Dr. Paul Conti: How to Understand & Assess Your Mental Health

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

00:00:02.440 | where I and an expert guest discuss science

00:00:05.120 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:07.320 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:09.360 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.400 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.440 | Today's episode marks the first in a four episode series

00:00:17.880 | all about mental health.

00:00:19.920 | The expert guest for this series is Dr. Paul Conte.

00:00:23.200 | Dr. Paul Conte is a medical doctor and psychiatrist

00:00:26.520 | who completed his medical training

00:00:27.920 | at Stanford University School of Medicine,

00:00:30.040 | and then went on to become a chief resident of psychiatry

00:00:33.160 | at Harvard Medical School.

00:00:34.680 | He then went on to found the Pacific Premier Group,

00:00:37.540 | which is a collection of psychiatrists and therapists

00:00:40.040 | who are expert in treating all types

00:00:41.880 | of psychiatric disorders and life stressors.

00:00:44.640 | Across the four episodes of this series on mental health,

00:00:47.540 | Dr. Conte teaches us about the structure of our own minds

00:00:51.040 | and how to think about our own minds

00:00:53.340 | as a way to enhance our mental health.

00:00:55.360 | He explains how our subconscious mind

00:00:57.360 | and our conscious mind interact to drive our emotions,

00:01:00.480 | our decision-making, and our behavior.

00:01:02.600 | And while any series about mental health

00:01:04.400 | requires that from time to time,

00:01:06.120 | we discuss personality disorders and psychiatric challenges,

00:01:09.160 | the main discussion in today's episode,

00:01:11.280 | and in fact, all four episodes in this series,

00:01:13.820 | are about what it means to be mentally healthy

00:01:16.040 | and how to build one's mental health

00:01:18.120 | through specific practices,

00:01:19.880 | either done alone or with a therapist.

00:01:22.620 | Today's episode addresses several key questions

00:01:25.720 | as well as provides protocols for you to address questions

00:01:28.800 | about your own mental health.

00:01:30.640 | For instance, you will learn what constitutes

00:01:32.680 | the most mentally healthy version of yourself.

00:01:35.340 | You will learn to assess and indeed you will learn protocols

00:01:38.360 | for addressing levels of anxiety, levels of your confidence,

00:01:42.400 | how to think about your beliefs and internal narratives,

00:01:45.220 | how to think about your self-talk

00:01:46.800 | and restructure your self-talk.

00:01:48.860 | We discuss common challenges such as overthinking.

00:01:51.860 | We talk about the role of defense mechanisms

00:01:53.920 | and other aspects of the conscious

00:01:55.780 | and unconscious mind interactions that can lead us toward

00:01:58.880 | or away from the healthiest versions of ourselves.

00:02:01.740 | You'll notice that during the first five minutes or so

00:02:03.840 | of today's discussion, Dr. Conti describes a framework

00:02:07.560 | of what he refers to as the structure of self

00:02:09.840 | and the function of self.

00:02:11.320 | And he describes several pillars

00:02:13.280 | for understanding what those are.

00:02:15.260 | I'd like to highlight that while that short portion

00:02:17.200 | of our discussion does bring up a number of terms

00:02:20.160 | that are likely to be novel to you,

00:02:21.600 | they certainly were novel to me,

00:02:23.480 | that as our conversation proceeds,

00:02:25.660 | you will really come to appreciate just how simple

00:02:28.320 | and yet powerful that framework is.

00:02:31.160 | It will help you understand, for instance,

00:02:32.600 | the relationship between your conscious mind

00:02:34.960 | and your subconscious mind in ways that you can really apply

00:02:38.040 | toward enhancing your mental health.

00:02:39.640 | In addition to that,

00:02:40.480 | Dr. Conti has generously provided a few PDFs

00:02:43.880 | which illustrate that framework for you

00:02:45.780 | and that are available completely zero cost

00:02:48.040 | by going to the links in the show note captions.

00:02:50.440 | So you have the option to download those PDFs

00:02:52.880 | and to look them over either prior to or during,

00:02:55.960 | or perhaps after you listen to these four podcast episodes.

00:02:59.060 | As a final note before beginning today's discussion,

00:03:01.800 | just want to emphasize my sentiment,

00:03:04.280 | which I'm confident will soon be your sentiment as well,

00:03:07.560 | which is that Dr. Paul Conti shares with us

00:03:09.840 | immensely powerful tools for enhancing mental health

00:03:12.840 | that at least to my knowledge

00:03:13.880 | have never been shared publicly before.

00:03:16.200 | In fact, as somebody who has done

00:03:17.840 | more than three decades of therapy,

00:03:19.720 | I've never before been exposed to a conversation

00:03:22.480 | about the structure of the mind and the subconscious mind,

00:03:25.500 | as well as tools and protocols for enhancing mental health

00:03:28.480 | as powerful as these.

00:03:30.160 | For me, the information was absolutely transformative

00:03:33.080 | in terms of reshaping my thought patterns,

00:03:35.120 | my emotional patterns,

00:03:36.640 | and indeed several of my behavioral patterns.

00:03:38.920 | And I'm confident that the information

00:03:40.320 | that you'll glean from today's episode

00:03:41.920 | and throughout the series

00:03:43.040 | will be positively transformative for you as well.

00:03:45.800 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:03:48.400 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:03:51.060 | It is however, part of my desire and effort

00:03:53.200 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:03:55.700 | and science related tools to the general public.

00:03:58.240 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:59.380 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:04:02.220 | Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

00:04:04.400 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:04:06.240 | with a licensed therapist carried out online.

00:04:09.000 | I personally have been doing weekly therapy

00:04:10.760 | for more than 30 years.

00:04:12.320 | And while that weekly therapy was initiated

00:04:14.720 | not by my own request,

00:04:16.200 | it was in fact a requirement for me to remain in high school

00:04:20.160 | over time, I really came to appreciate

00:04:21.960 | just how valuable doing quality therapy is.

00:04:25.320 | In fact, I look at doing quality therapy

00:04:27.940 | much in the same way that I look at going to the gym

00:04:30.620 | or doing cardiovascular training, such as running

00:04:33.420 | as ways to enhance my physical health.

00:04:35.400 | I see therapy as a vital way to enhance one's mental health.

00:04:39.520 | The beauty of BetterHelp is that they make it very easy

00:04:41.460 | to find an excellent therapist.

00:04:43.160 | An excellent therapist can be defined as somebody

00:04:45.580 | who is going to be very supportive of you

00:04:48.160 | in an objective way with whom you have excellent rapport

00:04:51.140 | with and who can help you arrive at key insights

00:04:53.900 | that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to find.

00:04:56.080 | And because BetterHelp therapy is conducted entirely online,

00:04:59.600 | it's extremely convenient and easy to incorporate

00:05:02.060 | into the rest of your life.

00:05:03.440 | So if you're interested in BetterHelp,

00:05:04.820 | go to betterhelp.com/huberman

00:05:07.500 | to get 10% off your first month.

00:05:09.560 | That's BetterHelp spelled H-E-L-P.com/huberman.

00:05:13.400 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

00:05:16.460 | Waking Up is a meditation app that offers dozens

00:05:18.880 | of guided meditation sessions, mindfulness trainings,

00:05:21.660 | yoga nidra sessions, and more.

00:05:24.060 | By now, there's an abundance of data showing

00:05:27.020 | that even short daily meditations can greatly improve

00:05:29.820 | our mood, reduce anxiety, improve our ability to focus,

00:05:33.380 | and can improve our memory.

00:05:35.360 | And while there are many different forms of meditation,

00:05:37.740 | most people find it difficult to find and stick

00:05:40.260 | to a meditation practice in a way

00:05:41.860 | that is most beneficial for them.

00:05:44.020 | The Waking Up app makes it extremely easy

00:05:46.040 | to learn how to meditate and to carry out

00:05:48.540 | your daily meditation practice in a way

00:05:50.780 | that's going to be most effective and efficient for you.

00:05:53.900 | It includes a variety of different types of meditations

00:05:56.300 | of different duration, as well as things like yoga nidra,

00:05:59.480 | which place the brain and body into a sort of pseudo sleep

00:06:02.700 | that allows you to emerge feeling

00:06:04.300 | incredibly mentally refreshed.

00:06:05.740 | In fact, the science around yoga nidra is really impressive,

00:06:08.400 | showing that after a yoga nidra session,

00:06:10.680 | levels of dopamine in certain areas of the brain

00:06:13.020 | are enhanced by up to 60%,

00:06:14.740 | which places the brain and body into a state

00:06:16.600 | of enhanced readiness for mental work and for physical work.

00:06:20.560 | Another thing I really like about the Waking Up app

00:06:22.640 | is that it provides a 30 day introduction course.

00:06:25.260 | So for those of you that have not meditated before

00:06:27.860 | or getting back to a meditation practice, that's fantastic.

00:06:31.340 | Or if you're somebody who's already a skilled

00:06:33.400 | and regular meditator, Waking Up has more advanced

00:06:36.080 | meditations and yoga nidra sessions for you as well.

00:06:38.780 | If you'd like to try the Waking Up app,

00:06:40.660 | you can go to wakingup.com/huberman

00:06:43.420 | and access a free 30 day trial.

00:06:45.900 | Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman.

00:06:48.860 | And now for my discussion about how to understand

00:06:51.480 | and assess your level of mental health with Dr. Paul Conte.

00:06:55.060 | Dr. Paul Conte, welcome.

00:06:56.820 | - Thank you.

00:06:57.940 | - I'm very excited for today's episode and for this series

00:07:01.220 | because I, like so many other people out there,

00:07:04.620 | have a lot of questions about myself and themselves

00:07:08.140 | and not just about ourselves,

00:07:10.060 | but how the different personality types out there,

00:07:13.600 | the healthy types, the narcissists,

00:07:17.420 | all the things that we hear about these days,

00:07:19.460 | gaslighting, all these sorts of things,

00:07:21.760 | what all of that really is.

00:07:23.440 | Perhaps we can dispel some of the myths that exist

00:07:26.800 | during the course of this series.

00:07:28.180 | I'm sure we will, I'm sure you will.

00:07:30.940 | - Thank you.

00:07:31.780 | - And also raise certain important questions

00:07:34.440 | that we should all ask ourselves

00:07:35.740 | in terms of trying to understand who we are

00:07:37.980 | and how we can be the best versions of ourselves,

00:07:39.860 | how we can experience the most happiness,

00:07:43.340 | also the most richness in life,

00:07:45.440 | because of course life isn't just all about being happy.

00:07:48.240 | So to start off this question,

00:07:49.980 | I want to raise a parallel with something I think

00:07:52.820 | for most people is more concrete, which is physical health.

00:07:56.000 | While there isn't an ideal physical self

00:08:00.780 | that's been defined by the medical community,

00:08:03.180 | we know for instance that there is a range of blood pressures

00:08:06.900 | that are considered healthy.

00:08:08.660 | There is a range of body mass index

00:08:11.400 | that's considered healthy,

00:08:12.780 | although that's a little controversial

00:08:14.120 | because it depends on how much muscle,

00:08:16.100 | how lean people are, et cetera.

00:08:17.320 | But I think it's reasonable to say

00:08:20.060 | that the healthy individual is not going to get exhausted

00:08:23.520 | walking up a flight of stairs.

00:08:25.400 | They could bend down and lift an object

00:08:27.060 | without hurting themselves.

00:08:28.180 | They might even have some additional strength

00:08:29.780 | or endurance, et cetera.

00:08:31.660 | Within the physical health domain,

00:08:33.380 | all of that is fairly well scripted

00:08:36.140 | and there are protocols that people can follow

00:08:38.560 | to improve their physical health.

00:08:39.880 | We've covered many of them on this podcast before.

00:08:42.380 | When it comes to mental health

00:08:45.280 | and it comes to concepts of the self,

00:08:48.280 | things become much more abstract for people.

00:08:50.300 | In fact, I think most people, including myself,

00:08:51.980 | are kind of wandering around in the dark,

00:08:53.640 | wondering whether or not

00:08:55.160 | we are the best versions of ourselves,

00:08:56.840 | whether or not we're thinking about ourselves

00:08:58.300 | and the world around us in the best ways.

00:09:00.340 | So to start things off,

00:09:01.620 | you tell us what is the healthy version of self?

00:09:05.020 | I mean, what should we all be aspiring to?

00:09:07.300 | You've worked with people who presumably are healthy

00:09:10.100 | and people who have severe pathologies

00:09:12.140 | of different psychiatric types, right?

00:09:14.880 | Bipolar, narcissistic, sociopathic,

00:09:18.380 | and everything in between.

00:09:20.820 | So for me and for the listeners, what is a healthy self?

00:09:25.960 | What should we be striving for?

00:09:27.660 | - Well, a healthy self approaches life

00:09:30.340 | through the lens of agency and gratitude.

00:09:33.200 | If you look at happy people,

00:09:35.180 | people who like their lives,

00:09:37.140 | no matter what stage of life they're at,

00:09:40.220 | no matter what their socioeconomic status is,

00:09:43.100 | race, religion, there's so many things

00:09:45.620 | that we think matters,

00:09:48.360 | and they matter to a lot of things.

00:09:49.760 | Do they matter to is someone happy or not?

00:09:52.360 | They are not factors.

00:09:55.340 | The factors that tell us, is this person enjoying life?

00:09:58.620 | Are they gonna take care of themselves?

00:10:00.000 | Are they happy they're here?

00:10:01.540 | Are they engaged productively in the world?

00:10:04.060 | Is agency and gratitude.

00:10:06.380 | And if we have those two things, then it's interesting,

00:10:10.080 | you almost never see someone go wrong, right?

00:10:13.420 | And even if there are difficulties,

00:10:15.260 | even if there are, if things happen in life

00:10:17.940 | that can make some unhappiness, right?

00:10:20.380 | It doesn't take away the person's engagement in life,

00:10:23.000 | the person's enthusiasm for life.

00:10:25.020 | And I think if you look at even traditions of understanding,

00:10:28.100 | how are people happy?

00:10:29.060 | Whether it's in psychiatry or it's through literature

00:10:31.780 | or through a religious lens,

00:10:33.460 | it is always people who approach life

00:10:36.980 | through the lens of agency and gratitude.

00:10:39.500 | - Could we go a little bit deeper on agency and gratitude?

00:10:43.780 | - Sure. - When I hear the words

00:10:44.860 | agency and gratitude, I think agency and ability

00:10:47.860 | to affect the world around me in the ways that I want,

00:10:50.100 | and I think gratitude, being thankful.

00:10:52.740 | And we did an entire episode all about gratitude practices,

00:10:57.420 | some of the neuroscience and neuroimaging

00:10:59.580 | and neurochemical changes that occur in the brain and body

00:11:02.780 | when people exert a gratitude practice.

00:11:05.820 | But I have a feeling that when you talk

00:11:06.980 | about agency and gratitude,

00:11:08.460 | you might be talking about something slightly

00:11:10.780 | or maybe even quite a bit different

00:11:12.100 | than the way that I'm defining it.

00:11:14.060 | - Yeah, I would say agency and gratitude

00:11:16.840 | are these amazing rewards, right?

00:11:19.540 | That sit on top of the highly complex brain function

00:11:24.380 | inside of us and the highly complex psychology in all of us.

00:11:28.660 | So if we think about a self, right,

00:11:31.580 | that I identify a self, right, I'm an I, right?

00:11:35.660 | If I'm gonna approach the world with agency and gratitude,

00:11:39.380 | that's sitting on top of a lot of healthy things, right?

00:11:43.380 | And the idea that, okay, there are ways

00:11:44.940 | in which we can be mentally unhealthy, right?

00:11:48.000 | But to start with, like, what is going on inside of us,

00:11:51.180 | and what does it look like when we're healthy?

00:11:54.340 | So there's a structure of the self, right?

00:11:57.220 | There's function of the self.

00:11:58.840 | And if we look at the structure and the function

00:12:01.620 | and the parts, the components of structure and function,

00:12:04.680 | we can come to understand, okay, what is going on in us?

00:12:08.480 | What might we change for the better?

00:12:10.380 | How do we build empowerment, right?

00:12:13.220 | Empowerment is the ability to navigate the world around us

00:12:19.160 | and to bring myself to bear in ways that are effective.

00:12:22.700 | And from empowerment arises the sense of agency, right?

00:12:26.100 | I have agency because I am empowered, right?

00:12:29.260 | And also from a healthy structure of self

00:12:32.100 | and function of self, we end up with humility, right?

00:12:36.100 | We come through that with a sense of our place in the world

00:12:40.740 | and our power in the world to navigate as we choose,

00:12:44.020 | but also a sense of the world around us

00:12:46.700 | that's far more complicated than just we are,

00:12:49.540 | extends beyond us to other people, to the climate around us,

00:12:53.460 | to the health of the whole planet, right?

00:12:55.720 | We feel a sense of humility that I'm here

00:12:58.740 | and I can do good things.

00:12:59.920 | I'm fortunate to be here,

00:13:01.860 | and I'm part of this bigger ecosystem, right?

00:13:04.940 | All the way up to the scale of the ecosystem of earth, right?

00:13:08.340 | And if we feel that humility,

00:13:10.580 | then we approach the world through the lens of gratitude.

00:13:13.340 | So the idea that a healthy structure of self

00:13:16.360 | and a healthy function of self leads to empowerment

00:13:19.740 | and humility, and then upon that,

00:13:22.200 | we are sort of imbued with agency and gratitude,

00:13:27.200 | and that leads us forth to happy lives.

00:13:32.460 | - Okay, so it's clear to me why having agency and gratitude

00:13:36.380 | would be wonderful, perhaps even the goal state

00:13:39.840 | that we should all be seeking to achieve.

00:13:42.340 | And it also makes sense to me as to why empowerment

00:13:46.000 | and humility are important components

00:13:49.140 | that feed into our ability to have agency and gratitude.

00:13:51.660 | - Yes. - Right?

00:13:52.960 | Because all of that, at least to my mind,

00:13:55.460 | sums to a very clear statement about having agency

00:14:00.460 | and gratitude is the best way to approach life.

00:14:03.060 | That all makes perfect sense to me,

00:14:04.560 | and yet I've never really thought about it that way.

00:14:06.520 | And I think most people haven't ever been told this, right?

00:14:09.120 | I mean, what should we be seeking?

00:14:10.560 | Agency and gratitude.

00:14:12.100 | - Yes.

00:14:12.940 | - We've heard endless number of podcasts,

00:14:15.260 | including this podcast, about physical health.

00:14:18.720 | And we've been told by physicians and everybody else

00:14:21.920 | that we should seek to have a relatively low blood pressure,

00:14:25.120 | we should seek to have a relatively low heart rate,

00:14:28.760 | that our cholesterol should be at a certain level, et cetera.

00:14:31.440 | So within the physical health domain,

00:14:33.620 | there are strong, clear messages

00:14:35.600 | about what we should all be striving toward.

00:14:37.920 | And in a similar way to how we're discussing the self

00:14:41.740 | in psychology, I don't think anyone seeks

00:14:43.900 | to have low blood pressure or low heart rate

00:14:46.080 | because that's what they want per se.

00:14:48.600 | They want those things along with some capacity

00:14:51.240 | for endurance, the ability to lift an object,

00:14:54.480 | so some strength, et cetera,

00:14:55.680 | because of the way that those metrics of health

00:14:59.320 | allow them to move through the world

00:15:00.840 | in the best possible way.

00:15:01.680 | In other words, having some degree of endurance

00:15:03.640 | allows you to walk down the block maybe a lot further,

00:15:06.380 | or to walk up several flights of stairs,

00:15:08.280 | or to have some strength allows you to pick up objects

00:15:11.480 | and effectively move through life.

00:15:13.980 | - Right.

00:15:15.220 | - You're telling us that having a sense of agency

00:15:17.380 | and gratitude, and that agency and gratitude

00:15:20.840 | are undergirded by empowerment and humility,

00:15:24.340 | and that's the best way to move through life,

00:15:25.920 | the most effective, happiest, if you will,

00:15:28.220 | way to move through life?

00:15:30.320 | Well, then I think we have to ask ourselves

00:15:32.220 | the same thing we would ask about physical fitness,

00:15:34.060 | which is what goes into creating a sense of agency

00:15:37.340 | and gratitude, empowerment and humility?

00:15:39.540 | What are the action steps?

00:15:40.580 | Because if I want more endurance,

00:15:41.860 | I know to get on an exercise bike or a treadmill,

00:15:45.220 | or go out for a run a few times a week or more.

00:15:47.320 | If I want to get stronger,

00:15:48.160 | I'm going to lift objects that are difficult to lift

00:15:51.080 | until they're easier to lift.

00:15:52.380 | I mean, it's all pretty straightforward

00:15:53.740 | in the physical domain, but in the mental health domain,

00:15:57.460 | in the psychological domain,

00:15:58.900 | it does become a bit more abstract,

00:16:00.460 | I think in part because no one's ever told us,

00:16:03.300 | certainly no one's ever told me,

00:16:04.960 | what you really need is agency and gratitude

00:16:08.100 | in order to have the best possible life.

00:16:09.620 | So I very much appreciate that you're telling us this,

00:16:12.700 | and I'd love for you to tell us what are the action steps

00:16:15.940 | that go into creating these things that we're calling

00:16:18.700 | agency, gratitude, empowerment and humility?

00:16:21.740 | - There's actually quite a strong parallel

00:16:23.980 | between the physical health dimension

00:16:26.180 | and the mental health dimension.

00:16:27.860 | So as you're saying, why do you put in the time,

00:16:31.200 | the energy, the learning to be physically healthy?

00:16:34.620 | It's a lot of effort and we put so much of ourselves

00:16:38.500 | towards it if we decide that we value that, right?

00:16:41.340 | Why do we do it, right?

00:16:42.660 | Because as you said, it's the best way to approach life.

00:16:45.940 | Like there may be some thing that I want to do.

00:16:48.180 | I wanna run a race, right?

00:16:49.860 | Or I wanna climb a mountain, right?

00:16:52.180 | But ultimately we take care of ourselves physically

00:16:54.780 | because we don't know what's coming next in life

00:16:57.180 | and we wanna be prepared for it good, bad and otherwise.

00:17:00.580 | And the same thing is true of mental health.

00:17:03.800 | So I can feel grateful for something.

00:17:05.860 | I can feel grateful that I'm still breathing right now.

00:17:08.340 | I can exercise agency.

00:17:10.140 | I can pick up that cup and take a drink, right?

00:17:12.240 | But that doesn't mean that I'm living life

00:17:15.260 | through the lens of agency and gratitude,

00:17:18.340 | which is consistent with every opinion.

00:17:20.700 | If you look psychologically through the lens of literature,

00:17:23.380 | through the lens of sociology and psychology,

00:17:26.380 | agency and gratitude make happiness, right?

00:17:30.160 | They're ways of approaching life.

00:17:33.100 | And just like physical health is undergirded

00:17:36.140 | by cardiovascular health, heart health, muscle strength,

00:17:41.140 | that there's an undergirding of agency and gratitude.

00:17:45.300 | And empowerment and humility are ways of describing,

00:17:49.340 | okay, what arises from understanding ourselves,

00:17:54.340 | taking care of ourselves,

00:17:56.200 | that then gives us the agency and gratitude.

00:17:58.820 | So we have empowerment, we have humility,

00:18:00.860 | but where does it all come from, right?

00:18:03.320 | So just like we have to understand the physical body

00:18:05.920 | and what to do to it in order to be healthy, right?

00:18:08.600 | We also have to understand the mind, right?

00:18:11.280 | The self that wants to be healthier.

00:18:13.840 | And that comes through understanding

00:18:15.340 | the structure of the self.

00:18:17.340 | And we have enough science through the lens of neurobiology

00:18:20.520 | and psychiatry to understand the structure of self

00:18:24.380 | and then the function of self, right?

00:18:26.460 | How we work, right?

00:18:28.000 | How we interface with the world.

00:18:30.080 | So it's actually not more complicated than physical health.

00:18:34.820 | It's just that we don't spell it out that way, right?

00:18:37.320 | We come at it through the lens of pathology,

00:18:39.560 | of what's wrong and who has some diagnosis.

00:18:42.260 | And we're looking for the problematic

00:18:44.720 | instead of saying like,

00:18:45.640 | what do we look like when we're happy, right?

00:18:48.360 | And then going and digging down

00:18:50.060 | into the mechanics of it all, right?

00:18:52.360 | And if we're not in that state, right?

00:18:54.820 | To go and look at that and to make changes,

00:18:57.340 | just as if you were very, very physically healthy, right?

00:19:00.840 | But your heart rate couldn't go up that much

00:19:03.060 | without you feeling very, very fatigued.

00:19:04.760 | We'd say, well, look,

00:19:05.800 | you're doing a lot of the right things, right?

00:19:07.740 | But let's work more on your heart, right?

00:19:11.440 | We would go look at the specifics of it

00:19:13.580 | because that's how we understand it.

00:19:15.740 | And we just don't apply the same science, logic,

00:19:20.400 | common sense to mental health as we do to physical health.

00:19:24.400 | But it's time for that to change

00:19:26.200 | because we have the knowledge and ability to do just that.

00:19:29.160 | - When we had Dr. Andy Galpin on this podcast

00:19:33.400 | to do a series on physical health and fitness, essentially,

00:19:38.400 | he said something that really stuck with me,

00:19:40.720 | which was that the number of different workouts

00:19:43.380 | that people can do out there, body weight workouts,

00:19:45.880 | work with weights, with machines, you can run far,

00:19:48.480 | you can run shorter distances more quickly,

00:19:51.600 | you can do planks, sit-ups,

00:19:53.280 | so many variations on exercise routines.

00:19:57.520 | But what he very clearly stated

00:20:00.160 | was that there are only a few core adaptations

00:20:02.900 | that the body can undergo that lead to these byproducts

00:20:07.160 | that we call lower blood pressure, enhanced endurance,

00:20:09.800 | improved strength, improved neuromuscular function,

00:20:12.520 | improved brain function, for that matter.

00:20:15.280 | It sounds to me like there are a lot of parallels

00:20:17.060 | in creating the healthy psychological self.

00:20:20.000 | So what are the core components

00:20:22.520 | that I and others should think about

00:20:24.880 | in terms of understanding,

00:20:26.560 | can you describe them as the structure of the self

00:20:28.720 | and the functions of the self?

00:20:30.160 | Again, just to draw a parallel,

00:20:31.280 | if we were talking about physical health,

00:20:32.260 | we'd say, okay, there's connections between nerves and muscle

00:20:34.680 | that allows us to move our limbs.

00:20:36.540 | If you apply a certain amount of resistance,

00:20:38.560 | you get a certain adaptation,

00:20:39.600 | which is the neuromuscular connection gets stronger,

00:20:41.780 | the muscle might get bigger or just stronger, et cetera.

00:20:44.760 | Flexibility, you know, you just push your range of motion

00:20:47.480 | just a little bit into discomfort.

00:20:49.080 | You do that, it so happens to be the case

00:20:51.860 | that you do that for just a couple of minutes each day

00:20:54.360 | over the course of about a week or so,

00:20:55.560 | you get a significant increase in flexibility.

00:20:57.560 | Okay, so it's all very clear in the physical domain.

00:20:59.600 | In the psychological domain,

00:21:00.900 | I hear you telling us that the action steps

00:21:02.760 | that we all should be taking

00:21:04.840 | in order to be the happiest version of ourselves

00:21:07.320 | by achieving agency and gratitude

00:21:10.120 | is to explore the structure of self

00:21:12.040 | and the function of self.

00:21:13.840 | So if you could tell us about what is the structure of self,

00:21:17.600 | like what goes into Andrew being Andrew

00:21:19.920 | and Paul being Paul and whoever the listener is

00:21:22.440 | and to being who they are.

00:21:24.300 | What is that and what is the function of self?

00:21:27.760 | How does a psychiatrist think about that?

00:21:29.560 | How should we think about that?

00:21:31.480 | - Okay, if I could start maybe to set the stage for that

00:21:35.100 | by pointing out that as we go up the hierarchy of health,

00:21:40.100 | everything should get simpler, not more complicated.

00:21:45.720 | If you think about physical health,

00:21:48.000 | there's so much complexity on the initial levels.

00:21:51.640 | So we think about your physical health status versus mine.

00:21:55.400 | It's gonna be different.

00:21:56.280 | We're gonna have different cardiac function

00:21:57.720 | and muscle function and pulmonary function.

00:21:59.680 | And if we're gonna be healthy,

00:22:00.900 | we could do a lot of different things, right?

00:22:03.140 | There might be a whole set of choices

00:22:04.600 | that would work well for you,

00:22:06.100 | different choices that would work for me,

00:22:07.860 | and we can gauge intensity, timing, frequency, right?

00:22:11.060 | It's very complicated

00:22:12.920 | when we're on the lower levels of the hierarchy.

00:22:16.880 | As we get higher up,

00:22:18.040 | let's say you and I both do the right things, right?

00:22:20.600 | Then what happens?

00:22:21.460 | We both have endurance, right?

00:22:23.300 | We both have some strength.

00:22:24.520 | We're both robust, right?

00:22:25.880 | Things are getting simpler because we're approaching

00:22:30.200 | the unique idiosyncrasies in all of us, right?

00:22:32.720 | And we have to look at that

00:22:33.560 | and look at that in a very specific way.

00:22:35.840 | But what we're trying to get to

00:22:38.120 | is something that's common for all of us.

00:22:40.600 | So stamina, for example, in physical health and endurance,

00:22:43.960 | and agency and gratitude in mental health, right?

00:22:47.840 | So then if we go and we look

00:22:49.600 | and we look at the structure of the self

00:22:52.000 | and the function of self,

00:22:53.780 | we find that there's more complexity,

00:22:55.720 | but that it is also understandable.

00:22:57.720 | I mean, there's tremendous complexity in the body,

00:23:00.080 | just as there's tremendous complexity in the mind,

00:23:02.800 | and we can understand what is the structure of self,

00:23:06.940 | what is the function of self,

00:23:08.680 | and we can look at that and assess that

00:23:10.740 | in the same way we would physical health parameters

00:23:13.520 | so that we arrive at the place we wanna be,

00:23:16.500 | be it endurance or agency or gratitude.

00:23:20.040 | So structure of self, right?

00:23:22.580 | We all have an unconscious mind, right?

00:23:26.040 | And we pay so little attention to this part of us

00:23:29.980 | that really is the biological supercomputer, right?

00:23:33.280 | So millions of things are going on all the time,

00:23:36.740 | like in every split second.

00:23:38.320 | So for example, I can say these words, right?

00:23:40.740 | You can listen to the words,

00:23:41.580 | and you can say things back, and I can listen, right?

00:23:44.300 | There are millions and millions of things going on

00:23:46.780 | under the surface,

00:23:48.140 | much of which comes from either biological predispositions,

00:23:52.460 | or habits over time, right?

00:23:54.980 | Thought processes, patterns, right?

00:23:57.100 | So this unconscious mind, this supercomputer,

00:24:00.460 | is doing all of these things,

00:24:02.260 | like at the speed of light, right?

00:24:04.300 | There are electrical and chemical signals,

00:24:06.520 | and multiple pathways as complicated as superhighway systems

00:24:11.520 | that then get consolidated and communicate with others, right?

00:24:14.620 | And then what comes up from all of that

00:24:17.300 | is the conscious mind.

00:24:19.020 | So imagine an iceberg, right?

00:24:21.340 | And it's a really, really big iceberg, right?

00:24:24.420 | And we see the part above the surface, right?

00:24:27.480 | That's the conscious mind, right?

00:24:29.300 | But there's a huge part of this iceberg,

00:24:32.460 | maybe 95% of it that's underneath the water, right?

00:24:36.540 | There's this hulking mass that we don't see.

00:24:39.540 | That's the unconscious mind, right?

00:24:41.380 | And it's feeding up to the conscious mind,

00:24:43.920 | which is a much smaller part of our brain function, right?

00:24:47.980 | But it's the part that we're aware of, right?

00:24:50.660 | It's sitting on top of all the unconscious things,

00:24:53.180 | which are extremely important,

00:24:55.300 | but then we become aware

00:24:57.300 | so that we can engage in the real world.

00:24:59.420 | In order for us to have this conversation,

00:25:01.420 | the millions of things per second

00:25:03.020 | have to be going on underneath the surface

00:25:05.180 | so that you and I, as conscious eyes, right,

00:25:08.340 | as conscious selves, can ride along on top of it.

00:25:11.580 | So that's the part of the iceberg that's above the water.

00:25:14.700 | It's the conscious self.

00:25:16.460 | Then imagine that the conscious self

00:25:19.180 | is girded by a set of long tendrils

00:25:24.180 | that come out from under the water, right?

00:25:29.180 | That they're defense mechanisms that are unconscious to us

00:25:32.780 | that sort of gird the conscious mind.

00:25:34.740 | So do we rationalize automatically?

00:25:37.260 | Do we avoid automatically?

00:25:39.420 | Do we act out automatically?

00:25:41.120 | Are these things in us in ways

00:25:43.460 | that we can observe and change,

00:25:46.000 | but that are there to try and protect the conscious mind

00:25:49.760 | from the slings and arrows of the world around us, right?

00:25:53.900 | So if you imagine, there's the big part of the iceberg

00:25:56.600 | under the water, the unconscious mind.

00:25:58.240 | The conscious mind is riding on top of it,

00:26:00.520 | but the conscious mind,

00:26:01.480 | that part sticking out of the water is vulnerable, right?

00:26:04.240 | So imagine that there's a defensive structure

00:26:06.960 | then that arises from the part of the iceberg

00:26:09.680 | that's underwater that is there to defend

00:26:12.400 | and protect the conscious mind.

00:26:15.040 | So when you say to defend and protect,

00:26:18.280 | when you say that the conscious mind is vulnerable,

00:26:21.100 | what do you mean?

00:26:21.940 | Do you mean that it's vulnerable to physical attack

00:26:24.840 | or that it's vulnerable to us realizing

00:26:27.440 | that we're just a bunch of neurons

00:26:29.100 | that are clicking away underneath?

00:26:30.560 | Like in other words, where does the vulnerability

00:26:32.600 | of the conscious mind really reside?

00:26:35.320 | Not physically where does it reside,

00:26:36.800 | but what am I so worried about in terms of my safety?

00:26:40.840 | I mean, right now we're in a room, I feel pretty safe.

00:26:44.100 | I don't think you're gonna attack me verbally or physically.

00:26:46.720 | I suppose it's possible that could happen,

00:26:48.760 | but it seems like a very distant possibility.

00:26:51.460 | So when you say that these defenses are there to protect us

00:26:54.140 | from some sort of awareness,

00:26:55.800 | what awareness are we trying to avoid?

00:26:58.460 | - So the vulnerability of the conscious mind

00:27:01.920 | is to fear, confusion, despair, right?

00:27:05.980 | There's so many things that we can fear, right?

00:27:08.840 | Some people are afraid of snakes or spiders.

00:27:10.720 | Some people are afraid of death.

00:27:12.240 | Some people are afraid of health issues

00:27:14.520 | that could come to them or to people they love.

00:27:17.000 | We can get confused and not know what decisions to make

00:27:19.600 | and how to navigate the world

00:27:21.300 | and how to be who we want to be to ourselves and to others.

00:27:24.360 | We can feel tremendously vulnerable and despairing

00:27:27.700 | if we lose others or we start to see things happening

00:27:31.400 | in the world around us that we don't like, right?

00:27:34.500 | We start to feel like what will happen

00:27:35.820 | to the planet we live on?

00:27:37.400 | Will there be war where I live?

00:27:39.360 | Will my children be safe, right?

00:27:40.980 | There's so much that we need to protect ourselves against.

00:27:44.540 | So that vulnerable part of us, right,

00:27:48.700 | the part of the iceberg sticking out above the water

00:27:51.500 | needs a defensive structure around it

00:27:54.260 | to protect it against the vulnerability

00:27:56.380 | of fear, confusion, despair, right?

00:27:59.640 | And because the conscious mind is sticking out of the water

00:28:03.140 | with a defensive structure around it, right,

00:28:05.720 | it is the raw material

00:28:08.600 | from which we create our character structure.

00:28:11.560 | So the character structure is all of that,

00:28:13.880 | the part under the water, the part above the water,

00:28:16.480 | the defensive structure.

00:28:17.760 | So imagine like a nest around all of that

00:28:20.800 | and that's the character structure that we utilize

00:28:24.040 | to interface with the world, right?

00:28:26.640 | So the character structure is,

00:28:28.400 | it's like the thing that I'm using, right?

00:28:30.200 | It's like if you're driving somewhere in a car, right,

00:28:32.440 | the car is the thing that you're using to go there, right?

00:28:35.200 | The character structure is the thing that we're using

00:28:37.660 | to interface with the world.

00:28:39.280 | So for example, how trusting am I versus suspicious, right?

00:28:43.980 | How readily do I come to make friends with people, right?

00:28:47.940 | How much do I act out if I'm frustrated, right?

00:28:52.060 | How much do I, you know, exclaim something negative, right,

00:28:56.040 | as opposed to holding it inside of me?

00:28:57.920 | How much do I rationalize if something isn't going well?

00:29:01.300 | Do I wanna look at it and maybe see that it is

00:29:03.540 | so that I don't have to face it, right?

00:29:05.320 | How much do I avoid problems in the world around me?

00:29:08.920 | How much do I exercise altruism, right?

00:29:11.340 | These are all the ways in which we're engaging

00:29:14.440 | with the world around us and this determines the self.

00:29:18.060 | Imagine that the self then grows out of this nest

00:29:21.580 | from the character structure that we use

00:29:24.500 | to interface with the world and the decisions that we make.

00:29:27.480 | So if our character structure is the thing

00:29:30.480 | through which we engage with the world,

00:29:33.480 | then we're enacting what is inside of us,

00:29:37.460 | what we've determined through our unconscious mind,

00:29:39.660 | our conscious mind, our defense mechanism,

00:29:41.560 | there's a certain us that comes at the world

00:29:44.500 | in a certain way and if we're more or less trusting,

00:29:47.380 | more or less avoidant, we rationalize more or less,

00:29:50.780 | these are the factors that determine,

00:29:53.100 | like where do our lives go, right?

00:29:55.380 | Because on top of all of this,

00:29:57.120 | imagine that the nest of the character structure

00:29:59.540 | around all of this grows from the self, right?

00:30:03.140 | The product of the feelings inside,

00:30:05.660 | the things that we know about ourselves

00:30:07.180 | and don't know about ourselves,

00:30:08.660 | the decisions that all of it leads to.

00:30:11.180 | So I may choose to be, for example, more trusting

00:30:14.400 | and that may bring an opportunity to me

00:30:16.400 | that I wouldn't have otherwise had, right?

00:30:18.660 | I may choose to be more trusting

00:30:20.740 | and it may bring risk to me

00:30:22.600 | that I wouldn't otherwise have had.

00:30:24.480 | So we wanna be as healthy as we can,

00:30:26.940 | as knowledgeable of ourselves and the world around us

00:30:30.420 | so that it's safe for us to have a healthy

00:30:33.540 | character structure through which we can engage

00:30:36.300 | in the world around us with a sense of prudence, right?

00:30:39.540 | Taking reasonable risks, right?

00:30:41.580 | Not too little so that we shut ourselves down

00:30:44.020 | and maybe end up despairing.

00:30:45.780 | Not so much that scary things can happen to us

00:30:48.980 | and we end up fearful, right?

00:30:50.700 | But the idea that if we know ourselves well,

00:30:54.100 | the character structure is healthy, right?

00:30:57.220 | Because it's built upon a structure of self

00:30:59.660 | and a function of self that are healthy

00:31:01.580 | and out of it is coming empowerment, right?

00:31:04.440 | And empowerment and humility, right?

00:31:06.380 | That then lead us to agency and gratitude, right?

00:31:09.400 | The idea here is that this is the character structure

00:31:13.180 | that we create that can then interface with the world

00:31:16.660 | in a way that's good for us and good for the world around us

00:31:20.140 | that leads us to be able to live in much more harmony

00:31:23.340 | inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves.

00:31:26.500 | - So if I understand correctly, defense mechanisms

00:31:29.220 | that grow up out of this portion of the iceberg

00:31:32.520 | that we're calling the unconscious mind,

00:31:35.460 | they protect our conscious self in ways that can be adaptive

00:31:40.380 | or that can be maladaptive.

00:31:42.140 | In other words, defenses can be healthy

00:31:43.960 | or they can be unhealthy.

00:31:46.100 | And perhaps in a few minutes we can get into

00:31:48.700 | what a healthy versus an unhealthy defense looks like.

00:31:52.060 | But the way you described character structure

00:31:55.180 | sounds to me like an array of contextual dispositions.

00:32:00.180 | I don't want to add unnecessarily complex language,

00:32:04.960 | but it sounds to me like a bunch of dispositions.

00:32:07.480 | Like if I'm walking into the office where I know everybody

00:32:10.820 | and I see familiar faces, there's no reason for me

00:32:13.320 | to be on guard if I trust those people.

00:32:16.360 | But if I'm walking down a street at night

00:32:19.300 | that I'm not familiar with and I'm starting to get the sense

00:32:21.860 | that this neighborhood might not be the best,

00:32:23.820 | it makes sense for me to be on relatively high alert.

00:32:27.100 | So different dispositions

00:32:28.300 | depending on different conditions.

00:32:30.140 | I can't help but mention my bulldog Costello

00:32:33.500 | who had basically three dispositions.

00:32:36.140 | He was asleep, but in all seriousness,

00:32:38.620 | the second one was kind of bored,

00:32:42.260 | the bulldog faces kind of bored,

00:32:43.660 | or if something was given to him that he liked

00:32:46.580 | or if we were doing something that he liked, delight.

00:32:48.460 | He basically had three dispositions as far as I could tell.

00:32:51.260 | I think one of the reasons we like dogs so much

00:32:53.420 | or that many of us like dogs so much

00:32:54.780 | is that their decisions are very predictable.

00:32:58.820 | Take him to the park, he's happy

00:33:00.200 | unless he happened to be ill that day, which was rare.

00:33:03.100 | Feed him, he's happy.

00:33:04.820 | There wasn't a lot of, I don't like this particular meal

00:33:08.100 | or I don't like this particular park

00:33:09.720 | or this Bijon Frise doesn't smell so good to me.

00:33:12.560 | It was so simple and yet people are very complex.

00:33:17.020 | I can look at myself and say,

00:33:19.560 | okay, what is my character structure?

00:33:21.260 | Character structure is certain things I like,

00:33:23.220 | certain things I dislike, certain things really irritate me.

00:33:26.320 | Certain environments and people I just delight in.

00:33:28.540 | Okay, so is the definition of a healthy character structure

00:33:32.540 | one in which the dispositions match the context perfectly?

00:33:37.540 | I mean, I don't know how any of us could be like that,

00:33:40.740 | but is that sort of the ideal much in the same way

00:33:43.520 | that we could probably arrive at an ideal degree of stamina

00:33:48.520 | that one could have?

00:33:51.940 | Some people run ultra marathons, 100 miles or more.

00:33:55.500 | Some people want to run a marathon.

00:33:56.600 | Some people don't really desire to run a marathon,

00:33:58.780 | but I want to be able to run a mile if I need to

00:34:01.300 | without being completely exhausted and injured.

00:34:03.580 | So when we ask ourselves about character structure,

00:34:07.780 | are we asking ourselves about context-driven dispositions?

00:34:11.600 | And how do we start to evaluate that for ourselves?

00:34:14.740 | - I think because we're more complicated,

00:34:16.740 | I think it's not dispositions

00:34:18.300 | as much as it's predispositions, right?

00:34:20.940 | So in the example that you gave,

00:34:23.580 | you have a certain predisposition

00:34:25.460 | to be either trusting or wary, right?

00:34:28.500 | And that's healthy in you, right?

00:34:31.460 | So when you come into a setting

00:34:33.160 | where there's not a good reason to feel mistrustful,

00:34:37.500 | to feel anxious, to feel vulnerable, right?

00:34:39.900 | Then you feel at ease, right?

00:34:41.580 | So you walk into the work setting,

00:34:42.820 | there are people you know, there are people you like,

00:34:44.660 | everything is okay, right?

00:34:46.200 | You have a different predisposition

00:34:48.780 | when the context is different, right?

00:34:50.460 | So if the context could bring a lack of safety,

00:34:53.300 | then you respond accordingly with a lack of safety, right?

00:34:56.980 | But it's possible certainly those predispositions

00:34:59.460 | can be in unhealthy places, right?

00:35:02.300 | So for example,

00:35:04.020 | you might have been traumatized in a certain way,

00:35:06.980 | or you might approach the world in a certain way

00:35:09.260 | because of prior experience

00:35:10.900 | that you may not register as trauma,

00:35:13.540 | but it may be that within you

00:35:15.180 | is a predisposition to be mistrustful.

00:35:17.600 | So you could walk into a room of people that you know,

00:35:20.260 | of people who've never met you any harm

00:35:22.300 | and still feel unsafe, right?

00:35:24.680 | Now this happens most often after trauma,

00:35:27.720 | but there are other ways people can get to that

00:35:30.440 | where the predisposition isn't so healthy.

00:35:32.700 | The converse is true too, right?

00:35:34.780 | There are people who can have

00:35:36.020 | too much of what's called an omnipotence defense,

00:35:38.260 | and then they don't recognize danger

00:35:39.940 | when danger is around them.

00:35:41.580 | So the idea, the character structure,

00:35:43.660 | that nest, right,

00:35:45.260 | that's built around the defensive structure

00:35:47.260 | and the conscious mind that's sitting on top

00:35:49.340 | of the part of the iceberg,

00:35:50.620 | the unconscious mind underwater, right?

00:35:52.860 | It's that nest that is interfacing with the world

00:35:57.180 | through a whole set of predispositions.

00:36:00.860 | I'd like to take a brief break

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00:37:27.540 | I think most of us are familiar with assessing

00:37:31.020 | and assigning names to the character structures of others.

00:37:34.900 | And at least for most of us,

00:37:35.940 | we do that with no professional training or authority, right?

00:37:38.700 | We say, that person is great.

00:37:40.900 | They're super nice.

00:37:42.620 | Person's a jerk.

00:37:44.080 | They're like weird, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

00:37:47.420 | I think very few of us are familiar

00:37:50.700 | with assessing our own character structure.

00:37:52.840 | - Right, right.

00:37:53.680 | - And I have to presume that some of what happens

00:37:55.980 | when somebody comes to you as a psychiatrist

00:37:58.700 | or to a psychologist is that certain questions are asked

00:38:01.660 | and certain narratives are told

00:38:03.540 | that start to reveal to the clinician

00:38:06.060 | the character structure.

00:38:07.440 | And perhaps from there,

00:38:09.360 | some of the possible defense mechanisms

00:38:11.400 | and structure of the person's unconscious mind

00:38:14.640 | and conscious mind that obviously are unaware to them,

00:38:16.940 | but would be clear to the clinician.

00:38:18.700 | Much in the same way that if somebody goes into the doctor

00:38:22.080 | and says, you know, I don't feel well,

00:38:24.140 | they're going to start probing with questions.

00:38:25.720 | Are they going to listen to their breathing,

00:38:29.120 | listen to their heart, right?

00:38:29.960 | - Right, get out the stethoscope and figure it out.

00:38:32.060 | - These are the pros,

00:38:32.900 | whereas the psychiatrist or psychologist uses words

00:38:35.420 | and language to probe.

00:38:36.720 | - Yes.

00:38:37.560 | - So what are the sorts of aspects

00:38:40.240 | of character structure that we can be aware of in ourselves?

00:38:44.800 | You know, I mean, in other words,

00:38:47.340 | should we be asking what type of character do I have

00:38:51.320 | depending on one circumstance or another?

00:38:54.700 | Should we ask ourselves what sorts of defenses we have?

00:38:57.540 | And maybe this would be a good opportunity

00:38:59.440 | to address this issue of what are healthy

00:39:02.720 | versus unhealthy defenses?

00:39:05.080 | Because it sounds to me, if I understand correctly,

00:39:07.240 | that the defense mechanisms are a very strong component

00:39:10.200 | in determining what our character structure is.

00:39:12.580 | - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:39:13.520 | Right, because the defense mechanisms are unconscious, right?

00:39:16.700 | The character structure that nest around the defenses

00:39:19.560 | in the conscious mind through which we interface

00:39:22.280 | with the world is very, very complicated.

00:39:24.880 | So there is many character structures

00:39:26.720 | as there are human beings, right?

00:39:28.560 | So it's very, very complicated,

00:39:30.060 | but there are factors that are consistently relevant

00:39:33.960 | across people and get identified as such.

00:39:36.920 | So one example would be isolation versus affiliation, right?

00:39:41.600 | So does a person tend to group with others, right?

00:39:44.640 | Or does the person tend to avoid grouping, right,

00:39:47.840 | and go about thoughts, tasks, approaches to life

00:39:52.440 | in a more singular manner, right?

00:39:55.200 | So it's just one element.

00:39:56.240 | I'm making value judgment about it

00:39:58.280 | 'cause it can be good or bad

00:40:00.200 | on either end of the spectrum, right?

00:40:01.900 | So we're just saying, what are the factors?

00:40:03.400 | So am I more affiliative or do I tend to isolate

00:40:06.400 | and be more singular?

00:40:07.360 | That's just one example, right?

00:40:09.680 | Another example could be things like,

00:40:11.320 | for example, use of humor, right?

00:40:13.680 | Does a person use humor and in what way, right?

00:40:16.120 | Does a person use humor

00:40:18.000 | to deflect discomfort in negative situations?

00:40:21.460 | Does a person use humor in order to be little others

00:40:24.500 | or to be little themselves?

00:40:26.120 | Or does a person not use humor, right?

00:40:28.120 | So there are these aspects of character structure

00:40:30.400 | and so much research has been done on this over the years

00:40:33.380 | to determine what is most salient, right?

00:40:36.240 | In this thing that we use

00:40:39.220 | in order to interface with the world around us

00:40:42.280 | out of which grows our self.

00:40:45.040 | - That makes good sense.

00:40:47.100 | And it makes me want to revise a little bit

00:40:50.040 | what I asked about before,

00:40:51.940 | which is I said that when it comes to an exam

00:40:54.480 | of physical health, measure blood pressure,

00:40:56.840 | measure breathing, et cetera,

00:40:59.960 | maybe even a blood test, look at some biomarkers.

00:41:02.880 | But what you're describing is a little bit more analogous

00:41:06.040 | to the physician addressing a patient

00:41:09.340 | who's having some physical discomfort or malaise

00:41:11.760 | and saying, "Tell me about your day.

00:41:13.800 | What do you do when you get up in the morning?"

00:41:16.040 | If the person says, "Well, I drink a quarter pint of vodka."

00:41:20.160 | It's a very different answer

00:41:21.400 | than I go outside and get sunlight in my eyes,

00:41:23.840 | drink a glass of water and maybe have a cup of coffee, right?

00:41:27.640 | Or if somebody says, "I have six espresso."

00:41:30.240 | If I understand correctly,

00:41:31.480 | the character structure is better revealed

00:41:33.620 | by exploring the action states

00:41:36.800 | that somebody engages in. - It comes to life.

00:41:38.060 | - Isolation versus engagement,

00:41:40.200 | as opposed to a read of one specific biomarker.

00:41:44.400 | - Yes, it's character structure brought to life, right?

00:41:48.520 | Yes.

00:41:49.360 | - Immediately, I'm thinking about movies and books

00:41:53.360 | where we learn so much about somebody

00:41:56.400 | through observing the way that they interact with people

00:42:00.220 | in very, very potent ways.

00:42:02.760 | So for instance, I can think of countless movies

00:42:05.440 | where you learn a ton about somebody in the first scene

00:42:09.080 | simply because of the way they react to somebody

00:42:10.940 | who cuts them off in traffic.

00:42:13.540 | They just explode.

00:42:14.660 | Okay, well then we think of that person as reactive

00:42:17.080 | from that point on,

00:42:18.200 | unless there's a significant amount of material

00:42:20.000 | to revise that.

00:42:21.260 | But it's in the action of getting explosive

00:42:24.480 | and cursing, et cetera,

00:42:25.580 | as opposed to if they just kind of laugh it off

00:42:27.960 | or laugh at themselves

00:42:29.500 | or blame someone within their own vehicle

00:42:31.640 | or something like that.

00:42:33.060 | So are those the sorts of things that a clinician

00:42:36.620 | like yourself is listening for

00:42:38.160 | when somebody says, "You know, I don't feel well."

00:42:39.760 | And you say, "Well, tell me about what's going on lately."

00:42:42.040 | And they start describing what's going on in their life.

00:42:45.440 | And are you listening for those places

00:42:47.600 | where the defense mechanisms start to reveal themselves,

00:42:52.240 | the character structure starts to reveal itself

00:42:54.540 | through these action steps

00:42:56.020 | that the person seems to be taking?

00:42:57.760 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:42:59.040 | I mean, maybe one way of looking at character structure

00:43:01.840 | is that it's potentialities and predispositions, right?

00:43:05.760 | That there's so much that's latent

00:43:08.080 | that then interfaces with events,

00:43:10.020 | like a person's stuck in traffic.

00:43:11.560 | How does that person respond?

00:43:13.300 | If that person weren't stuck in traffic,

00:43:15.000 | there wouldn't be a response to it, right?

00:43:16.560 | So there are potentialities, there are predispositions,

00:43:19.920 | and then we live through enacting them

00:43:22.920 | as we're moving then through life, right?

00:43:26.160 | And the attempts to understand,

00:43:28.120 | so using the physical health parallel, right?

00:43:30.960 | If you came in and you said, "I don't feel well," right?

00:43:33.920 | We might run a lot of tests, right?

00:43:35.980 | We might get an MRI or a CAT scan

00:43:38.360 | or even putting the stethoscope

00:43:40.100 | and listening to what's inside of you.

00:43:41.680 | Those, we could say, are unconscious things,

00:43:43.540 | like you're not aware of what the imaging may show

00:43:46.240 | or the blood test may show or how your lungs may sound

00:43:49.200 | when someone puts a stethoscope on them, right?

00:43:51.360 | So a clinician, if you're trying to understand

00:43:54.140 | and help someone,

00:43:55.280 | then you do wanna look for those things, right?

00:43:57.280 | You wanna look for the things

00:43:58.400 | that are underneath the surface

00:44:00.380 | but that can be very, very important, right?

00:44:03.800 | You also wanna look at everything that's on the surface,

00:44:06.640 | right?

00:44:07.480 | So if you're engaging with someone,

00:44:09.680 | you're engaging with the self, right?

00:44:11.480 | The self that grows out of the character structure nest,

00:44:15.560 | right?

00:44:16.400 | So by engaging with and doing one's best

00:44:18.980 | to understand the self,

00:44:21.080 | then you learn about what is underneath of it, right?

00:44:24.120 | So I may then learn,

00:44:25.320 | well, how do you respond in certain situations, right?

00:44:27.520 | Just like I could ask you questions

00:44:29.080 | or well, when do you not feel well, right?

00:44:31.280 | So you're asking a person questions

00:44:33.180 | because the idea is to understand

00:44:36.080 | elements of the character structure.

00:44:37.640 | So how do you respond in certain situations?

00:44:39.440 | What's going on inside of you, right?

00:44:41.280 | What do you understand about yourself

00:44:42.960 | and what do you not understand about yourself, right?

00:44:45.400 | How do you bring yourself to bear in the world around you?

00:44:48.240 | So there's a similar process going on

00:44:50.720 | but here we're trying to understand the self

00:44:53.640 | and the understanding of the self

00:44:55.440 | can help us understand the components

00:44:57.280 | underneath of the self

00:44:59.040 | because that's where we're gonna go to make things better,

00:45:01.880 | right?

00:45:02.720 | The idea is there shouldn't have to be mystery

00:45:05.120 | or certainly not mystery

00:45:06.320 | any more than there is in physical health.

00:45:08.360 | I mean, rarely someone comes in

00:45:10.440 | and they're really not feeling well

00:45:12.600 | and a whole set of everything that should be done is done,

00:45:15.840 | right?

00:45:16.680 | Labs, physical examination, history, imaging, right?

00:45:20.040 | And you still just don't know, right?

00:45:21.920 | I mean, sometimes that can happen

00:45:23.320 | but it's very rare.

00:45:24.840 | And the same should apply here

00:45:27.080 | that if we're examining a self, right?

00:45:30.160 | And we're looking for the components

00:45:31.840 | out of which that self comes, right?

00:45:34.400 | Then we should be able to understand

00:45:36.840 | well enough to go back to the components of self

00:45:40.360 | and to make change

00:45:42.200 | so that the self is in a better place, right?

00:45:45.440 | And that self can then be empowered,

00:45:48.440 | can feel humility, right?

00:45:49.920 | Can then come at life through the altruism

00:45:53.040 | and gratitude that we seek

00:45:54.840 | because again, you show me someone

00:45:56.960 | who's coming at life through altruism and gratitude

00:45:59.360 | and is not happy with their life

00:46:01.280 | and you'll be showing me something I've never seen before,

00:46:03.480 | something entirely new.

00:46:05.600 | So if we wanna get there,

00:46:07.160 | we wanna know how to get there

00:46:09.280 | and there are ways as there should be

00:46:11.880 | that parallel physical health that aren't mysterious

00:46:15.520 | that we can come at to make understanding and change.

00:46:19.520 | - I'm wondering about the role of anxiety in all of this.

00:46:24.040 | The reason I ask about anxiety

00:46:25.560 | is that you said that so much of character structure

00:46:28.560 | is determined by a set of predispositions and potentialities.

00:46:33.560 | And earlier we were talking about example

00:46:36.600 | of either being afraid or unafraid

00:46:38.560 | in particular environments

00:46:39.720 | or feeling like we can walk into a classroom and learn

00:46:42.760 | or whether or not we're overly concerned

00:46:44.280 | about what people think about us or both, right?

00:46:46.440 | It could be a mix.

00:46:48.400 | Whether or not we can embrace novel environments

00:46:51.080 | in safe and adaptive ways,

00:46:53.040 | whether or not we can grow from them

00:46:55.200 | as opposed to whether or not we can be overtaken by them

00:46:57.680 | or perhaps even injured,

00:46:59.120 | harmed psychologically, physically, or both.

00:47:01.320 | Anxiety to me is a very basic function.

00:47:05.420 | I think about it in terms of the autonomic nervous system

00:47:07.440 | and when degrees of excitability and et cetera,

00:47:10.440 | inability to sleep at night,

00:47:11.480 | inability to wake up feeling reasonably good

00:47:13.720 | but not have a panic attack.

00:47:15.580 | But anxiety to me does seem like a key node in all of this.

00:47:20.280 | Meaning, most people, including myself,

00:47:24.540 | I don't walk around thinking about my character structure.

00:47:28.740 | I don't walk around thinking about how I'm going to behave

00:47:31.180 | in a bunch of hypothetical environments.

00:47:33.520 | Think about the fact that most mornings I wake up

00:47:37.380 | and I feel pretty good, to be quite honest,

00:47:40.020 | not as good as I would like to feel.

00:47:41.620 | And not necessarily because anything's wrong

00:47:43.780 | but because I think I'm wired to be a little bit more

00:47:45.500 | on the anxious side and to predict what's going to happen next

00:47:48.860 | and what needs to be done.

00:47:49.700 | And so until I'm actually engaging in certain behaviors,

00:47:52.100 | that anxiety hums a little bit high for me.

00:47:54.900 | The gears turn a little bit faster perhaps

00:47:56.800 | than I would like when I wake up in the morning.

00:47:59.080 | But once I engage, I feel like the speed

00:48:01.580 | of that gear turning matches the demands

00:48:04.540 | of life pretty well and I feel agency.

00:48:07.580 | So if you don't mind, could we explore this feeling

00:48:12.740 | of anxiety or lack of anxiety that I think people

00:48:15.260 | are pretty familiar with within themselves

00:48:17.600 | at different times of day and under different conditions?

00:48:20.560 | Because to me, it seems like an interesting lens

00:48:24.060 | to explore this notion of character structure and defenses.

00:48:27.260 | Is anxiety a healthy defense or an unhealthy defense

00:48:30.500 | or does it simply depend on the circumstances?

00:48:32.900 | - Well, we all have some degree of anxiety in us, right?

00:48:38.520 | We all have some awareness that we're navigating the world

00:48:42.580 | and like not everything is perfect, right?

00:48:45.140 | This is not nirvana.

00:48:46.020 | So there's some anxiety within us.

00:48:47.980 | And the thought is that that anxiety can keep us vigilant

00:48:51.540 | about the things we should be vigilant about,

00:48:53.660 | health and safety, right?

00:48:55.060 | But that too much anxiety then becomes counter productive.

00:48:59.180 | And we can look at this in a very regimented way, right?

00:49:02.120 | So some anxiety makes sense, right?

00:49:05.360 | It keeps us being careful.

00:49:06.780 | It keeps you being careful as you're pulling out

00:49:09.000 | of a driveway, for example, right?

00:49:10.540 | So, okay, it can be absolutely fine.

00:49:13.700 | But let's say you bring something to clinical attention

00:49:16.140 | that isn't absolutely fine, right?

00:49:18.220 | Let's say I didn't know you and you come in,

00:49:19.900 | we have the example that you used before

00:49:22.700 | where you walk into work and there's a group of people

00:49:26.220 | that you know well and like, right?

00:49:28.720 | Let's say you told me, when I walk in there,

00:49:31.340 | I feel very anxious, right?

00:49:33.280 | I don't feel like things are okay, right?

00:49:35.740 | So then we would go through it.

00:49:37.260 | We said, that's not good, right?

00:49:38.440 | Maybe it's impacting your professional life.

00:49:40.020 | Things are not going well.

00:49:40.980 | Like you really want this to change

00:49:42.720 | 'cause it's impacting your life in a negative way.

00:49:44.860 | And we say, okay, let's look at that

00:49:47.260 | from the perspective of structure of self, right?

00:49:50.920 | So first, unconscious, right?

00:49:53.540 | Is it that just genetically are you built

00:49:56.060 | with just higher levels of anxiety, right?

00:49:58.160 | So we could learn, okay,

00:49:59.060 | have you always been anxious like this?

00:50:00.620 | Has this always been in your life

00:50:02.140 | since you were a little kid, no matter what?

00:50:03.960 | So we're looking for biological nature,

00:50:06.480 | so to speak, variables.

00:50:08.220 | We might also look for things that have happened to you

00:50:11.740 | that are lodged in your unconscious mind, right?

00:50:14.160 | Is there trauma that you haven't processed, right?

00:50:16.740 | That now is underneath the surface

00:50:19.080 | but is spinning off more anxiety, right?

00:50:22.100 | Let's say you tell me,

00:50:23.000 | oh, it wasn't that long ago you started being anxious.

00:50:25.580 | Ah, did something happen?

00:50:27.500 | Did you walk into a group of people and I don't know,

00:50:29.620 | you tripped and you felt bad about something, right?

00:50:31.300 | And then you get more anxious, right?

00:50:33.180 | So are there things going on underneath the surface

00:50:35.920 | that are impacting you?

00:50:36.860 | Like, let's look into that, right?

00:50:39.220 | Because that's the biggest part of the iceberg, right?

00:50:41.680 | Then your conscious mind, we could start thinking about,

00:50:44.920 | okay, what's going on?

00:50:46.880 | What are you actively thinking about, right?

00:50:48.800 | So this is where sometimes cognitive behavioral techniques

00:50:51.420 | can come into mind.

00:50:52.580 | Like, are you thinking like, oh no, I'm scared.

00:50:54.660 | It isn't gonna go well, right?

00:50:55.580 | Like, are you having thoughts?

00:50:56.520 | Are there thoughts in making you more anxious, right?

00:50:58.580 | What's going on in your conscious mind, right?

00:51:00.680 | I would also be very interested in the defenses around you.

00:51:04.520 | So for example, do you tend to avoid, right?

00:51:07.340 | Has this been getting worse for three months,

00:51:09.640 | but you just, your mind wouldn't acknowledge it, right?

00:51:13.160 | And by the time you have to acknowledge it,

00:51:14.760 | now it's really bad, right?

00:51:16.440 | Or do you not avoid and like this just started happening

00:51:19.600 | and you wanna nip it in the bud, right?

00:51:21.300 | So I would be interested in the defense mechanisms, right?

00:51:24.540 | That are girding your conscious self.

00:51:26.520 | And I would be interested in the character structure.

00:51:28.720 | What decisions are you then making?

00:51:31.160 | Like, are you going anyway, right?

00:51:33.440 | Are you having trouble so sometimes you avoid?

00:51:36.240 | Are you then making decisions that make you late

00:51:38.720 | and that causes problems.

00:51:40.600 | How does it impact you once you're there?

00:51:42.580 | Are you engaging differently with people,

00:51:44.300 | doing your work differently?

00:51:45.720 | So I wanna understand the character structure

00:51:48.320 | and ultimately you understand all of this

00:51:50.720 | by probing the self that's riding along on top of it.

00:51:55.080 | And then what is the experience of that self?

00:51:57.560 | Like, do you see that, okay, this is a problem

00:51:59.800 | and I wanna address it, but like, look,

00:52:01.560 | I know that I'm good at what I do

00:52:03.080 | and I mean, this isn't some like awful thing about me,

00:52:06.000 | I just have to deal with it, right?

00:52:07.600 | Or is yourself impacted where you start thinking,

00:52:10.440 | maybe I can't do this anymore, I'm not good enough

00:52:12.480 | or we wanna understand what's the experience of the self.

00:52:16.360 | Right, and if we do all of that,

00:52:18.500 | how is it that we don't get to a place

00:52:20.860 | where we can understand that anxiety, right?

00:52:23.640 | And we can make things better.

00:52:25.480 | So just like in physical health, okay, maybe we can't,

00:52:28.780 | but that is a dramatic outlier.

00:52:31.520 | If we bring ourselves to bear, we would say,

00:52:33.960 | you should not have to have this in you, right?

00:52:37.600 | Because it is something negative,

00:52:38.920 | it is making unhappiness for you,

00:52:40.640 | it is taking away from empowerment, right?

00:52:43.720 | And it's also taking away from humility, right?

00:52:46.760 | Because if someone's beating up on themselves,

00:52:48.320 | you're beating up on yourself about it,

00:52:50.200 | then that's not humility, right?

00:52:51.820 | Then that's being sort of falsely persecutory, right?

00:52:55.000 | This is not an honest humility to that,

00:52:56.600 | it leads us away from health.

00:52:58.400 | So it's like, we don't want it to be this way, right?

00:53:01.000 | Because that is working against agency and gratitude,

00:53:05.440 | so we can understand it and we can go after it

00:53:09.040 | and make it better.

00:53:10.520 | - One of the most common questions I get on the internet,

00:53:14.640 | and I get a lot of questions,

00:53:16.280 | is what can be done to improve confidence?

00:53:21.280 | And I've thought a lot about that question

00:53:23.540 | and what is confidence?

00:53:25.300 | In the context of what we're talking about now

00:53:27.040 | is one reasonable definition of confidence,

00:53:30.040 | our ability to trust our predispositions

00:53:33.040 | and our potentialities enough

00:53:36.120 | that were we to encounter scenarios A through Z,

00:53:41.120 | we feel pretty good that we would respond the right way

00:53:44.360 | in a way that wouldn't threaten our conscious mind

00:53:48.760 | at a core level, right?

00:53:50.480 | You know, that we wouldn't,

00:53:52.240 | I used to use the term and joke a lot in my laboratory

00:53:55.660 | with the phrase, you know,

00:53:57.840 | dissolve into a puddle of our own tears, right?

00:54:00.140 | It's kind of this like hyperbolic explanation

00:54:02.720 | of what I think many people fear,

00:54:04.520 | like they're going to be called upon

00:54:05.840 | to answer a question publicly or give a speech,

00:54:08.860 | or they're going to be at a critical moment

00:54:10.560 | in a relationship or something,

00:54:12.720 | and just everything is just going to go so badly wrong

00:54:15.620 | that it's just going to dissolve them as a person.

00:54:17.920 | It's impossible, right?

00:54:19.680 | Dissolving a bottle of our own tears is impossible,

00:54:21.960 | but I think that's a fear that a lot of people live with

00:54:25.800 | because we can get into this a little bit later and we will.

00:54:29.040 | I'm sure, you know,

00:54:29.880 | this notion of like protecting one's ego

00:54:32.080 | seems really vital to being a human being at some level.

00:54:34.840 | Like we don't want to dissolve

00:54:36.160 | into a puddle of our own tears.

00:54:37.440 | So is confidence the ability to trust ourselves

00:54:40.800 | in a bunch of different contexts?

00:54:42.740 | And at the same time,

00:54:45.680 | I do have to raise this notion of narcissism.

00:54:50.240 | I think, you know,

00:54:52.400 | this word gets thrown around a lot lately,

00:54:54.240 | but it seems to me that any truly

00:54:57.120 | psychologically healthy person

00:54:58.920 | would also not want to be the idiot

00:55:00.880 | that thinks that they're better than they actually are.

00:55:03.560 | What are your thoughts on this?

00:55:07.120 | - Well, I agree with the things that you said

00:55:09.780 | about confidence, except I would add two factors

00:55:13.080 | that I think are like really big factors, right?

00:55:16.760 | One being state dependence

00:55:18.640 | and the other being phenomenology, right?

00:55:20.820 | So think about the state dependence first, right?

00:55:23.400 | We're talking about confidence, it's not uniform, right?

00:55:27.080 | Or it's not automatically uniform, right?

00:55:29.160 | So if you were to tell me, oh, I lack confidence, right?

00:55:32.880 | Then I want to understand, is that across the board?

00:55:35.560 | Is like, is that a way that you feel about yourself?

00:55:38.000 | That like, I'm not good enough at anything, for example,

00:55:41.240 | right?

00:55:42.080 | Or do you lack confidence in a specific area, right?

00:55:45.840 | And this is often the case, right?

00:55:47.400 | And it's a huge difference, right?

00:55:48.760 | It says that person has the machinery of confidence,

00:55:51.440 | so to speak, right?

00:55:52.620 | They have the potentialities and the predispositions

00:55:55.560 | for confidence, right?

00:55:57.080 | When that character structure, the self built upon it

00:55:59.500 | is engaging with the world, right?

00:56:01.920 | But they're not able to bring it to bear

00:56:04.840 | in a certain special situation, so to speak.

00:56:08.480 | So for some people, for example,

00:56:10.360 | the way we most often see this is like

00:56:12.400 | the carve out of romance, right?

00:56:14.600 | Where because it's so emotionally laden, right?

00:56:17.320 | And like rejection can feel so bad, right?

00:56:19.400 | That we can see people who are very confident

00:56:21.680 | in many, many aspects of life,

00:56:23.860 | but they are very diffident about romance.

00:56:25.620 | And they'll say different, oh, it never works out for me,

00:56:27.800 | or no one will ever like me, right?

00:56:29.480 | And you see like, that's not how that person

00:56:32.120 | actually feels, right?

00:56:33.760 | About themselves as a whole human being, right?

00:56:36.720 | Which is then we are coming at how to make that better

00:56:41.040 | in a way that's very robust, right?

00:56:42.720 | We might say something like, hey, here's the good news is

00:56:45.560 | you have the tools and the machinery that you need, right?

00:56:48.120 | You're confident in so many ways, right?

00:56:50.440 | In fact, maybe in all ways, except this one.

00:56:53.400 | So let's go take a look at like, why is that special, right?

00:56:57.900 | And then, and where are we?

00:56:59.320 | We're back to, is it something in the unconscious mind?

00:57:01.980 | Is it something in the conscious mind

00:57:04.140 | about how that person is engaging, right?

00:57:05.940 | So we have to understand what the state is

00:57:09.520 | and if the lack of confidence is state dependent.

00:57:12.240 | If the person is not confident across the board,

00:57:15.240 | then again, we go back to the same,

00:57:17.000 | we always go back to the same places to look, right?

00:57:19.880 | But then you might more think, okay,

00:57:22.160 | is there an impact of childhood trauma

00:57:24.160 | or early life trauma that took away from that person,

00:57:28.320 | you know, their ability to gain confidence, right?

00:57:31.400 | 'Cause if you'd have no confidence across the board,

00:57:34.200 | there's a deeper problem, right?

00:57:35.600 | Because there would be something anyone can be good at

00:57:39.240 | and feel confident in, right?

00:57:41.160 | So the state dependence is very important

00:57:43.140 | as is phenomenology.

00:57:45.260 | So what is your experience of being confident?

00:57:49.160 | If you tell me, well, I'm,

00:57:51.640 | let's say in a different version of this example,

00:57:53.600 | you say, you know, actually I'm quite,

00:57:56.360 | I feel quite confident when I walk into a room of people.

00:58:00.520 | I say, okay, I wanna understand more about that too, right?

00:58:04.160 | Because if I ask questions about that and you say,

00:58:06.800 | well, I feel confident because, you know,

00:58:09.280 | look, I'm a pretty smart person.

00:58:11.680 | I can think on my feet, I can deal well with people.

00:58:15.460 | If something doesn't go right, I can recover from it.

00:58:18.360 | Like I've got, you know, that's why I feel confident,

00:58:21.080 | you know, and say, okay, that sounds pretty good.

00:58:23.080 | If you say, well, I feel confident

00:58:25.060 | because I know that I'm better than everybody, right?

00:58:27.320 | Now we have a problem, right?

00:58:28.960 | Right, like that's not gonna go well

00:58:30.720 | in other, you know, in other aspects of life and engagement.

00:58:35.360 | Like there's, you know,

00:58:36.200 | it's not gonna lead to humility and gratitude.

00:58:38.000 | So where's that coming from?

00:58:39.760 | And again, maybe there's a deeper problem, right?

00:58:42.120 | As you said about narcissism, right?

00:58:43.880 | Which can be a reaction, right?

00:58:46.440 | Which is a reaction to vulnerability, right?

00:58:48.700 | So then there's, what's called a reaction formation.

00:58:51.480 | And now the person is actually deeply diffident, right?

00:58:55.640 | But presents as very, very confident

00:58:57.500 | and with a sense of superiority.

00:58:59.200 | And that's not a recipe for happiness, right?

00:59:03.000 | So in approaching it,

00:59:06.400 | we do wanna understand all the things that you said.

00:59:08.920 | What are the factors and the set of predispositions

00:59:12.000 | and the set of potentialities?

00:59:13.600 | But then what's the real world experience of that

00:59:16.680 | across situations?

00:59:18.080 | And what is the person's experience of that inside?

00:59:21.340 | Which is why if we're gonna understand and help people,

00:59:23.520 | like that's the understand part, right?

00:59:25.520 | You know, it's why the conveyor belt medicine,

00:59:28.160 | you know, it doesn't work, right?

00:59:30.480 | In situations where we're dealing with human beings,

00:59:33.360 | like mental health, right?

00:59:34.820 | We have to understand something about people

00:59:37.120 | to understand whatever they're telling us means.

00:59:40.500 | Otherwise you have no context, so you have no knowledge.

00:59:43.780 | - Another very common set of questions that I get,

00:59:46.200 | that I believe is very directly related to this,

00:59:48.940 | is about beliefs and internal narratives.

00:59:52.140 | You know, people ask me all the time,

00:59:55.660 | how can I change what I believe about myself?

00:59:59.120 | And they also ask, how can I change the script in my head?

01:00:02.620 | How do I, typically it's how do I shut down

01:00:05.000 | a particular narrative in my head?

01:00:07.340 | That seems to fit very well

01:00:08.660 | in thinking about structure of self,

01:00:10.020 | because as you pointed out, you know,

01:00:11.460 | the self or the structure of self

01:00:14.060 | includes the unconscious mind, you know,

01:00:15.960 | what's going on below the surface of the water

01:00:17.820 | in this iceberg model,

01:00:19.180 | what's going on in the conscious mind,

01:00:20.740 | that the conscious mind is protected

01:00:22.980 | by these defense mechanisms

01:00:24.260 | that grow up from the unconscious mind,

01:00:26.780 | from that character structure,

01:00:28.720 | and then this thing that we call the self, right?

01:00:31.360 | But when it comes to beliefs and internal narratives,

01:00:34.340 | those seem to me things that people are pretty well aware of.

01:00:36.980 | In fact, the very example that people are asking me this

01:00:39.180 | all the time, how to change beliefs, internal narratives,

01:00:41.340 | it means they are aware of them.

01:00:42.800 | It also suggests that for many people out there,

01:00:46.000 | their beliefs about themselves

01:00:47.260 | and their internal narratives are not healthy,

01:00:50.020 | or at least they don't feel are serving them well

01:00:52.140 | or that they are intrusive.

01:00:53.500 | I don't know how open people are about their beliefs

01:00:56.580 | and internal narratives when they come to you

01:00:58.380 | in your clinical practice.

01:01:00.500 | But if you could tell us a little bit about beliefs

01:01:04.260 | and internal narratives and whether or not

01:01:06.500 | they are important to rewire and reset.

01:01:09.660 | - This part is extremely important, right?

01:01:13.740 | So imagine, for example, that I'm saying to myself

01:01:16.900 | over and over again that I'm a loser, right?

01:01:19.500 | Or I'm not good enough, right?

01:01:20.960 | I mean, imagine trying to go through life

01:01:22.940 | and someone else were saying that to you all the time, right?

01:01:25.900 | I mean, it's worse when it's inside your own head, right?

01:01:28.500 | So what's going on inside of us, our internal dialogue,

01:01:31.600 | our internal narratives are extremely important.

01:01:35.400 | And here's where we run into a very big problem

01:01:38.440 | is that we live in an era and in a culture

01:01:41.680 | that is very attuned to rapid gratification, right?

01:01:45.200 | And all of this that we're talking about can change,

01:01:49.820 | but it does not change quickly.

01:01:52.760 | And it's amazing to me when,

01:01:54.940 | you'll see under insurance paradigms often, right?

01:01:58.340 | No matter what's going on with someone,

01:01:59.840 | they have 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral treatment,

01:02:02.880 | right?

01:02:03.720 | So if there's something like we're trying to change beliefs,

01:02:05.960 | it's a guarantee of failure, right?

01:02:08.360 | Because beliefs don't change that fast, right?

01:02:12.220 | So imagine, for example, that you and I chose a word,

01:02:15.440 | a random word, and we decided to say it 500 times, right?

01:02:19.460 | We'd each be saying it tonight, right?

01:02:21.380 | Like it's not gonna be out of our minds by tonight,

01:02:23.840 | but because we, what, took a random word

01:02:25.840 | and said it 500 times, right?

01:02:28.080 | So imagine that there's something

01:02:29.620 | that's highly emotionally laden,

01:02:32.980 | and we've said it thousands and thousands

01:02:34.840 | and thousands of times, right?

01:02:37.080 | That's not gonna go away quickly, right?

01:02:39.460 | But it can go away.

01:02:41.520 | And during the process of it atrophying, right?

01:02:45.080 | Our lives can get better, right?

01:02:46.720 | This is the opposite of hopeless, right?

01:02:49.260 | It's actually very, very encouraging,

01:02:51.640 | but in a world that's rapid gratification, right?

01:02:54.580 | Like how do we fix this?

01:02:55.420 | How do we fix this now that doesn't acknowledge this?

01:02:58.680 | We hear all the time that a person has failed therapy,

01:03:02.120 | right, like this is said all the time,

01:03:03.780 | that person failed, what does failed therapy mean, right?

01:03:06.320 | I mean, I think therapy failed that person, right?

01:03:09.720 | But we label like, oh, a person isn't better, right?

01:03:12.720 | But there are things going on inside of us

01:03:15.000 | that could take months and months or years to make better.

01:03:18.240 | Now again, that's okay if we're aware of what's going on.

01:03:21.740 | Just the very fact that we understand

01:03:23.880 | and we're making change, right,

01:03:25.640 | helps us feel better about ourselves and more confident,

01:03:28.520 | right, that we can change all of this,

01:03:30.560 | but we have to approach it in the right way.

01:03:32.720 | So let's say that I'm telling myself over and over again,

01:03:36.860 | you're not gonna get there, right?

01:03:39.240 | And let's say a place I wanna go professionally, right?

01:03:41.520 | Or no one's ever gonna really want you, right?

01:03:44.160 | If I'm looking for a romantic partner, right?

01:03:46.800 | So imagine these things are going on

01:03:49.300 | and they're going on over and over again.

01:03:51.320 | And you can imagine now that it's intruded

01:03:53.960 | into the unconscious mind,

01:03:55.240 | it's going on in my conscious mind,

01:03:57.000 | my defensive structure is shifting in negative ways,

01:03:59.880 | I'm becoming more avoidant.

01:04:00.920 | Like nothing about this is good and I want it to change.

01:04:05.040 | And I want it to change to something that says,

01:04:07.320 | like you can do it, right?

01:04:09.140 | Or you're lovable, right?

01:04:10.960 | Or you can be a good partner to someone.

01:04:13.000 | So I wanna change it, right?

01:04:14.720 | So imagine now when I start to make that change,

01:04:18.440 | I'm blazing a path, right?

01:04:20.520 | And I'm blazing a path

01:04:21.760 | where there wasn't a path before, right?

01:04:23.720 | And I can blaze a path and I can go through that path,

01:04:27.280 | but that path is gonna be nothing like maybe

01:04:30.320 | the four lane highway, right?

01:04:32.400 | Adjacent to me where the thing that I've been telling myself

01:04:35.640 | for years and years and years, born of trauma, right?

01:04:38.880 | Is going back and forth, right?

01:04:42.120 | I mean, it's got a four lane highway,

01:04:43.640 | I'm cutting a path, right?

01:04:45.240 | But over time, you cut that path more and more,

01:04:48.420 | you tread that path more and more,

01:04:50.100 | you take energy towards that path, it becomes better.

01:04:53.600 | Now let's imagine like the path is well-lit

01:04:55.880 | and it's 12 feet wide and maybe we can pave the path

01:04:58.640 | so more traffic, so to speak, goes down it.

01:05:01.480 | And we're taking energy away from that four lane highway

01:05:04.120 | and maybe it starts to be overgrown a little bit

01:05:06.800 | and there are cracks in the road.

01:05:07.880 | Like we can change all of that,

01:05:10.140 | but we have to understand what's going on and identify it.

01:05:14.360 | Like what is going on inside of me?

01:05:16.080 | What do I make of it, right?

01:05:17.560 | How do I understand the process of change?

01:05:19.560 | How do I increase my empowerment

01:05:21.940 | during the process of change?

01:05:23.580 | If we come at it the right way, all of this can be changed.

01:05:27.640 | It's not hardwired in us,

01:05:29.860 | it's just very, very strongly reinforced.

01:05:33.820 | The same way our brains are built this way,

01:05:35.340 | so we don't forget our own names, right?

01:05:37.660 | You know, we don't forget where we live,

01:05:39.580 | you know, back when we were hunting and gathering

01:05:41.420 | and we don't forget, you know, where the good fruits are,

01:05:45.420 | right, I mean this goes on in human life now.

01:05:47.060 | Like we have to remember things, it's very, very important

01:05:49.700 | if something has high emotional valence

01:05:52.640 | and we've thought it a lot that we don't forget it,

01:05:55.260 | but that mechanism gets hijacked

01:05:57.140 | by things that are not good for us

01:05:59.280 | and we can take it back, but not if we don't understand.

01:06:02.660 | - What are the tools or the questions

01:06:05.780 | that you give or ask of patients

01:06:09.700 | in order to help them along that pathway?

01:06:12.800 | Because I totally agree that changing beliefs

01:06:15.360 | and internal narratives is very, very hard.

01:06:18.060 | Just one quick example that meshes

01:06:20.980 | with the physical health realm.

01:06:22.220 | I have a friend and colleague,

01:06:24.020 | he's a very accomplished scientist

01:06:25.840 | who was very overweight for a long period of time.

01:06:28.660 | He finally made some behavioral changes

01:06:31.260 | that allowed him to lose,

01:06:32.340 | I think it was in upwards of 80 pounds,

01:06:34.460 | a significant amount of weight,

01:06:35.860 | felt much better, looked much better.

01:06:37.920 | He just delighted in his ability to do that,

01:06:41.760 | but then started to reveal to me

01:06:44.680 | that he was deathly afraid

01:06:47.740 | that he was going to lose control

01:06:49.920 | and start eating the way he was before

01:06:52.020 | and stop exercising in a way that would return him

01:06:54.880 | to his previous weight and feelings of malaise.

01:06:58.340 | And I said, well, all the things you're doing

01:07:01.680 | are in the direction of health.

01:07:03.220 | None of what you're doing speaks

01:07:05.020 | to the possibility of this all crumbling.

01:07:07.960 | This was the dissolve into a puddle

01:07:09.260 | of my own tears kind of narrative,

01:07:10.940 | but at this point coming from him.

01:07:13.360 | And he just said, I know,

01:07:15.100 | but despite doing all the right things,

01:07:17.820 | I'm still incredibly afraid that it's going to happen.

01:07:21.300 | It was as if the beliefs and the internal narratives

01:07:23.840 | hadn't changed despite the fact

01:07:26.380 | that he was engaging in the world differently

01:07:28.460 | and more positively.

01:07:29.980 | I haven't checked in with him recently

01:07:31.240 | to find out where he's at with this now,

01:07:32.740 | several years later.

01:07:33.820 | He has kept off most of the weight, not all.

01:07:36.800 | They gained a little bit back,

01:07:37.880 | but he's still far healthier than he ever was.

01:07:40.140 | So hopefully he's experienced some relief.

01:07:42.620 | But what do you tell a patient who is saying,

01:07:47.060 | I've got this loop in my head

01:07:48.980 | that tells me I'm not good enough,

01:07:50.580 | or that even when things are going well,

01:07:53.180 | they're going to return to that state

01:07:54.960 | that I fear so much once again.

01:07:57.240 | This kind of like, you know, lack of agency, right?

01:08:00.740 | Just lack of agency, lack of agency, lack of empowerment.

01:08:04.020 | What sorts of practical tools can one give themselves

01:08:09.100 | or that you would provide to somebody?

01:08:11.340 | - No matter what is behind what's going on

01:08:14.460 | in that person's mind, it's addressable.

01:08:18.100 | But you don't know what it is and how to address it

01:08:21.420 | until we ask the question of what's going on inside, right?

01:08:26.120 | So if he's afraid

01:08:28.300 | that he's gonna gain all that weight back, right?

01:08:31.240 | And he has a history

01:08:32.500 | that if significant negative things happen,

01:08:35.680 | he throws self-care to the wind, right?

01:08:38.600 | Then we'd come at it through that pattern, right?

01:08:42.100 | Because he would have a very, you know,

01:08:43.700 | he'd have a good reason to be worried, right?

01:08:45.740 | Because this pattern of something bad happens

01:08:48.580 | and I don't take care of myself for six months.

01:08:50.620 | You know, maybe someone, I'm just making this up,

01:08:52.380 | and maybe someone in his life is ill

01:08:53.900 | or he's fearing a death, you know,

01:08:55.540 | and if it's just something that would say,

01:08:57.380 | that's a very legitimate fear to have,

01:08:59.740 | like, let's talk about that.

01:09:01.260 | Like, let's look at where that comes from, right?

01:09:04.140 | Got that person into that pattern in the first place, right?

01:09:07.160 | By understanding the pattern and by working together, right?

01:09:10.300 | Can we stave that off, right?

01:09:12.660 | But it could be different.

01:09:13.580 | The person might say,

01:09:14.940 | well, I'm really, I'm having a lot of food cravings, right?

01:09:17.820 | And we're like, okay, what does that mean?

01:09:19.420 | Where's that coming from?

01:09:20.660 | Or maybe he's depressed and he's getting depressed

01:09:23.180 | and when he's depressed, he can't stop eating more, right?

01:09:25.860 | So, you know, you would look,

01:09:27.060 | or it might just be plain old fear.

01:09:28.700 | Like, this is so good, right?

01:09:30.620 | That I'm worried it will go away, right?

01:09:32.680 | Then we might want to reinforce like, okay,

01:09:34.820 | like, you know, you're a person who's able

01:09:36.580 | to use circumspection and perseverance

01:09:38.820 | and preserve goodness, right?

01:09:40.420 | So like, you do that and you do that really well.

01:09:42.620 | So let's make sure we're doing that here, right?

01:09:45.820 | So, you know, a lot of times a person is worried,

01:09:48.980 | but that worry is coming through the lens of health.

01:09:51.020 | Like, they're healthy, right?

01:09:52.000 | So then we look at, okay, can we soothe that worry?

01:09:54.340 | Where's that coming from, right?

01:09:56.580 | We can come at it and reinforce the positive.

01:09:59.900 | But if there is something negative,

01:10:01.700 | there's a trauma-driven cycle,

01:10:03.100 | there's depression, there are cravings,

01:10:04.980 | we can understand that too.

01:10:06.580 | So I come back to this idea that there's answers

01:10:09.860 | to just about everything and in a very regimented,

01:10:13.220 | scientific way, it's not that hard to come to them, right?

01:10:17.500 | Just like in physical medicine,

01:10:19.020 | like we have the tools that we need to bring to bear,

01:10:22.300 | but you have to understand the person.

01:10:23.780 | Again, if you come in and say, I'm not feeling good

01:10:25.580 | and someone else comes in and says, I'm not feeling good,

01:10:28.280 | the doctor better not do the same things, right?

01:10:30.860 | As is, how are you not feeling good?

01:10:32.660 | Okay, let me understand that and then let me map that also

01:10:35.780 | to you, whatever underlying state of health you may have

01:10:38.920 | or diagnoses you may have.

01:10:40.260 | The same is true in mental health.

01:10:41.860 | If we just apply that, then it's remarkable,

01:10:45.540 | the good that we do, which I've seen very consistently

01:10:48.500 | across 20 years of doing this, not only in my own practice,

01:10:51.340 | but like who are the people who do really, really well

01:10:54.020 | trying to understand and take care of people,

01:10:56.260 | including sometimes not doing too much

01:10:58.620 | and realizing like, hey, this person is okay.

01:11:00.980 | Like there's a state of healthier,

01:11:02.140 | but this person is worried, how do we reassure them, right?

01:11:04.700 | How do we help someone living a good life,

01:11:06.160 | live a better life, right?

01:11:07.500 | If we're gonna do all of this,

01:11:09.260 | we have to approach people as individuals.

01:11:11.200 | It's just, I mean, the science tells us that

01:11:13.360 | and common sense tells us that too.

01:11:15.360 | But if we do that, a person can get to the place

01:11:19.280 | they wanna be.

01:11:20.680 | - I'd like to address a different person as an example,

01:11:23.400 | a hypothetical person.

01:11:25.000 | And I'm certain there are many, many

01:11:27.120 | of these people out there.

01:11:28.800 | These are the sorts of people that think, okay,

01:11:31.700 | there's a self and a mind and a unconscious mind, et cetera.

01:11:35.280 | But at some level, why not just do

01:11:39.220 | what needs to be done in life?

01:11:40.580 | Like the people that don't want to explore the self.

01:11:43.180 | Because to me, it seems so absolutely clear

01:11:45.540 | that just as it's important to have a certain level

01:11:47.540 | of endurance, strength, flexibility,

01:11:49.520 | so that one can extract the most joy and agency

01:11:53.460 | and gratitude and empowerment and humility from life,

01:11:56.860 | that it makes sense to explore the self.

01:11:59.560 | To ask, where am I internally strong?

01:12:02.220 | Where am I internally weak?

01:12:04.100 | Where might I perceive myself as strong

01:12:05.900 | where as I'm actually weak, right?

01:12:08.260 | These seem like very important,

01:12:11.060 | if not crucial questions to ask.

01:12:12.840 | But I know that there are a certain number of people

01:12:14.500 | in the world think all of that is just kind of a waste

01:12:17.960 | of time, right?

01:12:19.040 | It's all about doing stuff.

01:12:20.880 | It's all, why explore the self, you know?

01:12:23.840 | And I think the rest of us are looking at that person often

01:12:28.160 | and thinking, well, you're exactly the kind of person

01:12:30.020 | that needs to do this because of the ways

01:12:31.800 | that you grate on other people, but not always, right?

01:12:34.520 | Sometimes these people just appear to be just very effective.

01:12:37.360 | They're all about the outward expression

01:12:39.240 | of what they're doing.

01:12:40.400 | And I certainly don't know how other people feel

01:12:42.240 | waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night

01:12:44.480 | and throughout the day.

01:12:45.640 | But to the person that feels like introspection

01:12:50.600 | and exploring, maybe even excavating for trauma

01:12:53.620 | that they haven't been in touch with

01:12:55.080 | or haven't dealt with yet,

01:12:56.800 | for the person that feels that all of that

01:12:58.220 | is kind of not really worth the effort

01:13:01.320 | and that it's all about action,

01:13:02.960 | what can we say to that person or those people?

01:13:07.480 | Put differently, does one need to change

01:13:11.600 | and need to believe in the power

01:13:13.600 | of these sorts of approaches in order for them to work?

01:13:17.880 | We often hear that people don't change

01:13:19.120 | until they want to change.

01:13:20.580 | And could we also say perhaps that even for the people

01:13:24.800 | that feel like they're functioning extremely well

01:13:27.360 | in all domains of life, I know no such people

01:13:30.280 | and I know some very high achieving people as you do too.

01:13:33.200 | I know no such people.

01:13:35.020 | The only people who seem to exist in that sphere

01:13:37.460 | are the clear narcissists that to them

01:13:40.540 | just seem like they're doing great,

01:13:41.580 | but everyone else can't stand them.

01:13:42.820 | By the way, narcissists, no one else can stand you.

01:13:45.320 | What do we say to those individuals?

01:13:50.160 | 'Cause I think it's a big swath of humanity.

01:13:52.920 | And I think it accounts for a lot of suffering in the world,

01:13:56.400 | including their own suffering.

01:13:57.880 | Yeah, so I would make an appeal to common sense, right?

01:14:02.120 | So imagine you take someone

01:14:04.360 | who doesn't know anything about health.

01:14:05.800 | They don't know how to exercise,

01:14:07.800 | they don't know how to eat well, they just don't know

01:14:09.440 | and they're really, really unhealthy, right?

01:14:11.720 | They're overweight, they have low energy,

01:14:14.280 | they have sleep apnea, they don't need to have any,

01:14:17.000 | and why not just say to them,

01:14:19.400 | well, like, just go be different?

01:14:21.860 | Like, in fact, be different now.

01:14:24.000 | Why aren't you different right now, right?

01:14:25.720 | Like, of course, we would never do that

01:14:27.880 | because it's absurd, and by the way,

01:14:31.160 | also would be cruel, right?

01:14:33.280 | So it's absurd and it's cruel,

01:14:34.640 | so we would never do that, right?

01:14:36.700 | Let's say now, let's say we fast forward

01:14:39.460 | some period of months, say, make it up, right?

01:14:41.760 | And we see that person and wow, they are much healthier,

01:14:45.460 | they have much more energy, they've lost weight,

01:14:47.440 | they're physically fit, a lot will have gone on

01:14:51.480 | in between those two snapshots of that person.

01:14:54.480 | That person has to learn a lot, right?

01:14:56.240 | How does one take care of oneself, right?

01:14:58.740 | Then more specifically, how do I take care of myself, right?

01:15:01.720 | What healthy foods will I like?

01:15:04.120 | What healthy foods will I eat?

01:15:05.920 | How will I put that on the table?

01:15:07.280 | What kind of exercises can work for me?

01:15:09.200 | How will they work for me?

01:15:10.440 | How do I strengthen muscle?

01:15:11.860 | How do I strengthen the heart?

01:15:13.040 | How do I increase lung capacity, right?

01:15:14.680 | There's learning, there's diligence,

01:15:17.040 | there's stick-to-itiveness, right?

01:15:20.000 | There's resilience.

01:15:21.320 | That's how the person gets there, right?

01:15:24.400 | It is no different, and it's mental health, right?

01:15:27.600 | If we say, well, you feel diffident across the board,

01:15:30.940 | or you feel superior across the board, or whatever it is,

01:15:34.120 | like life isn't going well,

01:15:35.280 | and you don't have things you want,

01:15:36.760 | and the self-talk is negative,

01:15:38.840 | then we'd say, well, just be different right now, right?

01:15:41.640 | I mean, it's remarkable that people will say that at times,

01:15:45.320 | not just in a way that's denigrating and awful for others,

01:15:49.480 | but to themselves too, right?

01:15:51.120 | I mean, I hear people say this most often

01:15:54.220 | to themselves, like, why am I not just different, right?

01:15:57.040 | I want to be different,

01:15:58.080 | or what's wrong with me that I'm not?

01:16:00.080 | And they're like, yeah, it's like everything else.

01:16:02.700 | Like, you have to apply understanding, and work, and effort.

01:16:05.400 | Like, the good news is,

01:16:06.920 | you can get to whatever change you want.

01:16:08.960 | I mean, a person can get to whatever reasonable change

01:16:12.360 | that person wants.

01:16:13.360 | Like, you know, I'm 54 years old.

01:16:14.980 | I'm not gonna climb Mount Everest.

01:16:16.200 | I'm not a mountain climber, right?

01:16:17.580 | But if I want to, like, I want to climb some mountains.

01:16:19.760 | I want to get out there and do some things.

01:16:21.000 | I can go do that, right?

01:16:22.440 | The same thing is true with our mental health goals,

01:16:26.420 | but not at the snap of a finger, not by magic, right?

01:16:30.440 | It's through applying the same science and common sense,

01:16:33.540 | combination of science and common sense

01:16:35.340 | that we apply to other things.

01:16:37.200 | That's why we go through this procedure

01:16:38.960 | of unconscious mind, conscious mind,

01:16:41.080 | the structure and function of the self,

01:16:42.940 | because that's how it's done.

01:16:45.540 | That's how the after snapshot looks different

01:16:47.860 | than the before from the mental health perspective as well.

01:16:52.240 | - That's very helpful.

01:16:53.240 | And I think it's going to be very helpful

01:16:55.240 | to a lot of people in thinking about what to think about,

01:16:59.400 | what sorts of questions to address,

01:17:01.720 | maybe even whether or not to get therapy.

01:17:04.600 | And hopefully we'll remap their notions of therapy.

01:17:07.800 | I mean, of course, this critically relies

01:17:09.360 | on the therapist being good to excellent.

01:17:12.880 | And I think in the previous sit-down we had

01:17:16.880 | around the, in the episode on trauma specifically,

01:17:20.320 | you mapped out a number of the features of quality therapy.

01:17:23.600 | So we can refer people to that if they're thinking about,

01:17:26.520 | it's timestamped in that episode,

01:17:28.040 | as to what to look for in a therapist,

01:17:30.000 | how to assess whether or not it's going well or not,

01:17:32.520 | whether or not to move on or stay put

01:17:34.520 | with that therapist and so on.

01:17:36.020 | You've been telling us a lot about the structure

01:17:39.280 | of the self, unconscious mind, conscious mind,

01:17:42.760 | defense mechanisms, character structure, self.

01:17:46.040 | We haven't talked so much about the function of self.

01:17:49.540 | I realize it's been woven in here or there.

01:17:51.480 | - Yes.

01:17:52.320 | - Could you tell us about the function of self?

01:17:55.840 | Are the functions of self verb actions?

01:17:58.560 | I mean, are these things that we are all doing right now

01:18:01.660 | that reflect our character structure?

01:18:04.540 | Are these things that we can change more readily

01:18:08.000 | than trying to snap our fingers and say,

01:18:10.140 | okay, I'm now going to be a more altruistic person

01:18:12.880 | because I can decide that right now,

01:18:14.380 | but then ultimately I have to engage

01:18:16.280 | in some altruistic behaviors to lend support to that.

01:18:21.020 | Again, same with the parallel

01:18:23.000 | that I can't just snap my fingers

01:18:24.120 | and say lower blood pressure.

01:18:25.640 | I have to do some meditative practices,

01:18:27.300 | some cardiovascular training and things of that sort.

01:18:30.120 | What is this function of self thing?

01:18:33.680 | What goes into the functions of self?

01:18:36.280 | - Okay, so just stepping back to the framing, right?

01:18:40.100 | So there are these two pillars upon which we build our lives.

01:18:45.960 | The structure of self and the function of self.

01:18:49.060 | And we've been talking, as you said,

01:18:50.420 | more about the structure, which is more the nouns of it.

01:18:53.440 | Like there is an unconscious.

01:18:55.300 | What is in that unconscious?

01:18:57.080 | For example, there are defense mechanisms.

01:18:59.460 | How are we using them?

01:19:02.060 | Like it's not all nouns, but it's more,

01:19:03.680 | what are those things?

01:19:05.280 | And then we start talking about

01:19:06.520 | how we put them into practice.

01:19:08.200 | The function of self is much more the verbs, right?

01:19:10.820 | So if the structure is more nouns,

01:19:12.320 | the function is more the verbs, right?

01:19:14.880 | The actual engagement, right?

01:19:16.640 | So that would start with an awareness of I.

01:19:20.200 | So a function of self has to start with an awareness

01:19:22.920 | that like there's a person, there is a me

01:19:25.920 | that is separate from others, right?

01:19:28.840 | And I have responsibility for this I, right?

01:19:32.120 | Like it is me, no one else is guiding it.

01:19:34.300 | Like it's me, I know there's a me, okay?

01:19:37.560 | Then on top of that,

01:19:38.960 | we start seeing defense mechanisms in action, right?

01:19:41.600 | 'Cause we're thinking about function, right?

01:19:43.840 | We're aware that there's an I.

01:19:45.680 | But the first thing that starts happening to that I

01:19:47.920 | are unconscious things, right?

01:19:49.920 | So the defense mechanisms,

01:19:51.320 | because we're not choosing them, right?

01:19:54.320 | They start doing things automatically.

01:19:56.360 | So if, for example, I have a defense of avoidance, right?

01:20:01.360 | Then I'm not thinking, you know,

01:20:03.400 | if it's I'd like to meet a new person,

01:20:05.640 | but I automatically am shying away, right?

01:20:09.020 | Then that's not, it's not good, right?

01:20:10.920 | It's a factor, right?

01:20:12.380 | But it's a factor I'm not aware of

01:20:14.600 | until I start this process of introspecting, right?

01:20:17.480 | So the defense mechanisms are then

01:20:19.680 | kind of determining the lay of the land, right?

01:20:23.640 | - So in that example, I'm sorry to interrupt,

01:20:25.540 | but it's hard to interrupt. - Yeah, please, yeah.

01:20:26.880 | - But in that example,

01:20:28.760 | the turning away you describe as reflexive.

01:20:31.680 | So you're talking about someone,

01:20:33.600 | perhaps who would like to have a romantic partner

01:20:35.440 | or meet somebody, have a companion,

01:20:38.160 | and they go to the grocery store

01:20:40.000 | and somebody says something

01:20:41.520 | as they're reaching for the milk.

01:20:42.700 | And, you know, there's that moment of opportunity

01:20:44.500 | where they could say something back,

01:20:45.660 | but instead they just kind of go, "Oh yeah, thanks."

01:20:47.460 | And then they kind of move away.

01:20:49.080 | And then the narrative in their head might be,

01:20:51.180 | "Oh gosh, that was silly."

01:20:54.280 | But they don't really think about the alternate possibility.

01:20:57.980 | - Or there might be no narrative.

01:20:59.600 | - But they just head off to the produce section.

01:21:02.680 | - Yeah, and then they go home and someone says,

01:21:04.480 | "Oh, did anything happen at the grocery store?"

01:21:05.900 | "Did you meet anyone at the grocery store?"

01:21:06.940 | "No."

01:21:08.140 | Right, because- - It's all unconscious.

01:21:09.820 | - Right. - Okay.

01:21:10.660 | - Right, now again, can we explore that and change that?

01:21:13.720 | Yes, right, but it's important to understand

01:21:16.260 | that whatever that nest of defense mechanisms is,

01:21:19.320 | like, that's what I've got right now, right?

01:21:21.640 | And I'm living through that right now, right?

01:21:24.580 | It's performing a function, right?

01:21:26.600 | Just because it's an unconscious function

01:21:28.260 | doesn't mean it's not a very, very important function.

01:21:32.100 | - I can see in that example

01:21:33.500 | how it protects the conscious mind from risk,

01:21:35.780 | because there's always the possibility of rejection.

01:21:38.020 | There's a possibility of over-interpretation

01:21:39.960 | of what the other person is talking to them for, right?

01:21:43.160 | Is the person interested in them

01:21:44.400 | or whether or not this is just friendly banter

01:21:47.120 | of the sort that anyone would have next to anybody,

01:21:50.620 | that it's not special to them.

01:21:52.360 | So I can see how the unconscious turning away

01:21:56.240 | is protective against all the negative possibilities,

01:21:59.720 | and in some sense is pretty rational,

01:22:01.980 | because the probability that that one interaction

01:22:05.060 | could ratchet up to a life of companionship

01:22:07.960 | and romance with somebody is exceedingly small, really.

01:22:12.960 | - Although you could imagine a set of data points

01:22:14.980 | where you string together, you know, like five-second clips,

01:22:19.040 | you know, like the time something like that has happened,

01:22:21.540 | right, so maybe this is a person that, you know,

01:22:24.780 | intermittently, like, people are interested in them,

01:22:27.340 | or saying, "Hey," or saying, "Hello," or showing interest.

01:22:29.660 | You could string all those together,

01:22:31.140 | and the person hasn't noticed one of them, right,

01:22:33.380 | and then could have a very negative scene.

01:22:34.940 | Nobody, no one wants me, no one's interested in me,

01:22:37.980 | or whatever the person is saying,

01:22:40.160 | but like, it's different if you see from the outside.

01:22:43.140 | Like, it's objectively different,

01:22:45.300 | but that person doesn't know,

01:22:47.340 | and that's why after an awareness, there is an I.

01:22:51.640 | The next thing that I think of in the function of self

01:22:55.640 | is the defense mechanisms in action.

01:22:59.160 | - What are some other examples

01:23:00.260 | of defense mechanisms in action?

01:23:01.940 | Because I think there's immense interest in this.

01:23:05.780 | You know, the idea that we have unconscious processes in us

01:23:10.360 | that are reaching up out of the iceberg

01:23:12.940 | and preventing us from seeing our life and ourselves

01:23:16.200 | the way that it actually is occurring,

01:23:19.060 | and perhaps preventing us from achieving these ideals

01:23:22.460 | of agency and gratitude, empowerment and humility.

01:23:25.960 | You know, I mean, these seem like very powerful

01:23:28.860 | and important forces,

01:23:30.420 | and I and I know many other people out there

01:23:32.860 | want to understand whether or not what we're doing

01:23:35.860 | and what we're feeling and experiencing,

01:23:37.660 | whether or not that is serving us well or not.

01:23:40.420 | - So I think the place to start is to say

01:23:43.100 | that there's something very, very complicated going on.

01:23:47.020 | The part of the iceberg underneath the surface, right,

01:23:49.340 | that biological supercomputer that's running

01:23:52.140 | at a million thoughts and a million actions

01:23:54.920 | and a million internal processes a second, right,

01:23:57.700 | is constantly shifting our defensive structure.

01:24:01.300 | So it's complicated, and you can almost imagine

01:24:04.100 | that like one leaves and another comes in

01:24:05.820 | and they're shifting and there's a little bit of one

01:24:07.560 | and some of another.

01:24:08.860 | So it's a very complicated process,

01:24:11.180 | but we can look at it and understand.

01:24:13.900 | So an example of a defense mechanism that's very common

01:24:17.420 | and can cause us a lot of problems is projection, right?

01:24:21.300 | So I'll give two examples of projection.

01:24:23.780 | So one is the experience of sitting in a car, right,

01:24:28.180 | and being stuck in traffic, being a little bit late,

01:24:31.660 | and feeling beleaguered, right?

01:24:33.680 | I mean, this has happened to me more times than I can count,

01:24:37.100 | but at some point I started through my own therapy

01:24:39.500 | looking at like what's going on in me, right,

01:24:41.780 | when I'm doing this, right?

01:24:43.500 | So the thing about feeling beleaguered, right,

01:24:45.700 | as if what does that mean?

01:24:47.940 | Like there's something called traffic that exists

01:24:50.980 | and has a mind and wants to thwart me, right?

01:24:54.340 | Is it individual cars?

01:24:56.140 | Is it the people in the cars, right?

01:24:58.500 | What's going on is I'm having a perception of hostility.

01:25:01.300 | I feel beleaguered, right?

01:25:02.920 | But it's anger and frustration inside of me, right?

01:25:06.300 | I'm the one feeling angry and frustrated.

01:25:08.500 | There's no one and nothing but me

01:25:11.580 | that's feeling anything about this, right?

01:25:14.180 | But I have this sense of the world around me being hostile

01:25:17.900 | because I'm projecting my anger outward, right?

01:25:21.940 | Now, I think this isn't good

01:25:23.760 | because instead of sitting in traffic and saying,

01:25:26.860 | look, maybe it totally makes sense that I'm stuck in traffic

01:25:30.520 | and that I'm not happy.

01:25:32.100 | Like maybe I should leave a little bit earlier

01:25:34.120 | and I wouldn't be late, or if I'm going to work,

01:25:36.920 | should I live closer to work?

01:25:38.140 | I could make a whole set of decisions

01:25:40.240 | that I'm not making, right?

01:25:41.940 | Or maybe I know, I thought it was gonna be a 15-minute drive

01:25:45.540 | and like there was an accident, right?

01:25:47.020 | And okay, there are things that I can't control.

01:25:48.740 | I'm not supposed to control everything, right?

01:25:50.460 | If you think about what can I control, being aware of that,

01:25:53.660 | and what can I not control, right?

01:25:55.940 | Then it can make the situation much better

01:25:57.900 | so this doesn't happen with this frequency.

01:26:00.260 | And it also takes away the anger and the frustration, right?

01:26:04.220 | So I think that's a good example because it happens a lot.

01:26:07.820 | It's very, very common.

01:26:09.140 | But projection then also happens with people, right?

01:26:12.340 | So let's say you and I work together

01:26:14.180 | and we're gonna do something collaborative together

01:26:17.180 | and I'm just not having a good day

01:26:19.800 | and something negative happened before I came to work

01:26:22.340 | and I'm not at my best

01:26:24.020 | and I'm a little bit irritable and frustrated, right?

01:26:27.420 | This happens all the time

01:26:28.460 | where then the person sits down with someone

01:26:30.660 | and then I'm being irritable and frustrated

01:26:33.300 | which doesn't feel good to you, right?

01:26:35.340 | And you may become irritable and frustrated, right?

01:26:37.980 | And then I say, oh look, he's irritable and frustrated, right?

01:26:40.460 | But even if you don't, the fact that I feel that way, right?

01:26:44.940 | That projection often would lead me

01:26:47.860 | to think that it's you who's that way.

01:26:49.740 | Here I come wanting to do this job

01:26:51.500 | and you're not at your best.

01:26:52.540 | It's me who's not at my best, right?

01:26:54.500 | But we do this all the time

01:26:57.020 | and then we make incorrect or inaccurate attributions, right?

01:27:01.020 | So projection is an example of a defense mechanism

01:27:05.420 | that can cause us a lot of trouble, right?

01:27:10.180 | A lot of trouble.

01:27:11.300 | Another can be displacement

01:27:13.300 | where if I'm feeling anger or frustration,

01:27:17.220 | say in a certain realm,

01:27:19.460 | then the idea of feeling it at work

01:27:21.780 | and then kicking the dog, right?

01:27:23.420 | Like it's not good that we do that.

01:27:25.100 | We're not acknowledging what's going on inside of us at work,

01:27:27.460 | what we could change, what we could make better

01:27:29.300 | and the dog doesn't want to be kicked, right?

01:27:31.460 | And the dog is often also the family, right?

01:27:34.780 | And it could be physical or it could be through words, right?

01:27:37.420 | But the idea that there's something negative being generated

01:27:40.740 | in us, but inside we're perceiving

01:27:45.340 | that it's coming from somewhere else, right?

01:27:47.460 | I mean, the thought would be it's all things

01:27:49.300 | to lead us astray, right?

01:27:50.780 | When there are negative defenses, right?

01:27:52.660 | There can be positive defenses too, such as altruism, right?

01:27:56.580 | That someone could do something negative to me, right?

01:28:00.180 | And instead of me passing that along,

01:28:02.940 | I could decide, no, I'm gonna do something nice

01:28:05.900 | for the next person I have an opportunity

01:28:07.460 | to do something nice for, right?

01:28:09.180 | Like that's a defense.

01:28:10.660 | So sometimes we could think of it and decide that way,

01:28:12.860 | but there are people who react that way.

01:28:14.500 | Like there's something negative that happens

01:28:16.260 | and they respond with something that's different from that.

01:28:19.380 | So defense mechanisms can work against us,

01:28:21.820 | they can work for us, they're complicated,

01:28:23.940 | they're combinations of them,

01:28:25.420 | but we can look inside and say, for example,

01:28:27.580 | if I'm using projection all the time, right?

01:28:30.380 | And I think everyone around me

01:28:31.900 | is kind of always angry and frustrated, right?

01:28:34.260 | And there's always bad traffic, right?

01:28:35.780 | But then as we start to talk about it more,

01:28:38.820 | it becomes apparent that there's a lot I'm angry about,

01:28:42.020 | right, but I'm not aware of it.

01:28:43.860 | Then reflection or therapy, right,

01:28:46.900 | or a good friend we're talking to can help us see, right,

01:28:50.460 | that, hey, this is going on inside of me, right?

01:28:54.080 | And that can really help us.

01:28:55.940 | Same with use of humor.

01:28:57.020 | Like if I'm using humor

01:28:58.220 | and I'm kind of decompressing uncomfortable situations

01:29:01.920 | or things that make me feel uncomfortable,

01:29:03.380 | maybe that greases the wheels of social progress,

01:29:06.060 | but maybe over time,

01:29:08.340 | I come to use humor in a way that's self-denigrating, right?

01:29:11.600 | Well, that's not so good anymore,

01:29:14.260 | but I may not be aware of the shift

01:29:17.100 | just 'cause I can maybe be funny in certain situations

01:29:19.700 | that I'm now not using that for myself anymore,

01:29:22.340 | I'm using it against myself.

01:29:23.780 | And by talking to people, by reflection,

01:29:26.380 | like we can be aware of the defensive structure

01:29:29.380 | that's going on inside of us,

01:29:31.200 | and then there's not an automaticity to it.

01:29:33.760 | If you point out that I'm using projection a lot,

01:29:36.700 | I can start to be aware of that.

01:29:38.960 | Just like if someone,

01:29:40.780 | let's say you were with me at the grocery store, right,

01:29:43.460 | and someone says something nice and I shy away

01:29:45.660 | and you say, hey, you know,

01:29:47.420 | you weren't even aware someone said hello to you.

01:29:49.860 | And then I say, I want to be more aware of that.

01:29:52.360 | Like I don't want that thing to happen unconsciously.

01:29:55.060 | So maybe now I think, okay,

01:29:56.440 | anytime someone I don't know says something to me,

01:29:58.900 | I'm going to just stop and think like, what's going on here?

01:30:01.280 | Right?

01:30:02.120 | Is that person being friendly to me?

01:30:03.200 | Is it, are they just, you know,

01:30:04.760 | it's just a person exchanging money at the cash register,

01:30:06.800 | like what's going on?

01:30:07.980 | So we take what's unconscious and we make it conscious

01:30:11.560 | so that we can change it.

01:30:12.900 | - Sounds to me like exploring and thinking

01:30:15.960 | about our reflexes is what's really key here.

01:30:19.440 | The example of displacement that you gave,

01:30:23.180 | you know, kicking the dog.

01:30:24.320 | I couldn't help but smile,

01:30:26.520 | not because I think it's a good thing to do.

01:30:28.340 | I never once kicked my dog, by the way, folks.

01:30:30.440 | Terrible thing to do.

01:30:31.520 | Also, he was the size of a boulder.

01:30:33.040 | It would have injured me more than it would have injured him,

01:30:34.800 | but I never would do such a thing.

01:30:36.440 | However, in academia, there's this phenomenon.

01:30:40.920 | It's very common that I refer to as trickle-down anxiety

01:30:44.680 | where the person running the laboratory

01:30:46.820 | is inevitably under a tremendous amount of stress,

01:30:49.160 | grants and papers, et cetera.

01:30:51.080 | And graduate students and postdocs

01:30:52.980 | will immediately be familiar with what I'm describing.

01:30:55.260 | But for those of you that haven't gone

01:30:57.720 | to graduate school, this will be a little bit foreign,

01:31:00.540 | but you'll think of other examples

01:31:01.780 | where when the lab head is under stress,

01:31:04.740 | it's incredibly common for lab heads

01:31:08.480 | to walk through the laboratory

01:31:09.820 | and start asking about experiments

01:31:11.500 | and telling people to do additional experiments

01:31:13.200 | and basically just assigning busy work to people

01:31:15.560 | or pressuring what simply cannot be moved along any faster.

01:31:20.340 | And when I was a graduate student,

01:31:21.540 | I worked for somebody who was the exact opposite

01:31:24.000 | of this phenotype.

01:31:25.200 | When I was a postdoc, frankly,

01:31:26.300 | I worked with someone who was a little bit of that phenotype,

01:31:28.860 | although I still liked working for him very much.

01:31:31.140 | But I used to have a response that at least for me

01:31:33.620 | was adaptive, which was, I would always say,

01:31:35.580 | I'm working as fast as I carefully can

01:31:37.740 | because no scientist ever wants somebody to cut corners,

01:31:40.840 | no good scientist anyway.

01:31:42.540 | But trickle-down anxiety is common in every occupation,

01:31:45.820 | I think.

01:31:46.660 | We see this sort of displacement all the time

01:31:49.220 | where someone's anxious and so they go start creating

01:31:51.380 | anxiety for other people.

01:31:52.920 | I mean, you can just, as you're describing,

01:31:55.220 | I was just seeing how pathologic that is

01:31:56.900 | for everybody involved.

01:31:58.060 | - So the academic, the trickle-down anxiety

01:32:01.100 | that you were just talking about is it's a related,

01:32:03.900 | but it's a different defense mechanism.

01:32:06.360 | It's projective identification, right?

01:32:09.000 | Which is causing others to feel the way that you feel

01:32:13.580 | in order to get your needs met, right?

01:32:15.700 | - Is this a form of projection?

01:32:17.260 | And actually, perhaps you could clarify the definition

01:32:20.400 | of projection versus displacement

01:32:22.940 | versus projective identification.

01:32:24.860 | - Yeah, so projection is when you don't own it.

01:32:26.980 | So it's not me who's mad, it's you, right?

01:32:30.100 | So I don't own that I'm mad at all, right?

01:32:32.340 | I just think that it's you

01:32:33.300 | even though I'm the one who's mad, right?

01:32:35.540 | Displacement is what comes out of us

01:32:38.820 | or what our attribution can shift, right?

01:32:41.620 | It's not this person who's making me angry,

01:32:44.740 | it's that person 'cause that's a safer person, right?

01:32:47.460 | To be angry at, right?

01:32:49.460 | Or if I'm then going to take out my anger, right?

01:32:52.760 | Instead of metaphorically kicking the person

01:32:55.040 | who might respond to me in a way I don't want,

01:32:58.240 | maybe I kick the dog that's helpless to respond back, right?

01:33:01.280 | So that's displacement.

01:33:02.540 | Projective identification is there's an expression

01:33:06.600 | of an emotional state inside of a person

01:33:08.720 | that then becomes contagious to other people

01:33:11.100 | even though the person isn't trying to do that.

01:33:13.280 | The person says, "I'm gonna make you anxious."

01:33:14.880 | That's not a defense mechanism anymore, right?

01:33:17.080 | So here's an example I think.

01:33:18.440 | I think this is the best example of projective identification.

01:33:20.920 | So for a little bit of time at work,

01:33:23.280 | I would occasionally lose my keys, right?

01:33:25.960 | So then I'm trying to go and I can't find my keys, right?

01:33:29.400 | So I say, "Oh, I don't know where my keys are."

01:33:30.960 | So I start expressing something, right?

01:33:32.480 | And I'm anxious and I'm tense, right?

01:33:34.320 | Now people around me hear that, right?

01:33:36.720 | And what do they start feeling?

01:33:38.320 | They start feeling anxious and tense the way that I do,

01:33:41.120 | right?

01:33:41.960 | And now they're like, "Well, now they wanna find my keys."

01:33:44.480 | They wanna help me so that I stop spreading anxiety

01:33:47.700 | and tension into the whole environment around me, right?

01:33:51.220 | So then they helped me find my keys.

01:33:53.220 | I say, "Thank you."

01:33:54.060 | My own emotional state comes down and upon reflection,

01:33:57.260 | I think, "Look, I don't wanna do that," right?

01:33:59.900 | I got my, I'm getting my needs met

01:34:02.740 | by making other people feel in a way

01:34:05.380 | that's like not a good or comfortable way to feel.

01:34:07.580 | So here's a way around that,

01:34:08.680 | like put my keys in the same place every day, right?

01:34:12.220 | So then I can avoid that because it doesn't feel good to me.

01:34:15.160 | Like then if I get out to my car, like I find, you know,

01:34:17.340 | I'm a little bit, I'm breathing a little heavy.

01:34:18.740 | Like I don't, it doesn't feel good

01:34:19.660 | 'cause I was just agitated, right?

01:34:21.260 | And I did that to other people too, right?

01:34:23.620 | So it's an example of how projective identification works.

01:34:27.340 | And it's kind of a simple example, but it shows,

01:34:29.820 | it's happening all the time.

01:34:31.100 | You know, all these things are happening all the time,

01:34:33.340 | but we can become aware of it.

01:34:34.780 | Then I don't lose my keys.

01:34:35.960 | I don't have to feel bad about it.

01:34:36.800 | I don't have to activate myself for no reason.

01:34:39.180 | And I don't have to activate other people for no reason.

01:34:41.520 | So sort of thinking and reflecting,

01:34:43.080 | like change that thing for the better.

01:34:45.460 | And it can do it with much bigger things too.

01:34:47.880 | - Thank you for those clarifications.

01:34:50.260 | I'd like to touch on humor for a moment.

01:34:52.140 | Obviously humor is a wonderful thing

01:34:54.140 | or can be a wonderful thing.

01:34:55.700 | I've also seen a lot of examples of where very smart

01:35:00.940 | and or accomplished people,

01:35:02.380 | because those are not always the same thing,

01:35:06.740 | use sarcasm as a form of humor.

01:35:11.300 | And it can be very funny,

01:35:12.860 | but I have to imagine based on everything

01:35:16.040 | I'm hearing from you today,

01:35:16.960 | that there's a form of sarcasm,

01:35:19.260 | which is an unhealthy defense.

01:35:20.860 | I'm thinking of the person that no matter

01:35:23.300 | what someone else says that's positive

01:35:26.240 | or no matter what someone does

01:35:28.460 | that could be viewed as positive,

01:35:31.040 | they find some way to diminish it

01:35:32.840 | by kind of like through sarcastic humor.

01:35:35.700 | I see this a lot.

01:35:37.900 | And I think closely nested with sarcasm is cynicism.

01:35:42.740 | In fact, I have a family member,

01:35:45.780 | I won't name who they are to protect the not so innocent,

01:35:48.900 | who used to be very cynical.

01:35:50.820 | And I want to ask, what is the thing about cynicism?

01:35:54.500 | And they said, well,

01:35:55.580 | I have had a particular genre of schooling growing up,

01:36:00.380 | a formal schooling where if anyone behaved too happy,

01:36:05.780 | expressed too much happiness rather, too much delight,

01:36:09.220 | they were viewed as stupid.

01:36:11.380 | Like as if to be happy is to be unaware

01:36:14.180 | of the sophistication and the importance

01:36:17.580 | of things in life, right?

01:36:19.940 | And I hope that this is unrelatable

01:36:22.420 | to most people listening,

01:36:23.500 | but I do think that sarcasm is a double-edged blade

01:36:28.100 | in this sense.

01:36:28.940 | And that cynicism is perhaps a double-edged blade as well,

01:36:34.100 | but that it might even be worse than sarcasm

01:36:36.340 | because it's a way of really reflecting back what's,

01:36:40.620 | by definition, what's not good about life,

01:36:43.420 | what's not good about what's happening.

01:36:45.500 | And it does seem protective, right?

01:36:47.700 | It protects one from disappointment.

01:36:49.700 | If you're already disappointed,

01:36:50.940 | how could you be further disappointed?

01:36:52.840 | It's also seems to me like a bit of a power move.

01:36:55.500 | It's like, you're going to be happy.

01:36:56.460 | Well, I'm going to take that away from everybody.

01:36:58.840 | Like as something that's like for myself.

01:37:02.780 | Does any of this actually hold

01:37:04.420 | in the inside of the clinical literature?

01:37:07.480 | Because again, I enjoy a good sarcastic joke.

01:37:10.020 | In fact, there's a collaboration around a sarcastic joke.

01:37:12.920 | It can be truly funny to everybody,

01:37:15.460 | but sarcasm and cynicism,

01:37:18.340 | I feel like are often used to cut down

01:37:21.000 | what would otherwise be benevolence or bonding experiences.

01:37:26.000 | - Absolutely.

01:37:27.580 | Look, I grew up in central New Jersey.

01:37:29.340 | Humor is a weapon, right?

01:37:31.580 | Or it certainly can be, right?

01:37:33.220 | And people can be very aggressive through humor.

01:37:36.320 | So acting out, which is just letting our aggression flow,

01:37:40.060 | right, that's a defense, right?

01:37:41.780 | So just being aggressive and pushing someone back, right?

01:37:45.780 | However that means, like if I don't feel good about myself,

01:37:48.860 | I want you to feel not so good about yourself, right?

01:37:51.120 | Is where we start getting into envy, right?

01:37:53.500 | And humor can be used that way.

01:37:55.180 | So that sort of biting sarcastic humor

01:37:59.060 | is a form of acting out.

01:38:01.220 | It's a form of aggression, right?

01:38:02.820 | It's not humor as a healthy defense, right?

01:38:05.320 | We can call it the same thing,

01:38:06.380 | but we could also call it different things.

01:38:08.260 | It's just a nuance of our language, right?

01:38:09.900 | If humor can be a defense, like I trip and fall,

01:38:13.220 | I make a little joke,

01:38:14.160 | people are laughing with me instead of at me, right?

01:38:17.340 | Hey, humor is a good defense.

01:38:18.400 | I made myself feel better.

01:38:19.380 | It made things flow more easily.

01:38:21.780 | But if I'm using sarcastic humor to assail someone, right,

01:38:26.540 | then it's not that thing anymore, right?

01:38:29.620 | And now it's a manifestation of aggression, right?

01:38:32.500 | And the idea that cynicism is more,

01:38:36.580 | then we're just talking about a worldview, right?

01:38:38.300 | Like sarcasm is something that can be done now.

01:38:40.540 | Like we can make a sarcastic joke, funny or not,

01:38:42.740 | then it's over, right?

01:38:43.940 | But cynicism is a way of coming at the world

01:38:47.540 | that is a different kind of defense, right?

01:38:49.500 | The idea that, hey, it's like the fox and the sour grapes.

01:38:52.460 | Like I don't think there's anything good to be had anyway,

01:38:55.700 | right?

01:38:56.540 | So you can't take anything away from me.

01:38:57.660 | You can't make me feel worse, right?

01:38:59.460 | I already feel very, very bad about the world

01:39:02.500 | and about everybody in it.

01:39:03.660 | And I'm protecting myself that way.

01:39:05.900 | Like that's then an unhealthy defense.

01:39:08.060 | 'Cause what does that lead to?

01:39:09.060 | It leads to isolation.

01:39:10.100 | It leads to mistrust.

01:39:11.540 | You know, we know that people are happy

01:39:13.860 | if they live through altruism and gratitude

01:39:15.940 | and they're well-connected with others.

01:39:17.820 | So the cynical point of view, which again, to some degree,

01:39:22.020 | being in the world builds some cynicism in us, right?

01:39:24.300 | Like that's okay.

01:39:25.280 | That's part of awareness in some sense.

01:39:28.500 | But I think what you're talking about

01:39:29.860 | is a very pervasive cynicism

01:39:32.360 | that then is an unhealthy defense

01:39:34.660 | that is very harmful to others.

01:39:36.620 | The idea that I feel lousy about everything.

01:39:39.460 | And if you don't, I'm gonna try and bring you down, right?

01:39:42.140 | Like too much happiness.

01:39:43.200 | We'll label that as something, right?

01:39:44.700 | We could label it as stupid, right?

01:39:46.200 | So now it's like, it's not okay to be happier

01:39:48.420 | than some sort of cynical baseline, right?

01:39:51.060 | And again, there's nothing about altruism and gratitude.

01:39:53.740 | Like that's not happy, right?

01:39:54.980 | I mean, who's happy in that situation?

01:39:57.500 | The people who are overly cynical are not happy

01:39:59.760 | and the people around them are not happy.

01:40:01.600 | Nobody's happy.

01:40:02.480 | - Thanks for the clarification on New Jersey.

01:40:06.340 | A good portion of my biological family is from New Jersey.

01:40:09.620 | - Come out well-armed.

01:40:10.460 | - I adore them, but it's true.

01:40:12.460 | There was once a moment at a family gathering

01:40:15.100 | where somebody said, "Oh, let's, let's hug or something."

01:40:19.740 | And the reaction was like, "Oh, we're gonna hug now."

01:40:22.740 | You know, it was entirely sarcastic and cynical

01:40:27.740 | and the hug that resulted from that

01:40:30.180 | was this like little like distant hats kind of thing.

01:40:32.580 | It was, now I'm laughing about it and it's funny

01:40:35.060 | and they're very loving people, but you're right.

01:40:36.980 | It's a different style of humor and discourse.

01:40:41.380 | So you've been talking about these two pillars

01:40:43.020 | of the self and who we are

01:40:44.940 | and how things play out in the world for us

01:40:47.820 | as the structure of self and the function of self.

01:40:50.500 | And in terms of the function of self,

01:40:52.900 | you described self-awareness, this notion

01:40:56.040 | or this realization that there is an I, there's a me.

01:40:59.500 | And then we've been talking about defense mechanisms

01:41:01.400 | in action and how these play out in the real world,

01:41:04.220 | both positive and negative.

01:41:05.620 | It seems to me that a lot of what is happening here

01:41:09.340 | in terms of understanding the function of self

01:41:11.900 | has to do with like what we pay attention to

01:41:15.820 | and like where we place our efforts

01:41:18.860 | or choose to not place our attention

01:41:21.420 | and not place our efforts.

01:41:22.820 | Do I have that right?

01:41:23.740 | - Right.

01:41:24.580 | Yeah, salience is a huge concept in,

01:41:27.800 | I think in human existence, right?

01:41:29.820 | I mean, there are thousands upon thousands of things

01:41:32.540 | that you or I could be paying attention to right now, right?

01:41:35.820 | But we're not paying attention to anything

01:41:37.980 | except what we're doing right here.

01:41:39.340 | So we are gating out so many other thoughts, ideas,

01:41:44.220 | narratives inside.

01:41:45.700 | Now, if something were to shift very quickly,

01:41:47.500 | if we heard a loud noise, right?

01:41:49.060 | Our attention would shift, right?

01:41:51.020 | So our attention is it's focused.

01:41:53.320 | We're salient to one another

01:41:55.000 | because this is what we've chosen

01:41:56.980 | and we're focusing our minds.

01:41:58.620 | And we are also somewhere inside of us

01:42:01.220 | aware that we could shift away from it

01:42:03.380 | if something more important like something dangerous

01:42:05.540 | like were to happen, right?

01:42:06.640 | So it lets us be here and be salient to one another

01:42:09.340 | and have this conversation, right?

01:42:11.460 | But in the course of life, what's salient to us,

01:42:14.940 | it's so complicated and determined by so many factors

01:42:18.380 | that it's absolutely worth a lot of attention to.

01:42:21.780 | So one example is so many people

01:42:24.300 | have a negative internal dialogue

01:42:26.580 | that's running in them over and over again,

01:42:28.920 | or they're running through images, events.

01:42:31.940 | They may be traumatic events

01:42:33.620 | or things that they're not happy with,

01:42:35.380 | images of themselves in negative ways

01:42:37.740 | that these internal narratives or internal images

01:42:42.660 | can become so strong that there's no room for anything else.

01:42:46.700 | So an example would be a person

01:42:49.780 | who really, really loved music, right?

01:42:53.220 | And could have, just in addition to enjoying music,

01:42:56.620 | like had like good thoughts while listening to music.

01:42:59.680 | Like, you know what?

01:43:00.520 | I could go do this, right?

01:43:02.420 | And had a history of like that really working out well,

01:43:05.940 | like following his interests

01:43:07.500 | and like really creating sort of goodness in his life, right?

01:43:10.700 | Who now was going for long drives,

01:43:12.960 | like longer than would be needed to go somewhere,

01:43:15.860 | get something like, why the extra time in the car?

01:43:18.940 | And I had had a presumption,

01:43:20.880 | okay, the person's listening to music and thinking,

01:43:23.420 | but it doesn't quite add up.

01:43:25.060 | And then I learned that the person

01:43:26.580 | is not listening to music, right?

01:43:28.900 | That they're using that time

01:43:30.560 | so that the internal narrative, right?

01:43:33.280 | Which was a very, very negative, repeated internal negative.

01:43:36.860 | You're not gonna get anywhere,

01:43:37.820 | you're not gonna make anything of yourself, right?

01:43:40.100 | It could be there in his mind, right?

01:43:42.900 | So it was a form of self-punishment, right?

01:43:45.220 | It was a form of taking the anger and frustration inside

01:43:48.260 | and enacting it towards himself.

01:43:50.820 | And that was so salient

01:43:53.380 | that this person could not see his way to any goodness.

01:43:57.060 | Like nothing could change.

01:43:59.140 | Nothing could get any better.

01:44:00.540 | Like felt very sure and very resolved about that.

01:44:04.140 | And the answer was, yeah, that's right, right?

01:44:06.860 | Nothing can get any better with this constant mantra

01:44:11.340 | running over and over again.

01:44:13.380 | But things can get better, right?

01:44:15.140 | If that becomes less salient over time

01:44:18.780 | and your own thoughts and reflections become more salient.

01:44:22.360 | So at the other end of that shift,

01:44:24.700 | you know, that narrative that was still there,

01:44:27.300 | but it was weakened, right?

01:44:28.380 | Because it takes time to really change things.

01:44:30.540 | So it was very much weakened.

01:44:32.120 | The person was listening to music again.

01:44:34.220 | Those thoughts had kind of come back to the surface

01:44:36.540 | and they were being sort of jumbled, you know,

01:44:38.500 | in ways that brought new and interesting thoughts

01:44:40.940 | coming from them.

01:44:42.060 | And the person was in an entirely different place

01:44:44.380 | and like completely changed their life, right?

01:44:47.540 | I mean, this is true, right?

01:44:49.780 | It's a dramatic example,

01:44:50.980 | but dramatic examples inform us, right?

01:44:53.100 | Where the salience shifted

01:44:55.200 | and then the life shifted after that.

01:44:58.120 | - What you're describing in terms of the specific example

01:45:01.700 | doesn't resonate with me in terms of my own experience.

01:45:03.960 | Although, as you pointed out, it's very striking.

01:45:06.160 | It's very dramatic.

01:45:07.360 | But it resonates with me from a different perspective.

01:45:11.160 | I'm not seeking a free clinical session here,

01:45:14.140 | but to give meat to the example

01:45:18.120 | I'm about to ask you for insight on,

01:45:20.700 | I've never allowed myself to stay

01:45:23.600 | in a bad professional situation for very long.

01:45:27.100 | You know, when things didn't feel right

01:45:28.740 | or when I sensed someone I was working with or for

01:45:31.860 | wasn't the right situation, I got out,

01:45:34.200 | despite if I were to really think about it,

01:45:36.460 | there could have been pretty severe long-term consequences.

01:45:40.200 | Fortunately, it all worked out.

01:45:41.580 | In fact, so much so that I would say,

01:45:43.440 | you know, I pay attention to whether or not

01:45:46.900 | people I work with and for

01:45:48.380 | are of the sort that I want to be working with.

01:45:50.740 | And if I sense a particular type of danger,

01:45:52.520 | I'll look at that.

01:45:53.820 | And I'm 100% so far, knock on wood,

01:45:58.260 | but 100% so far on recognizing later

01:46:01.540 | that it was a great decision to move on.

01:46:03.740 | And on the flip side of it, I've made, I believe,

01:46:06.740 | excellent decisions in terms of who to work with,

01:46:09.480 | in terms of my podcasting,

01:46:11.060 | in terms of my academic career, et cetera.

01:46:13.300 | But I've had to move away from people

01:46:15.140 | that just weren't right for me.

01:46:17.320 | I don't think they were truly bad actors,

01:46:18.860 | but thank goodness I moved away.

01:46:20.700 | And thank goodness I found these other

01:46:23.420 | wonderful people to work with.

01:46:24.920 | However, there are circumstances

01:46:28.940 | that have been repetitive in my life where I've,

01:46:32.980 | just to be honest, repeatedly made not good decisions

01:46:37.860 | about who to be involved with

01:46:40.540 | over fairly long periods of time.

01:46:42.820 | And there can even be an awareness,

01:46:44.540 | or I should say there has been an awareness,

01:46:46.060 | like this isn't a good situation.

01:46:48.040 | And yet I'm persisting in seeking out this

01:46:50.260 | in similar types of situations.

01:46:52.460 | So I consider myself at least partially rational human being

01:46:56.300 | with some degree of introspection.

01:46:58.120 | You know, when I look at this and I think,

01:47:01.600 | okay, this is a choice to focus on placing myself in,

01:47:06.520 | I have to assume placing myself into situations

01:47:08.740 | that are challenging for me,

01:47:11.140 | in a way that I know is preventing me

01:47:13.620 | from living in certain ways that I want

01:47:15.460 | and from being "happy" in certain ways that I want.

01:47:18.580 | When you hear a scenario like that,

01:47:20.180 | like I can do it over here,

01:47:22.340 | but I can't seem to do it over here.

01:47:24.620 | In fact, I see myself doing it the wrong way here, right?

01:47:28.100 | A little bit different than the example you gave a moment ago

01:47:30.240 | because the guy was driving to work, not listening to music,

01:47:32.820 | but wasn't putting two and two together

01:47:34.740 | about what was going on.

01:47:36.060 | But when somebody can see what's going on,

01:47:38.800 | I think this might even be called the repetition compulsion

01:47:41.640 | or sometimes, you know, what is that about?

01:47:45.180 | Are people trying to work out something specific

01:47:48.420 | or are they deliberately creating some friction

01:47:50.460 | to accomplish something else, right?

01:47:53.120 | I mean, I realize this could be infinitely complex.

01:47:55.520 | And again, I'm not trying to extract the clinical insight

01:48:00.520 | for my own sake.

01:48:01.760 | - I started the clock on that.

01:48:03.300 | - Thank you.

01:48:04.140 | But I think a lot of people do this.

01:48:08.220 | They do what they know they shouldn't be doing.

01:48:11.820 | They know they shouldn't be doing it.

01:48:15.640 | Duh, I just said that, two ways.

01:48:18.220 | And, but they do it, like it must serve them in some way.

01:48:21.940 | You know, you think about when you get a dog

01:48:25.300 | and you talk to a dog trainer, they say, you know,

01:48:27.780 | a dogs do what works, right?

01:48:30.160 | They get a reward for doing something

01:48:31.480 | and they're going to continue doing it.

01:48:33.300 | You apply that to the same sort of thing

01:48:35.220 | I'm describing for myself

01:48:36.420 | and that I've observed in other people.

01:48:38.100 | And you must say, it must work for them.

01:48:40.420 | You hear this in kind of pop psychology,

01:48:42.100 | like it must work for them.

01:48:43.420 | Like it must be solving something.

01:48:45.300 | Why the hell do I do this?

01:48:48.980 | Why do people do this?

01:48:50.620 | Is it real pathology or is it a roundabout way

01:48:53.380 | to get to something else that's actually pretty adaptive?

01:48:57.340 | - I mean, instead of defining it as pathology,

01:48:59.060 | I would not define it as pathology.

01:49:00.580 | I would define it as humanness.

01:49:02.700 | If humanness is not in and of itself pathological,

01:49:05.920 | then all you're doing there is describing something

01:49:09.060 | that is common widespread across human beings.

01:49:12.340 | Now, it doesn't mean we can't understand it

01:49:14.040 | and make it healthier, right?

01:49:15.540 | I work in a discipline that wants to put a number

01:49:17.980 | on everything, right?

01:49:18.980 | Label it as something and then do something about it

01:49:21.420 | that's more often than not ineffective, right?

01:49:24.220 | Because we're not looking at things in a top-down way

01:49:27.180 | of what is human experience?

01:49:29.100 | What are the natural aspects of human experience

01:49:32.340 | that are less than ideal, right?

01:49:34.240 | That we can then understand and make better.

01:49:36.900 | If we come at it that way, then we see ah,

01:49:39.820 | this is a great example because here's where structure

01:49:42.180 | meets function, right?

01:49:43.540 | So on the structure side, we say, okay,

01:49:45.140 | there's defense mechanisms and we imagine the branches,

01:49:48.080 | right, that are coming up from the unconscious mind, right?

01:49:51.240 | And here it meets function, right?

01:49:53.040 | Defense mechanisms in action on the function side,

01:49:56.300 | then determining salience.

01:49:58.400 | So what I would imagine in your example,

01:50:00.620 | my image is that your defensive structure

01:50:03.560 | when you're doing the thing that's effective, right,

01:50:06.420 | the professional decisions, right, looks elegant, right?

01:50:09.120 | Like there's harmony to where those branches are.

01:50:12.300 | The consciousness is sitting in between it.

01:50:14.180 | You can see the elegance to it, right?

01:50:17.160 | That I can just imagine shifting, right,

01:50:20.820 | when you're not doing the thing effectively, right?

01:50:25.580 | Because now you're using an entirely different

01:50:28.780 | defensive structure, which is gonna function differently

01:50:31.260 | and create different salience.

01:50:32.540 | And I imagine that it's convoluted and, you know,

01:50:35.640 | that it's sort of piecemeal,

01:50:36.900 | that it's not something elegant, right?

01:50:39.280 | So you say, okay, what does that actually mean?

01:50:41.240 | Let's translate it into what are the actual defenses.

01:50:43.860 | So let's think about what you're not doing

01:50:46.700 | when you're making good decisions

01:50:48.320 | in the professional realm, right?

01:50:49.800 | You are not using denial or avoidance

01:50:52.900 | or rationalization or projection

01:50:55.800 | or projective identification or acting out, right?

01:50:59.200 | There are all these things that you are not doing

01:51:01.820 | that are the sort of unhealthy defenses beckoning to us.

01:51:05.480 | Like, oh, wouldn't it be easier

01:51:06.460 | to kick the can down the road, right?

01:51:08.460 | You know, wouldn't it be easier to just say,

01:51:10.220 | no, no, everything's okay.

01:51:11.100 | Everything's gonna work out okay.

01:51:12.740 | Wouldn't it be easier instead of being angry at one person

01:51:16.820 | who is really intrinsic to the environment,

01:51:18.900 | if you, you know, it's actually somebody else, you know,

01:51:20.840 | are you displacing and projecting?

01:51:22.660 | That's how people,

01:51:24.080 | that's how we get ourselves into trouble, right?

01:51:26.180 | And if that's going on,

01:51:28.460 | then that set of defense mechanisms in action, right,

01:51:33.460 | creates something that obscures the ability

01:51:36.900 | to make good judgment, right?

01:51:38.200 | But with none of those things going on,

01:51:40.580 | then what are you doing?

01:51:41.820 | What, you're applying your intelligence,

01:51:43.340 | you're applying your discernment, right?

01:51:45.380 | You're applying your desire to make things better.

01:51:47.840 | You're able to look at it.

01:51:49.480 | You're able to bring diligence, perseverance, right?

01:51:52.160 | You're able to bring healthy aspects of self

01:51:55.220 | to the question and decide like,

01:51:57.200 | oh, I don't want this and it should be different, right?

01:52:00.020 | And there again, what's going on?

01:52:01.740 | There's a complexity under the surface,

01:52:03.800 | but now we're coming up towards simplicity, right?

01:52:06.900 | We're coming up towards the things that are healthier,

01:52:08.680 | that are simplistic.

01:52:09.820 | If we look then, okay, what's going on

01:52:11.980 | if you're making the same mistakes over and over again?

01:52:15.040 | Well, we could, you know,

01:52:16.380 | we would dive under the hood and really look

01:52:18.500 | and say, okay, what are you doing there?

01:52:20.280 | But it has to be an array of unhealthy defenses.

01:52:23.120 | There's no other thing it could be.

01:52:24.720 | So we would say, okay, are you using avoidance?

01:52:28.440 | Maybe a little, maybe a lot.

01:52:29.860 | What about denial?

01:52:31.000 | What about rationalization?

01:52:32.760 | What about projection?

01:52:33.840 | Like, you know, you go through the unhealthy defenses

01:52:36.640 | and you see what is it that you're bringing to bear

01:52:40.440 | that is leading you astray.

01:52:41.760 | And then of course the goal is to use the role modeling

01:52:46.460 | and you role model for yourself how to be healthy, right?

01:52:49.620 | So let's take that role modeling

01:52:51.100 | and apply it to the thing you're sort of carving out

01:52:54.080 | and treating differently.

01:52:56.100 | And that's the reason

01:52:57.100 | when people talk about repetition compulsions,

01:52:59.940 | you know, it's not a formal term

01:53:01.740 | because what we're really talking about is repetition, right?

01:53:06.260 | And we're interested in like, why do we repeat things?

01:53:08.920 | Now that's one reason, right?

01:53:12.200 | Because we bring an unhealthy set of defenses

01:53:14.900 | and then at the end of the day, things come out the same

01:53:18.020 | because we're bringing an unhealthy set of defenses, right?

01:53:20.620 | There can be other motivations

01:53:22.600 | that are related to all of that

01:53:25.220 | and there's getting this complexity to it.

01:53:26.820 | But the compulsion part can be

01:53:29.460 | that we can reenter situations that didn't go well

01:53:33.460 | with the idea that we're gonna fix

01:53:36.300 | what happened in the past.

01:53:37.380 | We're gonna make ourselves feel better.

01:53:38.740 | We're gonna take away the mark of trauma

01:53:41.320 | 'cause remember trauma doesn't care about the clock

01:53:43.580 | or the calendar.

01:53:44.640 | So that's why you'll see someone

01:53:45.920 | who has had say five abusive relationships

01:53:48.560 | that looked very much the same, right?

01:53:51.180 | And is about to enter the sixth, right?

01:53:54.400 | And you say, it's not because, hopefully in most cases,

01:53:57.560 | it's not 'cause that person like wants to be hurt, right?

01:54:00.640 | I mean, sometimes it's a different problem, right?

01:54:02.580 | But there can be a drive inside of us

01:54:05.580 | to try and fix something.

01:54:07.000 | If I can make it work this time,

01:54:08.500 | I won't have to feel so bad about the other five, right?

01:54:11.660 | - So an attempt to change the past

01:54:13.720 | through one's current actions.

01:54:16.340 | - Right, which is rooted in the limbic system

01:54:18.380 | and how trauma affects us

01:54:20.660 | and how, again, it's outside the clock and the calendar.

01:54:23.140 | So that kind of magic, so to speak, can happen

01:54:25.820 | so the brain can seek that magic.

01:54:28.040 | But again, there are unhealthy defenses coming into play,

01:54:30.820 | right, there has to be denial, right?

01:54:33.180 | Otherwise the person would map,

01:54:35.620 | if the same thing happened five times

01:54:37.160 | and this looks the same,

01:54:38.520 | it's probably gonna happen now, right?

01:54:40.380 | So anytime you think a person, most often it's us, right?

01:54:45.380 | Is smart enough or worldly enough to like know better,

01:54:48.980 | which happens all the time, right?

01:54:50.920 | Then look for the answer, right?

01:54:52.740 | You say, well, shouldn't that person know better

01:54:54.740 | than to get into the sixth abusive relationship?

01:54:57.620 | The answer is like, yes, right?

01:54:59.280 | Like, because it's not that hard

01:55:01.020 | if you saw a set of circumstances five times

01:55:03.360 | to map that the sixth is gonna have the same outcome, right?

01:55:06.060 | The person would do that in other scenarios, right?

01:55:08.740 | So then you say, right, that is true.

01:55:10.220 | So now let's look for why the person doesn't recognize that.

01:55:15.220 | And again, we go down into the structure of self

01:55:18.000 | and the function of self, defense mechanisms and actions,

01:55:21.000 | salience, the things that we're talking about now,

01:55:23.460 | does that fit?

01:55:24.860 | - Yeah, it makes sense.

01:55:25.700 | And what comes to mind is the idea of getting into a car

01:55:29.520 | that you know is going to get into an accident

01:55:32.720 | over and over and over again,

01:55:34.880 | but being quite cognizant of safety and its importance

01:55:39.580 | in every other domain of life.

01:55:41.900 | Not even jaywalking, but getting into,

01:55:45.500 | like if certain Ubers arrived with a little flashing light

01:55:48.780 | that said this ride is gonna have an accident,

01:55:51.660 | it's like getting into that vehicle.

01:55:53.380 | And I see this in others as well.

01:55:55.340 | And it raises all sorts of questions like,

01:55:58.420 | is the person actually unconsciously afraid

01:56:02.860 | of the vehicle arriving where they wanna go?

01:56:05.460 | Because then like,

01:56:06.900 | are people actually afraid of things working out?

01:56:10.020 | I mean, this gets to something that-

01:56:11.740 | - But that, I'm so sorry, can I say?

01:56:13.360 | - Yeah.

01:56:14.200 | - That's why you have to know the person, right?

01:56:15.940 | Like who is that person, right?

01:56:17.700 | Why do they not wanna get in that car, right?

01:56:19.960 | Are they afraid they're not gonna get somewhere?

01:56:21.500 | Are they afraid they're gonna get somewhere, right?

01:56:23.040 | But ultimately we're looking for unhealthy defenses.

01:56:26.260 | And I'd still wanna emphasize that,

01:56:28.180 | that I will often think that the aspect of my education

01:56:32.100 | that's most helpful in me doing my job,

01:56:35.300 | when I'm in the job as a practicing psychiatrist

01:56:38.500 | is actually my mathematics minor, right?

01:56:41.060 | Because there's a lot more math to this, right?

01:56:44.280 | People tend to think, oh, mental health, it's all esoteric.

01:56:47.000 | And you can sort of say anything you want

01:56:49.860 | and there's no way of proving or disproving.

01:56:51.620 | It's not like that at all, right?

01:56:53.780 | There's a mathematical aspect to it.

01:56:55.900 | So if you do the correct logical common sense thing, right?

01:57:01.460 | In all aspects of your life, except one,

01:57:03.700 | and you're like 100 times more intelligent

01:57:06.520 | than you need to be to figure it all out, right?

01:57:09.220 | Then if there's a carve out, we say,

01:57:11.280 | look, that's of huge interest, right?

01:57:13.940 | I mean, the probability that we're gonna find

01:57:15.820 | something interesting, there's 100%, right?

01:57:18.460 | Because we know that you know better,

01:57:19.980 | we know that you do better, but why here?

01:57:23.160 | So like, that's so interesting, right?

01:57:24.940 | Like that's where the X marks the spot,

01:57:26.380 | like let's go dig there, right?

01:57:28.040 | So then when we go and dig there,

01:57:29.600 | like we're gonna find something, right?

01:57:32.280 | And we'll say, what is that?

01:57:33.780 | Like do we find that like, oh, it's an array

01:57:36.180 | of really unhealthy defense mechanisms.

01:57:38.120 | Maybe we find that.

01:57:39.580 | Do we find that there's a deep unconscious motivation, right?

01:57:42.960 | Like we might find that too, right?

01:57:45.440 | We might find a lot of things, right?

01:57:47.720 | But we're going to find them.

01:57:49.560 | If we go back to what is the structure of self?

01:57:52.740 | What is the function of self?

01:57:54.020 | If we go and look like that X marks the spot

01:57:56.700 | means there's pay dirt there, right?

01:57:58.760 | And then when we figure that out,

01:58:00.940 | then we go through and we can make things change.

01:58:03.940 | So if it's a deep seated trauma driven

01:58:06.180 | unconscious motivation that is resulting

01:58:08.900 | in an unhealthy array of defense mechanisms,

01:58:11.460 | well, let's go look at that, right?

01:58:13.260 | Let's look at the trauma.

01:58:14.300 | Let's take the thing that's unconscious

01:58:16.160 | and bring it to consciousness, right?

01:58:17.940 | Then we can make that better.

01:58:19.800 | And that array of unhealthy defenses,

01:58:21.740 | again, we're not gonna change it overnight,

01:58:23.720 | but can we change it very, very significantly,

01:58:27.320 | pretty rapidly? Probably yes.

01:58:29.380 | And we can almost entirely change it across time.

01:58:32.340 | So there's a mathematical aspect of this

01:58:35.000 | that I think is so important to point out

01:58:38.420 | because mental health, even as a field, right?

01:58:42.140 | We all want to be mentally healthy.

01:58:44.100 | Like there's a rhyme and reason to it

01:58:46.000 | that yes, it follows science

01:58:47.420 | and yes, it also follows common sense.

01:58:50.060 | And if we apply those things, we get to answers.

01:58:53.360 | - It's very reassuring.

01:58:57.060 | - Thank you.

01:58:58.060 | - Thinking about the functions of self.

01:59:00.920 | And again, just to remind myself and other people,

01:59:04.920 | it starts with self-awareness,

01:59:07.000 | involves defense mechanisms in action.

01:59:09.160 | Then there's the salience piece,

01:59:11.720 | paying attention to what's inside of us

01:59:13.760 | as well as what's external.

01:59:15.460 | And then you're now describing a lot of choices,

01:59:19.720 | choice-making and behavior and action in the world.

01:59:22.420 | I have to assume that for the person

01:59:25.360 | trying to improve themselves

01:59:26.740 | and get to agency and gratitude,

01:59:29.920 | that paying attention to all of these is important.

01:59:32.400 | But of course, if a defense mechanism is unconscious,

01:59:35.840 | we can't simply decide, okay,

01:59:37.140 | I'm going to see the unconscious defense mechanism.

01:59:39.620 | Does that mean that we should ask ourselves

01:59:41.100 | about what is most salient to us?

01:59:43.440 | Or should we be focusing on our behavioral choices?

01:59:47.960 | I mean, in the example I just gave,

01:59:49.520 | I'm aware of my behavioral choices,

01:59:51.220 | making certain decisions to engage with certain people

01:59:54.400 | and not with others.

01:59:56.080 | But should I be asking, for instance,

02:00:01.360 | what's salient, like what are the thoughts

02:00:03.220 | leading up to that decision?

02:00:05.220 | In other words, how does salience

02:00:07.520 | of internal and external cues and processes

02:00:12.360 | relate to behavior?

02:00:13.720 | And which of these should we be paying attention to

02:00:16.400 | if our goal is to eventually change our behavior?

02:00:18.920 | - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

02:00:20.200 | So think about what we're starting,

02:00:22.880 | we're sort of starting at the bottom, right?

02:00:24.280 | So we're starting with, okay, there is an I, right?

02:00:26.760 | And that's not just an apprehension, right?

02:00:29.680 | There's a lot to that, right?

02:00:31.100 | So for example, I know someone

02:00:32.720 | who is doing some mirror meditation,

02:00:35.120 | staring into the mirror, right?

02:00:36.720 | Looking back at self with a desire to be aware,

02:00:40.160 | like there is a me, like this me is in the world, right?

02:00:43.320 | - This is the first I've ever heard of such a practice,

02:00:46.020 | except when I was in elementary school,

02:00:49.160 | or maybe it was the ninth grade,

02:00:50.220 | I had a teacher who talked about, gave us an assignment

02:00:54.340 | to look in the mirror and ask ourselves questions.

02:00:57.280 | But if I understand correctly,

02:00:58.640 | you think there's utility to people

02:01:00.020 | spending a few minutes or more looking in the mirror

02:01:02.500 | and thinking about oneself in the eye

02:01:04.360 | as a way to build up this self-awareness.

02:01:06.540 | Do I have that right?

02:01:07.460 | - If you want to take the best care of yourself

02:01:09.460 | that you can, right?

02:01:10.500 | You want to understand yourself the best you can.

02:01:12.820 | You want to make your life the best it can be, right?

02:01:15.760 | Then if there are answers, right?

02:01:17.460 | And let's say the answers

02:01:18.420 | are in five or 10 different cupboards, right?

02:01:20.760 | Look in all of them, right?

02:01:22.260 | I mean, that's the idea, right?

02:01:24.140 | That if we want to know something, look everywhere for it,

02:01:28.380 | and also realize what we are building, right?

02:01:31.060 | What we are creating may be a recipe.

02:01:33.100 | There may be things from different cupboards that overlap.

02:01:35.840 | So the way to translate that practically is to say,

02:01:39.580 | to find the answers to what is either ailing us,

02:01:43.020 | why we're repeating things we don't want to repeat,

02:01:45.140 | or even if things are going okay,

02:01:46.320 | but we want them to be going better

02:01:48.300 | because we don't quite feel the peace and contentment

02:01:50.940 | we want to feel, then look everywhere.

02:01:53.580 | So in the function of self,

02:01:55.740 | in the function of self, start with the I, right?

02:01:59.700 | There are ways of increasing self-awareness.

02:02:02.220 | They can range from contemplation of self,

02:02:04.380 | to meditation, to looking in the mirror, right?

02:02:07.340 | There are things that we can do

02:02:08.500 | to more strongly emphasize to ourself

02:02:10.900 | that there is an I and this I is going through life, right?

02:02:15.060 | Then we know that there are defense mechanisms

02:02:17.420 | and that they're present, that they're acting in us, right?

02:02:20.340 | We can't just see them because they're unconscious,

02:02:23.080 | but if we start thinking about them,

02:02:24.780 | we can learn about them, right?

02:02:26.580 | And that's where salience comes into play.

02:02:28.400 | Salience kind of points both ways, right?

02:02:30.780 | Salience can point us towards the unconscious mind, right?

02:02:34.280 | Oh, I realize I'm doing this over and over again,

02:02:37.020 | or I'm saying this thing to myself over and over again.

02:02:39.500 | Where is that coming from?

02:02:40.640 | We start becoming curious about ourselves,

02:02:42.740 | and we look to the unconscious mind,

02:02:45.140 | and then we also look to the conscious mind.

02:02:47.380 | That's why after salience is behavior.

02:02:50.020 | Like, what am I doing, right?

02:02:52.380 | And a lot of times we don't know,

02:02:54.740 | just examples of we don't know why we're doing things, right?

02:02:58.100 | Someone who wants to lose weight,

02:02:59.420 | but always goes to the grocery store and comes home

02:03:01.860 | and is like, has some sense of surprise

02:03:03.460 | that there are things there that they don't wanna eat, right?

02:03:05.720 | Like, why am I behaving in a certain way?

02:03:07.860 | Why does certain things bother me when other things don't?

02:03:11.060 | Right, why am I really touchy about one thing

02:03:13.380 | and not another?

02:03:14.740 | Why might there be things that bother others and not me

02:03:17.260 | or vice versa, right?

02:03:18.580 | So, we're looking at what's going on inside of us

02:03:21.500 | and then how we respond, right?

02:03:23.460 | Because what may be upsetting me

02:03:25.700 | or what's going on inside of me,

02:03:27.740 | both conscious and unconscious,

02:03:29.860 | is then determining how I'm acting,

02:03:32.380 | how I'm behaving in the world around me.

02:03:34.740 | If I want a better job,

02:03:36.460 | but I never take an interview for another job,

02:03:38.620 | I'm not gonna get another job.

02:03:40.160 | If I want a romantic partner,

02:03:41.940 | but I automatically turn away from anyone who smiles at me,

02:03:44.940 | I'm not gonna have a romantic partner, right?

02:03:47.760 | If I want life to be better

02:03:49.180 | and there's a certain thing I repeat

02:03:50.740 | and I don't wanna repeat that,

02:03:52.260 | I wanna understand myself better

02:03:53.680 | so I can change the behavior.

02:03:55.500 | And that's why the function of self ends with strivings, right?

02:03:59.940 | The strivings are into the future.

02:04:01.500 | I know there is an I.

02:04:02.860 | I know there's a network

02:04:03.980 | and web of defense mechanisms in action.

02:04:06.740 | I know that there's salience going on inside of me

02:04:09.140 | and I'm only gonna pay attention to a few things

02:04:11.020 | from the thousands I could pay attention to.

02:04:13.140 | I wanna be aware of that and have more control over that.

02:04:16.460 | Then I'm enacting behaviors.

02:04:18.100 | I'm engaging in the world around me

02:04:20.460 | and ultimately I want things, right?

02:04:22.840 | I want life to be better.

02:04:24.140 | I wanna have that feeling that you can get to.

02:04:26.840 | I want to be in the state of agency and gratitude.

02:04:31.620 | So again, these two pillars,

02:04:33.580 | structure of self, function of self,

02:04:36.320 | that's where all the answers are.

02:04:38.740 | So there are all the cupboards, right?

02:04:40.340 | There are these five cupboards in the structure of self

02:04:42.700 | and five in the function of self.

02:04:44.100 | And I know we'll have it out there in a PDF, right?

02:04:47.100 | 'Cause you can go back there

02:04:48.340 | and that's where the vast majority of answers are

02:04:52.860 | to both understanding and routes to change.

02:04:56.900 | - What you just described is incredibly helpful.

02:04:59.660 | It's absolutely apparent to me

02:05:02.260 | why looking at all the cupboards is so key.

02:05:04.980 | It's also apparent that many different aspects

02:05:08.020 | of psychology and psychiatry,

02:05:10.820 | at least as I understand them might probe,

02:05:13.620 | for instance, just at the level of behavior.

02:05:15.700 | I think this is the just do it mantra.

02:05:17.720 | Well, just do the right thing, right?

02:05:20.420 | You're not finding a romantic partner.

02:05:22.460 | Schedule three dinners with friends

02:05:23.860 | and ask them to invite over people

02:05:25.300 | who are looking for partners.

02:05:26.120 | Sounds really simple, right?

02:05:27.620 | But much as with the example of my friend

02:05:30.420 | who lost all this weight through behavioral change,

02:05:33.220 | the fear still lives within him very strongly.

02:05:36.060 | And so clearly there's some stuff happening underneath there.

02:05:38.700 | Now, fortunately he did lose the weight

02:05:40.500 | and he's kept most of it off,

02:05:41.680 | but it's clear to me that until he addresses

02:05:44.320 | some of these other issues of salience

02:05:46.020 | and defense mechanism, self-awareness, et cetera,

02:05:48.960 | that the fear he's still experiencing makes total sense

02:05:52.980 | because the foundation of that change

02:05:55.220 | is not nearly as strong as it could be.

02:05:58.100 | - Maybe, right?

02:05:59.820 | Or maybe he doesn't have to have the fear,

02:06:01.220 | but he's not gonna learn either one without the exploration.

02:06:04.500 | So he won't, if there is risk,

02:06:06.180 | he won't be able to avert the risk.

02:06:08.140 | And if there's not risk,

02:06:09.780 | he's then sort of laboring through life,

02:06:11.620 | which is difficult enough,

02:06:12.620 | without being worried about something

02:06:13.940 | you don't have to be worried about, right?

02:06:15.800 | So the process of inquiry will always make that better.

02:06:18.460 | - It's clear to me that his fear of regaining weight

02:06:20.500 | is absolutely sapping his enjoyment

02:06:23.260 | and his productivity in other domains of life.

02:06:25.340 | - So warrants attention, right?

02:06:26.540 | Because we're deciding in that sort of mathematical way,

02:06:29.180 | like it doesn't have to be that way.

02:06:31.280 | Doesn't mean it can change overnight,

02:06:32.720 | but it can be understood and it can be changed.

02:06:35.820 | - Well, it's for that reason and many other reasons

02:06:37.500 | that I'm very grateful that you explain these two pillars,

02:06:40.560 | structure of self and function of self

02:06:42.260 | and how these flow up to empowerment and humility

02:06:45.340 | and how those flow up to agency and gratitude.

02:06:48.300 | You've given us a set of ideals

02:06:50.820 | and a roadmap of how to get there

02:06:53.300 | and one that we're going to continue with in a moment here.

02:06:56.660 | I did want to reiterate what you said,

02:06:58.340 | which is that there is a PDF version of this structure,

02:07:01.620 | this roadmap of ideals and how to get there.

02:07:05.300 | That's been provided as a link in the show note captions.

02:07:08.020 | So people can refer to them there

02:07:09.740 | and in visual form if they like.

02:07:11.500 | - If you're interested in understanding yourself

02:07:14.900 | and in having goodness in your life,

02:07:16.620 | as much as you possibly can,

02:07:18.620 | then you're interested in the structure of the mind.

02:07:21.440 | And this means that you're interested

02:07:22.820 | in the unconscious mind,

02:07:24.360 | in all the things that go on a million things a second

02:07:27.260 | that we don't know or understand one by one,

02:07:30.300 | but that we can explore and understand better in total.

02:07:34.300 | We're also interested in the conscious mind,

02:07:36.260 | in being self-aware.

02:07:37.760 | We're interested in the array of defense mechanisms

02:07:40.580 | and whether or not they're elegant

02:07:43.020 | and light passes clearly through them

02:07:45.180 | or whether they're distorting light

02:07:46.700 | and creating misperception.

02:07:48.740 | If you're interested in the structure of the mind,

02:07:51.400 | then you're also interested in the character structure.

02:07:54.700 | What is your character structure?

02:07:56.020 | What is the nest around all of it?

02:07:57.720 | How do you interface with the world?

02:07:59.500 | And then you're interested in the self

02:08:01.260 | that you grow from that phenomenologically,

02:08:03.740 | meaning what is your experience of self?

02:08:05.640 | How does it feel to you?

02:08:07.460 | These are all important parts of this pillar

02:08:11.680 | of health and happiness.

02:08:13.500 | The other pillar is the function of the mind.

02:08:16.400 | And of course there's overlap.

02:08:17.680 | There are different cupboards,

02:08:18.620 | but the cupboards all contain different ingredients

02:08:20.700 | that together make the recipe, right?

02:08:22.580 | So if we're interested in the function of the mind,

02:08:25.060 | then we wanna pay attention that there's an eye.

02:08:27.900 | We wanna be self-aware

02:08:29.460 | and we wanna cultivate self-awareness.

02:08:32.060 | We're also interested in how those defense mechanisms work

02:08:34.920 | when they're in action, right?

02:08:36.540 | What's salient inside of us and outside of us?

02:08:39.360 | What are we paying attention to?

02:08:41.400 | How are we behaving?

02:08:42.980 | What are our strivings?

02:08:44.180 | Do we feel hopeful about ourselves and the world around us?

02:08:47.220 | And if we're interested in all of these things,

02:08:49.880 | we can't help but be respectful, right?

02:08:52.380 | Of just how complicated this is.

02:08:55.140 | Like life is difficult

02:08:56.560 | and understanding ourselves is difficult.

02:08:59.580 | You know, wonderful joy can come of living life,

02:09:02.580 | but it is hard and it's hard day by day.

02:09:05.860 | And trying to understand ourselves, going to these places,

02:09:09.020 | these pillars that hold the answers, right?

02:09:12.140 | They can't but make in us a respect for all of it, right?

02:09:16.420 | And the respect for ourselves, for others,

02:09:19.900 | brings with it humility, right?

02:09:22.020 | When we come to this point of looking at ourselves

02:09:25.560 | and exploring, then yes, we become empowered, right?

02:09:28.940 | Because we've gained a lot of knowledge, right?

02:09:31.740 | We're digging where the pay dirt is

02:09:33.840 | and we're figuring things out.

02:09:35.620 | And along with that empowerment comes humility,

02:09:39.040 | a respectfulness for how difficult all of this is,

02:09:41.500 | how complicated we are,

02:09:43.360 | how we can make happiness in our lives,

02:09:45.960 | but how it certainly isn't easy.

02:09:48.180 | And we take with us the empowerment and the humility

02:09:51.980 | and we express them, right?

02:09:53.940 | And if we're expressing empowerment and humility,

02:09:57.420 | we come to living through agency and gratitude.

02:10:02.420 | So here, both are active words.

02:10:05.420 | So agency, it's easier to see, right?

02:10:07.380 | It's an active word where I'm aware of my ability

02:10:10.740 | to project myself into the world around me.

02:10:13.780 | I know that I can't control everything, right?

02:10:16.780 | But I'm really trying to understand what can I control,

02:10:19.820 | right, how can I control it?

02:10:21.260 | What do my decisions now lead to in the future?

02:10:24.600 | So agency is very, very active, right?

02:10:27.500 | Gratitude is active too, right?

02:10:30.060 | We're bringing an active sense of gratitude,

02:10:33.660 | a sense of the amazingness that we're here

02:10:36.620 | and pride in ourselves and others for being here

02:10:39.460 | and trying to move forward as best we can.

02:10:42.660 | And then we bring that to our interactions.

02:10:44.580 | We're much more likely to have a kind gesture

02:10:47.380 | towards others instead of being angry.

02:10:49.300 | We're much more likely to have something compassionate

02:10:51.560 | to say, including to ourselves,

02:10:53.660 | than we are to have something angry to say.

02:10:56.420 | That gratitude accompanies agency.

02:10:59.260 | They're active words and they're active together.

02:11:03.260 | And if we're living life through agency and gratitude,

02:11:06.660 | I mean, there's a lot of wisdom about this.

02:11:08.460 | There's a lot that's been written and researched about this.

02:11:10.580 | And if you look at what is it telling us, right?

02:11:13.100 | Remember, things are getting simpler, right,

02:11:15.480 | as we're getting higher up the levels here, right?

02:11:18.800 | The unconscious mind is most complicated.

02:11:20.780 | Now we're at, hey, can we live our lives with agency

02:11:24.300 | and gratitude at the forefront?

02:11:26.380 | And what does it bring for us?

02:11:28.140 | And I think it brings what we are seeking,

02:11:31.260 | that we might say, okay, we're seeking happiness.

02:11:33.180 | And that can mean a lot of things,

02:11:34.740 | you know, a lot of different things.

02:11:35.900 | It can be a very active thing.

02:11:37.140 | Am I happy in the moment?

02:11:38.500 | And we can use happiness sometimes to distract ourselves.

02:11:41.060 | Like, happiness is important.

02:11:43.160 | But words, when people really think,

02:11:45.140 | like, what is it that they want

02:11:46.540 | or what is it that they have, right,

02:11:48.560 | if they're overjoyed to be alive?

02:11:51.700 | They're finding a sense of peace.

02:11:54.660 | They're finding contentment.

02:11:56.540 | They're finding delight, the ability to be delighted, right?

02:12:00.700 | This is what people want.

02:12:02.380 | Our human history and our searchings tell us this

02:12:06.320 | and our own experiences tell us this.

02:12:09.000 | And now it could lead a person to think,

02:12:11.260 | well, okay, what's going on?

02:12:12.600 | I mean, is this someone who's, you know,

02:12:14.560 | levitating at the top of a mountain?

02:12:16.260 | Like, is this just a state?

02:12:17.960 | Is this a state that people are in?

02:12:19.660 | And the answer is no.

02:12:21.740 | There'll be some times we could be in that state

02:12:23.580 | where we can feel peace.

02:12:24.820 | There's no tension inside of us, right?

02:12:27.260 | I could feel, I have times

02:12:28.700 | when I don't feel tension inside of me.

02:12:30.260 | There's contentment, there's peace.

02:12:31.460 | I don't have to drive towards anything, right?

02:12:34.460 | But it's not the passive experience of it

02:12:37.600 | because we are living life.

02:12:39.900 | It's that that feeling goes hand in hand

02:12:43.540 | with a drive within us,

02:12:45.620 | that when we're in this healthy place,

02:12:48.640 | we are living life.

02:12:49.820 | The decisions that we're making,

02:12:51.400 | what is putting the rubber to the road?

02:12:53.540 | It is a generative drive within us.

02:12:56.320 | There is a drive to make things better,

02:12:58.740 | to understand, to explore.

02:13:01.120 | And it's that drive that we access and cultivate.

02:13:04.460 | And synonymous with happiness is it's not just the state

02:13:09.000 | when people wanna be happy in that very, very general way.

02:13:11.440 | Yes, contentment, peace, delight,

02:13:16.440 | but they're happening as we're living life, right?

02:13:19.420 | As we're enacting a generative drive

02:13:22.540 | where we're looking at ourselves and the world around us

02:13:25.300 | and we're interested in understanding.

02:13:26.900 | We're interested in making things better

02:13:29.920 | and that's the place that we're trying to get to.

02:13:32.480 | I believe that with all my heart and my brain, right?

02:13:36.400 | My education, training, experience,

02:13:38.920 | and also experience living life.

02:13:41.520 | And for 20 years, doing this work with people

02:13:45.000 | tells me this is what we're seeking

02:13:46.760 | and it's an active way of experiencing ourselves

02:13:51.240 | and our place in life.

02:13:53.260 | - I love that because it merges both the nouns

02:13:56.600 | and the adjectives and the verbs, you know?

02:13:59.580 | And this notion of a generative drive to me

02:14:02.240 | is so compelling because I have the sense,

02:14:06.520 | and I hope I'm right, that we all have

02:14:10.080 | some sort of generative drive within us

02:14:12.360 | starting at an early stage.

02:14:14.160 | Maybe it even starts as visual foraging

02:14:18.680 | or touching things with our hands as an infant

02:14:21.120 | and exploration of the world, right?

02:14:23.200 | Is what brings about the changes in the neural circuitry

02:14:25.940 | that allow us to engage even more

02:14:28.640 | and in progressively, on the one hand, narrower ways,

02:14:31.760 | but also with more richness and more detail.

02:14:36.240 | Could you tell us more about generative drive

02:14:38.400 | and how this shows up in different types of people?

02:14:42.040 | Is it always positive?

02:14:44.280 | Can there be too much of it?

02:14:46.480 | I certainly know a number of people

02:14:47.820 | who are addicted to work.

02:14:50.640 | Those of you listening, I'm raising my hand.

02:14:53.260 | But I would say nowadays,

02:14:54.600 | I'm not as addicted to work as I once was

02:14:56.480 | in the sense that I derive far more satisfaction

02:14:59.280 | from less work now,

02:15:02.280 | provided that the work is really in depth.

02:15:05.200 | I think that there were years in graduate school

02:15:07.560 | where I wanted to publish a bunch of papers

02:15:09.440 | and then quickly realized

02:15:10.720 | through the not so gentle persuasion of my mentors

02:15:15.200 | that like, let's just do the best possible work we can do.

02:15:18.240 | And there's so much more richness and experience

02:15:20.560 | and things to be gained from that.

02:15:22.660 | So I'm familiar with generative drive as I understand it,

02:15:27.660 | but maybe if you would,

02:15:29.020 | if you could flush out a bit of what generative drive is

02:15:31.640 | and does it arrive in parallel with or before

02:15:36.160 | we are able to access peace, contentment, and delight?

02:15:39.120 | Can it even be separated out from that?

02:15:42.260 | What is this generative drive?

02:15:46.440 | - Yeah, so drives are built into us.

02:15:50.000 | So they're synonymous with our existence.

02:15:52.640 | Like if we exist, then we have the drive.

02:15:55.840 | I mean, that's how the drive is defined.

02:15:58.360 | And we understand going far back to psychodynamic

02:16:02.800 | and psychoanalytic roots

02:16:04.160 | and when people were really thinking hard

02:16:06.640 | about human beings and what's going on inside of us

02:16:09.320 | that we've sort of identified and then validated

02:16:12.160 | over the period of time since

02:16:14.460 | that we have aggressive drives within us

02:16:17.100 | and we have drives towards pleasure.

02:16:19.080 | Now, this often gets misunderstood that,

02:16:21.340 | so aggression can be,

02:16:24.000 | it can be active violent aggression, for example,

02:16:26.680 | but aggression can also be a sense of agency, right?

02:16:30.080 | The inaction of agency, like I want to do things,

02:16:32.520 | I want to change things,

02:16:33.720 | I want to make the world a different place, right?

02:16:36.720 | That all of that comes under this drive.

02:16:39.400 | So an aggressive drive is not a bad thing.

02:16:42.620 | If we had no aggressive drives,

02:16:44.160 | the thought is we would just lie down

02:16:45.520 | and nothing else would happen

02:16:47.040 | and then we'd all be gone, right?

02:16:49.040 | So there's a way in which this drive within us

02:16:51.360 | moves us forward, right?

02:16:52.940 | And of course, it's extremely complicated

02:16:54.880 | the ways we can manifest too much of it or too little of it

02:16:57.560 | or how our defense mechanisms can intertwine with the drive,

02:17:01.260 | but the drive is there.

02:17:02.600 | It's like it's fuel within us that comes with our existence

02:17:06.860 | and then how that fuel moves us forward,

02:17:09.160 | how much of it there is.

02:17:11.120 | That is determined by the meshing of the drive

02:17:15.100 | with how we're living life, right?

02:17:17.640 | And the same would be true of pleasure.

02:17:19.720 | You know, the pleasure drive doesn't just mean

02:17:21.800 | that we all want to be hedonists, right, inside.

02:17:24.280 | It means that we want things that are gratifying, right?

02:17:26.720 | We want to feel good, right?

02:17:28.040 | This isn't just the drive towards physical pleasure,

02:17:31.680 | like a sex drive or eating food or having comfort.

02:17:35.080 | Like all of that can be part of it,

02:17:37.000 | but it's a drive for relief, right?

02:17:39.320 | The idea that we don't want to be white-knuckling life,

02:17:43.240 | right, searching for pleasure.

02:17:45.080 | So it's having aggression within us as we white-knuckle life

02:17:48.500 | and we search for some pleasure and relief, right?

02:17:51.040 | These drives within us can be healthy.

02:17:54.040 | They can be unhealthy.

02:17:55.720 | They can be anything, right?

02:17:57.840 | They're wellsprings within us that then fuel us forward.

02:18:02.840 | And there's controversy to the idea

02:18:06.040 | of is there a generative drive?

02:18:07.900 | And there's certainly parts of the field

02:18:09.560 | that do not think so, right?

02:18:11.880 | But there have been strong thinkers in the field

02:18:14.400 | that have thought we do have a generative drive,

02:18:16.740 | that it is within us to look around us to be curious,

02:18:21.960 | to be amazed, right, to think like how can I engage with this

02:18:26.240 | and make this better or happier?

02:18:28.200 | To think outside of ourselves, right?

02:18:30.720 | To think if I feel good and you're in pain,

02:18:33.920 | can I make you feel better, right?

02:18:35.900 | Having nothing to do with me, right?

02:18:37.960 | The idea of altruism, coming to the fore

02:18:40.700 | and having industriousness within us, right?

02:18:44.160 | And the idea that there is a generative drive,

02:18:47.760 | it's strengthened when you look at how humans behave

02:18:51.400 | when we're not struggling, right?

02:18:53.880 | That people are interested in learning.

02:18:55.720 | You think about how much people give of themselves

02:18:59.200 | to learning, right, or to serving others.

02:19:01.280 | Like there's so much of this goodness

02:19:03.640 | in the world around us.

02:19:05.320 | Now, if we shut people away, right?

02:19:07.860 | They have no, imagine, God forbid,

02:19:10.040 | someone is in a solitary confinement

02:19:11.720 | from the moment they're born,

02:19:13.920 | then there's not an opportunity

02:19:15.460 | for the generative drive to thrive, right?

02:19:17.880 | And we see so many situations

02:19:20.840 | where it doesn't thrive enough, right?

02:19:23.800 | Violence in people's surroundings,

02:19:25.760 | lack of opportunities, right?

02:19:27.360 | That we can squelch a generative drive,

02:19:31.080 | anyone's generative drive,

02:19:32.280 | but if we give ourselves opportunities,

02:19:34.400 | if we're healthy, that we're not weighed down by trauma

02:19:38.120 | and illness and misperceptions of self,

02:19:40.080 | and we can live life in a way

02:19:42.220 | that brings us to agency and gratitude,

02:19:44.960 | now we're allying with the generative drive

02:19:47.960 | that I absolutely believe is within us.

02:19:50.760 | I think just look at life, look at human beings.

02:19:54.160 | We observe that we have this drive within us,

02:19:57.380 | and if that drive is at the forefront,

02:19:59.960 | and that drive then naturally, of course,

02:20:02.320 | allies with agency and gratitude,

02:20:05.840 | then I think we're at the place

02:20:07.520 | that is the place we ultimately seek, right?

02:20:10.520 | And that we can find it for brief periods of time.

02:20:14.280 | So by really pursuing this and like really strongly

02:20:18.360 | in my own therapy and reflection

02:20:19.960 | and attempts to understand,

02:20:21.640 | I can have periods of time where I can feel that way.

02:20:24.480 | I can feel outward growth and interest in the world,

02:20:28.380 | and I feel good.

02:20:29.320 | I'm not trying to answer some question of like,

02:20:31.040 | why am I alive?

02:20:31.880 | Or like, I'm doing things that I feel good about,

02:20:34.860 | and I feel good about doing those things

02:20:38.140 | and about being in the world.

02:20:40.280 | And I think this is not uncommon.

02:20:42.680 | It may be far more common in societies

02:20:45.080 | that are allegedly less advanced, right?

02:20:47.460 | That have less distractions,

02:20:49.460 | or maybe less knowledge of all the awful things

02:20:53.220 | in the world that can happen to us

02:20:54.460 | that are constantly fed to us.

02:20:55.700 | Like there's a whole bunch of other questions

02:20:57.960 | and topics about it.

02:20:59.740 | But this absolute belief

02:21:04.340 | that there's this generative drive in us

02:21:06.120 | that wants to ally with agency and gratitude,

02:21:09.260 | and that we all have it within us

02:21:11.440 | to bring those to the forefront,

02:21:13.500 | and to find that thing that we seek,

02:21:15.640 | whether some of this person says it's nirvana,

02:21:17.600 | the other person says it's joy or happiness or peace

02:21:21.040 | or numbing, you know, whatever it is,

02:21:23.440 | there's something to it

02:21:25.440 | where we're not feeling the tension within us.

02:21:28.400 | We're not feeling the anxiety, the pressures,

02:21:30.920 | but we're feeling a sense of goodness.

02:21:33.080 | - The way you're describing it makes perfect sense

02:21:36.000 | why peace, contentment, and delight

02:21:38.880 | be so closely linked to this generative drive.

02:21:42.760 | You know, the word peace, as you alluded to,

02:21:45.720 | often brings to mind the idea of passivity,

02:21:50.720 | but generative drive and the inclusion of things

02:21:54.640 | like aggression and a drive for pleasure

02:21:57.320 | are anything but passive.

02:21:59.600 | So I think that's important for me

02:22:02.520 | and for everyone to understand

02:22:04.440 | that peace, contentment, and delight

02:22:07.520 | can really be action terms.

02:22:09.160 | Again, moving them from, you know,

02:22:12.440 | from the more typical conception of them

02:22:15.180 | to verb states.

02:22:17.140 | - So peace, contentment, and delight

02:22:20.460 | are not passive states.

02:22:22.540 | I mean, there can be periods of time

02:22:25.040 | where we can be just very peaceful

02:22:26.860 | and very much at rest,

02:22:28.600 | but those words are not synonymous with inaction, right?

02:22:33.000 | In fact, they're synonymous with action

02:22:35.840 | a lot of the time, right?

02:22:37.760 | If we are suffused with peace, contentment,

02:22:41.720 | the ability to delight,

02:22:43.340 | then what we're doing is we're raising up

02:22:45.920 | the generative drive.

02:22:47.000 | We're making conditions that are permissive

02:22:49.420 | for the generative drive to come to the forefront, right?

02:22:53.000 | To be paramount over the aggressive

02:22:55.720 | and the pleasure drives, right?

02:22:57.280 | And remember, we're not trying to get rid of those drives,

02:22:59.940 | right, we just want the generative drive

02:23:02.640 | in us to be at the forefront.

02:23:04.560 | Then we'll be able to harness the aggressive drive

02:23:07.460 | through, for example, a strong sense of agency,

02:23:10.060 | fueling the sense of agency forward

02:23:12.520 | as opposed to destructive aggression, right?

02:23:15.900 | The search for pleasure,

02:23:17.280 | which sure can include physical pleasures

02:23:19.880 | in ways that are good and reasonable and healthy for us,

02:23:22.920 | but also the pleasure of learning, right?

02:23:25.140 | The pleasure that altruism brings,

02:23:27.640 | that we can take the aggressive drive

02:23:30.000 | that we know is in us

02:23:31.360 | and the pleasure drive that we know is in us

02:23:34.180 | and we can dial them to the right places.

02:23:36.340 | Like this gets very complicated

02:23:37.800 | and it's easy to dial that too far up

02:23:39.920 | and it's easy to dial it too far down, right?

02:23:42.540 | But if both are serving the generative drive,

02:23:46.560 | because we lift up the generative drive

02:23:49.520 | and we bring it to primacy

02:23:51.440 | by being able to handle our lives,

02:23:53.520 | to understand ourselves, to go back to those pillars

02:23:56.000 | and to build upon it the agency and the gratitude

02:23:59.760 | that then leads us to peace, contentment and delight,

02:24:03.800 | we can put all of this together

02:24:05.320 | and like we're really and truly living in an active way

02:24:09.580 | in the world that's good for us,

02:24:11.720 | good for the world around us

02:24:13.200 | and doesn't leave us with a sense of yearning

02:24:15.700 | or sense of tension within us.

02:24:17.520 | - Do you think it's also the case that generative drive

02:24:22.240 | has kind of a self amplification feature to it?

02:24:27.240 | What comes to mind as you're describing generative drive

02:24:30.180 | and its relationship to peace, contentment and delight

02:24:32.720 | is that approximately a half hour after I wake up,

02:24:36.360 | I start to feel more physically energized.

02:24:39.540 | I'm not somebody who just pops out of bed

02:24:41.040 | and is ready to go exercise or do mental work,

02:24:43.740 | but about 30 minutes or so after waking,

02:24:46.960 | my mind starts to wake up.

02:24:48.600 | And I've noticed that if I read a scientific paper

02:24:53.400 | or if I read a chapter in a book

02:24:55.740 | or if I do something that feels a little bit difficult,

02:25:00.320 | cognitively difficult in particular,

02:25:02.860 | that the sense of satisfaction that I get from that

02:25:07.060 | is immense.

02:25:09.100 | And it's not necessarily the case

02:25:11.260 | that I have to learn something that I'm going to use

02:25:12.980 | that day, but for me, learning and often learning

02:25:17.160 | and sharing what I learn with the world,

02:25:19.140 | whether or not they want to hear it or not,

02:25:21.660 | is part of my pleasure loop.

02:25:24.940 | And I've learned that if I don't capture some new knowledge

02:25:30.620 | in a way that's challenging in the morning time,

02:25:34.040 | I feel like the gears are still turning,

02:25:38.220 | but I start to lose energy.

02:25:40.500 | Whereas if I find something interesting in particular

02:25:44.100 | and write it down and I feel like I own it,

02:25:46.980 | that's what I enjoy so much about learning.

02:25:48.300 | It's like, it's in there,

02:25:49.180 | maybe it'll be useful at some point, maybe it won't,

02:25:51.420 | but it's like an animal finding a tool

02:25:54.020 | that it can maybe use to forage more effectively

02:25:56.540 | later in life.

02:25:57.880 | I get such a sense of satisfaction

02:25:59.980 | that then I find that I have immense energy

02:26:02.700 | to do whatever is next.

02:26:04.420 | Like whether or not that's exercise or learn more

02:26:06.420 | or prepare a podcast or write a grant or working on a paper.

02:26:10.700 | And this feature of my mental life is so prominent

02:26:14.220 | that I almost have to force myself to do it each day.

02:26:18.820 | And there are so many distractions in the world nowadays

02:26:21.340 | that I've come to a place where I almost have to force

02:26:23.820 | myself to do what I know works for me.

02:26:28.020 | But when I do, it feels almost like a chemical rocket fuel.

02:26:33.020 | And it doesn't make me manic or crazy.

02:26:35.440 | I don't need to pick up the phone and call somebody

02:26:37.360 | or tell everybody about it or post it on social media.

02:26:40.020 | It's more of a deep sense of satisfaction

02:26:43.060 | and I get energy from it.

02:26:45.500 | Is that the generative drive?

02:26:47.180 | - Well, it's great that that works for you.

02:26:48.660 | What you're saying is that for you,

02:26:51.540 | like you can prime your generative drive that way, right?

02:26:54.740 | And then you prime it, you prime the pump,

02:26:56.740 | it gets revved up, right?

02:26:58.220 | And then it's really manifesting itself inside of you.

02:27:02.540 | I mean, there's many different manifestations

02:27:05.300 | of the generative drive as there are people, right?

02:27:07.980 | So some things are gonna work for some person,

02:27:10.140 | other things are gonna work for a different person, right?

02:27:12.460 | But you're saying that, hey, I know this thing works for me

02:27:15.820 | and even though sometimes it's not easy to do,

02:27:18.180 | I do it and then look what it gets for me, right?

02:27:22.060 | And that's really healthy, right?

02:27:24.740 | It's like knowing that this thing works for you

02:27:26.520 | and then you become committed to it

02:27:27.980 | because your generative drive

02:27:29.660 | is really strongly supported by it, right?

02:27:32.940 | And then you have this sense of good feeling, right?

02:27:35.460 | So then you have the peace

02:27:38.220 | and you have just the overall sense of goodness, right?

02:27:42.960 | Peace and contentment and delight,

02:27:45.300 | you're getting that in learning and in teaching.

02:27:47.200 | So you're figuring out like, hey, this works for me, right?

02:27:51.020 | And again, you don't have to figure it out

02:27:52.380 | through this lens.

02:27:53.280 | It's if we find parts that aren't working,

02:27:55.500 | then we go back and we figure them out, right?

02:27:58.140 | Maybe a good example maybe is,

02:28:00.560 | so let's say you take someone who really enjoys gardening

02:28:05.660 | and get something out of gardening, right?

02:28:07.440 | So there are as many generative drives

02:28:09.580 | in how they're measured out as there are humans,

02:28:11.800 | but there can be common outcomes of them, right?

02:28:14.460 | So the enjoyment of fostering plants, growing a garden,

02:28:17.980 | it's like that's not uncommon in humans, right?

02:28:20.180 | So imagine someone who hasn't been doing that, right?

02:28:24.780 | They really want to, they have a drive to do it.

02:28:26.600 | There's a plot of land in the back

02:28:28.160 | that they used to cultivate, right?

02:28:29.940 | So if they're not doing it, there are any number of reasons.

02:28:32.520 | Maybe they were depressed

02:28:34.040 | and they needed mental health treatment.

02:28:35.660 | Maybe they just got away from the path that they were on.

02:28:38.680 | Maybe their defense has shifted a little bit.

02:28:40.540 | Whatever the case may be,

02:28:42.400 | they go back to the pillars and they figure it out, right?

02:28:46.660 | And now they're in accord with themselves, right?

02:28:50.060 | And they're living through agency and gratitude

02:28:53.060 | and they feel like, right, I can go back out there

02:28:55.780 | and I can till that land.

02:28:57.700 | I can get the hoe out.

02:28:59.240 | I can make the plots.

02:29:01.660 | I'm gonna put the seeds in.

02:29:02.680 | I'm gonna nurture.

02:29:03.660 | I can go do that and I can do it even what?

02:29:06.600 | Even though I was depressed,

02:29:08.180 | even though somebody assaulted me five months ago,

02:29:11.200 | even though I lost my job,

02:29:12.420 | even though, even though, even though, right?

02:29:14.620 | They overcome the even-thos, right?

02:29:16.940 | And the sense of agency tells them, right,

02:29:18.900 | I can go do that, right?

02:29:21.100 | And the sense of gratitude.

02:29:22.460 | No one who's miserable and now is in such an awful position

02:29:27.420 | about life because they were attacked or lost their job

02:29:30.000 | or something bad happened, whatever it may be,

02:29:31.900 | or they're lost in cynicism.

02:29:33.660 | There's no gratitude there, right?

02:29:35.460 | It's a gratitude for being in life,

02:29:37.940 | for having the capability of going back

02:29:40.660 | and planting seeds in that garden.

02:29:43.700 | That's the alliance between agency and gratitude.

02:29:46.900 | And then the person goes and does that, right?

02:29:50.760 | So think of what's going on there.

02:29:52.600 | They do this thing.

02:29:53.480 | They feel good about this thing.

02:29:54.920 | They can look out at the garden, feel some peace, right?

02:29:58.280 | Feel some contentment to them.

02:29:59.600 | Be delighted by what they did.

02:30:01.160 | Remember how much they loved it before,

02:30:03.760 | how much it means to them.

02:30:05.520 | So yes, that goodness comes, that goodness suffuses us,

02:30:09.900 | and it raises up the generative drive.

02:30:12.080 | That says, right, it's good.

02:30:13.920 | We breathe some life into it, right?

02:30:16.240 | Enough to get that garden done.

02:30:18.400 | Now the generative drive is further fostered forward

02:30:21.840 | by the goodness the person feels.

02:30:23.800 | So the example, the difference between the person

02:30:26.920 | who wants a garden, feels terrible about themselves,

02:30:29.880 | that they're not doing it,

02:30:30.720 | and they feel lousy every time they look out the window,

02:30:33.320 | and there they are looking out the window, right?

02:30:35.460 | The difference between that and having made a garden

02:30:37.680 | and looking out the window at it

02:30:39.440 | is a night and day difference.

02:30:42.040 | And the person who's looking out the window at the garden

02:30:45.360 | that they built overcoming whatever was inside of them

02:30:47.960 | because they went and addressed it

02:30:49.800 | and proved to themselves that they could,

02:30:52.720 | that's what we're after in life, right?

02:30:54.600 | We all know this.

02:30:55.440 | It doesn't look like somebody levitating

02:30:56.720 | at the top of a mountain, right?

02:30:58.380 | That's what it looks like.

02:30:59.620 | The person looking out the window at the garden

02:31:01.800 | and thinking about what they overcame to create the garden

02:31:05.480 | and seeing the goodness of it all.

02:31:07.880 | - Yeah, I'm glad you said the word creating

02:31:09.900 | because it seems it's about creating things,

02:31:12.760 | real tangible things, but that the process to get there

02:31:16.420 | is every bit as important as what's created.

02:31:19.240 | - When you create knowledge, that's tangible, right?

02:31:22.040 | Like you create knowledge.

02:31:23.300 | Maybe that person looks down the row of beautiful flowers

02:31:26.460 | and has the same sense of goodness inside of them

02:31:28.820 | that you do when you're aware like,

02:31:30.600 | right, I just went and learned something.

02:31:33.140 | - As you described that, I'm thinking, I certainly hope so,

02:31:36.220 | 'cause for me, it's an incredible sense of satisfaction.

02:31:40.700 | And one that I enjoy so much

02:31:43.500 | that I almost don't want to look at it too much

02:31:45.020 | 'cause to me, it sits in this rare domain of perfect.

02:31:49.780 | Like it's just, it just feels so good

02:31:52.580 | and that I can get back there is very comforting to me.

02:31:57.580 | - Right, and that's all of this, that it feels so good.

02:32:00.560 | That's what all this is, it's the generative drive, right?

02:32:03.680 | It's the gratitude, it's the contentment.

02:32:06.860 | It's like all that coming together.

02:32:08.500 | And it's interesting, we could contrast that

02:32:10.900 | to when you talked about a repeated cycle that's negative,

02:32:13.980 | right, then you're not feeling that, right?

02:32:16.300 | So think about the learning that can come from it, right?

02:32:19.100 | That you can achieve this and feel this

02:32:22.200 | and be in this state in one aspect of your life.

02:32:24.860 | What can you learn from that to bring to the other place?

02:32:27.500 | And more, yes, that's important.

02:32:29.340 | It's more, it's often starting with what's going on

02:32:32.560 | in the place that's not doing well, right?

02:32:34.520 | Like is it, why the repetition, right?

02:32:36.320 | So this is how we can have what we're seeking

02:32:40.060 | in parts of our lives, even if we don't in others,

02:32:42.800 | but if we can have it in parts of our lives,

02:32:44.560 | we can have it in others too.

02:32:46.220 | And we can become role models for ourselves.

02:32:48.840 | We can learn from ourselves.

02:32:50.480 | We can learn from what brings the good,

02:32:53.100 | how to raise up the things about us

02:32:56.040 | and in our lives that aren't there yet.

02:32:57.940 | - I often get the question from the general public,

02:33:03.160 | how can I stop overthinking?

02:33:05.700 | You know, I have to imagine based on the fact

02:33:09.000 | that I get that question so often

02:33:10.440 | that there are a great number of people

02:33:12.220 | who sense their own generative drive.

02:33:15.880 | What are your thoughts on that?

02:33:17.960 | - Thinking can be wonderful

02:33:20.040 | if we're using thinking to learn, right?

02:33:22.740 | To figure things out.

02:33:24.080 | So when thinking is doing that, thinking is great,

02:33:27.360 | but a lot of thinking is just in the service

02:33:30.480 | of something else, right?

02:33:31.960 | And a lot of thinking works against us.

02:33:34.880 | So imagine the person making the garden, right?

02:33:38.560 | The person has to think about it.

02:33:39.840 | If you think about what seeds to make,

02:33:41.180 | they have to think about where the tools are.

02:33:43.240 | They have to think about what they're doing,

02:33:44.520 | when they're planting, when they're watering.

02:33:46.440 | There's a lot to do,

02:33:47.560 | but the beauty of it isn't in the thinking, right?

02:33:50.620 | The thinking is in the service of what is generative, right?

02:33:55.620 | So that's a different kind.

02:33:57.600 | It's just thinking in the service of something.

02:33:59.360 | But a lot of our thinking is that.

02:34:01.800 | You know, it's planning, it's projecting.

02:34:03.760 | We tend to glorify the planning and the projecting,

02:34:06.520 | and it can be great when we're learning,

02:34:08.520 | when we're figuring things out.

02:34:10.200 | But a lot of that is there so that we can do the things

02:34:13.640 | that are good for us to do, right?

02:34:15.060 | The planning and the projecting around making the garden

02:34:17.220 | where the point of it is the garden.

02:34:19.200 | It's not the thinking part, right?

02:34:21.440 | We can also use thinking against us.

02:34:23.880 | So much thinking is repetitive

02:34:26.780 | and not just unproductive, but harmful, right?

02:34:30.800 | That person who's looking out the window at the garden

02:34:34.500 | may be thinking.

02:34:35.720 | I mean, sometimes there's just pauses in our thinking,

02:34:37.940 | but, you know, a lot of times a person must be thinking.

02:34:40.520 | And what often goes on there

02:34:43.260 | is just repetitive, negative thinking.

02:34:45.820 | It's, you know, gosh, I used to have a garden.

02:34:48.740 | I remember when that was beautiful,

02:34:50.320 | or remember before such and such a person passed away,

02:34:55.320 | and then we stopped making the garden,

02:34:57.060 | or I'll never be able to make a garden again,

02:34:59.580 | or gosh, it's too much.

02:35:01.460 | You know, it's just something

02:35:02.780 | that's negative and unproductive.

02:35:04.340 | I mean, what else is there to think?

02:35:06.180 | If the person's actually looking out the window

02:35:07.720 | at the garden, right,

02:35:09.020 | and they're in this sort of stuck state,

02:35:10.840 | they're not in a generative state,

02:35:12.260 | then the thinking becomes repetitive

02:35:15.360 | and it furthers all the negative, right?

02:35:17.120 | As you said, the more we further the negative,

02:35:18.700 | the more we take, if there's a four-lane highway

02:35:20.540 | that we want to atrophy,

02:35:22.300 | let's not make it into a six-lane highway, you know?

02:35:24.620 | But we do that when we have this repetitive thinking,

02:35:27.700 | which then can evolve into the narratives,

02:35:30.180 | the things that we say to ourselves, right?

02:35:32.400 | So, you know, thinking is wonderful.

02:35:35.700 | It's wonderful, but it can also just observe something else,

02:35:39.460 | and it can also be used against us.

02:35:41.660 | So what we're talking about here doesn't glorify thinking.

02:35:44.880 | I mean, it does if it's in the service

02:35:46.420 | of the generative drive, but it doesn't in and of itself.

02:35:49.400 | - I think many people set a time,

02:35:55.080 | say, you know, 9.30 a.m. or 10 a.m.

02:35:57.980 | when they are going to begin doing something

02:35:59.820 | that they want to do or know they should do

02:36:02.700 | that's a little bit challenging.

02:36:03.820 | It could be exercise, could be cognitively demanding work.

02:36:07.540 | And then 10 o'clock rolls around, they say, okay, 10.15.

02:36:10.940 | And they're distracted by often social media texting.

02:36:14.620 | These days, I think those are the main culprits, really.

02:36:17.740 | I don't know too many people that get distracted

02:36:19.300 | by exercise and reading books.

02:36:22.540 | Some do, and doing complex puzzles or math,

02:36:26.320 | but, you know, social media is a little bit

02:36:29.380 | like mental chewing gum, except that I would add to that,

02:36:32.200 | that it's the kind of chewing gum that really does

02:36:35.600 | sate the appetite in a way that prevents you

02:36:37.780 | from eating nutritious food, unless used correctly, right?

02:36:41.700 | And then people feel bad about themselves

02:36:46.100 | because the whole morning went by, now it's noon,

02:36:48.860 | then they require some food, like any typical person.

02:36:53.000 | And they eat, then they might need a little nap

02:36:54.740 | for the gross perandial dip in energy.

02:36:57.460 | And then the afternoon, and then it goes on and on.

02:37:00.040 | I mean, I hear this all the time.

02:37:02.240 | I've experienced this before,

02:37:03.560 | so I'm not immune to this myself.

02:37:05.080 | That's why I try and capture that early wave of energy,

02:37:08.680 | whatever it might be, adrenaline, noradrenaline,

02:37:11.120 | some combination.

02:37:14.060 | The way you describe thinking and its potential relationship

02:37:16.760 | to generative drive, it seems to me it's so important

02:37:20.560 | that we capture those moments of potential creation,

02:37:25.560 | however small the action might be to remind ourselves

02:37:29.740 | that we are capable of moving things from point A to point B

02:37:33.700 | because in the description I just gave of the person

02:37:35.860 | that lets the morning escape,

02:37:38.340 | there's really no external barrier

02:37:42.720 | except these distractions.

02:37:44.080 | Put differently, all the tools exist within most all of us

02:37:47.680 | to be able to create what we want to create,

02:37:49.420 | or at least to create something.

02:37:51.020 | And yet many, many people just don't fulfill that right

02:37:59.440 | that they were, and that we've all been given.

02:38:01.920 | So let's think about what's going on there.

02:38:05.400 | So the person says, "I'm gonna exercise at 10 o'clock."

02:38:09.120 | Now they push it back to 10.15

02:38:11.040 | and they do something on social media,

02:38:12.520 | or they push it back to 10.30.

02:38:14.320 | It'll be okay, I'll get it all in.

02:38:16.580 | What they're doing is they're engaging

02:38:19.240 | in unhealthy defense mechanisms.

02:38:21.760 | So if we go back to the pillars, the structure of self,

02:38:25.640 | the function of self, there may be other reasons for it,

02:38:28.960 | but let's just identify the unhealthy defenses

02:38:32.120 | of avoidance and rationalization.

02:38:34.800 | And then there's no thinking going on about that.

02:38:38.200 | They're just unconscious processes and you kick it down.

02:38:40.880 | You kick it down the clock 15 minutes.

02:38:43.400 | They're not thinking about it.

02:38:44.720 | Thinking then is subserving something different.

02:38:47.280 | The thinking is subserving the avoidance.

02:38:49.480 | If I'm gonna go look on something, read a couple of things,

02:38:52.100 | reply, I'm thinking, I'm planning.

02:38:54.720 | I gotta get the, maybe I gotta get the phone out.

02:38:56.440 | I gotta tap my code into it.

02:38:58.600 | I gotta go to a certain website.

02:38:59.820 | Like we're doing something that we're thinking about it.

02:39:02.000 | I think about what I'm gonna write back,

02:39:03.840 | but the thinking is all in the service

02:39:06.720 | of the unhealthy defenses, right?

02:39:09.160 | So then by understanding ourselves better,

02:39:12.060 | we can bring that to a healthier place.

02:39:16.560 | How?

02:39:17.400 | By actually using thinking for what helps us, right?

02:39:20.520 | So let's think of like, what, okay, what's going,

02:39:22.620 | let's say if you're doing that, okay,

02:39:24.400 | what's going on when you're doing that, right?

02:39:27.040 | So do you, you really want to exercise, right?

02:39:30.320 | But like, it's not easy to exercise.

02:39:31.900 | And sometimes it might be just problem solving.

02:39:33.480 | Are you doing a thing you like?

02:39:34.600 | Maybe something you like more,

02:39:35.700 | there's lower barrier, et cetera.

02:39:37.520 | But let's say we're just working

02:39:39.040 | within the psychological, right?

02:39:41.080 | Then you can come at that a couple of ways.

02:39:43.580 | Like, oh, I don't wanna do that thing.

02:39:44.840 | That thing's hard, right?

02:39:46.160 | I mean, I think that about things in my life sometimes,

02:39:49.400 | and it always makes me weighty and unhappy, right?

02:39:53.420 | I may as well put 20 pound weights on either side of me.

02:39:56.280 | Right, I mean, I can look at it that way, right?

02:39:58.960 | Or there's a different way of looking at it

02:40:01.360 | that actually fits much better,

02:40:03.460 | which is like, I'm not daunted by doing difficult things.

02:40:06.080 | And I can get out there and apply myself.

02:40:08.560 | And you know, and I feel good about that

02:40:10.400 | when I do difficult things.

02:40:11.940 | It's like part of my identity, right?

02:40:13.460 | It's like part of how I see myself.

02:40:15.040 | So right, I'm gonna go do this thing

02:40:16.880 | and I'm gonna feel good about it.

02:40:18.360 | And isn't it amazing that I get to do it, right?

02:40:20.600 | Like, look, here I am, I'm alive, I'm healthy, right?

02:40:22.980 | I can go do this thing.

02:40:24.160 | My health is good, but I wanna make it better, right?

02:40:27.040 | By working out or I'm at least alive.

02:40:28.980 | And if I lose a little bit of weight, I'll feel healthier.

02:40:31.800 | Like, come on, this is good, right?

02:40:33.960 | And then I'll feel different about that, right?

02:40:36.560 | And like the truth is one or the other.

02:40:38.840 | It's like, oh, both can be true.

02:40:40.040 | Now, what will be true is what you choose, right?

02:40:42.800 | And if you choose the negative, then yes,

02:40:45.280 | the unhealthy defenses perpetuate.

02:40:47.000 | And even if you get yourself to do it today,

02:40:48.440 | it's harder to do it tomorrow.

02:40:49.740 | That's why sometimes I'll say to a person like,

02:40:51.280 | just take a look at it and decide

02:40:52.680 | if you wanna do it or not.

02:40:54.160 | If you don't wanna exercise, just decide you don't, right?

02:40:57.400 | And then, okay, there's a trade-off for everything.

02:40:59.480 | Maybe you're okay with the trade-off, right?

02:41:01.080 | But what am I trying to do there, right?

02:41:03.040 | Is bring to consciousness

02:41:05.000 | that that person is making a choice, right?

02:41:07.200 | Do you wanna do it?

02:41:08.040 | If you wanna do it, it's great to just do it, right?

02:41:11.700 | And if you don't, it's great to not do it.

02:41:13.680 | Then at least you're being honest and clear with yourself

02:41:15.640 | and you're not wasting all that time

02:41:17.040 | when you keep kicking it 15 minutes down the clock

02:41:21.400 | until it's too late.

02:41:22.720 | Does that make sense?

02:41:23.960 | That's, I think, how the structure here really does.

02:41:27.360 | It works because it's pulling together what we know

02:41:30.840 | from the biology to the psychology

02:41:33.000 | of like how to understand ourselves

02:41:34.720 | and how to understand when things aren't the way

02:41:37.160 | we want them to be

02:41:38.200 | so that we can make them the way we want them to be.

02:41:40.920 | It's not magic.

02:41:41.760 | It's following the sort of mathematical aspects

02:41:44.240 | of going to the factors, assessing them, making changes,

02:41:47.900 | and then, of course, we see the outcome we wanna see.

02:41:50.840 | The way you describe it does make sense.

02:41:53.320 | And I appreciate it because I think ultimately

02:41:57.240 | it seems to ratchet back to actions, to verbs,

02:42:00.080 | to bring us to these feeling states that, you know,

02:42:03.440 | I think are what people are seeking, you know?

02:42:05.700 | Peace, contentment, delight, you know,

02:42:07.400 | through agency, gratitude as active terms.

02:42:10.040 | - Right, yes.

02:42:11.040 | - You know, I think these are universal desires.

02:42:13.920 | And again, you're providing this wonderful roadmap

02:42:16.600 | for people to arrive there.

02:42:18.440 | - Thank you.

02:42:19.380 | I do have a question about some of the underpinnings

02:42:21.740 | of generative drive.

02:42:23.120 | In particular, this notion of aggressive drive.

02:42:26.280 | I've known people that seem to have a lot of this.

02:42:30.560 | They just have a lot of get up and go

02:42:32.640 | or a lot of drive to create in the world

02:42:35.320 | or to figure things out.

02:42:37.280 | They often do create great lives for themselves

02:42:40.100 | in work, in relationship, et cetera.

02:42:42.580 | I've also observed that these people

02:42:44.020 | often don't have the best relationship to themselves

02:42:46.100 | or that they run up against barriers or frankly,

02:42:49.520 | sometimes straight into brick walls

02:42:52.000 | in certain domains of their life,

02:42:54.120 | perhaps as a consequence of having too much

02:42:55.840 | of this generative or aggressive drive.

02:42:58.240 | And at the same time, I know that there are people

02:43:01.060 | in the world, many that have what seems

02:43:05.400 | to be a low generative drive.

02:43:07.200 | I don't know if that's the case or not,

02:43:08.660 | but that they seem to have a hard time engaging

02:43:13.120 | like in doing things and often you get the impression

02:43:16.780 | that they somewhat are completely given up.

02:43:19.840 | It's just like life is just too hard

02:43:22.220 | or sometimes it's even more subtle.

02:43:24.540 | Like I know someone who, they like their job,

02:43:28.400 | but they've come to the place that like it's just work,

02:43:33.080 | like it's a paycheck and that might be enough,

02:43:35.860 | but they're always talking about it.

02:43:37.640 | So I have to assume that it's not enough.

02:43:39.220 | They aren't able to slot their work into one domain

02:43:41.460 | and just focus on the other aspects of their life

02:43:44.500 | that are going well.

02:43:45.340 | It doesn't compensate for them to think

02:43:47.360 | about the other aspects of their life, that is.

02:43:49.380 | So is there a continuum of generative drives

02:43:53.060 | that exist in us?

02:43:53.900 | Are these intrinsic?

02:43:55.260 | I realize there are a near infinite number of conditions

02:43:58.240 | that could give rise to one or the other.

02:44:01.100 | It could be hardwired, it could be nature,

02:44:02.620 | it could be nurture, but what is the relationship

02:44:05.560 | between kind of, I want to say arousal

02:44:09.700 | or the potential for arousal and aggressive drive

02:44:13.900 | and these things that we're seeking?

02:44:17.140 | - Yeah, yeah.

02:44:18.260 | So if it's okay, I'd like to start

02:44:20.580 | like the first principles of the drives, right?

02:44:23.360 | So the theory of drives came about

02:44:26.300 | when people were observing very closely

02:44:29.220 | like human beings and human behavior,

02:44:31.260 | individuals, societies, cultures, right?

02:44:34.940 | And identifying that, hey, that you can boil a lot

02:44:39.620 | of things down to a drive that we call aggressive, right?

02:44:44.620 | There's something to like impose myself out there

02:44:47.720 | on the world around me, right?

02:44:49.300 | It explains a lot of what people do, right?

02:44:52.020 | And then the other identified drive was pleasure, right?

02:44:56.460 | It was, you know, so enjoyment,

02:44:58.420 | even relief of unpleasantness, right?

02:45:00.780 | There's those, like you can describe a lot

02:45:02.820 | of human behavior and that to understand

02:45:06.580 | like what's going on inside of us,

02:45:08.620 | that means that we're here, right?

02:45:10.980 | You see that through the lens

02:45:12.660 | of aggressive and pleasure drives.

02:45:15.700 | And like, that's the answer to it, to how we survive.

02:45:19.180 | But I think that is not the answer to it,

02:45:22.200 | that if it were just aggressive drives and pleasure drives,

02:45:26.700 | there's not a value system around that.

02:45:29.300 | Like somebody who's very industrious can build or destroy,

02:45:33.100 | right, and we see this in historical figures,

02:45:35.600 | like being very intelligent and very industrious

02:45:37.780 | and this has nothing to do

02:45:39.300 | with whether you're building or destroying, right?

02:45:41.980 | So if it were just an aggressive drive and a pleasure drive,

02:45:46.480 | then we wouldn't be having this conversation, right,

02:45:49.500 | because the species would not have survived, right?

02:45:53.380 | So if you believe that, and I believe that,

02:45:55.940 | then you look for something else.

02:45:57.800 | You say, maybe we looked and we found two things

02:45:59.700 | and there are more things, right?

02:46:01.520 | And then we start thinking about learning for learning's sake,

02:46:04.120 | altruism, things that are not explained, right,

02:46:07.000 | unless there's a self-referential,

02:46:08.360 | well, you feel good doing something for someone else,

02:46:10.120 | so therefore it's selfish.

02:46:11.780 | Like there's a lot of gyrations around that.

02:46:13.900 | If you really observe humans, you do see altruism.

02:46:17.360 | You see learning for learning's sake.

02:46:19.980 | You see people being benign

02:46:21.940 | when everything about a situation would say

02:46:24.400 | that they could, would, or should under society's rules

02:46:27.420 | not be benign, right?

02:46:28.900 | And then we start to see that there is another drive,

02:46:32.220 | that how do you explain that we're here?

02:46:34.220 | Yeah, aggression, pleasure, and generativeness,

02:46:38.100 | or a generative drive, the drive to make things better.

02:46:41.060 | That's why we build more than we destroy.

02:46:43.100 | We destroy a lot, right?

02:46:44.820 | But we build more than we destroy,

02:46:47.020 | otherwise we wouldn't have clothes on our backs,

02:46:49.140 | let alone have the technology to sit here

02:46:51.980 | and to be able to do this.

02:46:53.780 | So it's the generative drive that is most realized

02:46:58.140 | in the healthy person, right?

02:46:59.940 | And the healthy person has the strong generative drive.

02:47:04.100 | Now, as you said, there are other factors,

02:47:06.740 | and this is sort of what you were asking about.

02:47:08.260 | They're probably, they're natural levels of aggression

02:47:11.140 | or pleasure-seeking or generativeness

02:47:13.060 | that differ across people, right?

02:47:14.540 | 'Cause we're a product of the complexity of our genetics

02:47:18.500 | and all the complexities of nature and nurture.

02:47:21.040 | So we're gonna get to a place where some of us have more,

02:47:24.960 | some of us have less, right?

02:47:26.880 | The conclusion though is for all of us,

02:47:30.640 | the generative drive being at the helm

02:47:34.160 | is what leads us to live good lives, right?

02:47:38.460 | To live to the things that we aspire to,

02:47:40.380 | the peace and contentment, right?

02:47:42.160 | So we want the generative drive to rule the day, right?

02:47:46.560 | Whether a person is studying neuroscience

02:47:48.280 | or growing gardens, right?

02:47:49.480 | The importance is about being generative.

02:47:52.520 | Then aggression and pleasure can subserve

02:47:57.380 | the generative drive, right?

02:47:58.820 | And then the question you're asking, I think, which is,

02:48:01.260 | well, what if there's too much aggression,

02:48:02.880 | too little aggression, right?

02:48:04.460 | Or too much pleasure-seeking, too little pleasure-seeking,

02:48:07.300 | that's when we can see problems, right?

02:48:10.500 | And the problems then lead us back to the pillars

02:48:12.820 | to figure out the problems.

02:48:14.180 | So too much aggression ultimately becomes envy, right?

02:48:19.520 | Too much aggression means like I want to impose myself

02:48:23.320 | on the world around me more than I can,

02:48:25.600 | more than is reasonable,

02:48:26.880 | more than I can do without impinging upon others, right?

02:48:30.760 | That what you end up doing is taking from others, right?

02:48:33.960 | Too much aggression becomes destructive, right?

02:48:37.220 | Maybe a person destroys, tears something down, right?

02:48:40.000 | Takes from others, says the nasty comment

02:48:44.040 | when it wasn't necessary and now everyone feels bad, right?

02:48:46.640 | But there's that too much aggression becomes envy, right?

02:48:51.640 | And envy is destructive, right?

02:48:55.160 | The same thing with too much pleasure-seeking.

02:48:57.260 | If I say, okay, I want my fair share of pleasure

02:48:59.820 | and relief of distress and all that,

02:49:01.740 | but if I rely on that too much, right?

02:49:04.680 | We're now, instead of aggression,

02:49:06.220 | eclipsing the generative drive,

02:49:08.260 | now it's pleasure eclipsing the generative drive.

02:49:10.300 | Then I want more pleasure and more pleasure and more pleasure

02:49:12.880 | and how long before I want your pleasure, right?

02:49:15.220 | So then it's not healthy, right?

02:49:17.340 | What it becomes is envious, right?

02:49:18.940 | It becomes destructive

02:49:20.320 | because then I become covetous of your pleasure

02:49:22.860 | or if I can't get it, but I could bring you down,

02:49:26.540 | then I'll feel better about myself.

02:49:28.160 | That's envy, right?

02:49:29.600 | So too much aggression eclipsing the generative drive,

02:49:33.520 | too much of pleasure seeking, pleasure drive

02:49:37.160 | eclipsing the generative drive,

02:49:38.920 | and we end up in places of envy and envy is destructive.

02:49:43.580 | And now we're in trouble.

02:49:45.380 | - I've never thought before about the relationship

02:49:47.580 | between aggression, pleasure, and envy,

02:49:50.280 | but as you're describing it,

02:49:52.480 | comes to mind the movie "American Psycho"

02:49:55.440 | where Christian Bale plays this,

02:49:58.260 | well, basically an '80s yuppie

02:50:01.540 | working in finance in New York.

02:50:03.060 | And for anyone that's seen it,

02:50:05.140 | it can only be described as a violent parody

02:50:08.980 | of '80s yuppie culture.

02:50:10.800 | And it's meant to be- - As dark a comedy

02:50:12.180 | as there's going to be, right?

02:50:13.020 | - Yeah, it's as dark a comedy as it could be,

02:50:14.580 | and don't let your young children watch it

02:50:16.700 | because it's very gruesome and like very sexual.

02:50:20.060 | But the aggressive features within the character

02:50:25.060 | that Bale plays are immediately apparent in the movie.

02:50:28.980 | Like, you know, violent aggression, sexual aggression,

02:50:31.780 | seeking money, seeking wealth all the time,

02:50:36.420 | a narcissism too, an obsession with like everything

02:50:39.060 | from his skincare routine to his eight-pack abs

02:50:42.860 | and like, it's ridiculous.

02:50:44.620 | But also an interesting window into some milder forms

02:50:48.700 | of those features that still exist

02:50:50.020 | in many people today, right?

02:50:51.460 | But the envy component starts to reveal itself

02:50:55.500 | a little bit later into the movie

02:50:56.820 | where the scene I recall is one around

02:50:59.160 | where someone hands him a business card

02:51:01.220 | and then you hear the narrative in his own mind

02:51:02.940 | about how much nicer that guy's business card is than his

02:51:06.940 | and how he hates him so much.

02:51:08.300 | He ends up killing the guy in very violent

02:51:10.860 | and sadistic fashion.

02:51:11.940 | - That's aggression over generousness, right?

02:51:14.140 | - Right, and so, and the whole movie is about

02:51:17.280 | this one aspect of culture at that time's ability

02:51:21.300 | to impose their will on everyone at their whim.

02:51:25.740 | You know, basically Bale just does whatever

02:51:27.420 | the hell he wants at any point.

02:51:28.980 | Goes, returns, videotapes in between.

02:51:30.780 | And you know, and there's so much woven into it

02:51:33.020 | and that is relevant and so much that's woven into it

02:51:37.440 | that's just purely for people's kind of sick entertainment.

02:51:41.620 | But that, I believe it was Brent Easton Ellis

02:51:45.180 | that wrote that and you know,

02:51:46.140 | is tapping into the aggression component,

02:51:48.540 | the pleasure component, but the envy component

02:51:51.100 | is really what resonates as you come to the end of the movie

02:51:53.940 | is like, there's no satisfying this guy.

02:51:56.480 | He could kill or sleep with as many people as he wants

02:51:58.980 | in the movie and he can have as much wealth as he wants.

02:52:02.340 | He can have entire buildings.

02:52:03.700 | In fact, I think he's living in an entire building

02:52:05.700 | at some point.

02:52:06.540 | He takes over people's apartments after he kills them.

02:52:08.340 | It's wild and disgusting.

02:52:11.660 | But it really speaks to the extent to which envy

02:52:14.180 | is woven into aggression and pleasure seeking.

02:52:17.860 | And it's not something that had really sunk in for me

02:52:21.140 | until you describe it now.

02:52:22.980 | Because I think for most people, they imagine,

02:52:25.740 | okay, when somebody has X number of millions

02:52:29.900 | or billions of dollars that they'll reach this place

02:52:32.180 | of peace, contentment, and delight, right?

02:52:34.040 | They'll have enough.

02:52:35.500 | And in the movie Wall Street, there's that one scene

02:52:38.540 | where someone says, you know, what's your number?

02:52:40.020 | Like at what point is it enough?

02:52:41.320 | And the guy says, more.

02:52:42.620 | That says all sorts of things about the dopaminergic system

02:52:45.200 | of reward systems in the brain, et cetera.

02:52:47.500 | But I think it says a lot more about envy.

02:52:50.620 | - Absolutely.

02:52:51.460 | - And what a pit of despair envy is for everybody involved.

02:52:56.000 | - Right, right.

02:52:56.940 | Look, envy may not be the root of all evil,

02:52:59.940 | but envy plus natural disasters may be.

02:53:02.800 | So much evil and destruction arises from envy.

02:53:08.620 | And it may be that it's at the root of all of it.

02:53:12.860 | And we so under appreciate that, right?

02:53:15.260 | We so under appreciate why people are destructive, right?

02:53:18.900 | Which is why the roots aren't always in trauma,

02:53:21.060 | but a significant aspect of where envy arises from

02:53:26.060 | can often be trauma, creating a sense of guilt

02:53:31.020 | and shame and vulnerability.

02:53:32.740 | But wherever a person may come by it,

02:53:35.180 | and it's a larger discussion of envy

02:53:37.180 | and where it may come from, is it drives destruction.

02:53:41.140 | And if the aggressive drive is greater

02:53:45.140 | than the generative drive, or if the pleasure drive

02:53:47.700 | is greater than the generative drive,

02:53:49.380 | or if both are greater than the generative drive,

02:53:52.840 | it will drive destruction.

02:53:54.320 | And that destruction, the vast majority of times,

02:53:58.380 | if you look deep enough, you find at its roots envy.

02:54:01.700 | That envy may arise from guilt and shame within the person,

02:54:04.700 | but as soon as it becomes about another, right?

02:54:07.180 | I feel guilt and shame and inadequacy inside of me,

02:54:10.060 | but then I feel envy of those around me.

02:54:12.660 | It drives the vast majority of destruction.

02:54:15.260 | - Do you think that's what's happening

02:54:17.840 | when we see these sadly ever more frequent examples

02:54:22.320 | of active shooters and school shootings,

02:54:25.620 | things of that sort?

02:54:26.700 | - Yes, there are other people who have life, right?

02:54:30.660 | And that person doesn't feel that they do.

02:54:33.480 | So they wanna go and take it away from them, right?

02:54:37.380 | That's why as long as we have human tribulation

02:54:40.180 | and a lot of guns, it's gonna happen.

02:54:42.940 | It's a logical conclusion of enough people

02:54:47.420 | being in places of despair

02:54:48.920 | and how envy can be cultivated within us.

02:54:51.760 | And then ultimately how it blinds people,

02:54:55.060 | it creates such a desire for destruction

02:54:58.220 | that then people will take life away from others.

02:55:01.220 | And often to be able to sometimes take their own life,

02:55:04.260 | which I think really brings to the forefront

02:55:07.140 | that that person doesn't feel that they have a life,

02:55:08.900 | certainly not a life worth preserving.

02:55:10.920 | So they're then going to take the lives of others.

02:55:14.260 | And I think we're seeing that is as stark

02:55:18.220 | a portrait of where envy can lead.

02:55:24.620 | I think as we can find on a one-person basis,

02:55:27.040 | we can look at wars and their destruction

02:55:29.460 | on a societal basis.

02:55:30.620 | But I think that's the ultimate in understanding

02:55:34.180 | where envy can drive a person.

02:55:35.780 | - What about the other end of the spectrum

02:55:39.780 | when aggression and pleasure seeking are too low?

02:55:44.320 | - The other side of the spectrum is demoralization, right?

02:55:48.920 | So imagine very, very low aggression,

02:55:51.940 | so low self-assertion, low agency.

02:55:55.300 | There comes a place where the person is not then

02:56:00.120 | imposing themselves or believing that they can

02:56:02.680 | in much of any way on the outside world.

02:56:06.440 | And that creates a sense of isolation understandably, right?

02:56:09.440 | A sense of powerlessness and vulnerability and isolation.

02:56:12.680 | And that then becomes demoralizing,

02:56:15.040 | which is not the same as depression.

02:56:16.600 | I mean, we know depression is a...

02:56:19.440 | There's a neurochemical imbalance, right?

02:56:21.720 | Whether that imbalance came purely biologically

02:56:24.180 | or came psychologically or because of external events,

02:56:27.440 | there's a neurochemical imbalance.

02:56:29.600 | Here, we're not talking about an illness state

02:56:32.600 | as identified by modern psychiatry.

02:56:34.840 | There's not a number in the book of diagnoses

02:56:37.820 | that goes along with being demoralized, right?

02:56:40.900 | But why?

02:56:41.740 | Because it's a state that humans can be in

02:56:44.160 | and too low of an aggressive drive, right?

02:56:47.240 | And all the things that come of that,

02:56:49.120 | it's isolating and it's demoralizing.

02:56:51.480 | The same with too low of a pleasure drive.

02:56:55.100 | So an example that may be relatable to some people

02:56:59.820 | is knowing someone who has had a couple

02:57:02.900 | of really bad breakups and then says,

02:57:04.540 | "Oh, I'm not, you know what?

02:57:05.380 | I'm done with that.

02:57:06.200 | There's no more romance.

02:57:07.180 | I'm gonna be single," right?

02:57:08.220 | And you know like that person has a drive in them.

02:57:10.700 | Like, you know, they're an interconnected person.

02:57:12.420 | Like they want romance.

02:57:13.580 | So these are things that are important to them,

02:57:15.380 | but they make a decision.

02:57:17.460 | I'm not gonna have that in my life.

02:57:20.000 | What would be called in some psychodynamic sense

02:57:22.600 | is inviting death into life,

02:57:24.020 | a little bit of death by swearing off something

02:57:27.060 | that the person has a drive towards, right?

02:57:29.140 | The pleasure drive of companionship and of romance, right?

02:57:32.780 | That then becomes demoralizing as well.

02:57:35.860 | So sure, those things,

02:57:36.860 | demoralization can predispose to depression,

02:57:40.100 | but demoralization is a thing in and of itself

02:57:42.980 | is where then there's a sense of hopelessness.

02:57:45.020 | There's a sense of the goodness then isn't accessible anymore

02:57:49.220 | and that's the other side of envy.

02:57:52.460 | Can low levels of aggression

02:57:54.700 | and the resulting demoralization

02:57:57.780 | be coupled with high levels of pleasure seeking?

02:58:01.160 | So I'm thinking about the person that is like very overweight,

02:58:05.620 | clearly headed for health issues

02:58:08.980 | if they don't already have them

02:58:10.740 | and perhaps would like to remove that weight,

02:58:15.220 | would like to feel more vigorous,

02:58:17.100 | doesn't want type 2 diabetes and an early death,

02:58:20.980 | but at some level they've given up

02:58:22.820 | because the pleasure of eating

02:58:24.900 | is something they really enjoy.

02:58:26.300 | They really love it and yet it has a component to it

02:58:29.980 | in their life where they either self-soothe with it

02:58:33.500 | or they're just trying to hit baseline levels

02:58:35.500 | of satisfaction with it

02:58:36.740 | and they allow themselves to effectively be sedentary

02:58:41.740 | and then the other sorts of troubles start to show up,

02:58:45.580 | sleep apnea from carrying excessive weight

02:58:47.740 | and then they're feeling tired during the day

02:58:49.300 | and then who can exercise when they're too tired

02:58:51.260 | when you got to work and maintain other life demands

02:58:53.300 | and you can kind of see where this could rise

02:58:56.420 | and makes perfect sense.

02:58:57.820 | You can also see where

02:59:00.020 | if there were just a little bit more aggression,

02:59:03.460 | it could all be turned around, but they don't have it.

02:59:05.820 | So is the scenario described something

02:59:07.560 | that you've seen clinically?

02:59:08.740 | I certainly observe it in my nonclinical stance

02:59:11.380 | out there in the world a lot.

02:59:13.220 | - Right, well, I think the most important thing

02:59:16.260 | you're pointing out is that aggression and pleasure

02:59:20.300 | on the high end, we know can trump the generative drive,

02:59:25.100 | but that this can also happen on the low end.

02:59:28.340 | So you're describing a situation,

02:59:29.820 | so this is a great example,

02:59:31.020 | but it's not uncommon in the world around us.

02:59:33.340 | So the aggression, meaning the fuel to put oneself

02:59:36.500 | out there in the world, to utilize the sense of agency.

02:59:40.180 | So this is gonna be a person who's low agency,

02:59:42.860 | the aggressive drive has as little fuel

02:59:45.960 | than to give the sense of agency,

02:59:47.340 | it's further squelched by negative sense of self

02:59:51.540 | and negative self-talk.

02:59:52.960 | Now you find where the aggressive drive is too low

02:59:57.500 | and too low can also trump the generative drive.

03:00:01.200 | Because then that person can't take care of themselves.

03:00:03.180 | A generative drive would say,

03:00:04.580 | there's a lot of life to live

03:00:05.840 | and there can be great things in life

03:00:07.140 | and take better care of yourself.

03:00:08.840 | And by the way, they're like people that you love

03:00:10.380 | and people that love you, or if not,

03:00:12.860 | there's an animal or a garden you love.

03:00:15.020 | So the generative drive is saying that, right?

03:00:18.380 | But it's not winning the day because the aggression

03:00:21.900 | or aggression is one word we could put to that drive.

03:00:24.500 | You could call it an assertion drive,

03:00:26.940 | we call it an agency drive,

03:00:28.220 | but we're using agency in a different way,

03:00:30.680 | but that thing is too low.

03:00:32.900 | So it wins out over the generative drive.

03:00:35.480 | And then in the example you gave,

03:00:36.920 | it's not surprising that the pleasure drive

03:00:40.120 | goes the other way.

03:00:40.980 | Maybe there's a predisposition to that genetically,

03:00:43.680 | maybe it's just reinforced

03:00:45.260 | because a person in that place could say,

03:00:47.980 | well, think of what the self-conception would be, right?

03:00:52.520 | I'm in this terrible place, it means I'm a terrible person,

03:00:56.460 | I can't make myself better,

03:00:57.800 | or I'm not good enough to get better,

03:00:59.840 | no one cares about me, I can't make anything right.

03:01:02.460 | So therefore, I don't matter,

03:01:05.620 | there's no reason to take care of myself,

03:01:07.140 | so why would I not do if I eat that one thing that I enjoy

03:01:11.200 | and it gives me pleasure,

03:01:12.620 | even if it gives me pleasure for two minutes,

03:01:14.080 | then I'll eat another one, like in a sense, so what?

03:01:16.560 | Well, 'cause I don't feel that I'm worth preserving

03:01:18.580 | or that I can preserve myself, right?

03:01:20.300 | There's a nihilism to it

03:01:22.060 | that then kind of makes it make sense

03:01:24.420 | to overindulge the pleasure drive,

03:01:26.160 | whether it's biologically predisposed

03:01:28.660 | or one is just arriving there,

03:01:30.740 | but the reason all that is bad

03:01:33.820 | is because the aggressive drive is too low

03:01:37.020 | and in fact, it's low enough

03:01:38.260 | that it's outweighing the generative drive,

03:01:39.820 | then the pleasure drive is gonna come into,

03:01:41.940 | one place or another.

03:01:42.940 | If it's also really low,

03:01:44.740 | the person does not much of anything and wastes away,

03:01:46.800 | which tragically happens a lot in our society, right?

03:01:49.840 | Or if the pleasure drive is high,

03:01:51.980 | maybe that person overindulges in things

03:01:54.060 | that provide short-term gratification

03:01:55.880 | and then that causes a different set of problems,

03:01:57.900 | but what's deterministic there

03:02:00.420 | is whether aggression or assertion,

03:02:03.620 | again, we could put different words to that drive,

03:02:05.600 | but what we've been calling the aggressive drive

03:02:07.740 | and the pleasure drive is one or the other or both

03:02:11.940 | high enough to trump the generative drive

03:02:14.500 | or low enough to trump the generative drive

03:02:17.180 | and I think all problems that we see,

03:02:19.820 | like everything fits into this model

03:02:22.800 | because it honors what we know, right?

03:02:24.980 | It honors what we know about human behavior

03:02:26.840 | and insights into human behavior over hundreds of years,

03:02:29.420 | right, over thousands of years,

03:02:30.620 | like the wisdom that we bring forward

03:02:32.560 | and it honors the science

03:02:34.660 | and that's why it fits together

03:02:36.940 | because I think it honors who we are as,

03:02:40.120 | what our species is, what we are

03:02:42.900 | and what it's like, what life is like

03:02:46.020 | as we try and engage with it.

03:02:49.060 | - Yeah, I've seen cases of demoralized people

03:02:54.320 | where they simply disappear.

03:02:58.320 | They hide, they isolate, they slow down,

03:03:02.600 | they take terrible care of their health

03:03:04.540 | and sadly, I've known several people like this

03:03:08.540 | in my lifetime, one of whom killed himself,

03:03:11.740 | the other who just has an immense number of health problems

03:03:14.780 | related to overeating and inactivity

03:03:17.900 | and knows it and talks about it

03:03:20.220 | but nothing seems to change despite multiple interventions

03:03:23.540 | from a caring standpoint, from friends, et cetera.

03:03:26.900 | I've also seen examples of people who are demoralized

03:03:29.540 | who seem to band with other demoralized people,

03:03:33.760 | sort of try to recalibrate the standard

03:03:36.540 | that they feel oppresses them.

03:03:39.320 | And this isn't necessarily just in the realm

03:03:42.340 | of physical fitness, this is also in the realm

03:03:44.420 | of like school demands.

03:03:45.960 | I went to a very demanding high school

03:03:48.820 | as I've talked about before on a couple of podcasts,

03:03:50.980 | I barely finished high school,

03:03:52.460 | I was not an attentive student.

03:03:54.220 | My aggressive and pleasure drives

03:03:57.080 | went into non-academic endeavors and I regret that.

03:04:00.980 | I had so much making up of learning to do

03:04:04.520 | by time I fortunately got to college, eventually caught up.

03:04:08.620 | But my experience of high school was that there were these,

03:04:13.620 | kids scoring perfectly on the SAT

03:04:16.140 | and the early admission to Harvard

03:04:17.640 | and early admission to Yale and all these places

03:04:20.100 | and then there was a distribution in the middle

03:04:22.900 | and then there was a collection of kids

03:04:25.620 | who were not doing well, knew they weren't doing well

03:04:29.260 | and kind of banded together around the idea

03:04:31.460 | of not doing well.

03:04:32.860 | I didn't consider myself part of that group

03:04:35.940 | because I frankly wasn't there that often

03:04:38.380 | and I was focused on other things as I mentioned,

03:04:41.420 | but what came of that group was actually quite tragic,

03:04:45.820 | not just for them, but for a lot of other people.

03:04:48.420 | They eventually engaged it,

03:04:51.100 | it wasn't a school shooting type scenario,

03:04:52.980 | but they eventually set off explosives

03:04:56.220 | on the school campus, this was after they had graduated.

03:04:59.820 | I don't know where they are nowadays,

03:05:01.060 | but things did not go well for them

03:05:03.140 | and they exerted a lot of destruction

03:05:08.140 | to other people around them.

03:05:10.180 | But before they did that,

03:05:11.540 | there was this kind of banding together around there,

03:05:14.420 | the fact that they didn't fit in that they,

03:05:16.100 | and they weren't bullied as I recall,

03:05:18.060 | that I could be wrong about this,

03:05:19.720 | but I've seen this in other forms too.

03:05:22.120 | Like, if you can't meet the standard,

03:05:24.800 | band up with other people and change the standard,

03:05:28.380 | and then you don't feel as demoralized perhaps.

03:05:31.260 | I can understand, I can rationalize

03:05:34.100 | why this would be a reasonable approach,

03:05:37.220 | but I'm seeing this more and more.

03:05:40.880 | I'm also seeing, by the way,

03:05:43.520 | the other end of the spectrum,

03:05:44.480 | people are overly aggressive and pleasure seeking

03:05:46.620 | and things of that sort, but for the moment,

03:05:49.340 | I'd like your thoughts on how demoralization

03:05:53.900 | can split off into different expressions,

03:05:56.620 | depending on how people feel

03:05:59.140 | and who else they're relating to.

03:06:00.720 | - Yeah, yeah.

03:06:02.180 | Well, I think the place I would start is to say,

03:06:05.540 | our society rushes headlong forward

03:06:08.540 | in a way that causes our society

03:06:10.600 | to trample people who are vulnerable.

03:06:12.940 | And vulnerable people are demoralized people,

03:06:15.300 | demoralized people are vulnerable people,

03:06:18.180 | and our society often tramples them

03:06:20.020 | and then they're not here with us any longer

03:06:21.720 | and that is tragic.

03:06:24.160 | But at times they don't get trampled,

03:06:26.280 | they get cast aside, right?

03:06:27.760 | They're injured, right?

03:06:29.320 | And cast aside.

03:06:30.980 | And from that place, tragic things happen, right?

03:06:34.640 | People then stay isolated.

03:06:36.560 | I think it's a tragedy that we don't all band together

03:06:39.960 | and go door to door, right?

03:06:41.500 | To seek people who aren't coming out of doors, right?

03:06:45.420 | In the sense of we let people be so isolated

03:06:48.600 | and oftentimes that's the tragic end of someone's story.

03:06:52.820 | Sometimes people do engage, right?

03:06:57.960 | Either demoralized, but they can engage

03:07:01.440 | in ways that involve an affiliative defense.

03:07:04.560 | So sometimes people who are demoralized can affiliate,

03:07:07.820 | they can band together in ways,

03:07:10.860 | as I think you were alluding to,

03:07:12.080 | that can make things better.

03:07:14.020 | So if people are demoralized,

03:07:15.760 | because say they're a group in society

03:07:19.440 | that is chronically very mistreated, right?

03:07:22.540 | Then it can be very powerful to band together,

03:07:24.740 | both because there's what's called an affiliative defense,

03:07:27.480 | that if I feel bad about myself about something

03:07:29.520 | and I'm alone, it's highly likely

03:07:31.560 | I'm gonna continue feeling bad about myself

03:07:33.360 | about that thing, right?

03:07:34.800 | But if you feel bad about yourself about the same thing

03:07:37.200 | and then we're together, right?

03:07:38.920 | We help each other feel better.

03:07:40.320 | We don't feel so lonely, alone.

03:07:42.060 | We don't feel so isolated.

03:07:43.160 | We don't feel so ashamed, right?

03:07:44.920 | So an affiliative defense can help people to say,

03:07:48.880 | wait a second, like I'm not,

03:07:50.400 | there's nothing wrong with me

03:07:51.280 | and I'm not gonna take this line down or something, right?

03:07:53.720 | And then, and to make assertions

03:07:55.520 | that create better rights in the world around us.

03:07:58.920 | So very good things can happen from affiliation

03:08:03.220 | in the context of demoralization,

03:08:05.440 | but very bad things can happen too, right?

03:08:07.920 | Because people can also affiliate

03:08:09.880 | around things that are very destructive.

03:08:11.880 | I mean, if I am hateful of society

03:08:14.460 | and I would like to be destructive and I'm alone,

03:08:16.760 | okay, I could do destructive things alone,

03:08:18.820 | but if I band together with a couple other people

03:08:20.940 | who feel that way, now I'm empowered to feel that way, right?

03:08:23.920 | Instead of maybe I feel that way

03:08:26.040 | or there's racism or prejudice

03:08:28.020 | and I don't feel like I can say that, right?

03:08:30.120 | But then when it's permissive, right?

03:08:32.060 | Because other people are in the same place,

03:08:35.800 | then people can accentuate the hatred within them.

03:08:39.420 | So affiliation is very, very powerful

03:08:43.160 | and part of society rushing so headlong forward

03:08:46.160 | and either trampling or marginalizing people

03:08:48.360 | is that we then don't pay attention

03:08:50.680 | or not enough attention

03:08:51.920 | to what happens with the affiliative groups, right?

03:08:54.960 | How do you guide people towards being able to affiliate

03:08:58.360 | in ways that are productive?

03:08:59.380 | How do you give them routes of being productive, right?

03:09:02.160 | How do you try and protect against the ways

03:09:04.400 | that affiliation can lead to destructive behavior?

03:09:07.760 | So I think a lot of this is,

03:09:09.720 | these are the natural things that happen within us,

03:09:12.300 | but a lot of what we're talking about now

03:09:14.700 | gets impacted a lot by society and societal standards,

03:09:19.040 | which we, of course, all together, you know,

03:09:21.240 | determine, right, and arise from us,

03:09:24.080 | but they start to sort of transcend

03:09:26.600 | because it's now people interacting

03:09:29.040 | with a whole social system.

03:09:31.020 | - Going back to the other end of the spectrum,

03:09:34.900 | excess aggression in particular.

03:09:38.160 | I was in a conversation with somebody recently,

03:09:41.540 | who's very successful,

03:09:43.280 | like beyond most people's comprehension

03:09:46.800 | of successful, financially successful,

03:09:48.820 | and seems to just have checked off their goals

03:09:52.540 | one box at a time, you know, from go,

03:09:55.820 | but who described his underlying psychology

03:10:01.620 | and emotional state as one in which much of what he does

03:10:06.520 | on a day-to-day basis is driven by aggression.

03:10:09.720 | In fact, he volunteered an anecdote about the fact

03:10:13.660 | that he hates early morning meetings on Zoom,

03:10:17.120 | but he shows up to them as sort of like an F-you

03:10:20.940 | towards somebody that might not even be on the meeting.

03:10:23.320 | - Right.

03:10:24.160 | - And so there's a friction point for him

03:10:26.720 | that allows him to engage in a way

03:10:28.500 | that he wouldn't otherwise be able to engage,

03:10:30.240 | and he channels that towards productivity,

03:10:32.920 | and clearly it's worked for him.

03:10:34.720 | You know, I don't know if he's done

03:10:38.580 | the sort of introspective deep dive.

03:10:41.220 | I imagine no, through the structure of self

03:10:43.320 | and function of self, but you know,

03:10:45.440 | what are we to make of that sort of example?

03:10:48.140 | I mean, I like the idea that if someone

03:10:50.520 | has a strong, aggressive drive,

03:10:53.780 | that they would channel it toward good.

03:10:55.280 | I mean, I have no reason to think this person

03:10:57.720 | is doing anything but good in the world

03:10:59.600 | for themselves and others.

03:11:00.800 | They're certainly not harming anyone,

03:11:02.720 | at least not to my knowledge,

03:11:05.580 | but that seems like a rough place to live.

03:11:08.900 | For me, it seems like a rough place to live.

03:11:10.640 | And at the same time, I'll offer a very brief anecdote

03:11:13.200 | that, you know, at one point in my career,

03:11:14.880 | namely when I was a postdoc,

03:11:16.800 | I was in a position by virtue of having left a laboratory

03:11:19.560 | in the nature of the field at the time

03:11:21.200 | where the work I wanted to do was directly pitted

03:11:24.060 | against the work of another very powerful laboratory,

03:11:28.560 | except that I was alone postdoc working in a laboratory,

03:11:32.160 | essentially on my own on this problem.

03:11:33.480 | And I remember going to my postdoc advisor,

03:11:35.700 | the late Ben Barrus, and saying, you know,

03:11:37.300 | I think it might just move to a different problem

03:11:40.240 | because I don't really want to go up against this Goliath.

03:11:43.820 | And he said, you know, this is the best, you know,

03:11:48.560 | I can capture Ben's voice.

03:11:49.820 | He said, "Absolutely not.

03:11:51.200 | Like, there's no way you love this stuff.

03:11:52.960 | You have to do it because you love it."

03:11:54.500 | And he kept telling me how much I love it.

03:11:55.760 | And he reminded me that indeed I did love the questions.

03:11:58.700 | And once I was able to tap back into the love for

03:12:01.160 | and the curiosity around the questions,

03:12:04.320 | I was able to push aside the concerns enough

03:12:07.300 | that we did well in publishing certain papers.

03:12:10.560 | They did well, but those five years, frankly,

03:12:13.820 | were a lot less pleasureful than they could have been,

03:12:17.880 | I think, because much of the script in my head

03:12:20.800 | was that I was in friction with this, like, you know,

03:12:24.240 | at least in my mind, this oppressive force.

03:12:26.480 | It was purely competitive.

03:12:27.960 | And I truly believe that we can't be

03:12:29.560 | in our most creative state when we are competing

03:12:32.200 | with someone else by definition,

03:12:33.720 | because then you're creating against a standard

03:12:36.620 | as opposed to raw creation.

03:12:38.920 | So in both cases, a lot of aggressive drive,

03:12:42.280 | frankly, I have some of that and I had that,

03:12:46.160 | but a desire for revenge, a component of friction

03:12:50.560 | mixed in, you know, or integrated with this aggressive drive

03:12:55.560 | like this picture, like, even as I describe it as,

03:12:58.680 | you know, causing the release of a little bit of adrenaline,

03:13:01.320 | it's not a comfortable state.

03:13:03.840 | It can't be a state of happiness, right?

03:13:06.440 | So as you said, people can do good in the world,

03:13:08.600 | they can do not good in the world.

03:13:09.560 | Like, we're not making a value judgment

03:13:10.840 | about what the person is doing,

03:13:12.400 | because that's not what the question is about, right?

03:13:15.080 | Like, how are they feeling, how are they doing, right?

03:13:17.440 | What's going on inside of them, right?

03:13:19.480 | And that can't be happy, right?

03:13:21.500 | That can't be happy because if you're built

03:13:24.440 | to be pretty good at competition, right?

03:13:27.160 | So you can size up what are the factors,

03:13:29.480 | you know, you can strategize, right?

03:13:30.920 | So if prison is built to be really good at competition,

03:13:34.000 | then, you know, it sounds pretty good

03:13:36.440 | to make everything a competition, right?

03:13:38.440 | Because you have the highest winning percentage, right?

03:13:41.160 | And that's good to achieve some end, right?

03:13:45.380 | That doesn't have any feeling

03:13:47.560 | intrinsically associated with it, right?

03:13:50.100 | And if all you're doing is a series of competitions

03:13:53.200 | and what you're doing then is winning, right?

03:13:55.680 | And like winning is something like, you know,

03:13:57.800 | winning is like, I won, I beat you, whatever that is,

03:14:00.480 | like that can be part of happiness,

03:14:02.900 | but it doesn't have to be, right?

03:14:04.200 | That's not happiness, right?

03:14:06.060 | So yes, that kind of, I'm really built to compete well,

03:14:10.520 | and I'm gonna just see a series of competitions

03:14:13.480 | in front of me that's for expedient forward progress, right?

03:14:18.140 | That's very effective, but again,

03:14:19.920 | expedient forward progress is nothing to do with peace,

03:14:24.340 | contentment, delight, like it's not, you know,

03:14:27.700 | it doesn't have anything to do with that,

03:14:28.760 | nor does it have anything to do with doing good or bad,

03:14:31.760 | right?

03:14:32.600 | And I think the example you gave in your own,

03:14:34.640 | in your career is like, it's such a good example, right?

03:14:37.680 | Because, you know, if you think about it,

03:14:40.080 | when the way that you were sort of framing it inside

03:14:43.120 | is like, there's a question I'm asking,

03:14:45.480 | there's a question they're asking, right?

03:14:47.880 | And there's a competition, right?

03:14:50.600 | And again, it has to be two to compete, right?

03:14:53.580 | So there's almost an automaticity, right?

03:14:56.600 | That like, they're studying the same thing.

03:14:58.760 | Maybe, you know, they feel competitive

03:15:00.280 | or certain people there too.

03:15:01.640 | - They were and are definitely competitive.

03:15:04.400 | They know who they are.

03:15:05.240 | They're extremely competitive and very successful.

03:15:07.480 | - Okay, so then you're like, okay, I'm in a competition.

03:15:11.720 | Now again, but you never decided to be in a competition,

03:15:14.520 | right?

03:15:15.440 | But automatically, right?

03:15:17.160 | I mean, it's interesting, right?

03:15:18.000 | To understand you're acting as if you're in a competition,

03:15:20.280 | who is, I don't want this competition, right?

03:15:22.160 | Because like, they're bigger than me,

03:15:23.240 | it's gonna be unpleasant,

03:15:24.280 | it's gonna take you away from really thinking

03:15:25.980 | about what you wanna do, right?

03:15:27.700 | It's gonna make it harder to do the job you wanna do, right?

03:15:31.060 | 'Cause now you're embroiled in, you know,

03:15:33.060 | something that's, you know, that has aggression behind it,

03:15:36.660 | right?

03:15:37.500 | So you choose, no, I don't, I choose not to do that, right?

03:15:41.420 | And then Ben Barres reframes it to the truth

03:15:44.940 | and says, well, this is not a competition

03:15:48.060 | because you're not choosing to compete, right?

03:15:50.920 | 'Cause Ben pointed out what was important to you,

03:15:53.200 | was the questions, right?

03:15:54.900 | So it's like almost as if Ben reminds you,

03:15:56.700 | no, no, no, no, this is not through the aggressive drive,

03:15:59.040 | look at it through the generative drive,

03:16:00.520 | that's what wins out in you, right?

03:16:02.400 | And then you go and apply yourself to it.

03:16:05.880 | - Yeah, and bless him for doing it

03:16:08.320 | because from that point forward,

03:16:10.280 | I've made it my firm mission to always do things

03:16:15.280 | from a place of what I always think about as delight,

03:16:19.260 | you know, curiosity, delight,

03:16:20.520 | that the things that give me energy

03:16:22.000 | and that give me more energy from doing them.

03:16:25.000 | It wasn't a coincidence, I believe,

03:16:26.920 | that in those five years when I was operating

03:16:29.060 | from a mix of generative drive

03:16:31.520 | and the competition would then resurface

03:16:33.800 | and, you know, I couldn't hold it constant,

03:16:36.520 | that I was absolutely exhausted by the end of that phase.

03:16:41.520 | I just, in a way that sucked a lot of the pleasure out of it,

03:16:46.080 | I still derived some pleasure, but then, as I mentioned,

03:16:49.040 | fortunately, I was able to pivot back

03:16:52.440 | to doing things out of love, you know,

03:16:54.240 | and getting back to peace, contentment,

03:16:57.840 | and especially delight.

03:16:59.280 | - Right, right.

03:17:00.120 | And I absolutely make a value judgment about that, right?

03:17:04.140 | That what you did is better, right?

03:17:06.980 | So what if you were different?

03:17:09.380 | So think about it.

03:17:10.220 | If we talk about it through this accurate lens,

03:17:12.120 | what if you were different at that time

03:17:15.120 | and the aggressive drive in you

03:17:17.120 | was greater than the generative drive in you, right,

03:17:19.720 | which would be an unhealthy state to be in,

03:17:21.920 | but let's say you were in that unhealthy state,

03:17:24.200 | then you probably would have still done what you did,

03:17:27.160 | but you would have done it through the lens of aggression.

03:17:29.280 | Like, I'm gonna get them, right?

03:17:30.400 | Now you're competitive with them.

03:17:31.600 | There's anger in you.

03:17:33.080 | There's, you know, there's aggression, right,

03:17:35.220 | that you're enacting and fantasy as you're,

03:17:37.800 | you know, you're thinking about them

03:17:38.980 | and how you're gonna win.

03:17:39.920 | Like, all sorts of things go on inside of us,

03:17:42.140 | and I would say there's no way on Earth

03:17:44.660 | you could have done the science as well as you did, right?

03:17:47.540 | It couldn't be because all that stuff is distracting, right?

03:17:51.580 | It's, you know, that kind of negative affect

03:17:53.860 | pools for energy and time from you,

03:17:56.320 | and also, what seeds would you have planted

03:17:59.280 | in the microcosm that you operated, right?

03:18:01.940 | More competition, right?

03:18:03.980 | More competitiveness, more badness, right?

03:18:06.580 | So let's look at what you did do, right,

03:18:08.300 | because you're healthy,

03:18:10.380 | or this particular question about this particular thing,

03:18:13.140 | we know for sure, because your generative drive

03:18:15.700 | eclipses the aggressive drive,

03:18:17.940 | then you set yourself to the work

03:18:19.860 | in a way that's gonna be more effective, right?

03:18:22.420 | Your brain isn't clouded.

03:18:23.580 | You're not wasting energy, you know, plotting some revenge

03:18:26.340 | or plotting what you're gonna do

03:18:27.420 | if they come take something from your lab.

03:18:29.060 | I mean, whatever it is, you know,

03:18:30.700 | like, you're not living in any of that,

03:18:32.580 | so you're gonna do a better job

03:18:34.020 | at what's so important to you to do,

03:18:36.660 | and what seeds are you sowing then, right?

03:18:39.180 | You're sowing seeds of collaboration, right?

03:18:42.060 | And even then, if someone could say,

03:18:43.700 | well, what does even that matter, right?

03:18:45.900 | Say, well, it doesn't matter,

03:18:47.180 | because what you're doing then,

03:18:49.180 | we just follow forward the math of it, right,

03:18:51.300 | is contributing to understanding

03:18:53.220 | that's contributing to human health, right?

03:18:55.580 | And the better understanding we have of human health,

03:18:57.820 | the more people stay alive and the more people stay healthy,

03:19:00.720 | which could mean any one of us,

03:19:02.380 | just like any one of us could be the vulnerable person

03:19:04.900 | that society tramples or casts aside.

03:19:06.880 | We all have it in us to be that,

03:19:08.100 | or have been that at stages of our lives, right?

03:19:10.860 | We also all have it in us to be the opposite of that, right?

03:19:15.060 | We have it in us to be generative.

03:19:17.920 | We have it in us to make good.

03:19:19.500 | We have it in us to contribute to health, to survival,

03:19:22.780 | and that I place a value judgment upon.

03:19:26.620 | It's why doing good is better than doing bad,

03:19:29.180 | why creating is better than destroying,

03:19:31.580 | and why ultimately it's the generative drive

03:19:34.040 | that has to trump the other drives,

03:19:35.900 | and when it does, we're happy, we're healthy,

03:19:38.860 | we make the world a better place.

03:19:40.700 | We ally with and are suffused with.

03:19:43.540 | The gratitude and agency in us are fully active,

03:19:46.480 | and we're suffused with peace, contentment, delight.

03:19:50.040 | As you said, that's the place to be.

03:19:52.320 | From that place, we get this thing that we want,

03:19:55.860 | and we help to make the world a better place,

03:19:57.860 | which helps us to keep the thing we want.

03:19:59.940 | - It sounds so simple, because as you pointed out,

03:20:05.480 | the manifestations of looking at the right things

03:20:09.900 | and doing the right things are so simple, right?

03:20:13.580 | It's a list, really, and again, we have a PDF

03:20:16.740 | that includes this list and the structure of the pillars

03:20:20.680 | and how they flow up to this list,

03:20:22.280 | but ultimately it's peace, contentment, and delight,

03:20:26.840 | undergirded by agency and gratitude as active terms.

03:20:30.140 | I mean, very simple at some level.

03:20:32.280 | And yet for many people, including myself

03:20:36.060 | at certain times in life, the excess or lack

03:20:41.060 | of aggressive drive or excess or lack of pleasure drive

03:20:45.620 | can interfere with people's ability to access

03:20:47.940 | these simple but incredibly powerful being states.

03:20:52.940 | - Because it's nature and nurture, right?

03:20:55.380 | So you might be built with a greater or lesser

03:20:59.500 | natural amount of one drive than I am, right?

03:21:02.380 | But then we've had life experience

03:21:03.820 | that creates a delta around that, right?

03:21:06.580 | So you say, okay, we're built with different amounts

03:21:08.860 | of all these drives.

03:21:09.860 | Yes, yes, we are, right?

03:21:11.580 | But we also have control, right, through our decisions,

03:21:14.760 | through how we handle our lives to modulate them, right?

03:21:17.920 | So that makes sense, because the thought could be,

03:21:19.740 | well, the drive is what the drive is,

03:21:21.460 | and it varies across people.

03:21:23.080 | No, there's a range the drive is in,

03:21:24.860 | and that range can be very broad.

03:21:26.220 | I mean, people can do all sorts of things

03:21:28.260 | to cultivate the better.

03:21:30.620 | We all can, right?

03:21:31.860 | So if we look at it as an unlimited upside, right,

03:21:34.700 | then what we see is I want to know,

03:21:36.500 | where are they at in me now, right?

03:21:38.140 | What's going on inside of me?

03:21:39.220 | What are all those other factors, right?

03:21:41.020 | Because I want to cultivate the good.

03:21:42.820 | I want to cultivate that generative drive,

03:21:44.700 | and I want to make sure the aggression and the pleasure

03:21:46.860 | aren't out of balance one way or another.

03:21:48.780 | Like, we can actively look at that and manage it.

03:21:51.940 | And I think that's, like, so what we're striving for,

03:21:55.300 | because there's nothing here that we don't have

03:21:58.340 | some control over, right?

03:22:00.380 | And the higher we get up, right,

03:22:02.100 | the simpler it gets, the more we have control over it.

03:22:04.700 | - And for people who feel like the ideals

03:22:08.580 | that we're providing a roadmap toward

03:22:10.580 | are not accessible for whatever reason,

03:22:13.140 | maybe they're feeling a little bit or a lot demoralized,

03:22:16.020 | overly aggressive and not ending up where they want to go

03:22:19.740 | or ending up where they want to go

03:22:20.900 | and not experiencing deep satisfaction,

03:22:23.520 | peace, contentment, and delight,

03:22:25.100 | where should they look?

03:22:27.780 | In this framework that includes these pillars

03:22:30.480 | at the deep levels of structure of self, function of self,

03:22:33.060 | that give rise to empowerment, humility,

03:22:36.580 | agency, gratitude, peace, contentment, delight, you,

03:22:40.340 | if someone should find themselves unmotivated

03:22:42.900 | or stuck, metaphorically speaking,

03:22:46.520 | staring out the window into the garden that could be

03:22:48.620 | and that they want so very much,

03:22:49.960 | but that they're not creating,

03:22:51.300 | again, that should translate to whatever domain of life

03:22:53.700 | you're seeking or not even in touch

03:22:55.760 | with what you really want.

03:22:57.940 | Infinitely confused about what to do in relationship,

03:23:01.260 | school, work, life,

03:23:03.840 | and thinking about all the oppressive forces in the world,

03:23:06.680 | like the political chasm and the pandemics and lockdowns

03:23:11.680 | and all the stuff and all the things

03:23:14.140 | that are weighing down on us.

03:23:15.740 | What should that person,

03:23:19.340 | in other words, what should we all do at that moment?

03:23:21.540 | Stop and what?

03:23:23.640 | - Each pillar has five cupboards.

03:23:26.820 | Look in all five and follow the clues that you find there.

03:23:30.420 | That's the answer.

03:23:32.980 | - So go back to structure of self, function of self,

03:23:36.760 | ask questions about and engage in practices

03:23:40.260 | that bring about more self-awareness,

03:23:42.460 | practices that draw our attention to what's salient for us.

03:23:46.680 | Ask ourselves, what am I thinking about internally?

03:23:49.540 | What is my internal script?

03:23:51.300 | What am I focusing on externally?

03:23:53.940 | Am I spending all day on Twitter looking at accounts

03:23:56.240 | that I know I hate because it activates something in me,

03:23:58.840 | et cetera, et cetera.

03:24:00.300 | I might've revealed something about myself.

03:24:02.100 | I'm just kidding.

03:24:02.940 | That's not my behavior,

03:24:03.760 | but I see a lot of other people doing it.

03:24:05.520 | What are my behavioral choices?

03:24:07.240 | What could bring about more hopefulness and strivings?

03:24:12.460 | Do I have that right?

03:24:13.300 | - Right, and there's so much of this that say,

03:24:15.360 | one could do on one's own, right?

03:24:16.880 | 'Cause we can think about ourselves and we can learn things.

03:24:19.500 | If we say, well, I don't really know that much

03:24:21.540 | about defense mechanisms.

03:24:22.800 | Okay, look, we could read about it, right?

03:24:25.300 | We can do a lot of this on our own

03:24:27.720 | and we can get so much from talking to other people,

03:24:31.440 | people in our lives who are close to us, who love us, right?

03:24:34.580 | We can talk with them about what's going on inside of us.

03:24:38.100 | And that is such an amazing mechanism of learning.

03:24:41.520 | And there are also professional resources.

03:24:43.220 | I mean, like the good therapy should encompass,

03:24:45.900 | like this should be what it's doing, right?

03:24:48.340 | It might come out of through one lens or another lens

03:24:50.920 | and 'cause everybody's different

03:24:52.920 | and we can bring different modalities,

03:24:54.300 | but ultimately that's what good therapy is doing, right?

03:24:57.640 | It's looking in all 10 of those cupboards

03:24:59.380 | and it's seeing where is the issue?

03:25:01.160 | Let's follow the clues.

03:25:02.260 | Like it's a spirited inquiry, right?

03:25:04.300 | Whether we're doing it on our own

03:25:05.820 | or we're doing it with other people in our personal lives

03:25:08.460 | or we're doing it with someone professionally,

03:25:10.460 | it's a spirited inquiry to follow the clues

03:25:13.380 | because if we follow the clues, there are answers, right?

03:25:16.460 | And if we have the answers,

03:25:17.780 | then we can bring things into better alignment

03:25:20.380 | and then we're in a better place.

03:25:21.560 | Those pillows are more stable

03:25:23.120 | and we can build on top of them

03:25:25.380 | what we wanna build on top of them

03:25:26.860 | and the drives come better into line,

03:25:29.300 | that we can do that and it can be an iterative process of,

03:25:33.220 | you know, if we attain some better state of mind

03:25:35.920 | and like life is better and like we're happy,

03:25:38.400 | like this happens to people.

03:25:39.580 | There's a lot of contentment and peace

03:25:41.300 | and if things are going well

03:25:42.580 | and now something isn't as much,

03:25:44.740 | go back and look again, right?

03:25:46.620 | It's a process we can use over and over

03:25:48.840 | because it works because it fits with the truths

03:25:53.740 | and the reality as we have understood, learned them,

03:25:57.820 | you know, our education,

03:25:59.020 | this learning about humans across hundreds of years

03:26:02.900 | tells us this.

03:26:03.840 | - It makes very good sense to me

03:26:07.420 | in the way that you have mapped it out for us.

03:26:10.520 | So much sense, in fact,

03:26:13.140 | that I'm just struck by how divergent it is

03:26:17.340 | from what I think most people think of

03:26:19.960 | when they think of therapy

03:26:21.040 | or that some of the risks of going to a psychiatrist,

03:26:24.400 | which I think it's only fair to consider.

03:26:28.000 | In particular, the way that,

03:26:29.680 | at least from my outside nonclinical understanding,

03:26:35.280 | these sorts of situations of high levels of demoralization

03:26:38.280 | or excessive aggression,

03:26:39.240 | or just people not being in the place

03:26:41.260 | or being able to exert their actions in the world

03:26:45.760 | the way they want or not get the results they want is

03:26:48.440 | they'll start asking questions like,

03:26:51.080 | you know, maybe I have a chemical imbalance

03:26:52.840 | or maybe they'll go to a clinician,

03:26:55.160 | maybe a cognitive behavioral therapist or psychiatrist.

03:26:59.260 | And more often than not, it seems they'll get,

03:27:02.880 | you know, a prescription for X number of milligrams

03:27:05.020 | of some serotonergic agonist or a dopaminergic agonist.

03:27:10.020 | And of course, as a neurobiologist,

03:27:12.120 | I applaud the exploration of underlying brain mechanisms

03:27:16.760 | and the involvement of neuromodulators

03:27:18.480 | like dopamine and serotonin.

03:27:19.880 | But what you're describing today is very different,

03:27:23.440 | I think, than what most people can expect

03:27:28.440 | if they go to the typical psychiatrist

03:27:31.780 | or typical psychologist,

03:27:33.800 | which is part of the reason we're having this conversation.

03:27:36.160 | But I'd love your thoughts on that.

03:27:38.060 | And I don't want to make this about me.

03:27:41.400 | I only offer this anecdote as a way to round out

03:27:44.620 | a little bit of the earlier discussion.

03:27:46.360 | I'll never share this publicly,

03:27:48.560 | but when I was a postdoc and going through

03:27:50.040 | that very hard phase of competition that I didn't want

03:27:53.440 | and having a hard time staying in touch with that,

03:27:55.300 | and there were some other developmental things

03:27:57.080 | starting to resurface just by virtue of moving back

03:27:59.200 | to the town I grew up in, et cetera,

03:28:01.320 | I recall getting to the stairway of the building

03:28:04.680 | I was working in at the time,

03:28:06.400 | which is the same one where my laboratory exists now,

03:28:08.360 | actually, and realizing I couldn't go up the stairway.

03:28:11.880 | I've always been reasonably fit and just being so exhausted.

03:28:16.720 | And then driving home that day on 280

03:28:19.360 | and thinking, you know, like, none of this matters.

03:28:23.200 | Like, what am I doing?

03:28:24.780 | Like, none of it matters.

03:28:25.880 | I could have been exhausted, I don't know what it was,

03:28:27.680 | but what that ultimately resulted in

03:28:29.880 | was me talking to a psychiatrist who gave me a low dose

03:28:32.760 | of a serotonergic antidepressant.

03:28:38.320 | I took that low dose of serotonergic antidepressant,

03:28:40.920 | I don't recall which one it was,

03:28:42.000 | maybe it was citalopram, would that make sense?

03:28:44.420 | And spent that evening staring at my plate of Thai noodles

03:28:48.040 | for about two hours.

03:28:49.460 | It hit me really hard and I hated that feeling

03:28:52.360 | and then just stopped taking the drug.

03:28:54.820 | Now, I'm not, this is no knock on citalopram

03:28:57.720 | or the use of serotonergic agents in the proper context,

03:29:00.320 | they've saved lives, so the problematic too,

03:29:02.960 | but I just, you know, that wasn't the route

03:29:05.600 | that eventually got me out of it.

03:29:07.280 | It was mainly talk therapy and self-care,

03:29:11.640 | but I just offer that because I, you know,

03:29:15.000 | even as a neurobiologist, I perhaps,

03:29:17.600 | especially as a neurobiologist,

03:29:19.040 | I thought, okay, here's the solution, right?

03:29:20.680 | It's going to shift some internal modulatory system

03:29:23.720 | and I'm going to feel okay about the situation I'm in.

03:29:26.080 | And thank goodness it didn't work, even for a short while,

03:29:29.480 | because while I didn't do all the things

03:29:33.340 | that you're describing here of exploring the function

03:29:35.840 | of self because no one has ever laid this out for me,

03:29:38.000 | I took the route of talk therapy,

03:29:41.320 | which I find immensely beneficial.

03:29:44.600 | It takes time, but immensely beneficial.

03:29:47.200 | So what are your thoughts on the current strategies

03:29:50.040 | for diagnosis, where those succeed, where they fall short,

03:29:54.440 | and the role of medication in navigating this, you know,

03:29:58.700 | simple and yet complex landscape?

03:30:01.720 | We are so dramatically over reductionist, you know,

03:30:05.840 | it's almost to the point of unbelievable, right?

03:30:10.040 | I mean, think about getting a medicine,

03:30:12.520 | getting some say, citalopram, because of what happened, right?

03:30:17.600 | It can't possibly work, right?

03:30:20.720 | Now, maybe a judiciously chosen medicine

03:30:23.520 | could provide a little more distress tolerance

03:30:26.080 | and you could sort of think about it more

03:30:27.520 | and you could find your way through it,

03:30:28.720 | but clearly it was an issue of self, right?

03:30:31.480 | Like you're in a situation that was high stress

03:30:33.960 | and are you gonna have to have this competition or not?

03:30:35.920 | Is it gonna be good for you?

03:30:36.960 | And, you know, you don't want that, but can you avoid it?

03:30:39.760 | Like there's something going on

03:30:41.080 | that makes you not be able to walk up those stairs, right?

03:30:43.800 | So again, I'm not criticizing, I don't know what the person,

03:30:46.320 | what kind of conversations you had about it with the person,

03:30:48.560 | but the idea that a pill will fix that is like,

03:30:51.720 | that's insane, right?

03:30:53.840 | Now, medicines can help smooth the way.

03:30:56.000 | So let's say you initially went

03:30:59.440 | and the first time you see someone and they say,

03:31:00.960 | okay, we have to talk about this, right?

03:31:02.160 | Like what's going on in your life?

03:31:03.920 | 'Cause normally you can walk upstairs and go to work, right?

03:31:06.880 | Why can't you now?

03:31:08.080 | Like we need to think about that when you talk about that.

03:31:10.760 | Let's say you start doing that

03:31:11.880 | and you're having a lot of trouble with it,

03:31:13.960 | or you're just having really high levels of anxiety.

03:31:16.000 | You might say, look, medicine can kind of

03:31:17.480 | take the temperature down a little bit,

03:31:19.440 | give you a little more distress tolerance,

03:31:21.440 | and then you can think about it better inside of you

03:31:25.200 | and we can talk about it better,

03:31:26.600 | but it's medicine in the service of understanding.

03:31:29.160 | Now, sometimes medicines are doing things

03:31:31.480 | like medicines that can help prevent bipolar episodes, right?

03:31:34.920 | Like they're doing something that is purely biological,

03:31:37.760 | but we use so many medicines for things

03:31:40.840 | that are not biological, they're psychological,

03:31:43.160 | but we're so over reductionist

03:31:45.360 | that we could actually over reduce

03:31:47.120 | the problem that you said, right?

03:31:49.160 | Like a clear, wow, that's fascinating, right?

03:31:51.400 | Like how many times have you gone up those stairs

03:31:53.360 | and now you can't?

03:31:54.520 | It's so interesting, the idea of like,

03:31:56.200 | let's just give you a pill.

03:31:57.600 | I mean, it really makes no sense,

03:31:59.880 | but if we're over reductionist enough,

03:32:01.960 | you could see how that's the logical end point

03:32:04.960 | of an illogical process, right?

03:32:07.200 | And I'll give you another example,

03:32:08.640 | and this is really, it's a true story of a young woman

03:32:12.600 | comes into the emergency room and she says she can't sleep

03:32:15.000 | and she looks anxious and she feels very, very anxious

03:32:19.080 | by her description and that's why she can't sleep

03:32:21.880 | and she gets a sleeping medicine.

03:32:24.360 | And she goes home and then she comes back.

03:32:26.840 | She comes back a couple of days later

03:32:28.400 | and she's very, very anxious and she can't sleep

03:32:30.720 | and she looks like she did before,

03:32:32.480 | like nothing seems to be different

03:32:33.840 | and she hasn't gotten any sleep at all.

03:32:35.320 | So the doctor in charge gives her a higher dose

03:32:38.840 | of the sleeping medicine.

03:32:40.840 | Then she goes home and then she comes back yet again

03:32:45.000 | and nothing is any different.

03:32:46.960 | She's still not sleeping, she's still anxious.

03:32:49.360 | And then the doctor concludes that she's drug seeking

03:32:52.440 | because she wants more and more of the sleeping medicine.

03:32:56.040 | Okay, what was actually going on

03:32:59.760 | was she was getting hurt at home.

03:33:03.200 | She was terrified to go home.

03:33:05.440 | Of course she couldn't sleep, right?

03:33:07.600 | Like bad things were happening, right?

03:33:10.640 | But no one asked the question, right?

03:33:12.720 | They thought she cannot sleep, we'll give sleeping medicine

03:33:16.000 | instead of asking why, right?

03:33:18.680 | And then she gets home, she's sent home

03:33:20.680 | and when the medicine doesn't work,

03:33:22.640 | well, now there's something wrong with her, right?

03:33:25.920 | And if you put that label on her, now she's drug seeking,

03:33:28.560 | right, then she's not going to get any help, right?

03:33:31.440 | So I'm not against medicines.

03:33:33.680 | I mean, I use psychopharmacology as part of my practice

03:33:37.080 | and I think from a biologically based perspective

03:33:39.680 | about many things.

03:33:41.000 | But we have to know what something is the answer for

03:33:43.480 | and what something is not the answer for.

03:33:46.240 | And in the overly reductionist world of throughput

03:33:49.480 | in healthcare systems, people are even being trained

03:33:52.600 | these days that don't know any different, right?

03:33:54.560 | And I'm trying to be overly critical of practitioners

03:33:57.520 | because often practitioners are working

03:33:58.840 | in impossible situations where the goal is throughput

03:34:02.520 | and that's more efficient in the short term, right?

03:34:05.560 | It's more efficient today, right?

03:34:07.120 | But it's of course not good in anything but the today term.

03:34:11.000 | And it's interesting because it's never good

03:34:12.800 | for the person even today.

03:34:14.040 | It's like never good for the people in it, right?

03:34:16.920 | But often these decisions are being made

03:34:19.280 | based upon business and money.

03:34:20.720 | And I understand business and money, I'm a capitalist,

03:34:24.440 | I'm interested in these things.

03:34:25.560 | But the way that we have let things get,

03:34:28.640 | the business and money with a short-sighted,

03:34:31.240 | short-term perspective then bonds

03:34:33.720 | with the over reductionist ways that we approach medicine

03:34:37.720 | and then we have these bizarre things happen

03:34:40.840 | and these kinds of bizarre things end lives, right?

03:34:44.160 | It changed the courses of lives.

03:34:45.840 | Like fortunately you got what you needed

03:34:49.280 | and you figured things out but if you hadn't,

03:34:51.800 | would you have the career you have?

03:34:53.080 | Like we don't know, right?

03:34:54.200 | Or if someone else hadn't realized like,

03:34:56.840 | let's talk to that woman and see what's going on.

03:34:59.720 | Would she have survived?

03:35:00.760 | I mean, we don't know.

03:35:02.640 | But the point of that is like lots of bad things happen,

03:35:06.120 | right?

03:35:06.960 | We're rolling the dice too many times with too many people

03:35:09.120 | and it doesn't have to be that way.

03:35:11.000 | And the way that we're doing it now

03:35:12.280 | is not only inefficient financially, right?

03:35:16.120 | The thing that we seem to be caring about most,

03:35:18.520 | it leads to bad outcomes and it also makes no sense, right?

03:35:22.000 | We're looking at it through this sort of bizarre lens

03:35:24.480 | then we may find within us the strength to change that

03:35:28.200 | and to change it in a way that actually fits the science

03:35:30.360 | and fits the common sense.

03:35:32.520 | - I have to imagine that both for people

03:35:34.200 | who require medication in order to cope,

03:35:38.520 | in order to manage their way through these questions

03:35:42.320 | about function of self and how they are in the world,

03:35:44.760 | what they're paying attention to, et cetera.

03:35:47.360 | And for people who don't require medication

03:35:49.820 | to do this exploration,

03:35:52.100 | that this very same exploration is the roadmap

03:35:56.400 | to feeling agency, gratitude, peace,

03:35:59.800 | contentment and delight.

03:36:01.560 | - Medicines may have a role.

03:36:02.960 | So if, for example, we go look at the pillars

03:36:06.040 | and things are not going so well

03:36:08.200 | and you see that whenever that person

03:36:10.040 | has a bipolar manic episode,

03:36:12.200 | well, things get really, really damaged

03:36:14.360 | and it's very, very hard.

03:36:15.960 | They can't recover from that in the ways they want to.

03:36:17.840 | Then we'd say, well, we're gonna use medicine

03:36:20.320 | to help this, right?

03:36:21.200 | Now, of course, there are other things too.

03:36:22.840 | You use behavioral changes, for example, right?

03:36:25.320 | But there's a clear biological role,

03:36:28.340 | just like we use medicine to stop seizures, right?

03:36:30.680 | But people also have to make sure

03:36:31.900 | they're not super sleep deprived.

03:36:33.560 | There's another part to it too.

03:36:35.000 | We can use medicine to prevent bipolar episodes

03:36:37.360 | but there's another part of self-care involved too.

03:36:40.160 | But it's a role of medicine, right?

03:36:42.260 | Just as if anxiety levels aren't coming down too much,

03:36:45.480 | say for the person to get at the trauma, right?

03:36:47.800 | They know there's a trauma.

03:36:49.240 | They've talked around it for 20 years.

03:36:51.360 | They know it's been impacting them.

03:36:52.520 | They're not sure how.

03:36:53.760 | It's hard to go there.

03:36:54.880 | They're with a trusted therapist,

03:36:56.240 | but it's still, it's hard to put words to it.

03:36:58.240 | And now they're maybe having a panic attack, right?

03:37:00.960 | They think, okay, we can use medicines

03:37:02.680 | to take the temperature down

03:37:04.000 | to sort of ease that person's way forward

03:37:07.080 | so that they can understand something, right?

03:37:09.420 | That then provides a resolution in that part of the pillar

03:37:12.160 | and then, you know, things are set in a better place.

03:37:14.800 | So the biological aspect, you know,

03:37:18.500 | specifically here we're talking about medicines,

03:37:20.280 | has its place, but the idea that medicines

03:37:23.420 | are a substitute for understanding just makes no sense.

03:37:28.420 | Well, you've provided us an incredible framework.

03:37:31.920 | Thank you.

03:37:33.140 | You know, this framework really speaks to all of us, right?

03:37:36.840 | You know, that the components that make us who we are,

03:37:39.760 | you know, as you put it, the structure of the self,

03:37:43.120 | you know, everything from the unconscious mind,

03:37:44.920 | conscious mind, defense mechanisms,

03:37:46.440 | character structure, self, and the functions of self.

03:37:49.960 | You know, these components of self-awareness,

03:37:53.320 | defense mechanisms, reaching up from that iceberg

03:37:56.360 | under the water, what we pay attention to,

03:37:59.320 | our behaviors and hopefully our strivings and sense of hope

03:38:03.120 | and how those two pillars flow up

03:38:05.120 | into empowerment, humility, agency, and gratitude,

03:38:09.080 | again, as action terms, as active terms,

03:38:11.820 | and eventually to peace, contentment, and delight

03:38:15.280 | in this notion of generative drive,

03:38:18.080 | as well as some of the pitfalls and challenges

03:38:21.400 | that can pull down on generative drive

03:38:23.480 | or occlude generative drive.

03:38:25.620 | And you very clearly pointed us to where we should all look

03:38:29.160 | in terms of understanding ourselves better

03:38:32.120 | and where we could do better and be better in the world.

03:38:36.480 | Because this is a series,

03:38:37.680 | we have the wonderful opportunity

03:38:39.240 | to have you tell us even more

03:38:41.560 | about how this structure plays out,

03:38:44.360 | both in terms of its healthy expression

03:38:46.440 | and in terms of its unhealthy expression,

03:38:49.120 | you know, in different pathologic conditions

03:38:51.360 | that, you know, most of us are familiar with,

03:38:53.480 | at least in name.

03:38:54.720 | And I'm sure you're going to tell us more about,

03:38:57.300 | you know, what the real both underpinnings and expressions

03:39:00.920 | of things like narcissism and, you know,

03:39:03.140 | extreme and mild form, you know,

03:39:05.840 | anxiety and its extreme and mild forms,

03:39:08.640 | and also some of the names and diagnoses

03:39:12.320 | that we're more familiar with hearing about,

03:39:14.940 | such as, you know, bipolar disorder,

03:39:16.560 | obsessive compulsive things of that sort,

03:39:19.200 | but that all relate back to and really are nested

03:39:22.760 | in this structure and function of self

03:39:25.720 | and where it can all go.

03:39:26.740 | So first of all, I want to say thank you,

03:39:30.700 | really an immense thank you for defining the structure

03:39:34.860 | and making it so clear to me and to everybody else.

03:39:37.660 | And as you said, it has its complexity.

03:39:40.380 | There's in fact immense complexity down there at the bottom,

03:39:42.880 | but that flows up from complex to very simple ideals

03:39:46.880 | and a roadmap to get there.

03:39:48.700 | And again, the PDF is available to people

03:39:51.020 | as a link in the show note captions,

03:39:53.420 | should they want to see this in visual form.

03:39:55.860 | I also want to thank you for assembling the structure,

03:39:58.420 | not just as a tutorial,

03:39:59.560 | but because at least to my knowledge,

03:40:02.500 | no such structure or summary of these structures,

03:40:06.940 | it exists anywhere in the world.

03:40:08.900 | And certainly not in any form that the non-clinician

03:40:11.760 | and not, you know, highly trained psychiatrist

03:40:14.440 | could ever access or understand.

03:40:15.940 | So this is both an immense resource

03:40:18.980 | and an immense gift to us all.

03:40:21.180 | Thank you so very much.

03:40:22.620 | - You're so welcome and thank you for having me here,

03:40:24.980 | which is a gift.

03:40:26.220 | - Well, to be continued in the next episode, thank you.

03:40:30.340 | Thank you for joining me for this first episode

03:40:32.620 | of our series on mental health with Dr. Paul Conte.

03:40:35.580 | And I encourage you to keep an eye out

03:40:37.080 | for the second episode in the series,

03:40:39.020 | which is going to be about

03:40:40.060 | how to improve your mental health.

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03:41:40.840 | Not on today's episode,

03:41:42.080 | but on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast,

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03:41:45.940 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

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03:42:34.400 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion,

03:42:36.660 | which is the first episode in our series

03:42:38.680 | about mental health with Dr. Paul Conte.

03:42:41.260 | And last, but certainly not least,

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03:42:45.140 | [upbeat music]

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Dr. Paul Conti: How to Understand & Assess Your Mental Health | Huberman Lab Guest Series

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