So how many children, I mean, it's just terrible

01:43:01.560 | that this is such a high percentage

01:43:02.920 | of the work adult practitioners do

01:43:04.880 | is helping people who as children were told

01:43:08.440 | one way or another that they were worthless,

01:43:10.260 | incapable, bad, right?

01:43:13.900 | That gets put into the child, unfortunately, far, far,

01:43:17.620 | I mean, one time on the planet is too frequent,

01:43:20.340 | let alone how often this happens.

01:43:22.700 | - That example makes really good sense.

01:43:26.400 | Could we, and this is a question,

01:43:28.540 | could we add to that the example

01:43:30.860 | whereby the child overhears examples of what,

01:43:35.180 | say, men should be like, or women should be like?

01:43:38.700 | Like these things, it's not so much like,

01:43:41.180 | you did wrong, Andrew, or you did wrong, Paul,

01:43:45.060 | or telling Dar, you screwed up.

01:43:48.500 | But it's more, again, narratives that we overhear,

01:43:51.180 | or even a parent showing delight or excitement

01:43:56.140 | about a certain phenotype in the world.

01:43:58.260 | Like, oh wow, look at that person, or look at them.

01:44:00.580 | Like, isn't she beautiful, right?

01:44:02.940 | The young child thinks like, okay,

01:44:04.160 | well then that's the epitome of beauty

01:44:05.860 | through the lens of the parent.

01:44:07.580 | Or gosh, like this person, like, ugh, you know?

01:44:10.020 | Like then that child internalizes

01:44:12.980 | that this is the epitome of disgust

01:44:15.020 | with another human being.

01:44:16.540 | And I think children are so savvy without realizing it.

01:44:20.200 | It's like, okay, well then I guess you move toward that,

01:44:23.180 | and you aspire to that, and you deflect from that.

01:44:26.080 | And you can see how these trajectories

01:44:27.740 | can be set very early on.

01:44:29.600 | I mean, these are the four lane highways

01:44:32.220 | that we were talking about in episode one,

01:44:34.780 | where just routes of neural processing

01:44:36.920 | that can bring us to choices in life and places in life

01:44:40.300 | that oftentimes you're like,

01:44:41.360 | I don't want to go down this path anymore.

01:44:43.540 | And so the exploration of early narratives,

01:44:47.620 | both direct and indirect, you know,

01:44:49.100 | first person and third person, seem so critical.

01:44:52.720 | How does one go about that?

01:44:54.380 | I mean, clearly with a trained clinician like you,

01:44:57.220 | you would guide somebody through the process.

01:44:59.020 | But if somebody were to try and do this

01:45:01.020 | in some sort of structured way for themselves,

01:45:04.140 | what do those lines of inquiry look like?

01:45:06.020 | Because we have vast number of experiences from childhood,

01:45:09.720 | but some messages are going to be more salient than others.

01:45:12.000 | - Sure.

01:45:12.840 | Yeah, the idea that reflective self scrutiny, you know,

01:45:15.700 | can help us, I think is just a great idea.

01:45:17.880 | It's a great concept.

01:45:18.880 | And we do a lot of different things sort of inside,

01:45:22.100 | and we're guided to do a lot of things inside.

01:45:24.280 | But this, I think, should overshadow many,

01:45:27.260 | if not most of all those other things of like,

01:45:29.460 | what's really going on inside of me?

01:45:30.980 | Because if you think about it,

01:45:32.840 | a lot of people will come through that,

01:45:35.160 | and they'll learn, right?

01:45:36.540 | So the person is told like, this is what beautiful is.

01:45:38.720 | This is what successful is.

01:45:40.480 | This is what good enough looks like, right?

01:45:42.660 | And that person may through all sorts of experiences,

01:45:46.300 | there may be other people in their lives

01:45:47.900 | who are more balanced,

01:45:48.860 | be able to arrive on the other side of that,

01:45:50.980 | even still sometimes going through the midst of it,

01:45:53.740 | depending upon age and situation.

01:45:55.540 | And they're like, okay, like that's what, you know,

01:45:57.740 | my father and mother thinks like, this is what beauty is.

01:46:00.580 | This is what success is.

01:46:01.500 | But it's one set of opinions.

01:46:02.840 | And it's not a set of opinions that are gonna define me.

01:46:05.780 | Like sometimes people get to that place,

01:46:07.840 | but a lot of times they don't,

01:46:09.620 | and they carry that lesson forward,

01:46:11.660 | and they're not aware of it, right?

01:46:13.660 | So they think that they're very unattractive,

01:46:16.940 | even though other people are giving them different signals.

01:46:19.480 | They think that they're very dumb,

01:46:21.420 | even though other people are giving them different signals,

01:46:23.460 | and their own grades and their own success

01:46:25.740 | may be giving them different signals, right?

01:46:27.660 | But they're not putting the two things together,

01:46:30.100 | and that's gonna generate tension, right?

01:46:32.380 | That might be why that person doesn't follow up

01:46:34.560 | on potential relationships, right?

01:46:36.340 | They just don't think they're good enough,

01:46:37.480 | and the person's eventually gonna reject them

01:46:38.820 | because of what they look like, right?

01:46:40.220 | They're taking that with them in this example

01:46:43.880 | from childhood, right?

01:46:45.240 | Or they're not satisfied with the job

01:46:48.020 | that in other ways is like really great, right?

01:46:50.680 | They enjoy the work, they enjoy everything,

01:46:52.000 | but it doesn't pay enough, right?

01:46:53.460 | Why?

01:46:54.300 | Because they have some false idea inside

01:46:55.560 | of what it's supposed to pay, right?

01:46:57.140 | Because it's what the parent said.

01:46:58.620 | So by self scrutiny, like what are the givens?

01:47:01.380 | And I always think it goes back to the math minor, right?

01:47:04.580 | If you can't solve the problem,

01:47:06.660 | go back and look at the givens, right?

01:47:08.700 | What are you taking for granted?

01:47:10.300 | Like, oh, I know that every time I see an X,

01:47:12.260 | that X equals four, right?

01:47:13.500 | Really, maybe you wrote down four somehow

01:47:16.700 | because you were thinking of four at the time,

01:47:18.300 | and X actually is a three, right?

01:47:20.580 | So like just go back and look

01:47:22.580 | at what you're taking for granted, right?

01:47:25.020 | And a lot of times this is what we're doing

01:47:26.620 | in the therapy process,

01:47:28.140 | and then that's when the person can realize.

01:47:29.620 | So I'm simplifying, but for the person to realize like,

01:47:32.260 | oh, there's a voice in my head, so to speak,

01:47:35.100 | it's a natural voice that is the voice of this person,

01:47:38.300 | right, who may not even be around anymore,

01:47:40.500 | whose opinion doesn't mean to me what it did before,

01:47:43.520 | but that voice is saying, you're unattractive.

01:47:45.580 | You're not making enough money.

01:47:46.640 | You're not good enough, right?

01:47:47.700 | And you know what?

01:47:48.540 | I don't believe that, right?

01:47:50.540 | They can identify that, and then you can,

01:47:52.920 | it doesn't happen all at once,

01:47:54.220 | but you can get it out of you.

01:47:56.340 | Generally, you don't get it out of you

01:47:57.420 | unless you realize that it's there.

01:47:59.220 | What is the process of getting it out?

01:48:01.480 | Because I think that we all have the capacity

01:48:07.040 | to remember certain things and to arrive at a place

01:48:11.220 | where we can understand, okay, I'm taking for granted

01:48:15.620 | the fact that there's a voice in my head that says blank.

01:48:18.340 | Actually, I have a brief anecdote to say about this,

01:48:20.500 | and this isn't the quote unquote, I have a friend thing.

01:48:22.740 | I literally have a female friend who the other day

01:48:26.300 | called me laughing and crying

01:48:28.740 | because she was being evicted from her apartment.

01:48:32.060 | And she told her mother about this over the phone,

01:48:35.000 | and her mother's response was, well, at least you're thin.

01:48:38.140 | - Wow.

01:48:39.940 | - Like, and she was laughing and crying about it

01:48:43.080 | because it reflected so much of her childhood, right?

01:48:45.940 | That like no other accomplishment of having a job,

01:48:48.320 | having an apartment, et cetera, like, you know, mattered.

01:48:52.340 | It was about one thing.

01:48:54.140 | It was about a certain form of aesthetic beauty

01:48:56.780 | that I'm not even sure she subscribes to,

01:48:59.300 | even though she happens to be thin, right?

01:49:00.640 | So the fact that her mother would lift that

01:49:02.900 | from the conversation, there's such a deprivation

01:49:06.680 | of so many things in that interaction,

01:49:09.800 | but it really wasn't about that interaction.

01:49:12.340 | It was, you know, she was calling me

01:49:14.000 | because it was really about her entire childhood, right?

01:49:16.700 | And obviously I'm not equipped to solve the problem

01:49:19.180 | and it wasn't a request for money or anything of that sort.

01:49:21.300 | It was just, it was almost like the hilarity

01:49:25.740 | and the sadness of the whole picture, right?

01:49:29.420 | But again, it speaks to these narratives

01:49:32.800 | that we internalize and that sometimes show up

01:49:34.680 | in very glaring ways in the real world.

01:49:36.380 | It's like to hear that, I think, was shocking to her.

01:49:38.920 | I think she needed to tell me to like, is this real?

01:49:41.460 | But then it was clear that that message,

01:49:43.580 | it existed in her head for a long time anyway.

01:49:46.620 | - That can be very pivotal if she realizes that, right?

01:49:49.300 | And even the power of the humor of it is like,

01:49:51.340 | this is absurd, right?

01:49:52.860 | That could be very powerful in creating change.

01:49:55.940 | 'Cause if there's some vestige of that inside of her, right?

01:49:58.780 | Where like, she still believes like,

01:50:00.540 | oh, I'm not good enough because I achieved A, B, and C,

01:50:02.500 | but I don't look like X or whatever.

01:50:04.380 | It can have very much help 'cause there's a lot of power

01:50:07.540 | behind realizing that absurdity of like,

01:50:09.420 | oh my God, that's bizarre.

01:50:10.860 | Like, so, but wait, is any of that inside of me?

01:50:13.300 | Am I carrying some of that with me?

01:50:15.220 | I mean, there's an incentive for self scrutiny

01:50:17.460 | and, you know, through what you're describing.

01:50:19.220 | 'Cause what's the ideal amount of that to still be in her?

01:50:23.020 | Zero.

01:50:23.860 | - So as one comes to realize the messages they've heard

01:50:28.060 | or perhaps like in this case that they're still hearing,

01:50:30.860 | is the process of overcoming those messages

01:50:34.420 | and really arriving at the self,

01:50:35.900 | it sounds to me like it's a two-part process,

01:50:39.400 | at least two-part process.

01:50:40.820 | It's to look in the bin of what are the givens?

01:50:43.060 | What am I taking for granted about the internal narratives?

01:50:46.420 | And thinking about their origins in childhood or elsewhere,

01:50:49.680 | but then also cultivating the self-awareness piece

01:50:53.500 | that's under the function of self.

01:50:54.700 | Like, wait, what's really true for me at the level of me

01:50:57.820 | that has, that isn't the,

01:51:00.040 | and this is really, I think,

01:51:01.060 | about separating out the voices in one's head,

01:51:03.540 | these internalized narratives,

01:51:05.020 | from the person that we really truly are.

01:51:07.700 | - Because the idea is that those two pillars

01:51:09.900 | encompass everything we need to look at, right?

01:51:12.420 | Those 10 cupboards encompass everything.

01:51:14.540 | So it's all that, right?

01:51:15.860 | The person who's going and looking at the givens,

01:51:18.220 | they're trying to understand

01:51:19.180 | what might be in my unconscious mind

01:51:21.380 | that I'm not aware of, right?

01:51:23.180 | And, huh, wow, the last time I got this big award at work,

01:51:27.740 | I had this reflexive thought of like,

01:51:29.220 | but you're not thin enough.

01:51:30.860 | Wow, whoa, right?

01:51:32.880 | Like there could be a process,

01:51:33.940 | like that's going on inside of me.

01:51:35.580 | I don't want that going on inside of me, right?

01:51:37.640 | So the process of trying,

01:51:38.940 | what is unconscious in us that may be causing us harm,

01:51:42.460 | which is often where that's where the trauma goes, right?

01:51:44.980 | It's where the childhood trauma seats itself,

01:51:47.620 | which brings us back around to the intrusive thoughts, right?

01:51:50.520 | Intrusive negative thoughts and negative self dialogue

01:51:53.520 | usually does not mean what it meant

01:51:56.240 | to the man who need to change jobs, right?

01:51:58.820 | Because they were there for a good reason, right?

01:52:01.060 | Then he needed to make change.

01:52:02.660 | More often, they're the vestiges, the hangover,

01:52:06.980 | the lingering badness of some prior trauma.

01:52:10.940 | So oftentimes when you think,

01:52:12.780 | we talked a little bit yesterday

01:52:13.940 | about the person who was driving in the car

01:52:16.060 | and just telling themselves over and over

01:52:17.480 | that they were, that they're a loser, right?

01:52:19.160 | And then they can't achieve the things that they achieved

01:52:21.700 | when they stopped doing that.

01:52:23.140 | I'm simplifying a little, but that's the basics of it, right?

01:52:26.400 | Because the intrusive thoughts, the self-narrative,

01:52:30.300 | all the negativity in us is often coming

01:52:32.900 | from places that are in the unconscious mind, right?

01:52:35.780 | Not always, but this idea that I don't think

01:52:38.800 | I'm good enough, I'm saying it to myself

01:52:40.060 | over and over again.

01:52:40.900 | Like, wow, let's go back and look at why,

01:52:43.540 | because the answer to that, again,

01:52:45.060 | lies in a different place.

01:52:46.060 | It's just a different roadmap, right?

01:52:47.780 | The man who needed to change jobs had a roadmap

01:52:50.300 | that like spent a little bit of time in the eye,

01:52:53.380 | self-awareness, and then it kind of,

01:52:54.760 | then it went through self-defense mechanisms

01:52:57.620 | and action land, and it spent a lot of time with behavior,

01:53:00.340 | and then it got up to the strivings.

01:53:01.660 | That's his roadmap, whereas for someone who's laboring

01:53:05.780 | under the intrusive thoughts, the negative self-talk,

01:53:08.220 | the automaticity, the givens of childhood trauma

01:53:12.020 | then needs to go to a different place,

01:53:13.700 | where now we're spending time in the unconscious mind,

01:53:16.740 | thinking about what's there, figuring out what's there,

01:53:19.360 | bringing things to consciousness, right?

01:53:21.540 | That person, say, realizing maybe, you know,

01:53:24.140 | your friend, you had this realization of like,

01:53:26.440 | oh my goodness, we say, wow, did that bring something

01:53:28.900 | to the conscious mind in her?

01:53:30.660 | If so, great, let's look at that,

01:53:32.740 | and let's look a lot at it, and let's look,

01:53:34.500 | are there other things there too, right?

01:53:36.580 | Are there other givens, right?

01:53:38.140 | Let's bring them to consciousness

01:53:40.560 | so that we can talk about them.

01:53:41.580 | We can identify them, and then look at,

01:53:43.060 | how does that relate to defense mechanism,

01:53:45.300 | the character structure?

01:53:46.380 | And like, now what are we doing?

01:53:48.300 | A process of interested inquiry.

01:53:51.380 | Like, this is really interesting.

01:53:53.220 | I mean, it should be interesting to the person doing it.

01:53:55.660 | It's them, right?

01:53:56.940 | And it should be interesting to the person

01:53:58.420 | doing it with them, right?

01:54:00.020 | 'Cause if you're a therapist and it's not interesting to you,

01:54:02.180 | you need another job, right?

01:54:03.940 | So you're talking to a friend,

01:54:05.580 | like if it's a friend is gonna be interested.

01:54:07.220 | So there's an interested, honest, open inquiry

01:54:10.660 | with the idea of, oh, let's learn things

01:54:14.000 | so that we can make change for the better.

01:54:16.340 | And even though, as we talked about yesterday,

01:54:18.140 | the intrusive thoughts and the self-dialogue

01:54:20.720 | that's gone on over and over and over again,

01:54:22.980 | it doesn't go away easily.

01:54:24.860 | But that doesn't mean it doesn't atrophy over time

01:54:27.620 | and go away, or that the person

01:54:29.420 | can have that reflexive thought like,

01:54:30.900 | oh, there's the thought again that I'm a loser,

01:54:33.020 | or that I should cut myself, or I should drink,

01:54:35.020 | or whatever it is.

01:54:35.840 | And like, I know that thought appears in me automatically

01:54:38.660 | at times because it was in my head for so long,

01:54:41.460 | but it does not telling me anything, right?

01:54:43.660 | It's just an automatic thought.

01:54:44.740 | It's telling me I should drink.

01:54:45.700 | It's not telling me anything, right?

01:54:46.920 | Other than the fact that like,

01:54:48.040 | oh, that's what happens in human beings.

01:54:49.960 | Like that's how the self-understanding brings change in us

01:54:53.520 | and gets us over the barriers

01:54:54.980 | of why I've been trying this for,

01:54:56.640 | you know, what modern mental health would often think.

01:54:58.300 | I took the Selex and I did the 10 sessions of CBT.

01:55:00.940 | Like, you know, I'm a failure.

01:55:02.980 | Nothing will ever get better.

01:55:04.420 | You know, a different framing that says,

01:55:06.180 | hey, like this can get better over time in my understanding

01:55:08.740 | and my efforts and my thought redirection,

01:55:10.460 | my behavioral changes, all makes it better.

01:55:12.780 | And then those things I don't want in my head,

01:55:14.660 | they're going away.

01:55:15.980 | It's taking time, but they're going away.

01:55:18.640 | - I'm relieved to hear you say

01:55:19.780 | that one can have intrusive thoughts

01:55:22.220 | and that one approach to dealing with those

01:55:24.700 | is to acknowledge them and look at them

01:55:28.260 | and not try and push them back deeper, you know,

01:55:31.940 | not trying to eradicate them.

01:55:35.420 | - I'm familiar with having intrusive thoughts,

01:55:37.660 | not all the time, but it varies periods throughout my life.

01:55:40.420 | And the idea that one can just like extinguish them

01:55:44.660 | is a great idea, but that's simply not the way it's worked,

01:55:47.660 | at least not for me.

01:55:48.740 | But I have found that if I, you know, just say,

01:55:51.140 | okay, this is spontaneously coming up

01:55:53.240 | through the neural circuits of my subconscious

01:55:55.520 | and they're intrusive and I don't like them,

01:55:58.580 | but I eventually arrive at exactly the place

01:56:02.340 | that you described, which is that it's like,

01:56:04.760 | there's nothing actionable here.

01:56:06.620 | Like it's just, they go from being intrusive and troubling

01:56:10.920 | to intrusive and just kind of mildly irritating

01:56:14.760 | to intrusive and like, okay, you know, I just, you know,

01:56:19.360 | and yes, I go through some redirect,

01:56:22.580 | like trying to redirect my attention

01:56:23.900 | from time to time when they're happening,

01:56:25.660 | but I eventually just get to a place where it's like,

01:56:28.020 | okay, it's just a boring story or boring imagery.

01:56:31.340 | There's nothing there, like there's nothing there.

01:56:33.580 | And then they eventually break up like clouds.

01:56:36.660 | And that process could take a while, but-

01:56:38.860 | - Right, 'cause you took the energy out of them, right?

01:56:40.880 | You made them go away, which happened over time.

01:56:43.420 | And then the energy that was so powerful with them

01:56:45.100 | was less and less and less.

01:56:46.100 | And what happens, they dissipate, they atrophy, right?

01:56:48.580 | That's how they go away because there's no more power.

01:56:51.260 | There's no more power in them.

01:56:53.180 | And that really is the way that we make change.

01:56:55.620 | And I think, you know, your emphasis upon

01:56:58.100 | the fact that it takes time, the fact that it takes effort,

01:57:02.720 | the fact that it only goes away slowly.

01:57:05.500 | Over 20 years of, at times, being a therapist,

01:57:09.220 | what I've seen be the most daunting,

01:57:11.580 | the thing that makes people just give up and go away

01:57:14.340 | and go back to the things that are bad,

01:57:16.040 | give up on themselves, are that it takes time.

01:57:18.620 | And, you know, if you think it's supposed to take two weeks

01:57:22.220 | and the world around you is kind of leading you

01:57:23.840 | to think that, and then you go for help,

01:57:25.740 | and the help kind of leads you to think that,

01:57:28.060 | whether it's two weeks or it's 10 weeks,

01:57:30.500 | like if it's gonna take two years,

01:57:32.960 | you're gonna go away disheartened, right?

01:57:36.320 | Or maybe more angry at yourself or maybe demoralized.

01:57:38.800 | So we have to look at the truth of all of this.

01:57:42.120 | Like a parallel to your story.

01:57:43.680 | In my own life, for years and years and years,

01:57:46.560 | I carried a negative voice inside

01:57:49.320 | that was always waiting for me to do something wrong.

01:57:51.360 | So if I say something that's a little bit off

01:57:53.480 | or not exactly what I wanna say now,

01:57:55.980 | it would say like, that wasn't good.

01:57:57.520 | Like it says something negative inside to me.

01:57:59.300 | Or it's waiting for me to drop something

01:58:00.760 | and say that I'm stupid and clumsy, right?

01:58:02.860 | With me all the time.

01:58:04.680 | But over time, through self-reflection, through therapy,

01:58:07.240 | like through a lot of hard work,

01:58:09.120 | but a desire for things to be better

01:58:10.720 | and a desire to understand it, right?

01:58:12.600 | Like it's not there anymore.

01:58:14.120 | I mean, every now and then it'll raise its head, right?

01:58:17.280 | I'll do something really.

01:58:18.120 | I dropped a cup of coffee.

01:58:19.200 | I haven't done it in 10 years and it made a mess.

01:58:21.160 | And now people are coming to clean it up

01:58:22.920 | and man, the voice came back, right?

01:58:24.840 | But I could recognize it, right?

01:58:26.200 | Like I really feel bad about this.

01:58:27.800 | And now it gives that voice a chance to come out,

01:58:29.940 | but it doesn't come out much anymore.

01:58:32.540 | Whereas I lived with it for years.

01:58:35.120 | It doesn't come out much anymore.

01:58:37.020 | And when it came out not that long ago,

01:58:38.700 | like I could recognize it.

01:58:39.800 | Like I'm not happy I did this and let me help clean it up,

01:58:41.960 | but it doesn't mean I'm an idiot, right?

01:58:44.220 | So the voice in my head can just go away

01:58:46.860 | as I've been helping it to do for a bunch of years now.

01:58:51.120 | - Yeah, I think also important for people to understand

01:58:53.060 | is that it takes time,

01:58:54.060 | but that we can all potentially engage in right actions,

01:58:59.060 | you know, moving towards strivings and hopefulness

01:59:02.420 | as we cope with those

01:59:05.060 | and try and diminish those internal narratives,

01:59:07.540 | those intrusive thoughts.

01:59:08.620 | It's not as if during the entire process,

01:59:11.060 | you know, you can't function.

01:59:12.500 | I mean, I think that it's cognitively

01:59:15.860 | and sometimes even physically demanding to do,

01:59:17.820 | but we can still engage in healthy ways in the world

01:59:21.580 | and we can still try and avoid acting out

01:59:25.040 | and avoid forms of denial.

01:59:27.560 | And as I say this, I'm realizing that, you know,

01:59:30.940 | the wish for or the impulse

01:59:33.060 | to really just suppress intrusive thought,

01:59:35.840 | born of trauma or whatever else is really futile.

01:59:39.540 | Like that's not gonna work.

01:59:40.980 | It's not gonna work.

01:59:41.860 | We have to embrace these narratives

01:59:43.740 | and not expect them to disappear in a finger snap,

01:59:46.540 | but embrace them and like see them and look at them

01:59:49.780 | and be unafraid to look at them

01:59:52.780 | and discount where they are absolutely not true.

01:59:56.740 | - I would say unafraid to understand, right?

02:00:01.300 | Because we must understand.

02:00:03.780 | It means we must look at what's going on inside of us.

02:00:07.060 | When I didn't like that voice, but was afraid of it,

02:00:09.620 | like what is going on inside me?

02:00:10.980 | What does this say about me?

02:00:12.300 | And I'm directing away from it.

02:00:14.940 | Well, that's why it was with me for like several decades.

02:00:18.360 | Right?

02:00:19.200 | But when I start to go look at it,

02:00:20.760 | I can find an answer to it.

02:00:22.380 | And again, you have to look at what's going on

02:00:25.220 | in that person because one might presume,

02:00:27.740 | and maybe people listening are presuming this or maybe not,

02:00:30.140 | but a reasonable presumption

02:00:32.640 | that might just reflexively happen in a person

02:00:34.940 | would be to think that, oh, when I was younger,

02:00:37.640 | the messaging I was getting

02:00:39.040 | was that you're not good enough, right?

02:00:40.920 | You're not good enough, right?

02:00:41.760 | That's why I carry with me

02:00:43.000 | that you're not good enough, right?

02:00:45.160 | But it's not that.

02:00:46.740 | Sometimes it's the opposite.

02:00:48.800 | I was rewarded a lot when I was younger

02:00:51.500 | for doing things in a way everyone thought was great, right?

02:00:54.260 | Like getting great grades and being well-behaved,

02:00:56.580 | doing all sorts of things

02:00:57.580 | that brought a lot of positive reinforcement to me,

02:01:01.060 | but I never handled well things

02:01:03.060 | that fell even a little bit short of that,

02:01:05.420 | and then it would evoke a lot of shame.

02:01:06.820 | So the oppression inside is not coming from denigration,

02:01:11.060 | it's coming from something different, right?

02:01:12.980 | Which is also why this is not a search to blame someone,

02:01:17.980 | right?

02:01:18.820 | Because sometimes the people who are giving the message,

02:01:21.680 | like they're doing the best they can.

02:01:23.220 | I mean, someone who's saying to a child,

02:01:25.300 | you're a loser, like that's not okay, right?

02:01:28.480 | No matter what, that's not okay.

02:01:30.540 | But that's often not how it happens.

02:01:32.800 | Like, you know, the parent, like he says, communicating,

02:01:35.040 | they don't realize that every time

02:01:37.320 | they're admiring a certain level of wealth

02:01:39.020 | or a certain kind of beauty, they're giving that message,

02:01:41.420 | that the child that doesn't meet that

02:01:43.440 | or ends up not meeting that isn't good enough.

02:01:45.760 | But they don't know that.

02:01:46.760 | Or, you know, like my parents tried to nurture me

02:01:49.740 | and they did a good job of it in many ways

02:01:51.380 | and teachers did a good job.

02:01:52.680 | So they're realizing, hey, this person's gonna end up,

02:01:55.780 | you know, a bunch of years from now,

02:01:57.420 | not thinking anything's good enough.

02:01:59.680 | And I mean, they don't know that.

02:02:00.720 | So it's not a search for blame.

02:02:03.120 | And I think that's very, very important, very important,

02:02:05.640 | because often people don't wanna look inside

02:02:08.660 | because they think either I'm gonna find

02:02:10.680 | something dramatically wrong with me.

02:02:12.640 | And the answer I would give is there's almost surely

02:02:15.440 | not something dramatically wrong with you

02:02:17.240 | if you're having that thought.

02:02:18.800 | And if somehow there is, you're better off

02:02:20.920 | looking at it now than later, right?

02:02:23.160 | And so that's part of it.

02:02:24.420 | The other part is that people become worried

02:02:27.720 | that they're going to ruin something.

02:02:29.920 | You know, I'm gonna, I like my parents

02:02:31.840 | and if I go look at this, I'm gonna hate them.

02:02:35.800 | Like people say things or think things like that.

02:02:38.680 | And the idea that we may get down to something

02:02:41.920 | that really involves someone being responsible

02:02:43.980 | for something bad.

02:02:44.820 | Now, if that's the truth, the person already knows

02:02:47.680 | that inside the vast majority of times.

02:02:50.020 | They know that, they're just not facing that.

02:02:52.680 | But most of the time also, it's not that.

02:02:55.040 | It's just like, okay, that's how life evolved

02:02:56.760 | and what's the predisposition?

02:02:57.960 | Like, you know, I was smart enough to get good grades

02:03:00.380 | and I have a low threshold for shame

02:03:01.960 | and people reinforced me.

02:03:03.520 | And like, oh, like I can kind of understand that

02:03:06.240 | so then I can get control over it.

02:03:08.640 | It's not a search for anger, frustration,

02:03:11.280 | blame of self or others.

02:03:13.220 | - Yeah, and oftentimes I hear that people are afraid

02:03:16.880 | of dealing with these deeper issues

02:03:19.000 | or addressing these deeper issues

02:03:20.520 | for fear that they'll lose their drive, right?

02:03:24.060 | That the thing that makes them successful

02:03:25.640 | in the first place and that allows them

02:03:27.660 | perhaps even to afford therapy or afford the time

02:03:30.340 | to think about these sorts of questions.

02:03:31.940 | So it seems to me that the drives

02:03:35.200 | that you referred to earlier, the generative drive,

02:03:37.760 | the aggressive drive and the pleasure drive

02:03:41.320 | are such critical nodes or areas to look

02:03:45.360 | for all of us in terms of figuring out

02:03:48.180 | whether or not we're doing well or less well

02:03:51.140 | according to some features

02:03:52.380 | that are pretty much universal in people.

02:03:55.060 | Essentially what I'm saying is at least by my understanding,

02:03:59.280 | we all have drives to some extent or another

02:04:02.900 | and to the extent that our aggressive drive is very high

02:04:05.980 | and pleasure drive is very high

02:04:07.300 | and whether or not it's pointed in the right direction,

02:04:10.680 | it can be generative.

02:04:11.560 | If it's not, perhaps it can undermine our generative drive.

02:04:14.940 | I'm very curious to know how you've observed

02:04:17.940 | the different ranges of these drives in people

02:04:21.100 | and how that predicts whether or not people will do

02:04:23.740 | more or less well in different areas of life,

02:04:25.660 | essentially how the different drives play out.

02:04:27.900 | - I think that the first thing to say is

02:04:31.460 | where the drives are at, so to speak, in any of us

02:04:34.940 | is a combination of nature and nurture.

02:04:37.060 | So the nature part tells us the range

02:04:41.000 | sort of that the drive is gonna be,

02:04:43.200 | but because nurture means so much to humans,

02:04:46.440 | as we understand it from epigenetics,

02:04:48.480 | from the advancement of science,

02:04:50.680 | we see more and more and more how much nurture matters.

02:04:53.960 | So the range that's denoted by nature

02:04:56.880 | is probably pretty broad.

02:04:58.080 | I mean, we see the manifestation of that

02:04:59.920 | and then the nurture lets us then move that drive.

02:05:04.040 | Now, sometimes nurture that's not gone in the right place

02:05:06.760 | and move the drive in the wrong direction, right?

02:05:08.880 | But as adults, as people who can take care of ourselves,

02:05:12.280 | who can learn about ourselves,

02:05:14.360 | we can change where the drives are seated.

02:05:17.880 | It's not an easy thing to do

02:05:19.740 | because it requires a lot of changes of self,

02:05:22.120 | of self-knowledge and hard work, but we can do it, right?

02:05:25.520 | We can change the sort of array of how those drives

02:05:29.220 | are manifesting themselves within us, and we see that.

02:05:32.120 | I mean, that's part of the hopefulness

02:05:33.600 | of mental health treatment, right,

02:05:35.480 | that we see not just surface changes,

02:05:37.760 | but we can see changes on a deeper level.

02:05:39.740 | So I think it's important that these things are not fixed,

02:05:43.080 | although there are some natural elements.

02:05:45.240 | Someone who may have a natural sort of low aggression

02:05:48.320 | or low self-assertion, okay,

02:05:49.480 | it's gonna be in the lower range,

02:05:51.320 | but it doesn't mean that it's locked in

02:05:53.000 | at any one particular point.

02:05:55.200 | And that the place that we wanna be,

02:05:57.200 | what is the place that's consistent

02:05:59.080 | with the things that we want?

02:06:00.680 | The agency and gratitude as verbs

02:06:03.120 | and the sense of wellbeing and all of that.

02:06:06.520 | So the idea is the state of health

02:06:09.240 | has the generative drive as prominent, right?

02:06:12.980 | It's the dominant drive, and then aggression and pleasure,

02:06:16.160 | which are still active in us,

02:06:17.640 | but they're subserving the generative drive,

02:06:20.480 | and that's the state that we wish to be in.

02:06:22.460 | So when we're assessing, okay,

02:06:24.180 | why is there something that doesn't feel okay

02:06:26.360 | or something that's not going okay, right,

02:06:28.580 | then one way to start is to look at,

02:06:31.380 | okay, what's going on in the person?

02:06:32.740 | What may be off in the drives?

02:06:34.320 | That gives us a very strong idea of,

02:06:37.800 | okay, what's going on, a way of understanding

02:06:41.060 | what's going on as we then go and look in the 10 cupboards

02:06:44.840 | to figure out the specifics.

02:06:46.180 | Okay, what is actually going on here

02:06:47.940 | that we can then change?

02:06:49.440 | But the framing of what's going on

02:06:51.820 | can come through the lens of looking at the drives

02:06:54.400 | and how they're manifest in us.

02:06:56.400 | - What does it look like when the aggressive drive

02:06:59.760 | is very high and the pleasure drive is also very high?

02:07:04.400 | - So if these drives are running too high,

02:07:07.620 | where we end up at is in a place of envy, right?

02:07:11.280 | And envy, I'm always sort of on the soapbox about envy

02:07:14.840 | because I think envy is just so wildly destructive.

02:07:17.960 | And if the aggressive drive is very high,

02:07:21.220 | so the person, say, in one way this can manifest itself,

02:07:26.220 | just wants more and more and more, right?

02:07:28.440 | They're not getting satisfaction from anything,

02:07:30.720 | but they want more.

02:07:31.980 | That may be because of a strong vulnerability inside of them.

02:07:35.600 | So something that might map to narcissism, for example,

02:07:38.640 | there could be a strong aggressive drive to get more

02:07:43.080 | and that leads to something that's very unhealthy.

02:07:45.680 | So the idea that I want more, I need more,

02:07:48.100 | I don't have enough, I can't get enough,

02:07:50.480 | then fosters envy, right?

02:07:52.600 | Which is not the desire to be better or to have more,

02:07:57.840 | but it's just the desire to feel better about the self,

02:08:01.160 | whether that involves raising the self up

02:08:03.120 | or bringing someone else down.

02:08:05.060 | That's why envy is destructive.

02:08:07.180 | So very high levels of aggression that are not tempered,

02:08:10.860 | for example, by a generative drive that would also be high,

02:08:15.080 | then create a circumstance of envy

02:08:17.540 | and the envy is destructive.

02:08:19.760 | And the same happens if the pleasure drive

02:08:22.440 | is very, very strong.

02:08:23.840 | So if one continues to want more pleasure,

02:08:26.000 | so I can't find any satisfaction,

02:08:27.480 | I don't feel good about myself,

02:08:29.000 | I feel bereft inside, right?

02:08:31.160 | And I see that pleasure can make me feel better,

02:08:34.480 | but just for a little bit, right?

02:08:35.700 | Then it fades away and I want more of it

02:08:37.220 | and I want more of it.

02:08:38.380 | That also can lead to the place of envy.

02:08:40.960 | Like that's the outcome.

02:08:42.600 | So if the aggressive drive is running very high

02:08:45.700 | or the pleasure drive is running very high,

02:08:47.960 | or if both are running very high,

02:08:49.320 | but it only takes one in order to end up in a place of envy.

02:08:53.620 | So if the generative drive is not high enough

02:08:56.940 | to overcome how high the aggressive drive is,

02:08:59.560 | which would mean then the aggressive drive

02:09:01.180 | would be sublimated towards good, productive things.

02:09:04.000 | So take the energy and put it towards something

02:09:06.140 | that is goodness.

02:09:07.520 | But if the aggressive drive was way out there

02:09:10.500 | ahead of the generative drive,

02:09:12.460 | that ends up in a place of envy,

02:09:14.980 | as does the pleasure drive.

02:09:16.420 | If I want more and more and more,

02:09:18.660 | but I never get satisfaction from anything.

02:09:21.940 | It never brings me any sense of goodness

02:09:23.980 | that where it ends is in a place of vulnerability

02:09:28.140 | and resentment, right?

02:09:29.300 | 'Cause envy involves wanting more, right?

02:09:32.340 | And envy, if we look at what's really going on,

02:09:36.200 | envy under the surface involves wanting everything, right?

02:09:38.640 | If a person is at the outer limits of envy, right?

02:09:41.580 | Which is why envy is so destructive.

02:09:44.660 | Because if I can't get enough pleasure

02:09:46.820 | and there's so much aggression in me,

02:09:49.260 | then I'm not gonna make myself feel better.

02:09:51.740 | But what I can do is make other people feel worse.

02:09:55.500 | - I wanna ask you more about envy,

02:09:56.900 | but first I want to ask,

02:09:59.580 | is one way to characterize the generative drive

02:10:02.440 | and to distinguish it from the other drives

02:10:05.900 | is to say that generative drives are pro-social,

02:10:09.680 | meaning they tend to bring about

02:10:11.820 | benevolent interactions between people?

02:10:14.840 | - In the sense that, so pro-social as constructive, right?

02:10:19.580 | As in a sense building goodness, then yes,

02:10:22.900 | because it's the drive in us

02:10:24.460 | that makes us wanna love and nurture things, right?

02:10:27.140 | That makes us wanna learn

02:10:28.300 | and sometimes learn to make better in the world

02:10:30.660 | or learn for learning's sake,

02:10:32.460 | that the drive is a drive of goodness.

02:10:35.460 | So if the drive is then gonna enact itself

02:10:38.500 | in the world around us, it's gonna be pro-social

02:10:41.460 | because we exist as social units, right?

02:10:44.280 | I mean, if we decide,

02:10:45.120 | oh, I wanna be an island off somewhere,

02:10:46.740 | like that's not healthy, right?

02:10:47.940 | We exist in social units from small,

02:10:50.900 | like a nuclear family, right?

02:10:52.300 | To a neighborhood, right?

02:10:53.400 | All the way up to nations and to the planet.

02:10:56.260 | So if we perceive the truth of that,

02:10:58.420 | that, hey, there's an interdependence between me and others

02:11:02.260 | and I see that, then the drive will lead to

02:11:06.220 | choices and behaviors that are socially constructive.

02:11:08.920 | - Earlier, you talked about aggression

02:11:11.940 | and you were clear to make sure that we all understood

02:11:15.300 | that aggression does not necessarily mean violent aggression,

02:11:19.060 | that there are different forms of aggression.

02:11:21.260 | I'm curious if you could give us some examples

02:11:22.980 | of how you've observed people with high levels of aggression

02:11:27.860 | and high levels of pleasure drive as well,

02:11:31.060 | both male and female.

02:11:33.080 | And here, without defaulting to stereotypes,

02:11:36.420 | I think a lot of people just,

02:11:38.500 | despite the fact that you've clarified what aggression is

02:11:41.260 | and isn't in the context of this conversation,

02:11:43.780 | we hear the word aggression and we think

02:11:46.260 | verbal attack, physical attack.

02:11:48.220 | However, the way you're describing aggression

02:11:50.120 | and the aggressive drive,

02:11:51.180 | I have a feeling that you're referring to other expressions

02:11:54.060 | of aggression as well.

02:11:55.180 | - So if the aggressive drive is running too high

02:11:58.660 | and that could have factors of nature,

02:12:00.760 | factors of nurture, right?

02:12:02.320 | Factors of the situation the person is in,

02:12:04.340 | factors of their whole life,

02:12:05.580 | but it ends up at the moment in a place that is too high,

02:12:09.780 | then what that person is doing in one way or another

02:12:13.020 | is to try and exert an unhealthy level of control.

02:12:17.380 | And that can be done in so many different ways.

02:12:19.900 | It can be done in that overt way

02:12:21.780 | of just intimidating people, right?

02:12:24.020 | Of using harsh language for its people.

02:12:26.140 | It can be done by manipulating people.

02:12:27.960 | It can be done through passive aggression.

02:12:29.580 | There are all sorts of ways

02:12:31.340 | that the person can try and exert unhealthy control,

02:12:34.300 | but that's where we end up if there's too much expression

02:12:38.420 | of the aggressive drive in us.

02:12:40.460 | - That makes sense.

02:12:41.300 | And it reminds me of an example from my own life where,

02:12:44.700 | well, first off, I should say I've had

02:12:46.840 | almost exclusively positive collaborations

02:12:50.180 | among my colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere.

02:12:52.440 | Like every one of those collaborations has ended in a paper

02:12:55.860 | that we were all happy with, but more importantly,

02:12:58.120 | the relationships grew and were not diminished, right?

02:13:02.040 | But I had one collaboration with someone not to be named

02:13:05.800 | where it was going very well,

02:13:08.700 | but I had the need to reschedule an appointment.

02:13:12.100 | So I sent ahead a note about the fact

02:13:14.340 | that my car need dealing with, I had some other things.

02:13:16.660 | I explained why I need to reschedule the appointment

02:13:19.720 | and didn't receive a reply, which was a little unusual,

02:13:22.980 | but then eventually received a reply that said,

02:13:25.340 | well, it's clear that you don't want

02:13:28.740 | to pursue this collaboration,

02:13:30.300 | which is like the furthest thing from the truth, right?

02:13:32.700 | And so I expressed that

02:13:36.140 | and then the collaboration was reinstated.

02:13:38.520 | But it brought to mind some concern for me

02:13:41.240 | because it was sort of an extreme reaction

02:13:43.800 | to something that happens among academics or anyone.

02:13:47.800 | We get busy with things come up.

02:13:49.240 | It was important to tend to the car that is.

02:13:52.780 | And then at some point later,

02:13:54.260 | they were late to a number of meetings.

02:13:58.540 | Okay, no big deal.

02:13:59.780 | We're academics, we tend to run late.

02:14:01.460 | That's typical of many academics.

02:14:03.460 | But then I was late once to a meeting

02:14:05.420 | and they essentially left and wrote an email

02:14:08.300 | that said something of the sort like,

02:14:10.500 | I've got my own great ideas.

02:14:12.120 | So I'm no longer interested in pursuing the collaboration.

02:14:14.760 | And I was like pretty shocked, right?

02:14:17.580 | Because there was nothing really outside the ordinary

02:14:21.440 | in terms of busy-ness and professorial schedules.

02:14:25.200 | And there were other people involved,

02:14:26.720 | post-docs and things like that.

02:14:28.360 | And there was a great project to be worked out.

02:14:31.980 | So I remember being disappointed,

02:14:33.460 | but also really kind of surprised.

02:14:35.400 | But then when I mapped it back to the earlier example

02:14:37.620 | of the car incident, I thought,

02:14:40.020 | well, there's a real sort of lack of ability

02:14:43.960 | of this person to handle disappointment.

02:14:45.980 | And yet they're demonstrating some of the same behavior

02:14:49.620 | of occasionally running tardy and these kinds of things.

02:14:52.920 | And I remember feeling like it was pretty aggressive.

02:14:57.000 | Like it's a pretty aggressive reaction to something

02:15:00.180 | that could have been handled with a conversation.

02:15:02.380 | Now, I must say, I'm very grateful

02:15:03.820 | that the collaboration didn't proceed

02:15:05.260 | and it went elsewhere and it worked out great.

02:15:07.080 | And they're doing great and we're doing great.

02:15:08.420 | And so no hard feelings.

02:15:10.020 | But it stands out to me as a pretty salient example

02:15:15.020 | of aggression, but not played out

02:15:17.580 | at the level of yelling or anything.

02:15:19.040 | There's a passivity in there,

02:15:20.520 | but then there's also kind of entitlement.

02:15:24.060 | And here, of course,

02:15:24.900 | I'm only looking at the other person's behavior.

02:15:26.420 | And I should acknowledge, I realize, canceling, not good.

02:15:29.680 | Being late, not good.

02:15:30.640 | But listen, I'm a human being and I-

02:15:32.780 | - You canceled once, you were late.

02:15:34.700 | This isn't habitual, this is human stuff, right?

02:15:38.460 | - Right, and a lot of good work had gone into the project.

02:15:42.860 | And there was a cost where most importantly,

02:15:46.560 | the postdoc suffered because they weren't involved

02:15:49.120 | in these interactions at all.

02:15:50.340 | And yet the project halted at that point.

02:15:53.060 | So to me, that seems like an example

02:15:56.440 | of somebody who has a, well, strong, aggressive drive.

02:16:01.300 | And that's clear from that they're incredibly successful

02:16:04.360 | in the academic domain.

02:16:06.140 | And when disappointed, lashes back or is passive,

02:16:12.480 | one or the other.

02:16:13.320 | Is that kind of what we're getting at here?

02:16:16.140 | Not surprisingly, perhaps,

02:16:17.320 | the person rarely publishes with other people.

02:16:20.280 | Probably that doesn't make a very good collaborative partner.

02:16:22.720 | - Right, and it totally makes sense.

02:16:24.800 | I mean, if you think about what you're describing here,

02:16:27.960 | which is some vulnerability in the person,

02:16:30.660 | there's some way in which the person

02:16:32.400 | doesn't feel good enough, no matter what

02:16:34.440 | this person has achieved.

02:16:36.120 | So then there's a sense of the need

02:16:39.520 | and the right to over control.

02:16:41.640 | So when you agree to work together,

02:16:43.680 | you didn't agree that I'll never have to cancel anything.

02:16:47.640 | Right, but the thought was different.

02:16:51.120 | The framing is different on the other end

02:16:53.800 | that now we're gonna work together, right?

02:16:56.140 | So I'm exerting significant control over you, right?

02:16:58.840 | And again, you're not aware of it, right?

02:17:00.760 | And maybe that he's not aware of it.

02:17:02.400 | - In this case, it was a she.

02:17:03.880 | - Oh, okay, okay.

02:17:04.840 | So I was thinking of someone different,

02:17:06.520 | but she has to have some deficit of self

02:17:09.320 | that results in the reflexive need to over control.

02:17:13.120 | And think about the first response is a non-response, right?

02:17:17.160 | Which is, that's aggression.

02:17:19.000 | It's just passive aggression, right?

02:17:20.840 | The thought would be, well, you're worried

02:17:22.520 | something doesn't feel good in you

02:17:23.560 | because I didn't respond, which was true, right?

02:17:25.560 | You're expecting a response.

02:17:26.760 | Maybe you don't know, did you get the email?

02:17:28.880 | You know, what's happening?

02:17:29.720 | Is she mad?

02:17:30.600 | So it's sort of effective.

02:17:31.800 | It creates some consternation and some dissonance in you.

02:17:35.520 | Then on top of that,

02:17:37.520 | the person is willing to potentially

02:17:39.360 | at that point sacrifice the relationship, right?

02:17:42.000 | So you think about aggression now is not good, right?

02:17:45.000 | This excess aggression is not good for you.

02:17:48.800 | It also is clearly eclipsing the generative drive, right?

02:17:52.800 | Because it's not good for this person and their research.

02:17:55.420 | It's not good for this person

02:17:56.800 | and the postdocs in their lab, right?

02:17:59.320 | But the person is willing to accept that

02:18:02.120 | in the service of gratifying the excess in aggression.

02:18:06.200 | Now, so then you said something

02:18:08.200 | that then sort of made it okay, right, for the short term.

02:18:10.640 | Okay, then the person feels gratified.

02:18:12.240 | Like whether you apologize or not, they took it as,

02:18:14.820 | you know, you've to some degree bowed down before me now,

02:18:17.200 | like it'll be okay, at least for the short term, right?

02:18:20.520 | But then the next thing that happens

02:18:22.440 | actually does end the collaboration, right?

02:18:26.300 | So that's not good, right?

02:18:28.480 | And you see, even from a self-serving perspective,

02:18:31.120 | that person was collaborating with you for a reason, right?

02:18:34.000 | She saw a benefit to the science

02:18:36.640 | that she's very, very interested in

02:18:38.400 | through the collaboration with you.

02:18:40.800 | But then let that all go, right?

02:18:42.840 | In the service of what?

02:18:44.180 | In the service of the ego, right?

02:18:47.320 | Of, you know, I don't feel good enough about myself, right?

02:18:50.040 | The response to that then is a response of envy,

02:18:53.440 | that I don't like that you have the freedom

02:18:55.220 | to behave differently than I want you to, right?

02:18:58.120 | I don't like any of it.

02:18:58.960 | I don't like that I don't control you

02:19:00.120 | as much as I would like to.

02:19:01.960 | And ultimately, it's that envy that becomes destructive.

02:19:05.840 | So it's a setback for that person.

02:19:08.260 | It's destructive of the science that person was doing.

02:19:10.640 | It's destructive of the science that you were doing.

02:19:12.960 | So envy is destructive.

02:19:15.360 | And here, the high level of aggression,

02:19:19.640 | the aggressive drive is at a very high place.

02:19:21.900 | It's exceeding the generative drive.

02:19:24.040 | The pleasure drive isn't high enough either

02:19:25.640 | 'cause there's not enough pleasure

02:19:26.560 | coming from the great science that's being done, right?

02:19:29.600 | So then the person is approaching the world

02:19:32.880 | through the lens of envy, right?

02:19:35.360 | They don't feel good enough.

02:19:36.400 | They wanna exert that aggression through overcontrol.

02:19:40.160 | And what they end up doing is destructive, right?

02:19:43.440 | And it's very clearly destructive.

02:19:44.640 | It's a great example because it's destructive of the science

02:19:47.540 | which is ostensibly the reason that you're there, right?

02:19:50.820 | It's the reason you were there.

02:19:52.080 | But someone who needs to exert overcontrol

02:19:55.240 | is there not just for that reason.

02:19:56.920 | And then the other reasons can trump

02:19:59.220 | the generative reason that they're there.

02:20:01.680 | And that's how envy, when it is the product of aggression

02:20:06.680 | or pleasure seeking being too high,

02:20:11.640 | always, unfailingly creates destruction.

02:20:16.380 | And how different is that from agency and gratitude

02:20:21.380 | as active verbs, right?

02:20:24.480 | There's a sense of agency,

02:20:26.200 | but the agency isn't being exactly enacted

02:20:28.480 | 'cause if the agency is being enacted

02:20:29.940 | in the service of science or career or whatever it may be,

02:20:32.600 | that's not going so well, right?

02:20:35.380 | And the gratitude part isn't active.

02:20:37.840 | Like my goodness, I'm here.

02:20:39.200 | Like I have this great career.

02:20:40.200 | I'm discovering things.

02:20:41.220 | I get to spend my life in science.

02:20:42.760 | I get to collaborate with you.

02:20:43.960 | Like there's so many things to feel good about.

02:20:45.840 | I have postdocs in my lab, right?

02:20:47.600 | I get to nurture them because I know more and I can guide.

02:20:50.480 | But that's not leading, right?

02:20:52.160 | Envy is not those things,

02:20:55.000 | which is why people who are doing that,

02:20:57.500 | at least in this realm of life,

02:20:59.040 | although this often, no,

02:21:00.560 | this bleeds into other realms of life.

02:21:03.380 | What you, the vast majority of times,

02:21:05.800 | you see as someone who does not have happiness, right?

02:21:09.680 | In the way that we're, you know,

02:21:10.920 | happiness with the quotes, right?

02:21:12.040 | That happiness is, you know, the sense of peace, right?

02:21:15.920 | The sense of wellbeing, right?

02:21:18.720 | This being able to delight in things, contentment, right?

02:21:21.680 | The person doesn't have that, right?

02:21:23.700 | And here it's interesting, right?

02:21:24.920 | This person gets to the highest levels of academia

02:21:28.000 | and they're very successful

02:21:29.080 | and they have a lab of their own and they're collaborating.

02:21:31.960 | You think that's all great, right?

02:21:34.380 | But not inside of them.

02:21:35.480 | It's not bringing them those things

02:21:37.640 | as evidenced by how this person is behaving.

02:21:40.120 | And I would bet almost 100% if you say,

02:21:42.360 | what's that person like in other aspects of life,

02:21:45.120 | at least in the professional world, probably in others too,

02:21:47.740 | no one's gonna describe a happy person.

02:21:50.720 | So much of what you just said

02:21:52.160 | captures this individual extremely well.

02:21:56.200 | And it also reminds me that so much of the way

02:21:58.920 | that you're describing this aggressive drive

02:22:01.480 | can also be observed perhaps in the way

02:22:04.080 | that people show up to social interactions,

02:22:06.720 | not necessarily big interactions,

02:22:08.740 | maybe even just interactions between two people.

02:22:10.640 | What I'm thinking of here is the person, male or female,

02:22:14.200 | who shows up and just kind of takes over,

02:22:17.640 | like talks the whole time and tells stories.

02:22:20.440 | I went to a meal when I graduated university

02:22:23.640 | and someone showed up for the first time at this meal,

02:22:27.040 | meaning we had never met them before,

02:22:28.400 | and just like sat down and just started telling stories

02:22:30.720 | for like an hour.

02:22:32.200 | And it was interesting, portions of it were captivating.

02:22:35.440 | And then at some point I realized

02:22:37.240 | this is either total pathology,

02:22:38.760 | like this person is crazy, but they weren't crazy,

02:22:42.320 | or they have no recognition

02:22:45.720 | that they're absorbing all the oxygen in the room

02:22:48.840 | as it's sometimes described.

02:22:50.280 | But it seemed like they had this need

02:22:53.880 | to just control the whole environment by way of speech,

02:22:56.040 | just like, you know, fire hose stories.

02:23:00.360 | And I've seen this definitely in the academic realm.

02:23:03.800 | I've seen this in the non-academic realm

02:23:06.280 | and social settings.

02:23:07.120 | And what's interesting is perhaps why this person does this

02:23:11.640 | or these people do this.

02:23:12.640 | But what's also interesting is how people react to it.

02:23:16.560 | On the one hand, I think most people find

02:23:19.220 | that kind of obnoxious,

02:23:21.060 | but there also seem to be people who see this as like,

02:23:23.120 | oh, that person has a lot of agency.

02:23:25.840 | Like they're a leader.

02:23:27.000 | Like they actually grab a lot of the attention

02:23:30.180 | that they're seeking.

02:23:31.020 | And we tend to view those people as kind of empowered.

02:23:34.440 | I don't actually think that they're necessarily empowered,

02:23:36.840 | but perhaps this stems from the feeling

02:23:39.800 | that the rest of us, I like to think have,

02:23:42.020 | which is some sense of social etiquette

02:23:44.520 | where there's some give and take.

02:23:45.840 | You know, you walk into a room,

02:23:47.040 | you kind of assess, you know, what's the context here.

02:23:50.360 | There's some listening as well as some speaking and so on.

02:23:53.840 | And so when someone shows up

02:23:55.320 | and kind of violates all those rules,

02:23:57.440 | on the one hand, it can be obnoxious

02:23:59.080 | and overtake everything.

02:24:00.200 | But as I said before, you know,

02:24:02.540 | there's also this sense of like,

02:24:04.120 | oh, like that must be nice to just be able to like

02:24:07.280 | be as one feels.

02:24:09.480 | And so I think I'm describing this

02:24:12.640 | not because I think people should mimic

02:24:14.340 | this type of behavior either way, you know,

02:24:17.000 | be really meek and not say anything that's on their mind

02:24:19.340 | or just overtake.

02:24:20.300 | But because I feel like it might be an exploration

02:24:23.500 | of this aggressive drive.

02:24:25.840 | And if someone's doing that,

02:24:27.020 | are they trying to like mask something else?

02:24:30.020 | And why do people react to these seemingly powerful people

02:24:34.380 | in this way?

02:24:35.220 | - These things happen in the world around us, right?

02:24:37.040 | They're independent of the spectrum of gender,

02:24:39.140 | the spectrum of intelligence achievement, right?

02:24:41.920 | They're human problems.

02:24:44.400 | So a person you're describing,

02:24:46.800 | whether that person has character structure problems

02:24:50.400 | that are present with them across time,

02:24:53.200 | or whether they're in a certain place, you know,

02:24:55.620 | whether it's in life or today,

02:24:57.220 | like we don't know for sure what the underpinnings,

02:24:59.760 | but what you're describing is

02:25:02.360 | it's a presentation of narcissism, right?

02:25:05.480 | And narcissism is rooted not in confidence,

02:25:09.480 | not in arrogance, right?

02:25:11.100 | It's rooted in vulnerability.

02:25:13.080 | It's rooted in I don't feel good enough.

02:25:17.440 | And narcissism then engages with the world

02:25:21.000 | through the lens of envy.

02:25:22.560 | So no one else gets to have any time.

02:25:25.320 | No one else gets to say anything funny.

02:25:27.560 | No one else maybe gets to say anything at all, right?

02:25:30.420 | There's a dominance of the room, right?

02:25:34.040 | There's a dominance of the room

02:25:35.960 | that comes through an inability to tolerate

02:25:39.360 | the back and forth of human interactions, right?

02:25:43.080 | Human engagement, right?

02:25:44.640 | So then that person becomes very dominant.

02:25:47.540 | And why is that?

02:25:48.420 | Because when they tell a story and they get a laugh,

02:25:50.760 | or even if it's not that funny and it's a 15th story,

02:25:52.820 | but somebody smiles a little bit or nobody smiles,

02:25:55.600 | they can perceive inside that like, I just did that.

02:25:58.580 | I said that.

02:25:59.420 | And maybe somebody responded positively.

02:26:00.780 | I feel good about that.

02:26:01.860 | For a split second now that's gone.

02:26:03.940 | And then the next thing comes and the next thing comes

02:26:07.540 | because people who are coming at the world

02:26:09.780 | through the lens of narcissism,

02:26:11.620 | whether it's just in that particular event, right?

02:26:15.400 | Or it's across life, right?

02:26:17.380 | Are never satisfied.

02:26:19.260 | And nothing ever brings enough goodness.

02:26:21.660 | Nothing ever brings enough feeling of pleasure.

02:26:25.820 | So the person then wants more.

02:26:27.580 | And that's how the person dominates the room.

02:26:29.820 | Now that can be very seductive, right?

02:26:32.320 | Narcissistic people, not always,

02:26:34.460 | but are often very seductive

02:26:36.540 | because of that appearance of mastery, right?

02:26:39.140 | Of control.

02:26:40.180 | So that person did have,

02:26:42.040 | we could look at it in the short term and say,

02:26:44.380 | that person had mastery over the room, right?

02:26:47.060 | No one said anything for an hour, but them, right?

02:26:49.380 | So they had mastery over the room.

02:26:50.700 | They had control over the room.

02:26:52.380 | But what they're doing is exerting over control, right?

02:26:55.260 | In the short, it's like, you know,

02:26:56.420 | penny wise and pound foolish, right?

02:26:58.660 | Borrow a dollar today to pay back a hundred tomorrow, right?

02:27:01.540 | Because they got to control that room.

02:27:03.620 | But a lot of people, not everyone, right?

02:27:06.420 | Some people are seduced by it, right?

02:27:08.220 | But a lot of people will take away from that

02:27:10.140 | something that's not a good feeling,

02:27:11.640 | something that wasn't mutual,

02:27:13.120 | that doesn't make a person want to collaborate

02:27:15.260 | with that person,

02:27:16.100 | even be in the same space as that person, right?

02:27:18.460 | So it's counterproductive, right?

02:27:20.940 | Because the people who might come under the spell,

02:27:23.260 | so to speak, right?

02:27:24.440 | They're the people who were brought under the spell, right?

02:27:26.620 | They're less observant, dynamic,

02:27:30.140 | you know, intuitive, introspective.

02:27:32.540 | They're not the people that you want,

02:27:34.540 | in a sense, on your side, right?

02:27:36.040 | The people that would be most valuable to collaborate with,

02:27:38.940 | even as thought partners, have conversations with,

02:27:41.180 | like those people are going to be put off

02:27:43.060 | because even if they don't know exactly what's wrong,

02:27:46.040 | they know like, that didn't feel good.

02:27:47.780 | And they map, do I want that feeling more in my life?

02:27:49.940 | No, right?

02:27:51.360 | So that's the counterproductive aspects.

02:27:53.860 | Well, that's why narcissism is destructive.

02:27:56.060 | 'Cause you might say, well, there's nothing destructive

02:27:57.780 | in that, you know, in that interaction.

02:28:00.900 | But again, you have to be standing so up close to it

02:28:03.820 | that you don't see the bigger picture.

02:28:05.540 | 'Cause when you stand back from that,

02:28:06.940 | that's not a person who's, by and large, you know,

02:28:09.440 | you see that's not a person who's interconnected

02:28:11.160 | in the world around them,

02:28:12.380 | has a group of good, supportive friends,

02:28:14.160 | has a bunch of colleagues

02:28:15.640 | where they can sort of exchange information.

02:28:17.360 | And, you know, 'cause all that social dynamic

02:28:19.420 | has to happen in the rest of life.

02:28:21.240 | So you're seeing a situation that is counterproductive,

02:28:25.520 | that is destructive, and you always see that

02:28:28.080 | when people are enacting narcissism,

02:28:30.200 | whether it's, okay, a bunch of bad things have happened,

02:28:32.700 | and for whatever reason, like I'm in an unhealthy place

02:28:34.920 | and I'm enacting it right now,

02:28:36.220 | or if I'm enacting it every day of my life

02:28:38.100 | because it's in my character structure

02:28:39.440 | and I have it recognize and change it,

02:28:41.920 | it's always destructive.

02:28:43.940 | - The narcissists that I've known and observed

02:28:46.680 | almost always seem to have a partner

02:28:49.080 | who clearly supports their narcissism,

02:28:52.560 | or at least doesn't speak up very much against it,

02:28:54.800 | at least not publicly, and not much else,

02:28:58.240 | except a professional role.

02:28:59.900 | In fact, there's one scientist who I did not work with

02:29:02.980 | who comes to mind, and the joke about him

02:29:05.240 | was always that this person would talk about themselves

02:29:08.920 | endlessly for the first half hour that you run into them

02:29:11.800 | and say, okay, well, enough about me.

02:29:13.520 | Why don't you tell me about me?

02:29:15.120 | This person moved to a different country with their partner,

02:29:20.720 | comes back every once in a while,

02:29:22.400 | has essentially done nothing over the last decade or so,

02:29:26.640 | kind of left the field.

02:29:27.780 | And it's kind of secretly the laughing stock of the field.

02:29:31.820 | There was one other anecdote about this person.

02:29:34.280 | I'm just, I'm not picking on them.

02:29:36.040 | I'm just trying to explore these dimensions of aggression

02:29:38.800 | and low pleasure drive and envy.

02:29:43.040 | At lab meetings, it was well-known

02:29:47.040 | that they would host a basketball game,

02:29:49.080 | but it was well-known that you did not want to score

02:29:54.680 | like, you know, on this person

02:29:56.640 | because you would be asked to leave the lab.

02:30:00.320 | And indeed several people were asked to leave the laboratory

02:30:03.600 | for having embarrassed the lab head

02:30:06.260 | at one of these lab events.

02:30:07.920 | - By participating in exactly the event that was described

02:30:11.340 | in the way it was described and doing something competent.

02:30:14.340 | - Right, so the game was essentially a way

02:30:16.960 | for the person to build themselves up.

02:30:19.380 | And they were a mediocre at best basketball player.

02:30:21.920 | So like, here's this game where everyone's expected

02:30:24.080 | to pretend, right?

02:30:26.240 | And I have to imagine, pretend that the person

02:30:28.240 | is actually better at what they do than they are.

02:30:30.660 | And in some ways, it feels like a replica

02:30:34.720 | of how narcissism shows up in so many other areas of life.

02:30:38.040 | Like you said, you know, these people are rarely surrounded

02:30:40.160 | by people who are actually very bright,

02:30:44.720 | self, you know, self-effacing, et cetera, you know,

02:30:48.760 | who they tend to gather people that just support them

02:30:51.960 | or no one at all because no reasonably healthy person

02:30:54.960 | would choose to be around that.

02:30:56.720 | - Right, because that game is a metaphor for all of life

02:31:01.720 | for that person.

02:31:02.760 | It's sending that message, like see this message

02:31:05.280 | and extrapolate it out to everything else, right?

02:31:07.840 | And what is so, what's the metaphor?

02:31:09.680 | What's it communicating?

02:31:10.640 | It's communicating that you don't do anything better

02:31:15.640 | than I do, right?

02:31:17.640 | You don't rise above me, interestingly, right?

02:31:20.300 | You don't rise above me in any way.

02:31:22.480 | You don't get to know things I don't know.

02:31:24.320 | You don't get to do anything better than I do, right?

02:31:28.780 | Or I will be destructive towards you, right?

02:31:32.440 | It's fascinating because it's not about the game, right?

02:31:35.060 | The game is a way of communicating that message, right?

02:31:40.060 | Interesting, the person not even that good at the game,

02:31:42.600 | like why not choose something you're really good at, right?

02:31:44.840 | 'Cause then the message is not communicated as clearly,

02:31:47.280 | right, and a lot of this is coming as unconscious.

02:31:49.280 | Let's choose something I'm kind of fair to middling at,

02:31:51.640 | right, and then make it very clear

02:31:53.080 | that no one gets to be better,

02:31:54.740 | or I do something destructive to them.

02:31:57.340 | I mean, that's exactly what that is.

02:31:59.200 | And imagine like someone is thrown out of the lab, right?

02:32:02.040 | I mean, like this is in many ways,

02:32:04.440 | like the biggest thing in their life

02:32:05.920 | or one of the biggest things in that person's life.

02:32:06.760 | - Yeah, it's anti-generative.

02:32:08.240 | I mean, the cost of that in the larger world

02:32:11.100 | is one less potentially fantastic scientist.

02:32:14.440 | - Right, and that's the broader,

02:32:15.520 | that's always the broader picture

02:32:16.880 | because the narcissist is standing very, very close

02:32:20.080 | to the tapestry, right?

02:32:21.600 | And so the interaction there is

02:32:24.480 | you have scored a basket when I have not, right?

02:32:28.280 | So you don't understand the message

02:32:30.120 | that you're not supposed to exceed me.

02:32:32.280 | And now I will get rid of you

02:32:33.780 | because you're dangerous to have around, right?

02:32:35.480 | Because you don't get the message

02:32:36.680 | and you may exceed me in other ways.

02:32:39.160 | And also I'm gonna feel better

02:32:41.200 | because I have the power to be punitive, right?

02:32:43.620 | Even though it's wantonly punitive, right?

02:32:45.960 | And completely unjustified, but I have the power to do that.

02:32:49.040 | And it'll make me feel good then to push you away.

02:32:51.840 | And I know that's not gonna be good for you

02:32:53.200 | and I'll feel good about that, right?

02:32:55.080 | But that doesn't last.

02:32:57.200 | Of course, that's why the person continues to do it.

02:32:59.520 | And it also doesn't understand at all

02:33:02.960 | that like that's not good for science, right?

02:33:06.360 | Or most importantly, that's not good for me, right?

02:33:10.500 | There's a graduate student in that lab

02:33:12.200 | 'cause you didn't say fire the graduate,

02:33:14.520 | make the graduate student leave if the person wasn't good.

02:33:17.560 | No, it's make the graduate student leave.

02:33:18.940 | No matter what.

02:33:20.040 | So the person is doing things

02:33:21.440 | that are injurious to the society around us,

02:33:24.040 | obviously to the specific person they're targeting

02:33:26.600 | and also to themselves.

02:33:28.400 | And that's where if you follow envy

02:33:31.900 | and you see high levels of it

02:33:34.320 | in situations that are unbounded.

02:33:36.440 | So like this situation is unbounded

02:33:38.320 | in the sense that the person can do that.

02:33:39.800 | There's no higher authority.

02:33:41.120 | - Right, well labs, this is changing.

02:33:43.920 | And by the way, I should back up a second and say that

02:33:46.800 | I do believe and it's been my experience

02:33:48.580 | that most scientists and lab heads

02:33:50.160 | are not narcissists, are quite kind, are benevolent.

02:33:53.680 | I mean, they can be a little quirky.

02:33:54.660 | We're scientists after all, but not narcissists.

02:33:58.000 | At the same time, it is true that for a long time,

02:34:01.380 | less so now, laboratories were sort of like little fiefdoms.

02:34:05.880 | There was very little oversight from the universities.

02:34:08.400 | And so the lab you joined

02:34:09.860 | became your entire world and landscape.

02:34:12.760 | And there was some exploitation

02:34:14.300 | by narcissistic lab heads for sure.

02:34:18.080 | - Yeah, as you said, it was unbounded, right?

02:34:20.480 | Like there was no oversight.

02:34:21.560 | Whereas this would be much harder to recreate today

02:34:25.560 | if someone wanted to.

02:34:26.940 | - And I think that's why by almost everyone

02:34:29.680 | listening to this, it will resonate with them.

02:34:32.160 | They'll find some familiarity because you see this

02:34:35.060 | or you can see this in situations

02:34:37.220 | where there's a bounded group of people, right?

02:34:39.820 | There's just a certain group of people

02:34:41.320 | in a certain situation and that's who they are.

02:34:43.820 | But the authority of the person leading the group

02:34:47.000 | is unbounded.

02:34:48.080 | So there's a situation where if that person

02:34:50.800 | has narcissistic tendencies, aggressive drive is too high,

02:34:53.980 | pleasure drive is high but not being met,

02:34:56.140 | if all of those things are happening,

02:34:58.020 | that's when you see this come to light,

02:35:00.460 | which is why the destruction varies

02:35:03.480 | based upon the destruction that's permissible

02:35:07.440 | within the framework, right?

02:35:09.320 | So here, this person wasn't gonna like

02:35:11.260 | fire everyone in their lab, right?

02:35:13.640 | So in a sense, they could only damage their labs so much,

02:35:16.640 | although maybe if you damage your labs so much,

02:35:18.640 | you don't get funding, you inadvertently sink yourself.

02:35:21.640 | So even there, that person could bring about

02:35:24.280 | their own destruction.

02:35:25.660 | But when you see the other end where it's truly unbounded,

02:35:29.540 | like in the sense of war, right?

02:35:31.600 | As someone who can control a machine of war,

02:35:35.500 | who then has everything, right?

02:35:37.600 | Like what do they need, right?

02:35:39.540 | Well, they need something they don't have

02:35:41.360 | and never will get.

02:35:42.240 | So now they start enacting more and more is destructive,

02:35:46.320 | right?

02:35:47.160 | And you think, "Oh, that person wants something."

02:35:48.240 | I mean, how many times does someone start a war, right?

02:35:51.600 | There's clearly an unjustified war, right?

02:35:53.800 | It's a war because they want something.

02:35:56.120 | Then they get something and they're satisfied, right?

02:35:58.840 | That's not how it goes, right?

02:36:00.560 | Then they get something and they're not satisfied

02:36:02.480 | and they want more.

02:36:03.480 | So in discussions at times about narcissism and envy

02:36:07.200 | and how that can play out on the world stage.

02:36:10.660 | So sometimes huge events in human history will come up

02:36:15.000 | and people, for example, will bring up Adolf Hitler

02:36:17.880 | and the idea that Hitler wanted things, wanted things.

02:36:21.560 | No, the unbound narcissism, the unbound envy

02:36:26.400 | wanted destruction, right?

02:36:29.060 | This is a person who, if things had continued to go

02:36:32.400 | as this person intended, right?

02:36:34.660 | There would have been no one left on earth but him

02:36:37.800 | because the process is nothing but destructive,

02:36:41.520 | which is why after the fact there's incalculable

02:36:45.640 | human carnage, right?

02:36:47.360 | And he himself was among the incalculable human carnage

02:36:51.300 | because that's the end point of narcissism.

02:36:56.080 | That's the end, of narcissism on a broad stage, right?

02:36:58.600 | That's the end point of envy at its highest magnitude.

02:37:02.020 | And we see that as examples, whether we see

02:37:04.200 | on the smaller stage of the lab, right?

02:37:07.240 | A head that you're describing or on the larger stage

02:37:09.840 | of unbounded war, we end up with destruction like 100% time.

02:37:14.580 | That's the final common pathway for all of that.

02:37:18.060 | - Are there some consistent themes of childhood

02:37:20.720 | that lead somebody to become a narcissist?

02:37:23.840 | And in addition to that, I'm curious whether or not

02:37:27.080 | narcissists ever have insight, whether or not

02:37:30.920 | if offered the opportunity to explore the 10 cupboards

02:37:34.240 | under the structure of self and function of self,

02:37:36.960 | whether or not they eventually see inside those cupboards

02:37:40.720 | and go, oh my goodness, I've got this self

02:37:44.040 | that's clearly overinflated and I've got

02:37:45.880 | these defense mechanisms and I'm so envious

02:37:48.400 | in the end and modify their behavior,

02:37:50.520 | or whether or not the narcissists are immune

02:37:52.720 | from a constructive self-reflection.

02:37:55.780 | - Right, right.

02:37:56.620 | To answer the first part is the vast majority of narcissism,

02:38:01.620 | it may be all of it, we don't know for sure,

02:38:03.960 | is rooted in the childhood trauma

02:38:06.340 | of not feeling good enough, right?

02:38:08.440 | Which is not an excuse for people doing awful things.

02:38:13.080 | It's not what we're saying.

02:38:14.120 | We're trying to have an explanatory mechanism, right?

02:38:16.520 | Which goes back to formative life experiences

02:38:20.060 | and not feeling good enough, whether it was

02:38:22.160 | because that person was directly denigrated

02:38:24.600 | or that person wasn't denigrated

02:38:26.600 | but could never work hard enough, never could be enough

02:38:29.780 | to get approval, right?

02:38:32.760 | Again, it's not 100% and human beings are complicated,

02:38:35.980 | but if you go and look, you see that,

02:38:38.240 | that there was never a state of like,

02:38:39.620 | oh, I feel good enough about myself, right?

02:38:41.640 | And if there's never a state of I feel good enough

02:38:43.720 | about myself because someone has told me that

02:38:45.640 | and given me the pat on the head

02:38:46.860 | or given me the positive comment,

02:38:48.500 | you can see how in a certain sort of natural lay

02:38:51.240 | of the land genetically and in concert

02:38:53.280 | with other experiences, that person can get to adulthood

02:38:57.020 | with a lot of aggression in them

02:38:59.720 | and never having experienced I'm good enough,

02:39:01.940 | it's still running along inside of them,

02:39:04.080 | and then they're enacting that aggression

02:39:06.260 | in the world around them.

02:39:07.180 | That's most commonly what we see

02:39:10.120 | and because there's such deep vulnerability

02:39:14.560 | and such deep insecurity, then people,

02:39:17.720 | let's say people who suffer from full-blown narcissism,

02:39:20.200 | narcissistic personality disorder,

02:39:22.100 | so inaction of envy on the highest levels,

02:39:25.880 | that is, they're so defended,

02:39:29.380 | they're so strongly defended in an unhealthy manner

02:39:33.160 | from seeing their own vulnerability

02:39:35.440 | that it is extremely difficult to get that person

02:39:39.160 | to come around and say, okay, let's look in those 10 cupboards.

02:39:43.640 | Within the field, people often talk

02:39:45.760 | about treating narcissistic people,

02:39:48.600 | they talk about it in a nihilistic way,

02:39:51.780 | and some just be very experienced.

02:39:53.760 | People say, oh, that's impossible, right?

02:39:55.720 | That never gets better.

02:39:56.600 | Now, I'm not a believer in therapeutic nihilism.

02:39:59.960 | I think that, yes, it is the norm

02:40:04.440 | that that person just can't get it together

02:40:07.560 | to go look at that thing.

02:40:09.000 | They're so defended against it, they're so afraid of it.

02:40:12.160 | They won't look anywhere near it,

02:40:13.480 | so they're looking in the other direction

02:40:14.840 | and they're furthering all that on health.

02:40:16.920 | It's not the case that it's always that way.

02:40:19.880 | And on a couple of occasions, I have worked with,

02:40:22.840 | seen, witnessed narcissistic people who can make changes.

02:40:27.500 | Now, it's usually in the context of something very extreme

02:40:30.360 | that causes them to do that.

02:40:32.080 | So, someone who will no longer have access

02:40:34.060 | to family members they want to see

02:40:37.200 | or to financial resources

02:40:39.360 | that they need to keep themselves afloat.

02:40:42.300 | It's things that often are that dramatic.

02:40:44.260 | It's not always that, but we can see, though,

02:40:46.880 | in those kind of extenuating situations

02:40:49.720 | where the problem is so big, the envy is so high,

02:40:54.160 | but the motivation for change is very, very high

02:40:56.760 | because in the carrot and stick model,

02:40:58.580 | the stick here is very, very strong,

02:41:00.700 | that if a person then goes and does that,

02:41:02.720 | you can see change inside of them.

02:41:05.520 | So, we're never in a place of therapeutic nihilism,

02:41:09.700 | but the barriers to that are very, very high

02:41:13.200 | because the self is so wounded

02:41:16.120 | that the person is protecting that self so strongly.

02:41:19.500 | That's why the narcissism and envy are so full-blown,

02:41:22.640 | and it's hard to get that person to go back and look,

02:41:25.280 | but not impossible.

02:41:26.620 | - Based on what you're telling me,

02:41:28.220 | it seems that it's a very low probability

02:41:32.100 | that a non-clinician could change a narcissist.

02:41:37.100 | In other words, if one is engaging in the world

02:41:40.800 | with a narcissist because they have to, presumably,

02:41:44.620 | or they just find themselves in that place,

02:41:47.520 | would you say to that person,

02:41:49.180 | there's very little, if anything,

02:41:50.600 | that you can do to change the narcissist's behavior

02:41:53.880 | or psychological framework?

02:41:56.180 | If they can, because, of course,

02:41:58.320 | if the narcissists can't often do it for themselves

02:42:01.080 | with the help of a skilled clinician,

02:42:02.880 | why would anyone else be able to achieve that?

02:42:06.480 | - So, we're coming at what we're doing here

02:42:08.960 | from a perspective of truth about human beings, right?

02:42:12.380 | And that truth brings with it hopefulness, right?

02:42:15.680 | It brings with it hopefulness that people can change

02:42:18.120 | and how people can change.

02:42:19.320 | And I am 100% all for that.

02:42:23.540 | It's the way to look at ourselves, right?

02:42:25.920 | But it is also true that there are aspects of pathology

02:42:30.700 | that require clinical treatment in order to improve.

02:42:35.220 | So, now we're looking from the other side and saying,

02:42:37.640 | hey, there's a problem here and there's a deep problem here.

02:42:41.160 | And that, we have to come at from a different perspective

02:42:43.600 | of how can you help that problem?

02:42:45.620 | And there's a science behind this, too,

02:42:47.200 | of what level of clinical care, for example,

02:42:49.900 | is most likely to be helpful to someone like this.

02:42:53.000 | And it's not an individual clinician even, right?

02:42:55.680 | It's a team of people who work through different modalities

02:42:59.240 | who can sort of wrap around that person.

02:43:01.400 | So, it's not just a level of clinical care is needed,

02:43:05.120 | but it's a relatively high level of clinical care.

02:43:07.720 | And that, in general, is the only way

02:43:10.140 | that we get at narcissism.

02:43:11.360 | That's not 100%, but that's the vast majority of time.

02:43:15.080 | So, what can then the person do, right?

02:43:17.080 | A person cannot be a team of clinicians, right?

02:43:19.880 | What that person can do, one choice is to disengage, right?

02:43:23.320 | But disengagement can come with the promise of re-engagement,

02:43:27.800 | right, many, many times I've worked with people

02:43:30.580 | and practiced and rehearsed with them,

02:43:32.720 | like, okay, what might you say to someone along the lines of,

02:43:36.560 | you know, I've known you for a long time

02:43:38.240 | or I care about you or I love you, right?

02:43:40.160 | Whatever they may say to lead in,

02:43:41.680 | but I can't be with you or I can't be around you, right?

02:43:45.440 | There's something going on that makes it not okay for me.

02:43:48.920 | It doesn't feel okay.

02:43:50.320 | You know, a person maybe says things like,

02:43:51.560 | you know, you're aggressive or demeaning or whatever it is,

02:43:54.000 | or maybe they just say, it just doesn't feel okay,

02:43:55.720 | I can't have it.

02:43:56.820 | And then the need to step away from the person,

02:44:00.600 | but look, if you got some help, right?

02:44:03.600 | If you took better care of yourself in ways

02:44:05.320 | that would be better for you and for the people around you,

02:44:09.360 | then of course I'd wanna be in your life.

02:44:10.920 | You know, something like that.

02:44:12.120 | So, disengagement can come, you know,

02:44:14.680 | with that encouragement, right, to the person.

02:44:19.100 | But one way or another, you have to set boundaries,

02:44:22.120 | which is, okay, I have to deal with this person,

02:44:23.700 | so I'll deal with them a little bit.

02:44:25.720 | Or I don't have to deal with this person, so I won't, right?

02:44:28.640 | Or I can't get away from this person,

02:44:30.060 | so I have to take with a grain of salt

02:44:32.340 | what they're saying to me.

02:44:33.640 | But ultimately, some form of strong boundaries

02:44:37.180 | or disengagement is, like, that's the response,

02:44:40.580 | that's the self-care response, right,

02:44:43.660 | for the person who's with the narcissist.

02:44:46.840 | - What are some other ways that the aggressive drive

02:44:48.960 | and pleasure drive and generative drive,

02:44:51.800 | for that matter, play out?

02:44:53.220 | For instance, we talked about the former patient of yours

02:44:56.000 | who eventually switched jobs,

02:44:58.980 | clearly had a generative drive within him,

02:45:00.840 | but it was being blocked by a number of choices

02:45:03.100 | rooted in narratives that originated in childhood, et cetera.

02:45:07.460 | We talked about individuals with high aggressive drive,

02:45:10.200 | high degree of pleasure drive,

02:45:11.940 | but a very diminished capacity to experience pleasure

02:45:14.800 | and therefore a lot of envy

02:45:16.380 | and the destruction that comes with envy.

02:45:18.260 | - Yes.

02:45:19.220 | - What are some of the other variations on these drives

02:45:22.260 | as you observe them in your clinical practice?

02:45:25.380 | - Well, our overall framing is

02:45:27.260 | we want the generative drive

02:45:29.440 | to be the one that's deterministic, right?

02:45:31.620 | It's the one with the strongest influence.

02:45:34.300 | So we want to nurture the generative drive in us

02:45:37.380 | and in others, and it makes sense for us to talk about that.

02:45:41.220 | But we've looked at how do things get out of balance, right?

02:45:44.660 | And from the perspective of,

02:45:46.180 | well, what if the aggressive drive or the pleasure drive,

02:45:50.220 | what if they're too high, right?

02:45:52.300 | And then it makes sense that often not always

02:45:55.540 | what can be driving them to be so high

02:45:57.860 | are things that aren't healthy in us.

02:45:59.820 | Then the higher they get, the harder it is to gratify them.

02:46:03.800 | So we end up with that problem of envy, right?

02:46:07.320 | But we can be out of balance in the other direction too,

02:46:11.860 | where the person does not experience an ability

02:46:16.620 | to engage with the world around them, right?

02:46:20.300 | They don't think they can do anything

02:46:22.180 | to change anything for the better

02:46:23.580 | or inside or outside of themselves.

02:46:25.240 | And they're not doing much.

02:46:26.700 | They don't feel that they can do much.

02:46:28.400 | And also not receiving pleasure from things.

02:46:32.540 | There's no gratification

02:46:33.540 | from the things that person is doing.

02:46:34.860 | Like we see situations like this too

02:46:37.300 | with the aggressive drive, the pleasure drive, or both.

02:46:41.120 | And then we end up not at envy

02:46:44.000 | because envy is the side of excess,

02:46:46.080 | but we end up at demoralization on the lower side.

02:46:49.700 | Now, demoralization is not a specific psychiatric diagnosis.

02:46:54.200 | It can predispose to psychiatric problems

02:46:57.140 | like the biochemical abnormality of depression, right?

02:47:00.620 | But what we're talking about here

02:47:02.120 | is not a psychiatric diagnosis, right?

02:47:05.380 | Like envy is not a psychiatric diagnosis.

02:47:07.340 | Like it's a thing that can be experienced

02:47:09.880 | that can lead to diagnoses.

02:47:11.600 | The same thing with demoralization.

02:47:13.700 | If you don't feel

02:47:15.380 | that you can make a difference to anything, right?

02:47:18.780 | And you're not enjoying anything

02:47:20.100 | or feeling gratification from anything,

02:47:22.820 | then that pool is gonna win out.

02:47:24.800 | That's gonna be a demoralized person.

02:47:27.080 | The same way, of course, we know in experiments

02:47:28.940 | when you have a rat going for food,

02:47:32.860 | if you do it enough, when the rat goes for the food

02:47:35.300 | and you take the food away, the rat stops trying, right?

02:47:38.020 | - And the learned helplessness phenomenon.

02:47:39.260 | - Right, and that exists in us too.

02:47:42.520 | And it comes along with all sorts of other things

02:47:44.660 | 'cause being not rats, right?

02:47:47.380 | We have a whole bunch of thoughts about that of,

02:47:49.500 | oh my God, I'm not good enough and nothing will ever be okay.

02:47:52.100 | And so demoralization then can be very, very strong

02:47:57.100 | in taking a person away

02:48:00.340 | from the other things we're trying to seek, right?

02:48:03.360 | Either because that person

02:48:04.480 | has essentially the learned helplessness, right?

02:48:06.820 | And all the things, the complicated things inside of us

02:48:09.680 | that can come along with that,

02:48:11.300 | or the person isn't gaining pleasure from anything.

02:48:14.740 | So when we're considering the ways

02:48:16.720 | in which we can be out of balance, right?

02:48:18.780 | We think, okay, aggression and pleasure drive,

02:48:21.980 | if one or the other or both is too high,

02:48:26.240 | we end up at envy.

02:48:28.980 | And if one or the other or both are too low,

02:48:33.140 | we end up with demoralization.

02:48:35.340 | And you can take almost any scenario.

02:48:38.100 | It could be a scenario of something

02:48:39.520 | that's just not really not going well for a person,

02:48:41.900 | not a clinical scenario, it's a thing in a person's life.

02:48:45.220 | Or we can take clinical scenarios and the vast majority,

02:48:49.940 | outside of outliers, like a head injury, for example,

02:48:53.260 | we can take those scenarios

02:48:54.940 | and we can look at it in that way

02:48:56.940 | and we can understand what's going on.

02:48:59.540 | At least we can understand enough

02:49:01.540 | that when we go back and look in the 10 cupboards

02:49:05.300 | of the two pillars,

02:49:06.660 | we can then have some understanding of,

02:49:08.700 | okay, what is going on?

02:49:10.180 | We know the basic picture

02:49:11.380 | and how things are not in the balance we want them in.

02:49:15.680 | Now we can understand that enough to go back

02:49:18.420 | and then look in those 10 cupboards.

02:49:20.460 | And I believe that just about everything

02:49:23.660 | except those biological outliers,

02:49:25.540 | like a head injury, fits into that heuristic,

02:49:28.900 | which is why we can use it to understand,

02:49:31.340 | we can use it to help, we can use it to make change.

02:49:34.820 | - What a powerful lens to think about and explore the self

02:49:38.420 | and where things are working for us

02:49:41.260 | and where things are possibly not working for us.

02:49:44.180 | If I or anyone else out there wanted to get some read on,

02:49:49.460 | assess their level of aggressive drive

02:49:51.660 | and their level of pleasure drive

02:49:53.660 | and their ability to experience pleasure,

02:49:56.060 | what sorts of questions would one ask?

02:49:58.060 | You know, for instance, is it a question of,

02:50:01.900 | like, how driven am I?

02:50:04.200 | How much get up and go do I have?

02:50:07.520 | How much pleasure do I experience

02:50:09.960 | from an interaction with a puppy,

02:50:12.120 | an interaction with food?

02:50:14.180 | Is it too much, right?

02:50:15.380 | Like, does it draw me off course?

02:50:16.780 | Are those the sorts of very simple

02:50:18.680 | but perhaps also very informative questions

02:50:21.380 | that we could start to use to probe our psyche?

02:50:24.900 | - Yeah, I think yes, but I would come top down, right?

02:50:28.740 | So if the goal of health is that aggression and pleasure,

02:50:33.380 | those drives are sub-serving the generative drive,

02:50:36.340 | then start to look there, right?

02:50:38.220 | If a person can take an honest inventory of self,

02:50:42.100 | like, what kind of force am I being in the world around me?

02:50:46.660 | And that could mean, for example,

02:50:48.980 | what kind of force am I being in my family, right?

02:50:52.820 | Am I denigrating to the people around me?

02:50:55.300 | Are the other people in the home afraid of me?

02:50:57.820 | Like, what kind of force?

02:50:58.900 | Am I being a force for good?

02:50:59.980 | Am I bolstering?

02:51:00.820 | Like, people can't always see that in themselves

02:51:04.940 | and take stock of themselves,

02:51:06.540 | but what we're talking about is a situation

02:51:08.020 | where we think a person can.

02:51:09.020 | Like, they can bring to bear who am I being in the world.

02:51:11.940 | In other ways, if you think of the example

02:51:14.260 | of the person who needed to leave the job,

02:51:16.580 | who could look at that and say,

02:51:18.720 | "No, I'm not being generative in the world

02:51:22.380 | "in the way I want to.

02:51:23.860 | "I'm certainly not doing my job as well as I would want to.

02:51:26.620 | "I'm making my own life worse," right?

02:51:28.780 | So that person could then see that's out of balance.

02:51:31.380 | Or in another way, a person might see,

02:51:33.660 | you know, a lot of what I'm doing is self-serving

02:51:37.340 | or maybe destructive.

02:51:39.140 | Like, people can realize that, right?

02:51:41.260 | So you can realize by taking an inventory of self

02:51:44.940 | is the generative drive what's deterministic in me.

02:51:48.220 | And again, not always,

02:51:49.220 | but we're talking about a process of exploration.

02:51:51.660 | If the answer to that is yes,

02:51:53.100 | if you say, "Look, I'm trying to be the best person

02:51:55.000 | "that I can, and I think about the people

02:51:57.280 | "over whom I have any authority," right?

02:51:59.420 | And like, I try to be reasonable,

02:52:00.860 | and I try to be fair, and I try and be circumspect.

02:52:03.100 | And you know, I try and think in someone else's shoes.

02:52:05.620 | I mean, you know, sometimes I have to set boundaries

02:52:08.500 | or expectations or even punishment, right?

02:52:10.280 | But I'm like, careful about how I'm doing that.

02:52:12.580 | And I'm certainly not perfect,

02:52:13.900 | and I get things wrong at times.

02:52:15.380 | But you know, I do think I'm contributing to the world.

02:52:18.200 | I'm doing whatever I take on, you know,

02:52:20.580 | as well as I can do it, I'm productive at work.

02:52:23.620 | You know, my kids are doing okay,

02:52:25.160 | or my friends are doing all right.

02:52:27.100 | Whatever it is that, if we can come up with that,

02:52:30.660 | then we can say, "Okay, exhale a little bit."

02:52:33.140 | Like, we're in a good place, right?

02:52:35.180 | It doesn't mean everything is optimal, of course.

02:52:36.980 | So then go look at the level of the aggressive drive,

02:52:39.840 | which might mean, you know, how assertive am I, right?

02:52:42.500 | Am I the kind of person who comes up to the precipice,

02:52:44.940 | but does it make the decision?

02:52:46.820 | Am I the kind of person who's a little too assertive,

02:52:49.160 | and sometimes I'm sort of walking on people a little bit.

02:52:51.620 | Like, a person can go look at the aggressive drive

02:52:53.860 | within them, or pleasure-seeking.

02:52:55.620 | Am I doing things that bring me gratification, right?

02:52:58.680 | Am I engaging with the people around me

02:53:01.000 | in a way that brings the gratification

02:53:03.600 | that one might wish for, right?

02:53:05.860 | So if it's in a romantic relationship, is there romance?

02:53:08.280 | Like, are we being nice to one another, right?

02:53:10.080 | So you can go and look at that and say,

02:53:11.940 | "Am I getting gratification from the things I'm doing?"

02:53:14.600 | Right, am I taking this, wherever this drive is within me,

02:53:19.600 | and trying to satisfy it in reasonable, healthy ways

02:53:22.520 | that are also good for others?

02:53:23.820 | And we're back to the generative drive.

02:53:25.620 | So that's one way of coming at it,

02:53:27.560 | and it's the way that we would like to,

02:53:28.940 | because now, what are we trying to do next?

02:53:32.180 | And what can we make things better, right?

02:53:33.760 | Can we optimize things?

02:53:34.820 | Okay, things are okay, right?

02:53:36.220 | But can we make them better?

02:53:37.700 | But let's say we see that the generative drive

02:53:41.760 | is not winning the day, right?

02:53:43.580 | And people can see that, they're like,

02:53:45.000 | "Look, I'm seeking pleasure, right?

02:53:47.300 | It's why I got, for example, I hear over and over,

02:53:49.280 | that's why I got addicted to this substance,

02:53:51.840 | and now it's not providing any pleasure to me,

02:53:53.720 | and it's now making me miserable, right?

02:53:55.720 | But I wanted what it was giving me."

02:53:58.340 | Again, this doesn't mean that the person

02:54:01.020 | just wants to have the world's best time, right?

02:54:03.180 | It may mean that they're really suffering a lot, right?

02:54:05.940 | And the pleasure that that drug gave them

02:54:08.560 | was some relief from pain.

02:54:10.640 | And this is how many, many people tragically

02:54:13.920 | ended up becoming addicted to and dying from opiates, right?

02:54:18.800 | Because say the opiate after the surgery

02:54:20.880 | or the opiate after the injury

02:54:22.600 | then is soothing something, right?

02:54:25.040 | And it's soothing something

02:54:26.080 | because the person feels less bad

02:54:27.720 | about something inside of them.

02:54:29.320 | You hear this all the time, that that then fosters addiction.

02:54:33.080 | So that person looking for pleasure,

02:54:35.300 | this isn't something where we would say

02:54:37.760 | in some lighthearted manner,

02:54:38.880 | that person took chances with their life.

02:54:40.680 | I mean, sometimes we'll see that,

02:54:42.380 | but more and more what people are looking for then

02:54:44.680 | is relief from suffering, right?

02:54:46.160 | But we can get to that point

02:54:47.480 | where we can ascertain for whatever reason

02:54:50.560 | that the pleasure seeking is too much.

02:54:53.060 | And if pleasure seeking and aggression are too much,

02:54:56.000 | we become aware of dissatisfaction, right?

02:54:58.720 | If you're relying too much on aggression,

02:55:00.560 | I always want my way, it's not always gonna happen, right?

02:55:03.960 | Or I always want that pleasurable thing.

02:55:05.680 | I always wanna feel better.

02:55:07.520 | That also doesn't happen, right?

02:55:09.360 | So then that can guide us towards being aware

02:55:12.120 | of where are those drives.

02:55:13.840 | And if the drives are high,

02:55:16.040 | how much dissonance is created

02:55:18.880 | by what's actually coming of the drive, right?

02:55:23.200 | Versus the level of the drive is at.

02:55:24.840 | So I guess it's a long way of saying yes to your question,

02:55:28.400 | but I would sort of come top down

02:55:30.180 | because the generative drive is so important

02:55:33.020 | and it does gate forward.

02:55:35.380 | Like kind of where are we at

02:55:37.860 | in the spectrum of like, how healthy am I?

02:55:40.500 | Or are there elements of unhealth I wanna kind of go after?

02:55:43.840 | Or am I seeing things in myself that really say

02:55:47.380 | things that are unhealthy are really dominating my life,

02:55:50.860 | are deterministic, like addiction.

02:55:53.180 | Well, just one example,

02:55:54.620 | addiction, things that are self-destructive, right?

02:55:56.780 | Because then that's a place to then look at it more

02:55:59.980 | through the clinical lens.

02:56:00.900 | And maybe I won't just talk to a trusted other

02:56:03.900 | and go get a book,

02:56:05.020 | but maybe I should and maybe I should have clinical care.

02:56:09.460 | - Yeah, the example of addiction is very potent.

02:56:12.820 | And it also brings to mind

02:56:14.580 | the perhaps less apparently dangerous situation,

02:56:19.580 | but one that I think is really common

02:56:21.880 | where people have a certain amount of aggressive drive,

02:56:24.800 | they have a certain amount of pleasure drive,

02:56:28.040 | but there's a kind of passivity

02:56:30.720 | and draining out of the generative drive

02:56:33.200 | or competing out of the generative drive

02:56:35.260 | because of social media.

02:56:38.140 | And the reason I bring this up is again,

02:56:41.340 | not because I dislike social media,

02:56:42.820 | I rely on and use social media for teaching and learning

02:56:45.980 | extensively really,

02:56:47.680 | but in going back to the pillars that underlie

02:56:49.940 | whether or not we achieve and experience agency,

02:56:53.000 | gratitude, peace, contentment, and delight,

02:56:55.180 | within the pillar of function of self,

02:56:58.500 | there's this thing, salience,

02:57:01.440 | and what we're paying attention to internal and external.

02:57:04.260 | And social media does seem to me a unique circumstance,

02:57:09.260 | never before observed in human evolution,

02:57:13.120 | where you have a near infinite number of environments

02:57:17.420 | available to you.

02:57:18.260 | And we know that a picture is worth a thousand words

02:57:20.580 | and a movie is worth a billion pictures

02:57:22.780 | when it comes to drawing our attention.

02:57:24.420 | I mean, you just look at, you give a young child,

02:57:26.220 | even an infant an iPad.

02:57:28.500 | I mean, that kid is in the tunnel.

02:57:30.500 | I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

02:57:32.280 | And that computers and computer screens

02:57:34.060 | are going to be a part of their lives

02:57:35.340 | now and forever, presumably.

02:57:37.300 | But it is the case that there are a lot of people

02:57:41.920 | who perhaps have the propensity

02:57:45.400 | for a strong generative drive,

02:57:47.420 | but because they also have a propensity

02:57:50.040 | for a pleasure drive, they wake up,

02:57:53.760 | they pick up the phone, they look at the phone,

02:57:56.220 | something captivates their attention,

02:57:57.580 | then they're thinking about that.

02:57:58.420 | It might be something that brings them delight,

02:58:00.660 | but more often than not,

02:58:01.540 | it's something that brings them either mild irritation

02:58:04.240 | or mild entertainment,

02:58:06.580 | maybe even intense entertainment for a short while,

02:58:09.820 | but very quickly, minutes and hours go by

02:58:13.460 | in which we are not engaging in the world

02:58:16.020 | unless we are posting valuable content.

02:58:18.980 | And so social media is a bit of a drain on these drives.

02:58:24.220 | I mean, it taps into these drives in very strong ways.

02:58:26.520 | And all one has to do is observe the behavior of people

02:58:29.340 | in public spaces now, in airports, on trains,

02:58:34.000 | even in their cars.

02:58:35.100 | And I mean, people are essentially watching TV all day long.

02:58:38.520 | And it does concern me.

02:58:40.320 | And I raise it because I feel like it can distract

02:58:45.060 | from our generative drive in a way that

02:58:47.720 | doesn't necessarily speak to any kind of like

02:58:50.700 | deep character flaw or any kind of subconscious narrative,

02:58:54.080 | but just that that salience cupboard

02:58:58.240 | is clearly something within that salience cupboard

02:59:01.540 | is happening that's unprecedented and very, very powerful

02:59:06.540 | and potentially quite destructive.

02:59:09.660 | - Yeah.

02:59:10.500 | I think to understand this, I would cite this belief.

02:59:15.500 | I believe this to be true,

02:59:16.720 | that human beings have a long history

02:59:19.260 | of under appreciating the power of the discoveries

02:59:22.720 | that are then in their own hands.

02:59:24.560 | So we discover gunpowder,

02:59:26.700 | how long until we're shooting each other, right?

02:59:28.860 | We discover nuclear fission, right?

02:59:30.900 | Now, are we gonna destroy the planet, right?

02:59:33.100 | So social media, in a sense, it's a discovery.

02:59:35.540 | It's a thing that comes from what we figured out as humans

02:59:39.160 | that now is there in front of us.

02:59:41.720 | And big, powerful discoveries

02:59:44.580 | deserve to be treated with respect, right?

02:59:47.280 | Gunpowder is very powerful.

02:59:48.700 | And if people need to hunt in order to survive,

02:59:51.620 | like gunpowder can help them hunt without getting hurt.

02:59:53.780 | Then we'd be more successful, right?

02:59:55.460 | Nuclear fission has provided some good things to humanity,

02:59:58.940 | but it can also destroy humanity.

03:00:00.980 | So I think the same is true here

03:00:02.700 | that what you're talking about is something of immense power

03:00:06.180 | and you can see how if it gets out of balance.

03:00:08.740 | So let's use the salient.

03:00:10.260 | So let's say the social media is too salient, right?

03:00:14.940 | That's gonna make a problem, right?

03:00:16.940 | If it's too salient in the sense

03:00:18.820 | that the person is always looking at things

03:00:20.460 | that don't make them feel good enough, right?

03:00:22.540 | Well, that's not gonna go well,

03:00:24.300 | and that's gonna affect what's in those other 10 cupboards,

03:00:27.700 | right, and what is built on top of it.

03:00:29.340 | So then it gets into the unconscious mind,

03:00:31.380 | like, oh, I thought I was good enough

03:00:33.460 | until like now I'm looking at all the social media

03:00:35.940 | and I realize I'm not.

03:00:37.040 | I mean, this is, people who treat teens

03:00:39.540 | often talk about this,

03:00:40.540 | that you see something that you didn't often see before

03:00:43.620 | where a person who might've gotten through

03:00:46.020 | a lot of formative years thinking like,

03:00:48.420 | oh, how I look is okay, for example,

03:00:50.740 | then is bombarding themselves with social media

03:00:53.660 | that tells them how they look is not okay

03:00:55.420 | and then that changes.

03:00:56.640 | - Absolutely, or perhaps social media

03:00:59.460 | is just simply absorbing a ton of time and energy,

03:01:02.540 | but mostly time that could be devoted to a generative force.

03:01:07.100 | - Right, that's the other side of it.

03:01:08.660 | So think about the example of the person

03:01:10.640 | who I know it wasn't social media,

03:01:12.180 | but we were saying, well, what if it were social media

03:01:13.700 | that instead of 90 minutes a day,

03:01:15.700 | you know, it's eight hours 'cause there's an analog there,

03:01:18.580 | right, and we see a lot of this

03:01:19.840 | and it's taking something that can be good, right,

03:01:24.580 | and can, in a sense, you could even, should be good.

03:01:27.300 | Like there's enough out there, right,

03:01:29.220 | in terms of learning and bolstering

03:01:31.140 | that like why should it not be good, right?

03:01:33.300 | But it's not good because the defenses then shift.

03:01:36.660 | Like if you're relying on it 10 hours a day,

03:01:39.520 | there has to be some denial, right,

03:01:41.020 | 'cause there are other things to do in the world.

03:01:43.420 | There has to be some avoidance.

03:01:44.580 | There has to be some rationalization.

03:01:45.940 | Like something is going on there that's not healthy.

03:01:48.940 | So if you tell me this person is utilizing social media

03:01:51.500 | 10 hours a day, they're not looking at things

03:01:53.620 | that make them feel bad about themselves.

03:01:54.980 | They're just doing it.

03:01:56.060 | Then I think, okay, something is out of balance.

03:02:00.140 | Now it may be that that person's defenses are out of balance.

03:02:03.940 | So think about the example of the person

03:02:05.620 | with the job they didn't like,

03:02:06.680 | then their defensive structure changes.

03:02:08.520 | Then the thing that was good for them,

03:02:10.560 | they rely on too much and now it becomes something

03:02:12.700 | that's not good for them, right?

03:02:14.700 | So then you go and look at what else

03:02:16.900 | is out of balance here, right?

03:02:19.220 | What else is driving this?

03:02:21.540 | So maybe it's being driven

03:02:22.780 | by the change in defense mechanisms, et cetera.

03:02:24.840 | Maybe it's the other way around

03:02:26.140 | that this person just kind of habituated

03:02:28.260 | to doing more and more and more and more of it.

03:02:30.580 | And then you would come at it in a different way of,

03:02:32.700 | okay, can you slowly but surely do less,

03:02:36.420 | replace the time with things that were good before?

03:02:39.640 | 'Cause you could then back that person out

03:02:41.100 | to where they were before.

03:02:42.540 | But you're not gonna back the person out

03:02:44.220 | to where they were before

03:02:45.620 | if it's being driven by something else.

03:02:47.800 | So we, again, come to the curiosity.

03:02:50.200 | You tell me that person is on social media 14 hours a day.

03:02:53.980 | I'm curious, right?

03:02:55.420 | I wanna understand what is the balance of those drives, right?

03:02:59.300 | You've just told me a very powerful point about salience

03:03:03.100 | that doesn't sound like a good one.

03:03:04.460 | So already you're giving me clues

03:03:06.500 | about where the drives are,

03:03:07.660 | which means where's that person at,

03:03:09.380 | what's going on in all those cabinets.

03:03:11.100 | And then you give more information.

03:03:13.260 | Now sit and talk with the person.

03:03:14.600 | Now you're gonna understand

03:03:17.020 | what is the lay of the land here

03:03:18.140 | and how do we go about making it better?

03:03:20.420 | - I love the concept of the generative drive.

03:03:24.140 | First of all, because it's pro-social,

03:03:26.500 | it brings about great things for us and for the world.

03:03:29.660 | And I mean, what is better than peace,

03:03:31.740 | contentment, and delight?

03:03:33.080 | Especially when we remind ourselves

03:03:35.860 | that those are active phrases

03:03:37.860 | or those can be achieved and experienced

03:03:40.780 | inside of action.

03:03:41.760 | It's not just sitting, levitating,

03:03:43.420 | navel gazing, that sort of things.

03:03:44.860 | It's not enlightenment, right?

03:03:46.640 | It's peace, contentment, and delight.

03:03:48.500 | - Very big difference.

03:03:51.300 | - Very big difference, yes.

03:03:53.100 | One of the other reasons I love this concept

03:03:54.880 | of the generative drive so much

03:03:56.820 | is also because it is a verb state.

03:03:59.780 | It has to do with creating things in us and in the world,

03:04:03.100 | in cultivating our experience of things

03:04:05.660 | and what we do and what we say

03:04:07.320 | and how we respond to what others do and say.

03:04:10.380 | And I also like it because it's distinct

03:04:13.540 | from the way that we're normally taught

03:04:15.460 | to think about psychological wellbeing

03:04:18.700 | or being a healthy individual,

03:04:19.860 | which usually centers around a discussion

03:04:22.860 | of goals and values and like,

03:04:26.280 | what am I trying to focus on?

03:04:28.100 | And what sorts of people do I want to engage with

03:04:30.140 | in the world?

03:04:30.980 | And certainly all of that is really important,

03:04:32.220 | goals and who you engage with.

03:04:33.820 | But I think for many people out there,

03:04:36.580 | much of their time is spent thinking about other people,

03:04:40.300 | like how healthy or unhealthy are the people they're dating

03:04:44.960 | or their friends or what's going on

03:04:47.100 | between two family members?

03:04:49.140 | Which of course is fine to think about,

03:04:51.540 | but a lot of emphasis is placed on like our assessments

03:04:55.100 | of others and how those are impacting us.

03:04:57.420 | And in some cases, people default to just thinking

03:05:01.100 | about others and their problems and seeing their problems.

03:05:03.760 | And what we're really talking about here

03:05:05.440 | is a process of introspection and inquiry

03:05:08.780 | that's very structured.

03:05:10.340 | And as it's been laid out by you,

03:05:13.400 | these two pillars, structure of self, function of self

03:05:16.180 | with these 10 cupboards,

03:05:18.080 | that might sound like a lot of cupboards,

03:05:19.540 | but as we talked about in the first episode,

03:05:21.840 | all of that flows up to these very simple ideals

03:05:26.840 | and concepts and action states and ways of being.

03:05:30.220 | And to me, there's nothing more powerful

03:05:32.720 | than the statement that what we are all seeking

03:05:36.380 | are states of agency and gratitude.

03:05:39.400 | Because again, to go back to the analogy

03:05:41.260 | of physical fitness, there are not an infinite number

03:05:45.640 | of different physical states or states of fitness

03:05:48.700 | that one can seek.

03:05:51.140 | There's endurance, there's strength, there's flexibility,

03:05:53.600 | there's dynamic movement, there's explosiveness,

03:05:56.520 | there's speed, there are a bunch of subtleties to it.

03:05:59.340 | But here, it really seems that the psyche,

03:06:03.300 | ourselves and our mental health is really tractable

03:06:06.680 | if we turn the lens and we look inward.

03:06:10.260 | - Yes, yes, I think that hits upon

03:06:13.020 | a very, very important point as we talk about

03:06:15.980 | understanding oneself in the process of change, right?

03:06:19.140 | And I would describe that as rational aspiration, right?

03:06:22.820 | So let's use the physical health example, right?

03:06:25.780 | If I think, okay, I want to be healthier,

03:06:29.540 | I want to have more strength, I want to have more endurance,

03:06:32.620 | and I might even have ideas of what that would be.

03:06:34.900 | I want to be able to run a certain distance

03:06:36.620 | in a certain time, lift a certain amount of weight,

03:06:38.780 | I have an idea of what that is.

03:06:40.460 | But rational aspiration is rooted in our present.

03:06:44.300 | Or like, I'm aware that there's a me now

03:06:47.260 | that like isn't in that state.

03:06:50.060 | And I'm aware that there are things that I'm gonna do

03:06:53.360 | to get to that state, right?

03:06:54.900 | And I'm not that dreading them, like, okay,

03:06:56.900 | they'll be difficult, right?

03:06:57.940 | But that's okay, I can do difficult things,

03:06:59.660 | I can take pride in doing difficult things,

03:07:01.700 | and that's how we all achieve things.

03:07:04.040 | So I see myself in the present,

03:07:06.540 | 'cause of course, goals are good, and that's true,

03:07:10.440 | as long as we're still living our lives in the present,

03:07:12.820 | because otherwise, goals just become fantasies,

03:07:15.940 | or things we want to possess.

03:07:18.660 | So if I'm aware of the state of physical health

03:07:21.100 | I'm in right now, and I'm aware of the state

03:07:23.020 | of physical health I want to be in,

03:07:24.460 | and I know there's a bunch of pathways

03:07:26.060 | I could take to get there, but I have to think about it,

03:07:29.300 | figure it out, do those things,

03:07:31.280 | and then I'm gonna navigate myself there.

03:07:32.820 | That's how the whole process is good, right?

03:07:34.820 | I don't feel bad about myself now.

03:07:36.920 | I recognize something I would like to change.

03:07:38.800 | I'm not saying, oh, you're a loser,

03:07:40.200 | 'cause you don't have those things, right?

03:07:41.840 | I feel good about myself now.

03:07:44.140 | I recognize there's something I want,

03:07:46.000 | and there's gonna be a process, a process across time,

03:07:48.940 | across effort, that's gonna navigate me there.

03:07:51.680 | Then when I get there, I feel good about being there, right?

03:07:55.140 | It's very, very different if I think I want that.

03:07:58.320 | I want to possess, in a sense, right?

03:08:00.220 | I want to possess the ability to run a certain distance

03:08:02.220 | in a certain time.

03:08:03.060 | I just want the thing.

03:08:03.900 | I'm covetous of the thing, right?

03:08:05.860 | That is not good, right?

03:08:07.860 | 'Cause a person then often is denigrating to the self,

03:08:10.160 | not always, but that's a motivation to go out

03:08:12.200 | and get that thing that's better,

03:08:13.740 | and they're really lamenting the process of getting there.

03:08:17.780 | They just want something as an endpoint,

03:08:20.100 | and that doesn't make for happiness.

03:08:22.340 | It doesn't make for even the humility,

03:08:25.180 | and humility in action, the gratitude, right,

03:08:27.580 | of the humility is I can't just do that overnight.

03:08:30.080 | I'm gonna have to work hard.

03:08:31.260 | People have to work hard.

03:08:32.820 | I'm no different than anybody else.

03:08:34.220 | I'm not special.

03:08:35.060 | I gotta get in there and work and use the elbow grease,

03:08:37.460 | and then I'll get healthier.

03:08:38.820 | All of that is good.

03:08:40.600 | I just want to possess something is not good,

03:08:44.100 | and that's why people, in scenarios like this,

03:08:46.780 | they might go through, maybe in an unthinking way,

03:08:49.440 | or they're gutting it out,

03:08:50.280 | or they go and they get that thing, right?

03:08:52.100 | But then that thing is not enough, right?

03:08:53.720 | And they want more.

03:08:54.560 | Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting more

03:08:56.700 | if it's the healthy inaction of self, right?

03:08:59.260 | I'm gonna now map my way.

03:09:00.300 | This feels better.

03:09:01.420 | I want to map myself from here

03:09:03.260 | to the next level of better physical fitness.

03:09:06.700 | That's different than I just want that thing,

03:09:08.460 | because then if I get it, it won't be good enough, right?

03:09:12.040 | It doesn't make me happy.

03:09:13.020 | It doesn't satisfy me,

03:09:14.640 | and that's the unhealthy state

03:09:17.400 | of just wanting things to possess them,

03:09:19.600 | and then we don't feel good about them,

03:09:21.380 | which is the thought of if you give people,

03:09:23.300 | if you give a person something,

03:09:24.440 | they'll resent you for it, right?

03:09:26.020 | Again, that we're painting it in a sort of certain way.

03:09:30.180 | The context of that statement,

03:09:32.020 | which I used to hear a lot, even when I was younger,

03:09:35.060 | people would say that, right?

03:09:36.340 | And what were they trying to get at, right?

03:09:38.280 | What they were getting at is it doesn't feel good

03:09:40.880 | if you didn't work for something, right?

03:09:42.780 | Like if you didn't work very hard and you got a C,

03:09:45.580 | but I give you an A, or somebody gives me an A, right?

03:09:48.260 | I know that that's not good.

03:09:50.660 | I know that I got the thing.

03:09:52.420 | I got the A, and I might feel happy in the moment

03:09:54.900 | 'cause I wanted that thing,

03:09:56.340 | but there's no real pleasure in it.

03:09:59.740 | There's no satisfaction.

03:10:00.820 | There's no contentment.

03:10:01.700 | There's no sense of self.

03:10:02.820 | There's nothing generative.

03:10:03.760 | I didn't work hard enough to go from a C to an A, right?

03:10:06.860 | So it's that, and that really brings us back to the self

03:10:10.660 | that we're growing on top of the structure, right?

03:10:14.720 | And how that self is functioning, right?

03:10:17.580 | How it's striving,

03:10:18.580 | because now we're really talking about strivings,

03:10:20.900 | and if I'm gonna strive for something

03:10:22.640 | and work hard to get it,

03:10:23.960 | well, I get the good feeling on the other side of it,

03:10:26.300 | and now we're living in the generative space.

03:10:29.420 | - Well, I love the structure of what you've laid out.

03:10:31.500 | Again- - Thank you.

03:10:32.540 | - The pillars of structure of self and function of self

03:10:35.640 | with 10 cupboards between the two of them

03:10:38.460 | that when explored can seem a little bit complex,

03:10:41.460 | but they're really some very straightforward types of inquiry

03:10:44.700 | that anyone can go about about self-awareness

03:10:48.240 | and address potential defense mechanisms,

03:10:50.940 | what we're conscious of,

03:10:51.940 | maybe what we're not conscious of,

03:10:53.580 | look at our behaviors and our strivings,

03:10:55.260 | and how that flows up to these simple ideals,

03:10:57.700 | again, of empowerment, humility, agency,

03:11:00.220 | and gratitude as verbs.

03:11:02.920 | And then from that, peace, contentment, and delight,

03:11:06.540 | and the generative drive, which, gosh,

03:11:09.580 | if there ever was a more powerful concept

03:11:13.000 | and something to strive for, I don't think it exists,

03:11:15.740 | because the generative drive is extraordinary

03:11:19.860 | in the number of different ways it plays out,

03:11:22.000 | and it seems always positively, right?

03:11:25.240 | And of course, the aggressive drive, the pleasure drive,

03:11:28.040 | exists to varying extents in all of us,

03:11:29.920 | but cannot be allowed to overcome the generative drive

03:11:34.920 | if we're going to really thrive.

03:11:37.200 | So thank you again so much for this framework,

03:11:40.460 | and again, to remind people listening and watching

03:11:42.900 | that this framework is mapped out in a downloadable PDF

03:11:46.480 | if people want to see it visually,

03:11:47.820 | even though we've touched on it several times before.

03:11:50.880 | I really appreciate how logical, clear,

03:11:54.500 | and actionable this framework is.

03:11:56.660 | And also that in providing a framework for us,

03:12:00.340 | it gives us something to hold our mind to.

03:12:02.900 | I think I and so many people out there are familiar

03:12:05.180 | with being in a struggle and not being able to orient,

03:12:09.060 | like where am I in the struggle, not knowing what to do.

03:12:12.300 | And you've provided some incredible points of reference

03:12:15.980 | for us to really focus on, start asking questions

03:12:18.340 | about I and how I see myself.

03:12:20.080 | What am I paying attention to, and so on and so forth,

03:12:22.300 | to really first anchor and orient and then be able

03:12:25.220 | to move forward in this process as many times

03:12:28.240 | as is required to get where we each and all want to go.

03:12:32.040 | So thank you so much for this.

03:12:33.820 | I know in our next discussion,

03:12:35.300 | we're going to touch on the relational aspects

03:12:37.860 | of human existence, not just selves,

03:12:41.100 | but interactions between selves,

03:12:43.100 | including some of the, let's call it a darker

03:12:46.060 | and unfortunate aspects of human existence,

03:12:48.580 | like narcissists and some of the challenges

03:12:51.100 | of different full-blown personality disorders,

03:12:53.340 | but also just in terms of building healthy relationships

03:12:56.480 | between friends, romantic partners, parents and children

03:12:59.200 | and siblings and coworkers and all the rest.

03:13:02.860 | So thank you again for this incredibly rich knowledge

03:13:07.000 | that you provided us and a map forward.

03:13:09.980 | - You're very welcome and thank you.

03:13:11.220 | I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it with you.

03:13:13.820 | - Great, well, to be continued.

03:13:15.820 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

03:13:18.100 | about how to improve your mental health

03:13:19.980 | with Dr. Paul Conte.

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Dr. Paul Conti: How to Improve Your Mental Health | Huberman Lab Guest Series

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