Dr. Paul Conti: Tools and Protocols for Mental Health

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

00:00:02.460 | 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,

00:00:09.480 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.460 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.460 | Today marks the fourth episode in our four episode series

00:00:17.620 | with Dr. Paul Conte about mental health.

00:00:20.620 | Today's episode deals with the topic of self-care.

00:00:23.380 | We hear the phrase self-care a lot nowadays,

00:00:26.100 | but rarely, if ever, is self-care precisely defined.

00:00:29.940 | For instance, is self-care about pampering oneself?

00:00:33.100 | Is it about self-acceptance?

00:00:34.980 | Is self-care about just making sure we get enough sleep

00:00:38.000 | and enough exercise and have healthy relationships?

00:00:40.700 | Well, it turns out that yes, indeed,

00:00:42.740 | adequate self-care is about all of those things,

00:00:45.040 | but true self-care, the topic of today's episode,

00:00:47.860 | is about far more as it relates to our mental health.

00:00:50.660 | True self-care is also about constructing a life narrative

00:00:53.700 | in which we frame our past, our present, and future

00:00:56.900 | in a way that allows us to see what's gone wrong,

00:00:59.900 | what's gone right, and the best path to navigate forward.

00:01:03.420 | So in many ways, true self-care

00:01:05.300 | is really about fostering a sense of self-awareness

00:01:08.140 | and doing so within the context of a framework

00:01:11.140 | that is known to work.

00:01:12.620 | And today, Dr. Paul Conte shares with us

00:01:14.940 | exactly how to do that.

00:01:16.740 | He also touches on some of the things

00:01:18.600 | that if not properly understood and processed

00:01:21.260 | can inhibit our ability to take excellent care of ourselves,

00:01:24.580 | including how to properly process traumatic experiences,

00:01:27.680 | something that he is expert in

00:01:29.300 | among many other topics as well.

00:01:31.020 | He also touches on some of the things

00:01:32.900 | that can potentially serve as barriers to excellent self-care

00:01:36.080 | including traumatic experiences

00:01:37.780 | and explains how to frame those traumatic experiences

00:01:40.420 | so that we can best move forward.

00:01:42.140 | He also shares with us various practices

00:01:44.820 | that include therapy,

00:01:45.980 | but also practices that we can carry out on our own,

00:01:48.620 | such as specific forms of meditation,

00:01:51.180 | journaling, and other ways of examining the self

00:01:53.540 | and fostering better self-care toward our mental health.

00:01:56.780 | As I mentioned before, this is the fourth episode

00:01:58.860 | in our four episode series all about mental health.

00:02:01.520 | I realized that perhaps not everyone

00:02:02.940 | has had the opportunity yet

00:02:04.540 | to listen to the previous three episodes in this series.

00:02:07.060 | If you haven't, it certainly won't prevent you

00:02:09.200 | from gleaning important information and protocols

00:02:11.320 | from today's episode,

00:02:12.700 | but I do encourage you at some point

00:02:14.860 | to try and listen to all four episodes in this series

00:02:17.700 | because at some level they are interwoven

00:02:19.540 | at the level of concepts and of practices.

00:02:22.460 | I'd also like to highlight that Dr. Paul Conte

00:02:24.660 | has generously provided some simple diagrams

00:02:27.700 | that can help you navigate today's material

00:02:29.560 | and the material in the other episodes.

00:02:31.140 | They are available as zero cost PDFs

00:02:33.620 | by simply going to the show note captions

00:02:35.260 | where you can view them or download them.

00:02:37.200 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:39.820 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:42.460 | It is however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:44.420 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:02:47.060 | and science related tools to the general public.

00:02:49.700 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:50.780 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:53.540 | Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

00:02:55.620 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:02:57.460 | with a licensed therapist carried out all online.

00:03:00.840 | I've been doing therapy for more than 30 years.

00:03:03.580 | While I confess that initially I was forced

00:03:06.300 | to do that therapy as a condition

00:03:07.740 | for being let back into high school,

00:03:09.460 | over time I learned that therapy

00:03:11.540 | is a tremendously valuable practice.

00:03:14.200 | In fact, I consider doing regular weekly therapy

00:03:16.940 | as just as important as doing regular physical exercise

00:03:20.080 | in order to improve one's health.

00:03:21.760 | The beauty of BetterHelp is that it makes it extremely easy

00:03:24.280 | to find a therapist that's excellent for you.

00:03:26.680 | And we can define an excellent therapist

00:03:28.360 | as somebody who's going to give you a lot of support,

00:03:30.680 | but in an objective way,

00:03:32.320 | as well as somebody with whom you can have excellent rapport

00:03:35.200 | and that can help you arrive

00:03:36.200 | at positively transformative insights

00:03:38.540 | that you wouldn't have otherwise had.

00:03:40.200 | And with BetterHelp, they make it convenient

00:03:42.220 | so that it's matched to your schedule

00:03:43.740 | and the other aspects of your life.

00:03:45.280 | If you'd like to try BetterHelp,

00:03:46.780 | go to betterhelp.com/huberman

00:03:49.220 | to get 10% off your first month.

00:03:51.340 | Again, that's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com/huberman.

00:03:55.100 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up.

00:03:58.140 | Waking Up is a meditation app

00:03:59.700 | that offers dozens of guided meditation sessions,

00:04:02.220 | mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and more.

00:04:05.740 | By now there's an abundance of data showing

00:04:08.720 | that even short daily meditations

00:04:10.460 | can greatly improve our mood, reduce anxiety,

00:04:13.540 | improve our ability to focus, and can improve our memory.

00:04:17.060 | And while there are many different forms of meditation,

00:04:19.440 | most people find it difficult to find

00:04:21.540 | and stick to a meditation practice

00:04:23.120 | in a way that is most beneficial for them.

00:04:25.700 | The Waking Up app makes it extremely easy

00:04:27.740 | to learn how to meditate

00:04:29.340 | and to carry out your daily meditation practice

00:04:32.060 | in a way that's going to be most effective

00:04:33.980 | and efficient for you.

00:04:35.600 | It includes a variety of different types of meditations

00:04:37.980 | of different duration, as well as things like yoga nidra,

00:04:41.180 | which place the brain and body into a sort of pseudo sleep

00:04:44.380 | that allows you to emerge

00:04:45.460 | feeling incredibly mentally refreshed.

00:04:47.420 | In fact, the science around yoga nidra is really impressive,

00:04:50.060 | showing that after a yoga nidra session,

00:04:52.340 | levels of dopamine in certain areas of the brain

00:04:54.680 | are enhanced by up to 60%,

00:04:56.380 | which places the brain and body

00:04:57.620 | into a state of enhanced readiness

00:04:59.780 | for mental work and for physical work.

00:05:02.220 | Another thing I really like about the Waking Up app

00:05:04.280 | is that it provides a 30 day introduction course.

00:05:06.900 | So for those of you that have not meditated before

00:05:09.500 | or getting back to a meditation practice, that's fantastic.

00:05:12.980 | Or if you're somebody who's already a skilled

00:05:15.060 | and regular meditator,

00:05:16.420 | Waking Up has more advanced meditations

00:05:18.360 | and yoga nidra sessions for you as well.

00:05:20.440 | If you'd like to try the Waking Up app,

00:05:22.320 | you can go to wakingup.com/huberman

00:05:25.060 | and access a free 30 day trial.

00:05:27.580 | Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman.

00:05:30.700 | And now for my discussion about mental health

00:05:32.760 | with Dr. Paul Conte.

00:05:34.700 | Dr. Conte, welcome back.

00:05:36.140 | - Thank you, pleasure to be here.

00:05:38.100 | - For this series, we've been focusing on mental health

00:05:40.660 | and really defining what mental health is

00:05:43.640 | and a roadmap to achieve mental health.

00:05:46.680 | And in episode one, you laid out for us a map,

00:05:50.960 | essentially of the things that any and all of us

00:05:53.820 | can look at pretty much at any time

00:05:57.040 | with essentially any degree of resources

00:06:00.080 | to try and get a better understanding of ourselves

00:06:03.040 | and how well or not well we happen to be moving toward

00:06:07.480 | or creating true mental health for ourselves.

00:06:10.440 | In addition to that, you spelled out for us

00:06:12.400 | what true mental health really is.

00:06:14.880 | And just to recap a little bit of that,

00:06:17.560 | it really boils down to these verb states,

00:06:20.120 | action states of agency and gratitude.

00:06:23.140 | And then in episode two,

00:06:25.620 | you covered some of the common challenges

00:06:27.240 | that you've observed in life and in your clinical practice.

00:06:31.280 | And we address some of the ways

00:06:32.840 | that people can overcome those challenges

00:06:35.080 | by going to the map, opening the so-called cupboards,

00:06:39.000 | as we're referring to them,

00:06:40.360 | and asking specific sorts of questions.

00:06:43.320 | And then in episode three,

00:06:44.400 | we talked about how looking at the map

00:06:47.080 | and exploring the map in those cupboards in particular

00:06:50.120 | can help people in relational aspects of life,

00:06:53.200 | romantic relationship, work relationships,

00:06:56.140 | family relationships, and the relationship to self.

00:06:59.040 | - Yes, very important.

00:07:00.860 | - Very important.

00:07:01.700 | - The foundation of all relationships outside of ourselves.

00:07:04.900 | - And I'm so glad that you highlighted

00:07:06.280 | the relationship to self because today's episode,

00:07:08.880 | we will of course return to the map.

00:07:10.660 | And I should mention that if people have not seen episodes

00:07:12.880 | one, two, or three, that's okay.

00:07:14.240 | Today's discussion will be entirely accessible to them,

00:07:16.960 | but I do recommend that at some point,

00:07:18.800 | they especially listen to episode one

00:07:21.400 | and hopefully episodes two and three as well.

00:07:24.440 | But today's discussion is really about the aspects

00:07:27.720 | of ourselves that exist in all people and the action steps,

00:07:32.720 | the paths of inquiry that are available to all people

00:07:36.720 | that can allow anyone and everyone to improve

00:07:39.320 | their mental health, to move toward these ideals

00:07:43.240 | of agency and gratitude on a regular basis.

00:07:46.280 | And as you pointed out, it is a process.

00:07:48.240 | It's not that we arrive at agency and gratitude.

00:07:51.480 | And just to reiterate, agency and gratitude are verb states.

00:07:55.800 | They involve ways of being in the world.

00:07:58.840 | - Right, they're active processes

00:08:00.180 | like life is an active process, right?

00:08:02.720 | There's not an end point we're trying to reach, right?

00:08:04.920 | We're trying to live.

00:08:07.140 | - And in thinking about today's discussion,

00:08:09.520 | it occurred to both of us really

00:08:11.440 | that today's discussion is really about self-care.

00:08:15.000 | Self-care as a concept, I think for many people,

00:08:18.840 | evokes notions of like, okay,

00:08:20.200 | you're gonna take a vacation

00:08:21.400 | or you're gonna kick your feet up or get a massage,

00:08:24.960 | things of that sort.

00:08:25.800 | And certainly it can involve those sorts of things.

00:08:28.400 | But just as if we were having a discussion

00:08:30.720 | about physical health and we were going to talk about ways

00:08:32.640 | to take care of the physical body to enhance health span

00:08:36.200 | and lifespan, today's discussion is really about

00:08:39.520 | how to take care of the internal landscape, the mind.

00:08:43.200 | Which also qualifies very strongly as self-care.

00:08:46.600 | So if you would, could you tell us

00:08:49.080 | how you think about self-care?

00:08:51.600 | Regardless of whether or not you have a patient

00:08:53.160 | who's dealing with severe mental illness

00:08:55.800 | or somebody who's just hitting the same speed bumps of life

00:09:00.320 | over and over again or anything in between,

00:09:02.800 | what sorts of self-care practices and mindsets

00:09:06.880 | do you suggest people take on for themselves?

00:09:10.560 | And for that matter, how do you think about self-care?

00:09:13.440 | - Well, I think we start with factors

00:09:18.040 | that are really just baseline factors

00:09:20.680 | that have to be in place

00:09:21.840 | in order to achieve good things upon them.

00:09:24.640 | So the basics of, we have to be eating well enough

00:09:27.800 | to feel okay and hopefully eating really well.

00:09:30.160 | We have to stay hydrated, we have to get sleep,

00:09:32.040 | we have to move the body.

00:09:33.520 | And these are basics,

00:09:35.280 | but basics a lot of people are not attending to.

00:09:38.320 | Similarly, we have to be in a situation

00:09:40.960 | that isn't making fear and misery all the time.

00:09:44.040 | So an example of an abusive relationship, right?

00:09:46.560 | A person has to navigate out of that

00:09:49.360 | before they can really start taking care of themselves

00:09:51.640 | in the way that builds goodness, right?

00:09:54.320 | So we look for the basic factors that we need to take care of

00:09:59.040 | in order to then look at the factors

00:10:01.480 | that become particular to each of us.

00:10:04.200 | And what we're really looking for is self-understanding.

00:10:08.000 | How much can we understand about ourselves?

00:10:10.240 | Be knowledgeable about what's going on inside of us,

00:10:12.680 | why it's going on.

00:10:14.160 | Also, and very importantly,

00:10:16.040 | being aware that we don't know everything

00:10:18.320 | that goes on inside of us and being curious about that

00:10:21.520 | and looking at how we're engaging with the world around us.

00:10:24.880 | Do we feel happy?

00:10:25.880 | Do we not feel happy?

00:10:27.120 | How do we define what happy means?

00:10:30.040 | How are we engaging with the world?

00:10:32.200 | Because as you were saying,

00:10:34.240 | the agency and gratitude are verb states.

00:10:36.640 | So how are we living life?

00:10:38.400 | How are we engaging with the world?

00:10:39.920 | Do we feel like life is a sequence of things I have to do,

00:10:43.480 | you know, for example, right?

00:10:45.360 | Or are we doing things we really, really don't wanna do,

00:10:48.120 | right?

00:10:48.960 | Do we have to do those things?

00:10:49.800 | How could life be different, right?

00:10:51.400 | We start looking at ourselves to assess

00:10:54.960 | how we're engaging with ourselves,

00:10:57.480 | the people, the world around us,

00:10:59.320 | in a way that is either generative or not generative.

00:11:03.480 | If we're in that state of agency and gratitude,

00:11:07.320 | then we are gonna have periods of time

00:11:09.080 | where we feel peaceful, right?

00:11:10.640 | We feel a sense of contentment or we feel delighted.

00:11:13.000 | So is any of that in my life, right?

00:11:15.400 | If not, why?

00:11:16.960 | Can I start thinking about that?

00:11:18.320 | Sometimes the answer is quite clear.

00:11:19.960 | Like, oh, there's this thing I love

00:11:21.720 | and I'm not doing that, right?

00:11:23.240 | And I can't do it.

00:11:24.400 | And then you revisit, like,

00:11:25.480 | is it true that you can't do it?

00:11:27.240 | I mean, a lot of times it is not true.

00:11:28.960 | And if it is true,

00:11:30.120 | how does the person come to terms with that,

00:11:32.160 | process that, perhaps grieve, right?

00:11:34.560 | So say if it's a loss of a person, right?

00:11:36.880 | That can keep people, you know,

00:11:38.520 | in terrible misery over years and years.

00:11:41.240 | So there may be things we have to understand,

00:11:43.200 | we have to process,

00:11:44.480 | so that we can get ourselves to that place

00:11:46.440 | of knowing ourselves pretty well

00:11:48.520 | and engaging in the world

00:11:49.760 | in ways that we have a pretty good understanding of

00:11:52.560 | and that are adaptive.

00:11:54.200 | And then we look to say,

00:11:55.440 | okay, now how do I make that better?

00:11:58.080 | Because now we're thinking about preventive medicine, right?

00:12:00.640 | We want our bodies to be healthy

00:12:02.520 | because of course we wanna be healthy today, right?

00:12:05.080 | But we also don't know what will happen in the future, right?

00:12:07.640 | Will there be an injury or an illness?

00:12:09.480 | I mean, eventually, like, you know,

00:12:10.800 | we all have an injury or an illness in some way or another.

00:12:13.400 | So we're preparing for the predictable challenges

00:12:16.860 | that will come our way in the future.

00:12:19.240 | And we're well-served by doing this

00:12:22.760 | about our mental health too, right?

00:12:25.160 | There will be challenges that come our way.

00:12:27.640 | There'll be losses and stressors

00:12:29.540 | and things that make us feel bad or feel scared.

00:12:32.120 | I mean, these things will happen to us.

00:12:34.360 | So the healthier we are, the better today is,

00:12:37.720 | and the better we set ourselves up

00:12:39.960 | to either make tomorrow even better today,

00:12:41.860 | or if tomorrow gives me a challenge I don't have today,

00:12:45.040 | I can meet that challenge and get back to a better place.

00:12:48.400 | - So if I understand correctly,

00:12:49.640 | it sounds like one of the cornerstones of self-care

00:12:52.720 | for sake of mental health

00:12:54.300 | involves asking really good questions about oneself.

00:12:58.080 | - Yes, yes.

00:12:59.800 | - I don't think I've ever heard it defined that way before.

00:13:02.600 | - Yes.

00:13:03.440 | - You know, it's in such stark contrast

00:13:05.640 | to the other forms of self-care,

00:13:06.940 | which I certainly subscribe to as well,

00:13:08.940 | like making sure one gets enough rest

00:13:10.960 | and, you know, avoids toxic people

00:13:13.400 | to the extent one can, et cetera,

00:13:15.360 | or toxic environments and so on.

00:13:18.240 | - Right, you mentioned ask questions of the self.

00:13:21.280 | But the logical next question to that is,

00:13:23.880 | well, what questions do I ask myself?

00:13:26.200 | Sometimes we know, we have an idea, right?

00:13:29.580 | Sometimes we don't.

00:13:30.720 | And this is where the construction of a life narrative,

00:13:33.480 | like let me think about my life.

00:13:35.580 | Let me potentially talk about my life

00:13:37.940 | with a trusted other person.

00:13:39.560 | Let me potentially write down a narrative about my life.

00:13:43.600 | And we can learn so much from doing that.

00:13:46.600 | So the person who thinks back

00:13:48.720 | and starts to tell a story of themselves,

00:13:51.240 | and let's say, just as an example,

00:13:53.500 | you know, that story is going pretty well,

00:13:56.260 | and the person is feeling pretty good about themselves.

00:13:58.240 | And then say something happens and it starts to change.

00:14:01.200 | Well, then this thing happened.

00:14:02.560 | And then, you know, I started kind of spending time

00:14:05.640 | with different people, or I started dating different people,

00:14:08.880 | or I took a different kind of job.

00:14:10.920 | And it can engender the reflection of like,

00:14:14.120 | oh, things really kind of changed then.

00:14:17.100 | Because the emotion systems within us

00:14:20.720 | don't care about the clock or the calendar,

00:14:23.400 | the emotions often of negative experiences

00:14:26.560 | can back map into our lives.

00:14:28.400 | And someone who can tell you, I was miserable

00:14:30.800 | ever since I was a child,

00:14:32.280 | can then write out a life narrative

00:14:34.840 | that describes a very happy childhood

00:14:37.360 | until something happened or something changed

00:14:39.920 | at a certain point, which could be something dramatic,

00:14:42.440 | or it might be increasing pressures of school

00:14:45.120 | or increasing social pressures

00:14:46.760 | or how things changed at puberty, right?

00:14:49.480 | And if we have an understanding of that,

00:14:51.580 | we may know the right questions.

00:14:53.200 | Like, for example, let's say afterwards,

00:14:55.520 | the person finds that they're drinking more.

00:14:57.160 | So an example, what a common example,

00:14:59.520 | instead of taking that for granted,

00:15:01.480 | oh, that's what I do, right?

00:15:03.120 | Or, yeah, I can't cope any better, right?

00:15:05.200 | The negative things people will say to themselves,

00:15:07.580 | the narrative can often point out, I can cope better.

00:15:10.500 | I did cope better.

00:15:11.740 | I did feel differently about myself.

00:15:13.700 | So the life narrative can really help us

00:15:16.580 | establish the roadmap, right?

00:15:18.240 | And part of what the life narrative does

00:15:20.040 | is it guides us to the places to ask the questions.

00:15:23.240 | - If you would be so kind as to tell us a little bit more

00:15:27.520 | about how one would do this on their own.

00:15:29.780 | So does this involve journaling things out?

00:15:32.440 | I confess I have a file on my computer

00:15:35.700 | that has a bunch of other files

00:15:37.400 | that starts with age zero to five,

00:15:41.060 | and then I have some notes in there.

00:15:42.840 | It's not an autobiography, far from it.

00:15:45.820 | It's just kind of highlights of events that I remember,

00:15:49.380 | six to 10 and so on, and places I lived.

00:15:52.160 | And I use it just to kind of orient myself in time.

00:15:56.680 | I actually don't know what the purpose and utility of it is,

00:16:00.440 | why I initially started doing this,

00:16:02.320 | but it's an important file to me.

00:16:05.440 | And when I return to it,

00:16:06.400 | I often remember additional key events.

00:16:09.020 | So it's constantly growing.

00:16:10.180 | I mean, these files are getting quite large.

00:16:12.820 | Again, with no specific purpose

00:16:15.240 | of writing this out at any point, but just to orient.

00:16:19.260 | - Right.

00:16:20.100 | You can't not learn about yourself from doing that, right?

00:16:25.100 | It exposes truths of self.

00:16:27.580 | It makes you ponder about things.

00:16:29.440 | It draws your attention to ways in which you've changed,

00:16:32.240 | whether you think those ways are good or bad, right?

00:16:34.360 | It draws your attention to change.

00:16:36.400 | It draws your attention to the impact of external events.

00:16:39.480 | And as you said, it grounds you.

00:16:41.520 | It provides a way of localizing oneself in time.

00:16:44.340 | Like I am here now.

00:16:46.300 | Wait, how did I get here, right?

00:16:47.600 | And the thoughts and ideas of how we got here

00:16:50.780 | very much help us because often we don't do that.

00:16:54.140 | We're sort of rushing headlong forward

00:16:56.520 | because in many ways our society is prompting us.

00:16:59.400 | We live in a very fast moving society.

00:17:01.680 | We want information and gratification.

00:17:03.460 | And often we don't even want it very fast,

00:17:05.280 | but it's coming at us very fast anyway.

00:17:07.440 | And to stop and reflect makes a very, very big difference.

00:17:11.600 | Even to think at times beyond our generations, right?

00:17:15.920 | And to the best of my knowledge,

00:17:17.240 | the vast majority of people on one side of my family,

00:17:20.540 | everyone was a shepherd for like every generation

00:17:23.160 | until like two ago, right?

00:17:25.160 | And thinking about that of like, huh, that's interesting,

00:17:28.200 | right, it makes me in many ways grateful,

00:17:30.400 | so grateful for the opportunity I've had.

00:17:32.560 | But I also think like, well,

00:17:33.760 | they lived in close-knit communities then,

00:17:35.660 | and what was that like?

00:17:36.760 | And we begin to see ourselves in a broader way,

00:17:40.160 | both in our own history and then projecting forward,

00:17:43.380 | which sometimes is about children and nurturing children,

00:17:47.080 | but it can certainly be about other things.

00:17:49.440 | It can be about friendship, it can be about work.

00:17:51.840 | So we start to see ourselves in ways that are interesting,

00:17:55.360 | that are through the lens of truth,

00:17:57.080 | and that speak to our place in the world around us.

00:18:00.600 | And I think this engenders both agency and gratitude, right?

00:18:04.640 | If I'm aware of like, huh, what have I done?

00:18:06.560 | What have I accomplished?

00:18:07.480 | When haven't I accomplished things?

00:18:08.860 | How might that be different?

00:18:10.540 | And a sense of gratitude for being here

00:18:13.200 | and having opportunity and even be able to think about this.

00:18:16.440 | You know, my guess is when you read through those files,

00:18:19.680 | that at some point you have sort of a sense of marvel,

00:18:22.400 | while like, whoa, that's me, right?

00:18:24.680 | Whether it's a good memory or it's a difficult memory,

00:18:28.000 | no, it's all part of you that leads you through to today,

00:18:31.680 | and you do have a better sense of self through that.

00:18:35.920 | One of the feelings I most often come away

00:18:38.660 | from those excursions into those files with

00:18:41.720 | is one of gratitude,

00:18:43.800 | because so much of what's in those files

00:18:45.840 | are recollections of others that I really appreciate.

00:18:50.440 | Some are still alive, some aren't,

00:18:52.320 | and what that's meant to me and how that carries me forward.

00:18:56.240 | So that's what I do.

00:18:58.980 | I'm sure there are a near infinite number of ways

00:19:02.720 | that people could do this,

00:19:03.560 | but what are a few that you've seen work really well

00:19:07.320 | that people can do on their own

00:19:08.760 | or perhaps with a clinician as well?

00:19:11.320 | In fact, that raises the question,

00:19:12.820 | should people share this sort of practice

00:19:15.100 | and the contents of that practice with a trusted clinician?

00:19:18.740 | - Right, yeah, I think sharing with another person

00:19:22.500 | always should be a trusted other, right?

00:19:25.120 | And we can kind of take stock of that,

00:19:27.300 | you know, of people have an idea of who may be safe, right?

00:19:30.040 | Often people say, oh, there's no one

00:19:31.120 | I could share something with,

00:19:32.200 | but really that often comes through a lens of fear,

00:19:34.780 | you know, of exposure of self, of rejection,

00:19:36.840 | of vulnerability, which often is warranted,

00:19:39.440 | but sometimes it's not.

00:19:40.520 | Sometimes there really are,

00:19:41.720 | in fact, often there are safe people, right?

00:19:44.920 | So the act of doing something other

00:19:49.380 | than just thinking about something brings,

00:19:52.200 | as you all know, it brings parts of our brain online

00:19:56.160 | that then are thinking in a different way.

00:19:58.520 | So for example,

00:19:59.500 | they may bring error correction mechanisms online.

00:20:02.040 | So if I'm thinking over and over again

00:20:04.400 | that I've never been good enough to do anything,

00:20:06.780 | you know, that can be just automatic inside of me.

00:20:08.960 | But if I start to write or to talk

00:20:11.200 | or even to formulate words, to talk to myself,

00:20:13.800 | or to put words in my mind as if I were talking,

00:20:17.360 | now we come at it in a different way.

00:20:20.560 | And we can sort of ferret out the truth within us,

00:20:23.720 | which might be, you know, it's not true

00:20:25.600 | that I've never been able to do things or achieve things.

00:20:28.520 | And people often bring that online

00:20:30.760 | by doing something other than the same thought process

00:20:33.860 | that's gone often over and over,

00:20:37.020 | and it's non-productive, and it brings down mood,

00:20:39.880 | and it raises anxiety,

00:20:41.500 | and it also builds a sense of futility.

00:20:43.840 | I mean, I cannot tell you how often I've heard a person say,

00:20:47.600 | like, "No good will come of this,"

00:20:48.860 | or like, "Okay, try, we'll try, but I know I can't be helped.

00:20:51.700 | I've been thinking about this for 10 years or 20 years."

00:20:54.920 | But what they've been doing is the same thing.

00:20:56.720 | They've been ruminating on it for 10 years.

00:20:59.200 | They start talking about it,

00:21:00.560 | and people will say, "Oh my goodness.

00:21:02.520 | I've achieved more in two hours than I did in years," right?

00:21:08.180 | But that's because you're doing something different

00:21:10.840 | in the two hours.

00:21:11.760 | So I think that's very important,

00:21:13.720 | especially because we can't say,

00:21:15.580 | "Okay, go look in your unconscious mind

00:21:17.600 | and see what you find there," right?

00:21:19.320 | So then we need ways of accessing the unconscious mind,

00:21:22.280 | and the communication, either with self,

00:21:24.600 | in writing, with others,

00:21:26.440 | can be very, very helpful in doing that.

00:21:28.920 | I also, I am a firm believer that knowledge is power.

00:21:33.920 | Many times, I will feel like I have a sense

00:21:37.440 | of really having helped someone,

00:21:38.900 | and the other person may have that sense,

00:21:40.540 | and we can see the change,

00:21:42.160 | and all that I've done is impart knowledge, right?

00:21:45.000 | We all know different things.

00:21:47.320 | So often it's the case that,

00:21:49.240 | hey, I happen to have learned things

00:21:51.320 | that are different from what that other person learns,

00:21:53.820 | and then I'm communicating to them things

00:21:56.080 | that I have learned so they know them too,

00:21:58.400 | and then they feel tremendously better, right?

00:22:01.180 | Because if we put inside of ourselves

00:22:03.160 | the tools of understanding,

00:22:05.160 | our unconscious minds,

00:22:06.400 | and sometimes our conscious minds too will work on them,

00:22:09.360 | will make use of them.

00:22:10.720 | So if you talk to a person, for example,

00:22:14.060 | about how trauma can impact us,

00:22:16.360 | and how we can shove it underneath the surface,

00:22:18.320 | and how it can spin off shame,

00:22:20.180 | then that person may take that knowledge away

00:22:22.800 | and come back with real understanding,

00:22:25.840 | and the fact that we can do this on our own, right?

00:22:28.120 | We can do this through good resources.

00:22:29.800 | We can do this by taking information into ourselves.

00:22:33.880 | That can be very, very helpful,

00:22:35.280 | and it doesn't require,

00:22:36.360 | because the first place to start

00:22:38.200 | are with things we can do

00:22:39.560 | that don't require professional help, right?

00:22:42.500 | And sometimes we may come at problems

00:22:45.440 | that do tell us that we should get professional help, right?

00:22:49.400 | So if we're having thoughts of self-harm,

00:22:51.680 | thoughts of not wanting to be alive,

00:22:53.680 | thoughts of real despair,

00:22:54.920 | thoughts of hopelessness,

00:22:56.940 | that's telling us, okay, let's get some help.

00:22:59.720 | There's a role and a place for professional help.

00:23:02.340 | But people come to professional help in other ways too,

00:23:05.660 | such as, for example, reflecting on the self.

00:23:08.400 | And so real example, a person thinking,

00:23:11.300 | you know, it really became kind of different

00:23:14.220 | when things started changing.

00:23:16.740 | Like after college, and then I thought like,

00:23:19.220 | oh, I've kind of gotten to this place,

00:23:20.800 | and I've got a good job,

00:23:21.840 | and like, things really should get better.

00:23:24.720 | But like, they kind of haven't, right?

00:23:26.280 | And that was really a branch point.

00:23:27.900 | That person may have never really thought about that,

00:23:30.520 | or they may have thought about it 10,000 times,

00:23:33.000 | and then shoved it underneath

00:23:35.000 | from consciousness to unconsciousness,

00:23:37.860 | because it's a scary, vulnerability-inducing thing.

00:23:40.660 | It seems scary, like, how could it be

00:23:42.200 | that I achieved things and didn't get healthier?

00:23:44.260 | Now we're afraid of that, right?

00:23:46.080 | And letting that come to the surface,

00:23:49.080 | being able to say, oh, like, that's true.

00:23:51.140 | Like, I don't have to be afraid to shine light on that.

00:23:54.040 | Then a lot of times, that alone,

00:23:55.840 | sometimes a person will solve their own problems.

00:23:57.760 | They think about it, they come in,

00:23:59.400 | they have all the answers, they thank me,

00:24:01.080 | I did nothing but listen,

00:24:02.520 | but the listening part is important.

00:24:04.480 | It allowed them to come in and say what they needed to say.

00:24:07.640 | And other times, then, it's not,

00:24:10.320 | it can be that, but it's not always that.

00:24:12.280 | Other times, it informs us about what to work on clinically,

00:24:15.520 | and it might not be something that's dire, right?

00:24:17.560 | It might just be like, I wanna understand this.

00:24:19.800 | I wanna be happier, I wanna be healthier,

00:24:21.280 | I wanna work towards these good things.

00:24:22.760 | When people talk about that,

00:24:24.480 | they're always, if you really distill them,

00:24:26.200 | what are they talking about?

00:24:27.100 | A sense of peace, a sense of contentment,

00:24:29.000 | coming at the world through agency and gratitude.

00:24:31.440 | And we can do that through self-inquiry,

00:24:34.560 | including through therapy.

00:24:36.280 | It doesn't have to just be for situations

00:24:38.440 | where, oh, there's a significant clinical problem.

00:24:41.880 | - Is it the case that when somebody journals

00:24:45.580 | a bit of their life narrative

00:24:47.080 | or thinks about some great or sadly traumatic events

00:24:52.240 | that perhaps happened to them at whatever stage of life,

00:24:56.120 | that there's something accomplished in that action

00:25:00.360 | or in that therapy session

00:25:01.760 | if they're doing it with a clinician,

00:25:03.920 | but that when they go to sleep that night

00:25:06.280 | and perhaps in their waking states as well,

00:25:08.600 | that the unconscious is working some of that through

00:25:11.720 | such that revelations come to mind later,

00:25:15.680 | insights come to mind.

00:25:18.000 | I'm certainly familiar with the fact

00:25:19.680 | that there are certain times of day and evening

00:25:23.180 | where my brain is in a bit of a liminal state.

00:25:25.520 | It feels like somewhere between sleep and awake.

00:25:27.720 | And I just have learned that provided I block

00:25:30.880 | against outside sensory input as much as I can,

00:25:35.880 | in particular, social media and the news,

00:25:38.620 | that I'll just be doing the dishes

00:25:41.160 | or preparing coffee or something.

00:25:42.440 | And something will come to mind

00:25:44.200 | that's seemingly out of nowhere, right?

00:25:46.120 | It's not always a great insight.

00:25:47.560 | In fact, it's rarely a great insight.

00:25:49.480 | But it always takes me a bit by surprise,

00:25:51.860 | sometimes a little bit of delight,

00:25:53.160 | sometimes a little bit of shock,

00:25:54.240 | like, wow, where did that come from?

00:25:56.100 | - 'Cause it came from your unconscious mind, right?

00:25:57.840 | It was invisible to you then it got thrown up

00:26:00.160 | and you're like, whoa, and you realize it

00:26:01.920 | while in the midst of doing something relatively mundane.

00:26:05.200 | Because during the day, you're engaging,

00:26:07.100 | your brain is highly engaged, which is great,

00:26:10.220 | but it doesn't leave a lot of room

00:26:12.880 | for the unconscious mind to do its millions

00:26:15.360 | and millions of things a second

00:26:16.520 | that can help you figure things out,

00:26:18.280 | which is the same reason, I mean, it's uncanny.

00:26:21.000 | Any psychiatrist will tell you this,

00:26:23.240 | that people, a person will come in and say,

00:26:26.360 | it's strange, you know, all of a sudden,

00:26:28.880 | when I can finally relax,

00:26:30.920 | like, that's when I have a panic attack, right?

00:26:33.640 | Or they don't know, like, then I can finally relax

00:26:35.960 | and I go, ah, and then my heart's beating fast

00:26:38.440 | and I'm sweating, right?

00:26:39.960 | Because that's when the panic attacks come.

00:26:41.740 | If the person is laboring under something

00:26:44.120 | that is causing them this sort of constant distress,

00:26:47.480 | when you stop focusing outward

00:26:50.600 | and you sort of settle into an inward state,

00:26:53.160 | then the things that are underneath the surface

00:26:55.360 | are gonna come to the surface.

00:26:56.620 | And if there's something really bothering you

00:26:58.700 | that your brain is very upset about or very afraid of,

00:27:01.520 | what does it throw up to the surface?

00:27:03.580 | A panic attack, right?

00:27:05.380 | But if you're in a good place,

00:27:06.740 | you're taking care of yourself,

00:27:08.080 | you're in a generative stage, you're in a safe environment,

00:27:10.640 | then when you stop putting all the attention outward.

00:27:14.160 | So we imagine then salience changes

00:27:16.680 | and instead of a lot of the salience being outward,

00:27:18.800 | it starts to be inward and you're just sort of meditative.

00:27:21.400 | You're washing the dishes, right?

00:27:22.620 | And there's room then for your unconscious mind

00:27:25.500 | to throw something important to the surface.

00:27:28.860 | It's the exact opposite of how people can't

00:27:32.560 | remember something if they're trying to think of it.

00:27:34.680 | I mean, we all go through this,

00:27:35.840 | like, oh, I can't remember that person's name

00:27:37.440 | or that restaurant or whatever it is.

00:27:39.800 | Try to keep thinking about it

00:27:41.440 | and see if you figure it out, right?

00:27:43.280 | The answer is not in your conscious mind.

00:27:45.160 | So if you keep bringing your conscious mind to bear,

00:27:47.240 | you just generate frustration, right?

00:27:49.340 | But then when you stop thinking about it,

00:27:50.960 | the answer's there inside of you, oh, I remember now, right?

00:27:54.380 | So that's how if we have the conscious mind engage

00:27:58.160 | in something it's not gonna figure out, right,

00:28:00.480 | then it doesn't figure the thing out, right?

00:28:03.060 | And that works for our problems too.

00:28:06.440 | That's why a person can say,

00:28:07.720 | I thought about that for 10 years.

00:28:09.680 | Well, you ruminated about it for 10 years.

00:28:12.080 | It just ran over and over and over in the conscious mind

00:28:15.360 | and how ironic, right?

00:28:16.940 | It prevents understanding.

00:28:19.720 | - So it's very clear to me that asking certain kinds

00:28:23.500 | of questions about oneself and oneself narrative,

00:28:27.840 | life history essentially, can be very beneficial

00:28:30.680 | in the moment or moments of doing that practice

00:28:33.840 | as well as the subconscious or I guess the appropriate way

00:28:38.200 | to refer to it as the unconscious, right?

00:28:40.000 | Okay, so for those out there who like me

00:28:42.400 | sometimes say subconscious, it's unconscious.

00:28:44.660 | The unconscious can throw things up to the surface

00:28:48.600 | that can be real insights, can give us

00:28:51.880 | not just panic attacks, which I think most people

00:28:53.720 | would like to shy away from, but as you point out,

00:28:55.640 | there's information in the fact that the panic attack

00:28:57.820 | is occurring under conditions of wrath.

00:29:00.000 | - And if you stir up the pot of the unconscious

00:29:02.920 | and you put some new information in, it can do new things.

00:29:06.240 | It can figure new things out, which is why the process

00:29:09.960 | of self-reflection, for example, and often the process

00:29:13.160 | of therapy is not always and in fact often is not

00:29:17.280 | a pleasant process, right?

00:29:19.480 | But then we take away from that hard work renewed insights.

00:29:23.820 | So someone, this happens all the time, who knows,

00:29:27.160 | they know that a certain trauma is inside of them

00:29:32.000 | and has been affecting them, whether it's for days

00:29:34.120 | or weeks or years.

00:29:35.720 | They know it, they don't know what to do about it,

00:29:37.600 | they have a conflict about it, so they keep trying

00:29:39.580 | to shove it under the surface, they finally accept

00:29:42.840 | for whatever reason to talk about it.

00:29:45.560 | And what often happens then is, let's say doing three

00:29:49.520 | or four successive weeks of hourly therapy,

00:29:52.160 | I mean, that person is crying and that person is upset

00:29:55.140 | or that person is angry, I mean, it doesn't always happen

00:29:57.280 | this way, but it does a fair amount of the time,

00:29:59.580 | as they get better and better, right?

00:30:02.200 | Because they're discharging some of the energy, right?

00:30:04.540 | Maybe they're crying and they're sad because they're

00:30:07.200 | grieving something they haven't grieved before, right?

00:30:09.720 | Because they've just been angry, right?

00:30:12.060 | Or they've just been ashamed, a classic example is a death.

00:30:15.540 | I mean, how many times do people think, well,

00:30:17.000 | that can't be still affecting me, it was X number

00:30:20.120 | of years ago, but they've never actually grieved

00:30:23.440 | because they carry in them, oh, it was my fault, right?

00:30:26.500 | And how many times do we hear that?

00:30:28.540 | I should have said something different before,

00:30:30.240 | I should have gone, you know, we then back map something

00:30:33.640 | that makes us feel bad and then from the guilt and shame

00:30:38.360 | comes the inability to process grief.

00:30:41.600 | So if the person then deals with, right, I feel so bad

00:30:45.140 | about this, in fact, I feel so ashamed of it and I feel

00:30:48.060 | like it's my fault and so, okay, well, let's talk about that,

00:30:50.960 | right, after my brother's death by suicide,

00:30:54.960 | I felt responsible, I was not involved in any way

00:30:58.240 | in mental health, I had a business career at the time

00:31:01.560 | and I finally went and saw someone, I wasn't acculturated

00:31:05.080 | that getting therapy was something one did,

00:31:07.680 | but I realized, hey, I'm not okay, right?

00:31:11.000 | So I didn't know how, right, I just knew the manifestation

00:31:16.000 | of it, which was misery and risk and, you know,

00:31:19.000 | I could just tell, like, I know what it feels like

00:31:21.220 | to not feel like this and this is not okay.

00:31:23.800 | So then I, you know, I called the insurance number,

00:31:26.360 | eventually I go in and see a therapist and, you know,

00:31:30.200 | she did, I'm sure she was a very good therapist,

00:31:32.160 | but she didn't, in a sense, need to be,

00:31:34.480 | in the sense that sometimes we don't need to use

00:31:36.920 | all the things we know, we can do just something basic

00:31:39.240 | with someone and that's all she did with me.

00:31:41.400 | I mean, she got me talking about it and then I talked about

00:31:43.740 | how ashamed I was because it was my fault and then really?

00:31:46.320 | And then she challenged me about that and then, you know,

00:31:48.580 | in a nice way, but then it became clear that I was

00:31:51.960 | so utterly shocked by it, right, far from it being

00:31:55.200 | foreseeable to me, right, that the problem that I was having

00:31:59.680 | now was the shock of it and the sense of shame and guilt

00:32:03.520 | that it raised in me and then me shoving it under the surface

00:32:06.240 | not knowing what to do with it, then it's making all sorts

00:32:09.240 | of misery in me and I can't actually grieve, right?

00:32:12.940 | So at some point during those sessions, now I'm sad

00:32:15.600 | and I'm crying, right, and I know what she was thinking,

00:32:19.200 | right, she's good, okay, this is like, thank goodness,

00:32:22.580 | this person is getting better, she might have felt a sense

00:32:24.320 | of relief because she could say, hey, he's coming out

00:32:26.880 | of risk, he's able to feel sadness, he's able to grieve,

00:32:29.160 | he hasn't been doing this before, you know?

00:32:31.200 | So it's that work, if we put into it that makes a difference

00:32:36.200 | just as in physical health, I mean, if I wanna be stronger,

00:32:40.400 | I wanna be more robust, like I have to go to the gym

00:32:42.640 | and work or I have to do something, that's hard work

00:32:45.800 | and then I get the benefit of it and the same is true

00:32:48.360 | whether we're reflecting on our life narrative

00:32:50.340 | and it brings, you know, some difficult emotions to us

00:32:53.280 | or whether we're talking with someone or whether we're doing

00:32:55.320 | it in therapy but that's how that process of inquiry leads

00:32:59.920 | us, you know, to take some of the Gordian knots in us,

00:33:02.520 | so to speak, and to cut them instead of trying to figure out

00:33:05.600 | like, how am I gonna feel okay about myself even though

00:33:08.280 | I'm responsible for my brother's death because I should've

00:33:11.120 | foreseen it, I mean, that doesn't work, right?

00:33:13.480 | You have to say like, I see what that thing is and that has

00:33:16.920 | to go away, right, and then therapy can lead us to the point

00:33:20.280 | where oh, it wasn't my fault and oh my goodness, I'm sad.

00:33:23.260 | - I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one

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00:34:50.100 | I can see how self-inquiry is really powerful.

00:34:53.040 | I've certainly experienced that in my own life

00:34:55.220 | and it's an ongoing process, right?

00:34:57.700 | This is not something that one does and then stops.

00:34:59.860 | Ideally you do it forever, just like physical fitness.

00:35:03.120 | And at the same time, I know that a number of people

00:35:06.700 | perhaps are wary of self-inquiry, especially because

00:35:10.820 | of the pain points it can bring about and make conscious

00:35:13.580 | and that we have to really sit with.

00:35:16.320 | And most people would like to avoid discomfort.

00:35:19.220 | I'm sure there are also people who are doing quite well

00:35:22.340 | in life and therefore think, oh, pattern of self-inquiry,

00:35:25.900 | all it could do, it sounds like is more harm,

00:35:27.820 | like why would I want to do that?

00:35:28.920 | But I think we both agree that there's nothing but good

00:35:33.340 | and progress and more agency and gratitude to be had

00:35:37.840 | by going through patterns of self-inquiry.

00:35:40.100 | - I think that really highlights something very important,

00:35:43.900 | which is that self-inquiry isn't always the right answer.

00:35:47.460 | Now, I think just because things are going well,

00:35:49.940 | that doesn't mean self-inquiry isn't the right thing to do.

00:35:52.780 | Self-inquiry is always the right thing to do

00:35:55.460 | if we want to understand ourselves better,

00:35:57.580 | unless we're in a place where it can bring real risk to us.

00:36:01.440 | So when I was trying to think about myself and inquire,

00:36:04.200 | why was I so miserable?

00:36:05.460 | What's going on in me?

00:36:06.700 | I mean, I reached a point where I realized like,

00:36:08.300 | I'm not getting myself anywhere and I'm getting worse.

00:36:11.700 | And like, this is now, this is not good for me.

00:36:13.860 | 'Cause where did the self-inquiry lead me

00:36:15.380 | to more guilt and shame?

00:36:16.860 | So then at some point I sort of pulled the rip cord, right?

00:36:20.060 | I was like, I can't do this on my own anymore, right?

00:36:22.560 | And that's very, very important to anyone who's listening.

00:36:26.020 | If you feel like, look, I don't think I'm in a safe

00:36:28.020 | or a stable place.

00:36:29.100 | Again, thoughts of self-harm, thoughts of hopelessness,

00:36:31.800 | then it probably is not,

00:36:34.180 | or let's err on the side of being cautious, right?

00:36:36.420 | It is not a good idea then to engage in self-inquiry, right?

00:36:40.740 | First, go see someone clinically, right?

00:36:43.580 | And I know that can be hard to do in this day and age,

00:36:47.020 | but if we really advocate for ourselves, we really push,

00:36:49.780 | we really, we do whatever we can do

00:36:52.100 | to try and get in front of someone

00:36:53.740 | who can kind of help us understand what we may need.

00:36:56.780 | And maybe that person helps us

00:36:58.060 | with the process of self-inquiry.

00:36:59.940 | Maybe that person reassures us.

00:37:01.500 | Maybe that person then tells us

00:37:03.460 | that we really do need more care, more help.

00:37:06.780 | And then it leads to us getting that

00:37:08.840 | so that we can come back to the good place

00:37:10.500 | of being well enough for the self-inquiry.

00:37:14.020 | - I'm grateful you shared your path

00:37:15.980 | to working with a clinician

00:37:17.620 | and the fact that just focusing on something on your own

00:37:20.420 | wasn't really working.

00:37:22.060 | And there was a, it sounds like a requirement

00:37:24.480 | for a clinician to help guide you through that.

00:37:26.780 | It relates directly to what I'm most curious about

00:37:31.140 | at this moment, which is, you know,

00:37:33.640 | in the map that you established for us in episode one,

00:37:37.400 | and that has carried through all these episodes,

00:37:39.060 | and by the way, if people are not familiar with the map,

00:37:41.580 | we will cover it in top contour

00:37:44.340 | in a little bit more depth in a moment here.

00:37:47.080 | But one of the key things, or cupboards,

00:37:49.900 | as we're referring to them,

00:37:51.780 | to look in in order to exert self-care

00:37:54.420 | and improve one's mental health

00:37:56.600 | is this notion of self-awareness,

00:37:58.740 | of really understanding that there's an I, a me,

00:38:02.220 | and exploring what that's really about in the moment,

00:38:04.420 | but also historically through narrative, et cetera.

00:38:07.860 | Also in this map is a cupboard that relates to salience.

00:38:12.860 | What's most obvious, or what do we default to,

00:38:16.140 | both internally, in terms of what sorts of thoughts

00:38:18.460 | we default to, and externally,

00:38:19.820 | what are we focusing on in the outside world?

00:38:22.100 | And I think I, and perhaps many other people out there,

00:38:25.500 | are wondering how to resolve any conflict

00:38:28.340 | between a practice that is aimed

00:38:31.340 | at increasing self-awareness,

00:38:33.060 | and perhaps even drawing to mind early traumas

00:38:35.820 | or challenges, or recent traumas or challenges,

00:38:38.380 | and salience.

00:38:39.220 | In other words, if I were to take some moments,

00:38:43.940 | or even an hour once a week,

00:38:45.720 | and sit there and really think about the sorts of things

00:38:49.120 | that I don't want to think about,

00:38:50.980 | that have been gnawing at me below the surface

00:38:53.580 | for a very long time,

00:38:54.540 | the stuff that I've gained some proficiency

00:38:57.060 | at pushing down beneath the surface.

00:38:59.740 | I think one fear that I have,

00:39:01.220 | and so I have to assume other people have it as well,

00:39:03.340 | is that if I were to bring that to mind,

00:39:06.140 | that it would overtake a lot of my waking hours.

00:39:09.900 | Like, it's like, I don't want to think about this thing,

00:39:12.140 | or those things.

00:39:13.080 | And so now what's salient is something negative.

00:39:15.600 | And when I'm focused on something negative,

00:39:18.260 | then I'm not able to be as generative as I would like,

00:39:21.660 | move my life, move forward toward my life goals.

00:39:24.440 | Now, I could even have the realization,

00:39:26.780 | the cognitive understanding that,

00:39:28.860 | okay, but that's necessary, right?

00:39:30.740 | Like, this is like getting a wound fixed

00:39:33.340 | or dealing with a chronic injury.

00:39:35.500 | Like, sooner or later, you got to deal with it,

00:39:37.140 | otherwise you're not going to be at your best.

00:39:39.100 | But that conflict between gaining more self-awareness

00:39:43.800 | and also the understanding that what is most salient to us

00:39:47.340 | is kind of defines the quality of our daily life.

00:39:50.520 | That conflict or friction seems like an important thing

00:39:55.040 | for us to drill into a little bit.

00:39:56.660 | - Absolutely.

00:39:57.500 | And I would say this.

00:39:59.100 | If you think there's something

00:40:01.080 | that you can't bring up into consciousness

00:40:03.420 | because it's going to take over your mind,

00:40:05.420 | or as people often say,

00:40:06.420 | I'm going to curl up in a fetal position,

00:40:08.160 | I'm going to cry and never stop,

00:40:09.840 | that is exactly the thing you must look at.

00:40:13.740 | Because salience presents itself in a whole array of ways.

00:40:18.660 | So if there's something inside of you

00:40:20.620 | that's strong enough, right,

00:40:22.820 | that it's throwing itself up to the surface,

00:40:25.600 | like, hey, maybe you want to think about me, right?

00:40:28.380 | Is your unconscious mind throwing it up to the surface?

00:40:31.420 | That is active in you.

00:40:34.300 | And often, although a lot of it happens

00:40:37.340 | in the unconscious mind,

00:40:38.380 | it happens also in the conscious mind.

00:40:40.560 | And if the person then stops and thinks,

00:40:42.760 | how much might that thing that you are not thinking about

00:40:47.760 | be impacting you?

00:40:49.420 | How might it be salient in other ways?

00:40:52.380 | And sometimes a person will realize like,

00:40:53.820 | yeah, that's on my mind.

00:40:54.860 | People say, oh, that's on my mind all the time.

00:40:57.700 | It's like kind of on the back burner, but always there.

00:41:00.460 | And he says, right, on the back burner?

00:41:02.620 | You know, that's like having a voice in the background

00:41:05.380 | telling you something very negative or very distressing.

00:41:08.640 | And it's just one example where oftentimes

00:41:12.220 | there's a realization

00:41:13.900 | that that thing is actually quite salient.

00:41:16.700 | Sometimes there isn't a realization until later.

00:41:20.300 | Oh, the salience of that is that that's how,

00:41:24.180 | that's why I don't let myself get ahead, right?

00:41:27.060 | It can come out later because, you know,

00:41:29.400 | we don't know how much of it is unconscious,

00:41:31.040 | how much of it is conscious,

00:41:32.540 | but under the right circumstances, if things are safe,

00:41:36.060 | as we said, if there's not something going on

00:41:37.860 | that presents risk and warrants clinical care,

00:41:40.660 | if there's something inside of you and you think,

00:41:42.780 | I can't let that to the surface,

00:41:45.260 | then what that is telling you is,

00:41:47.960 | I must let that to the surface.

00:41:50.640 | Now, again, we wanna do it in judicious ways

00:41:53.060 | and do it in ways that are safe, but that's the message.

00:41:56.740 | I think it's especially important that you mentioned

00:41:59.540 | that if something is gnawing at our conscious mind

00:42:02.780 | every once in a while,

00:42:04.380 | then it absolutely has to be operating

00:42:07.660 | below the level of our conscious awareness.

00:42:09.460 | - Maybe running amok.

00:42:10.540 | - All the time.

00:42:11.360 | - Below the level of consciousness, yes.

00:42:12.700 | - So if ever there was a cause

00:42:15.780 | for exploring something like that, that's it, right?

00:42:19.900 | Because we can't be aware of the ways

00:42:21.180 | that's damaging to us or limiting us.

00:42:23.380 | Again, you know, somebody listening to this

00:42:25.340 | could be doing quite well.

00:42:26.540 | They're thinking, I'm doing great.

00:42:27.380 | Like, why would I wanna do any of this?

00:42:28.980 | Well, perhaps they could be doing that much better.

00:42:31.580 | - Right, absolutely.

00:42:33.840 | - Self-awareness and addressing one's personal narrative

00:42:37.700 | and a sense of I is what we called covered one

00:42:41.640 | under the function of self.

00:42:44.040 | Now, for those that listen to episodes one, two, or three,

00:42:46.500 | they'll be familiar with what I'm talking about

00:42:48.460 | when I say a covered one function of self.

00:42:50.880 | But just for sake of getting everybody on the same page

00:42:54.000 | as we move forward here,

00:42:55.940 | maybe we could just return to the map of mental health

00:42:59.780 | for a moment.

00:43:00.700 | You know, we've talked about agency and gratitude

00:43:02.740 | as verb states.

00:43:03.940 | And you also described in previous episodes

00:43:06.740 | this key really essential concept of this generative drive.

00:43:11.740 | So if you could just take a few minutes for us

00:43:14.620 | and really explain what agency and gratitude are,

00:43:17.540 | how one goes about building those up and expressing those,

00:43:20.660 | and what the generative drive is,

00:43:22.540 | and then we'll return to the 10 cupboards of inquiry

00:43:25.980 | under the structure of self and function of self,

00:43:27.960 | which really represent the pillars and all the stuff

00:43:31.660 | that geysers up into these simple

00:43:35.180 | but extremely powerful concepts and ways of being,

00:43:38.540 | which are agency and gratitude.

00:43:40.380 | - Yes, yes.

00:43:41.860 | So I really liked when you brought the image of a geyser

00:43:46.860 | to mind, because if we think about the structure of self,

00:43:50.620 | which is one pillar, and the function of self,

00:43:53.060 | which is another pillar, underneath those pillars,

00:43:56.140 | there are the 10 cupboards we've been talking about.

00:43:58.900 | And they represent the areas of inquiry for us,

00:44:03.900 | because they're the aspects of the structure

00:44:06.340 | and function of self.

00:44:07.820 | So that's where the answers are, right?

00:44:10.720 | The answers are in those pillars.

00:44:12.500 | The answers are in those 10 cupboards.

00:44:15.620 | So if we're doing that, we're looking there,

00:44:18.500 | we're honoring what we find there,

00:44:20.380 | we're becoming healthier than that geyser, right?

00:44:24.340 | I imagine it coming out, you know,

00:44:26.340 | like the space in between the pillars, right?

00:44:28.940 | And what it is lifting up is first empowerment and humility.

00:44:33.940 | But empowerment and humility are qualities.

00:44:37.380 | It's certainly the way, and the way we're using them,

00:44:40.180 | they're qualities, they're potential.

00:44:41.720 | So I have empowerment as opposed to being disempowered,

00:44:46.060 | right?

00:44:46.900 | So I have humility instead of, for example,

00:44:49.180 | a reactive grandiosity, or even a reactive self oppression.

00:44:53.760 | So I have these qualities of empowerment and humility,

00:44:57.260 | and then they become enacted, right?

00:45:00.180 | They become expressed by us.

00:45:02.680 | And I imagine riding on the top is the agency

00:45:06.060 | and the gratitude is at the top of the geyser,

00:45:08.800 | and it's moving, right?

00:45:10.060 | They're verbs.

00:45:11.180 | We navigate life as life moves forward, right?

00:45:15.300 | I will often think like being on like the luge, right?

00:45:19.060 | And you see in the Olympics,

00:45:20.100 | so the bridge is going down the twisting path,

00:45:21.860 | and it's like, that's us moving through life, right?

00:45:25.420 | And we all have different pathways,

00:45:27.000 | but they can interconnect and they can cross,

00:45:29.260 | but that's what's happening.

00:45:30.980 | Living is an active thing, right?

00:45:35.080 | So agency and gratitude are active things.

00:45:38.500 | Why?

00:45:39.320 | Because they're the ultimate expression

00:45:41.620 | of all underneath of them.

00:45:44.580 | That's where it goes.

00:45:45.720 | If the pillars are in the right place,

00:45:47.620 | the geyser can function, the empowerment and humility

00:45:50.260 | are with us.

00:45:51.100 | So we're engaging with ourselves, with others,

00:45:53.780 | with the world through a lens of clarity

00:45:55.960 | and through a lens of knowing we can make the world

00:45:58.900 | a better place and knowing our role in it.

00:46:01.340 | That's very, very active.

00:46:03.620 | And then it brings to us the peace,

00:46:06.580 | the contentment, the delight that weaves in and out.

00:46:09.700 | As you described that you will feel the peace,

00:46:12.680 | the contentment, the delight

00:46:14.340 | when you're doing the solo podcast, right?

00:46:16.940 | But you're doing something very, very active, right?

00:46:19.900 | That's not, it's not a passive endeavor, right?

00:46:23.500 | During which you feel all those things,

00:46:24.820 | but that makes sense, right?

00:46:26.180 | Peace doesn't mean nothingness, right?

00:46:28.760 | Now it can, someone who's looking out the window

00:46:30.940 | at the garden they planted can feel that too.

00:46:33.960 | But there's life going on in them also, right?

00:46:37.300 | They're contemplating the garden.

00:46:39.140 | They know that they made the garden.

00:46:40.980 | So these are all active processes

00:46:43.180 | because life is an active process.

00:46:45.700 | And then we end up in this place of looking inside of us.

00:46:49.640 | These drives within us are both deterministic

00:46:53.500 | and determined, right?

00:46:55.380 | So think about how active a process that is

00:46:58.260 | where we have a natural bias one way or another

00:47:02.060 | because of our genetics.

00:47:03.220 | Just like someone has a natural aptitude to be taller

00:47:06.340 | and someone shorter or to be more or less athletic, right?

00:47:09.260 | We have potential within us

00:47:11.680 | when the genetics come together, right?

00:47:14.440 | And that may determine some sort of set of parameters.

00:47:18.260 | So maybe someone who doesn't have the blessings

00:47:21.500 | of being so athletic, perhaps myself, right?

00:47:24.580 | I'm not gonna be the world's greatest athlete, right?

00:47:27.540 | But if I work hard, like I could be a lot more athletic

00:47:30.780 | and have been at times, right?

00:47:31.980 | And if I don't, I could be a lot less athletic, right?

00:47:35.060 | So there are potentials within us

00:47:39.120 | that get sort of genetically determined,

00:47:41.260 | but have a wide array of variants around them.

00:47:46.260 | And then our choices determine where we are in that variance.

00:47:51.600 | If I don't take care of myself,

00:47:53.400 | I will be on the very low end of the athletic spectrum,

00:47:56.880 | right?

00:47:57.720 | If I do and I cultivate myself,

00:47:59.840 | I can be on a higher end for me, right?

00:48:02.280 | But still that's a lot better than the lower end.

00:48:05.300 | There's a very big difference.

00:48:07.080 | The same is true in our drives.

00:48:09.720 | So the more we're taking care of ourselves,

00:48:13.040 | we're reinforcing the primacy of the generative drive.

00:48:18.040 | And then the aggression, assertion, proactive, right?

00:48:22.200 | That drive in us is realized as best we're gonna realize it.

00:48:27.200 | And not everyone's is gonna be off the chart, right?

00:48:29.940 | And that's okay, right?

00:48:31.440 | But that drive is in a place that lets that person

00:48:34.260 | take care of themselves, you know?

00:48:35.600 | Have a job they enjoy and can do well at

00:48:39.060 | and make their home life better,

00:48:40.880 | whatever it is that we can do.

00:48:43.200 | We're more assertive, we're more engaged.

00:48:45.340 | And then that's bringing us more pleasure.

00:48:47.640 | So the pleasure drive, again, it's not a hedonistic drive,

00:48:50.960 | it's drive for things we enjoy.

00:48:52.440 | Like we enjoy safety, we enjoy absence of pain,

00:48:55.520 | but we also enjoy friends and romance and sex and food.

00:48:59.200 | Like these are things that bring us gratification

00:49:01.760 | and we can have that in a healthy place too.

00:49:04.400 | So there's not too much and not too little

00:49:07.440 | of the aggression, assertion, proactive drive,

00:49:11.480 | not too much, not too little of the pleasure drive.

00:49:15.140 | And then we're in a place where we can meet

00:49:17.800 | where those drives are at.

00:49:19.360 | So if the pleasure drive is in a certain place in us,

00:49:22.260 | we can meet that, right?

00:49:23.760 | And maybe we foster it moving a little higher up

00:49:27.340 | because we're doing good things

00:49:28.660 | and we're taking care of ourselves.

00:49:30.300 | So if our romance is in a better place,

00:49:33.000 | then we can take more pleasure in our romance, right?

00:49:36.220 | If our physical fitness is in a better place,

00:49:38.560 | we can enjoy that more, right?

00:49:40.040 | We can do more things.

00:49:41.420 | So we are helping those drives to be in the optimal place

00:49:46.420 | to subserve the generative drive,

00:49:50.180 | which we are trying to optimize and maximize.

00:49:53.500 | And that puts us in the best place to have the things

00:49:57.200 | under those pillars in those cupboards in a good place.

00:50:00.440 | And then on top of that geyser is the empowerment

00:50:02.880 | and the humility.

00:50:03.940 | And then that gets enacted as agency and gratitude.

00:50:07.380 | And we have more of the goodness of peace

00:50:10.360 | and contentment and delight,

00:50:12.260 | and that reinforces the generative drive.

00:50:14.520 | So that's what's going on.

00:50:16.860 | And it has never failed me yet to read or listen

00:50:21.860 | to someone communicating happiness,

00:50:26.500 | either what they think it is, how they found it,

00:50:29.320 | what they're striving for,

00:50:30.600 | what they think it philosophically is, right?

00:50:33.660 | It's all that, right?

00:50:35.480 | And it's not as simple as a word, right?

00:50:38.780 | Because it's complex, we're complex,

00:50:41.460 | but the beauty of it all is the complexity is within us,

00:50:45.440 | but it's not out of our reach to understand ourselves better

00:50:49.360 | and help ourselves.

00:50:50.340 | And if we do that, as we move further up the hierarchy,

00:50:54.560 | it gets simpler.

00:50:56.880 | Approaching the world through agency and gratitude as verbs,

00:51:00.520 | it's pretty straightforward.

00:51:01.720 | That's why that's the best metric

00:51:03.540 | for romantic compatibility, right?

00:51:06.660 | It's not this person plays a musical instrument

00:51:09.540 | and that person's a mathematician,

00:51:11.340 | so they're not compatible.

00:51:12.520 | No more than one plays the trumpet,

00:51:14.220 | one plays the clarinet, and we assume they are compatible.

00:51:17.060 | Where are those drives at?

00:51:18.700 | Are people healthy, in a healthy place?

00:51:21.700 | We can then take the best care of ourselves,

00:51:24.260 | engage with others in a healthy way,

00:51:26.860 | understand who's a healthy other to engage with, right?

00:51:31.500 | Get ourselves out of unhealthy situations,

00:51:34.060 | and then we're building health within ourselves

00:51:36.860 | and around ourselves.

00:51:38.060 | And that's how, at the different levels of emergence,

00:51:41.780 | things get better.

00:51:42.900 | So if I make myself healthier

00:51:45.660 | and you make yourself healthier,

00:51:47.320 | we will be healthier as a group of two.

00:51:49.960 | That's always how that is.

00:51:51.820 | And if we're healthier as a group of two,

00:51:54.020 | we can be healthier as parts of larger groups, right?

00:51:58.100 | Or if the groups aren't healthy,

00:52:00.200 | we're pushing towards greater health, right?

00:52:01.840 | We're engendering health,

00:52:03.340 | and that's how we see health grow

00:52:05.460 | until it can be manifest even on a cultural level,

00:52:08.800 | where we're taking better care of ourselves.

00:52:10.780 | We're less punitive.

00:52:11.820 | We're less rushing forward as a society

00:52:14.340 | and trampling the vulnerable, right?

00:52:16.100 | And we realize, oh, I could be the vulnerable, right?

00:52:19.700 | I care about other people even if I don't know them

00:52:22.040 | because I can understand and empathize

00:52:23.860 | with what it feels like to be vulnerable.

00:52:25.840 | And furthermore, I could be among the vulnerable.

00:52:28.420 | So we behave differently as a culture,

00:52:31.620 | and that's what we're searching for on an individual level,

00:52:35.880 | all the way up to a cultural level.

00:52:38.200 | - I have several questions,

00:52:40.420 | but first I want to just highlight what you said

00:52:44.520 | about relational structure, relationships,

00:52:47.580 | and the fact that as was explored in episode three,

00:52:52.300 | and you made so clear, and it just makes so much sense,

00:52:56.340 | most of what people explore for

00:52:59.180 | when looking for a romantic partner

00:53:00.740 | or determining whether or not

00:53:02.100 | their existing romantic relationship could be better or not

00:53:05.100 | is focused on the wrong things, right?

00:53:07.760 | These very kind of superficial notions of what people enjoy

00:53:11.460 | and even level of education, some of which can really matter,

00:53:15.120 | but that's not the critical issue at hand,

00:53:18.300 | and that the maps that the two individuals have

00:53:22.420 | and the extent to which they are expressing

00:53:24.420 | their generative drive and agency and gratitude

00:53:28.900 | is far, far more important.

00:53:30.700 | And so for those that haven't heard episode three

00:53:33.000 | and are interested in relationships,

00:53:34.420 | not just romantic relationships,

00:53:36.140 | but relationships of all kinds, work, families,

00:53:38.700 | relationship to self, friendship,

00:53:40.220 | I highly, highly recommend listening to that conversation

00:53:42.540 | because it's truly spectacular

00:53:46.100 | in terms of its actionable takeaways in by actual,

00:53:49.720 | well, I mean, actions, of course, behaviors,

00:53:51.780 | and also modes of thinking that can really serve people.

00:53:55.260 | I also just want to make one clarification

00:53:57.700 | that I believe that when you said hierarchy,

00:54:01.380 | when you said move up the hierarchy,

00:54:03.780 | you were referring to the hierarchy within the map

00:54:06.300 | that's been laid out here, right?

00:54:07.720 | As opposed to, I don't want people to get mistakenly

00:54:11.900 | distracted by the possibility that we're talking about

00:54:13.820 | some sort of like external social hierarchy.

00:54:16.300 | So I just want to clarify that.

00:54:17.940 | And that's actually a perfect jumping off place

00:54:20.200 | for going into the map with a little bit more depth

00:54:24.260 | and detail and exploring these cupboards

00:54:26.960 | that reside at the lower levels of the map

00:54:29.860 | and that are quite complex.

00:54:31.020 | Okay, so for those of you listening who have not yet gone

00:54:33.660 | in access to the PDF that we put in the show, no captions,

00:54:37.000 | you can do that at any point.

00:54:38.440 | But what we're talking about is a bunch of things

00:54:40.900 | down at the bottom under these two pillars,

00:54:43.900 | structure of self and function of self,

00:54:45.780 | these cupboards, excuse me, that are extremely valuable

00:54:50.200 | for any and all of us to look in and explore

00:54:52.540 | and ask specific questions because it's what resides

00:54:55.600 | within those cupboards that combine in a sort of recipe

00:54:59.320 | and then geyser up into whether or not

00:55:02.520 | and how much empowerment, humility, agency, gratitude,

00:55:06.780 | peace, contentment, delight, and generative drive

00:55:10.360 | we are able to exert and experience for ourselves in life.

00:55:15.980 | So imagine in your minds, if you will,

00:55:18.740 | and here I'm borrowing directly from a picture model

00:55:22.340 | that Dr. Conti provided before the filming of this series,

00:55:27.340 | which is an iceberg where below the surface of the water

00:55:30.580 | resides a bunch of stuff and then a little bit

00:55:32.620 | is above the water and maybe you'll help us revisit

00:55:34.980 | that model now for a few moments.

00:55:37.060 | But if you take nothing away at this moment,

00:55:40.060 | please understand that there's a lot of complex stuff

00:55:43.260 | going on underneath the surface of the brain and mind.

00:55:46.480 | But a key feature of this map is that while it is very,

00:55:50.020 | very complex underneath, what emerges from that complexity

00:55:54.520 | gets simpler and simpler, especially as we move

00:55:56.880 | towards places of better health

00:55:58.820 | and more effectiveness in life.

00:56:01.420 | So if you would, could you describe the map

00:56:05.260 | in a bit more detail, especially what's down there

00:56:07.780 | in these pillars, the complex stuff and the stuff

00:56:10.140 | that we should be looking at.

00:56:11.220 | And then we'll touch on some of those cupboards

00:56:13.860 | that we all have and the sorts of questions

00:56:16.600 | that we should all be asking in the context

00:56:19.260 | of some common challenges, but also some very common

00:56:23.400 | and very effective paths to doing and feeling better.

00:56:26.320 | - Yes, yes.

00:56:28.580 | The unconscious mind is the place to start.

00:56:31.660 | That's the deepest level of the structure of self.

00:56:36.180 | So imagine sitting on top of a biological supercomputer

00:56:41.220 | the size of a house, right?

00:56:43.220 | That's what's going on inside of us, right?

00:56:45.220 | The unconscious mind is that biological supercomputer.

00:56:49.380 | And if we're interested in ourselves, right,

00:56:51.820 | we become very, very curious about what is going on in it.

00:56:56.340 | And that's where even though it's not directly accessible

00:56:59.780 | to us, it can be accessible through other ways,

00:57:03.000 | such as we talked about reflection or therapy,

00:57:05.300 | and of course there are other ways too,

00:57:06.780 | but it is accessible to us.

00:57:09.420 | And we want to know what is in it

00:57:12.120 | because what is in it has such a strong effect

00:57:17.020 | on what's going on in our conscious mind, right?

00:57:20.180 | That's the person on top of the biological supercomputer

00:57:25.180 | the size of a house, or the image we've been using

00:57:29.140 | is the top of the iceberg that's coming out of the water.

00:57:31.920 | So we can look at that either way,

00:57:33.760 | but what is in it has of course a huge effect

00:57:36.900 | on the part that we're aware of, our conscious mind.

00:57:40.340 | And I think the best analogy here,

00:57:42.660 | and it's actually I think quite an analogy

00:57:45.700 | that parallels very well is to an abscess

00:57:48.460 | in the field of physical medicine.

00:57:50.520 | So an abscess is an area of walled off infection, right?

00:57:55.140 | So imagine that there's some infection, for example,

00:57:58.380 | it's often in the abdomen, okay?

00:58:00.140 | There's some infection and that infection

00:58:03.020 | could be really dangerous, right?

00:58:04.500 | If that infection spread, boy, it could go to the blood,

00:58:07.860 | the person could die from that, right?

00:58:10.940 | So the body does a really good job

00:58:13.900 | of walling off that infection, right?

00:58:16.540 | And that's a good thing, right?

00:58:18.360 | Because if the infection weren't walled off,

00:58:20.540 | it poses huge risk.

00:58:22.800 | But the walled off infection

00:58:24.740 | does not represent a condition of health.

00:58:27.960 | So someone who has an abscess in them and doesn't know it,

00:58:31.580 | this happens frequently in medicine.

00:58:33.660 | We see people coming to emergency rooms

00:58:36.020 | and they have a low grade fever

00:58:38.220 | and they've had a low grade fever for a while

00:58:40.140 | and they just don't feel good.

00:58:42.420 | And they have low energy and they're not sleeping well.

00:58:44.860 | And they find themselves sweating a lot.

00:58:46.860 | There are pervasive experiences going on

00:58:49.820 | that are really detracting from life,

00:58:52.380 | like not feeling great all the time,

00:58:54.740 | even though the person doesn't feel really sick.

00:58:56.980 | That's sometimes why it takes a while

00:58:58.480 | for the person to come to medical attention.

00:59:01.260 | So what's going on is better than not being walled off,

00:59:05.420 | but it is not synonymous with health.

00:59:08.420 | So what happens in physical medicine?

00:59:10.580 | Abscess is identified and then someone goes in,

00:59:13.900 | the surgeon goes in and drains it.

00:59:16.420 | And then the person is better, right?

00:59:20.300 | Think about that process.

00:59:21.500 | Like surgery, surgery is not like a fun thing, right?

00:59:25.820 | There's anesthesia, there's recovery, right?

00:59:28.360 | But surgery is great when it cures the problem, right?

00:59:31.600 | So it's not that, oh, the physician in the emergency room

00:59:35.580 | or the family practice doc who identifies

00:59:37.960 | that there's an abscess, refer to the surgeon,

00:59:39.520 | everything is great and happy and they're better.

00:59:42.100 | No, they have to go have a surgery

00:59:43.840 | and that's not an easy thing, right?

00:59:45.940 | But if they go and do that on the other side,

00:59:48.200 | the infection actually is gone.

00:59:50.560 | So they do not have the symptoms

00:59:53.540 | that was constantly spinning off inside of them.

00:59:56.560 | And they also don't have the risk

00:59:58.540 | that maybe that infection gets out of the abscess

01:00:01.820 | and their life is then at risk.

01:00:04.540 | So the parallel is looking into the unconscious mind

01:00:08.720 | to what is inside of us that may be acting like that abscess.

01:00:13.720 | Even though this is an analogy, it is not theoretical.

01:00:17.660 | Like this happens all the time.

01:00:20.840 | And the abscess inside that person emotionally

01:00:24.440 | may be the bullying that went on

01:00:26.560 | right around the time of puberty, right?

01:00:28.800 | It may be that awful boss who was just so mean

01:00:33.180 | and took that good job away from me, right?

01:00:36.900 | It might be that.

01:00:37.840 | It might be that assault that I don't wanna think about

01:00:41.700 | that's really still with me.

01:00:43.460 | It might be that death I still feel guilty about.

01:00:46.640 | I don't know what it is, right?

01:00:48.100 | But if there's an abscess in there,

01:00:50.600 | we want to understand it and then fix it, cure it, right?

01:00:55.600 | And that's what the therapy process can do.

01:00:59.200 | And that's why at times the therapy is unpleasant.

01:01:02.100 | The crying and the anger,

01:01:04.060 | that's the parallel of going through the surgery, right?

01:01:06.640 | But on the other side,

01:01:08.220 | we've dissipated the energy inside of it.

01:01:10.880 | Like we've taken care of it.

01:01:13.120 | And that's why it is so important

01:01:15.560 | to go into the unconscious mind

01:01:17.880 | if there are things that are really troubling us

01:01:20.840 | or if we don't know what's going on

01:01:23.540 | to cast a net of inquiry that may lead us there

01:01:26.220 | because trauma is so common

01:01:29.040 | and we shove trauma underneath the surface

01:01:32.560 | because of the guilt and shame that it generates.

01:01:35.780 | And then it stays in us like an abscess

01:01:38.940 | and spins off symptoms.

01:01:40.300 | They could be symptoms of diffidence.

01:01:42.180 | They could be symptoms of overusing a substance.

01:01:45.800 | They could be symptoms of avoiding good things in our life,

01:01:49.020 | but they're pervasive symptoms

01:01:51.360 | that are really harmful to us

01:01:53.140 | that we can understand and fix.

01:01:56.540 | - In addition to quality therapy,

01:02:00.720 | what are some other ways to access the unconscious?

01:02:05.720 | Earlier, we were talking about journaling

01:02:07.840 | and spelling out one's life narrative

01:02:10.540 | in written or in spoken form,

01:02:12.200 | either alone or with a trusted other.

01:02:14.360 | Let's assume that somebody either can't afford

01:02:16.620 | or is just not at the place

01:02:18.100 | where they're willing to do therapy yet.

01:02:20.680 | But they fully adopt this abscess model

01:02:25.160 | that or this abscess analogy that you described,

01:02:29.180 | which I think is an exceptional one

01:02:31.240 | because A, you have the 20 plus years of clinical experience

01:02:35.820 | knowing this exists, but also I think we all at some level

01:02:40.560 | can understand that there's stuff happening within us

01:02:42.940 | that we can't explain.

01:02:44.860 | And I, as a neuroscientist can absolutely say

01:02:47.860 | that most of the neural machinery in your head

01:02:50.760 | and the parts of it that are in your body,

01:02:53.820 | we don't have access to it.

01:02:55.580 | We love to think that we do, but we don't.

01:02:57.500 | It's just clicking away under there.

01:02:59.680 | So let's say somebody wants to make some progress,

01:03:04.000 | really improve their level of mental health,

01:03:07.120 | obtain more agency and gratitude,

01:03:09.040 | improve all aspects of their life and the generative drive.

01:03:12.320 | What are some ways that they can start to tap

01:03:14.360 | into the unconscious?

01:03:15.600 | And my guess is, if it's not in therapy,

01:03:19.540 | it's going to be by looking at some,

01:03:21.580 | in some of these other cupboards as you're describing them.

01:03:24.280 | - Right, yes.

01:03:25.560 | Develop and embrace curiosity about yourself, right?

01:03:28.920 | And if you can, go for that curiosity being dispassionate.

01:03:33.920 | In the sense that, you talk about these files you have

01:03:39.200 | with your, with memories and events from your past,

01:03:42.560 | that's so good, right?

01:03:44.480 | Because you're exploring your life, right?

01:03:46.720 | So someone who wants to understand themselves better,

01:03:50.560 | do that for yourself.

01:03:51.920 | Go look at pictures, talk to people you knew

01:03:54.640 | at different stages of life,

01:03:56.360 | reflect upon how you behaved at different stages of life,

01:03:59.420 | what you felt inside, anchor yourself to memories

01:04:02.080 | and then extrapolate from there,

01:04:03.720 | become curious about yourself.

01:04:05.520 | And if you can be dispassionate,

01:04:07.520 | this idea that sometimes gets called an observing ego,

01:04:10.960 | right, there are other words to put to it,

01:04:12.840 | but it's not ego in a negative sense, right?

01:04:15.440 | Here, it means the ability to stand outside of oneself

01:04:18.220 | and go, huh, right?

01:04:20.120 | And to really think about oneself

01:04:22.360 | without the negative emotion,

01:04:24.640 | we're often able to either see the trauma, for example,

01:04:28.200 | or see the change, like, huh,

01:04:30.160 | why did I go from feeling really good about myself?

01:04:34.120 | And I felt like I could do anything

01:04:36.200 | and then just a couple of years later,

01:04:39.520 | man, look at me, I'm mopey in the pictures

01:04:42.000 | and then think, yeah, I was drinking more,

01:04:44.360 | I stopped taking care of myself,

01:04:45.680 | like that's a pretty big change, right?

01:04:48.040 | And then, so now like we're calling attention,

01:04:50.520 | what's that change?

01:04:51.480 | And a lot of times the person knew it,

01:04:53.900 | you know, like, oh, I got rejected,

01:04:55.440 | I had that terrible breakup, right?

01:04:57.120 | And like, they knew it was a terrible breakup

01:04:59.680 | but they keep shoving it under the surface.

01:05:01.480 | Maybe they didn't know it was a terrible breakup.

01:05:03.960 | Maybe they can't figure out what it is, like, that's okay.

01:05:07.280 | Even if they recognize, look, there was a change,

01:05:09.880 | then that will put the lie

01:05:11.960 | to what in this example is likely going on.

01:05:14.560 | So that person likely frames themselves

01:05:17.520 | in a way that is very negative and always was true, right?

01:05:22.140 | So, I can never achieve anything, I never feel good,

01:05:25.840 | no one likes me, I can't find a partner,

01:05:27.360 | whatever it is we say to ourselves,

01:05:29.080 | the person, it's always been that way, right?

01:05:31.520 | Because the negative emotion is so strong

01:05:33.960 | and that part of our brain

01:05:34.920 | doesn't care about the clock and the calendar,

01:05:36.840 | and then the person goes back

01:05:38.080 | and thinks it was not always that way, right?

01:05:41.000 | And it comes to this a lot in therapy,

01:05:42.780 | doesn't have to be, as you said, in therapy,

01:05:44.940 | but no, you know, I was a go-getter, right?

01:05:48.040 | I'm thinking of the person who said I was a go-getter

01:05:50.220 | and I went out there and did things

01:05:51.680 | which put the lie to her saying that she was lazy,

01:05:54.720 | incapable, all those things that were not true,

01:05:57.800 | but she accepted as truth, right?

01:06:00.040 | So, she needed, from that mathematical perspective,

01:06:02.240 | like to go back and question the givens, right?

01:06:04.600 | From our perspective, we're saying,

01:06:06.520 | go look in the unconscious mind,

01:06:08.960 | go look in that part of the pillar of the structure of self.

01:06:13.960 | Go look there, that's the deepest part,

01:06:16.480 | the most complicated part,

01:06:17.940 | but it doesn't mean we can't understand it.

01:06:20.200 | And if we start to gain understanding,

01:06:22.360 | then we can think more about the conscious mind,

01:06:24.900 | like, wait a second, what am I thinking about?

01:06:27.200 | What do I think about that, right?

01:06:28.840 | Have I really thought about this

01:06:30.080 | or is it just running over and over in my head?

01:06:32.520 | What would I like to do about it?

01:06:34.400 | Maybe I'd like to learn more.

01:06:35.720 | Maybe I wanna go get a book that I think could help me,

01:06:37.560 | listen to another podcast that could help me,

01:06:39.600 | talk to a friend, like maybe I wanna do those things.

01:06:41.920 | So now, the flow between the unconscious mind

01:06:45.120 | and the conscious mind, right, becomes much more robust

01:06:49.040 | and that lets us look further, right?

01:06:50.760 | To look at the next level up, the defense mechanisms

01:06:53.820 | that grow up out of the unconscious mind

01:06:57.240 | and we can have some understanding of them

01:07:00.720 | even though they're unconscious, right?

01:07:02.640 | So the idea of when something shifted in me,

01:07:07.080 | how did my way of engaging with the world kind of change?

01:07:10.360 | You know, like I was perseverant and, you know,

01:07:14.480 | I would take some of that energy in me that wasn't so good

01:07:17.020 | and I could put it into like exercising,

01:07:19.320 | taking care of myself and then, you know,

01:07:21.240 | then that sort of shifted

01:07:22.600 | and I became sarcastic and cynical

01:07:26.080 | and, you know, I started avoiding, you know,

01:07:28.800 | those of my friends who are really taking care of themselves

01:07:31.700 | and doing well because that made me feel worse about myself.

01:07:34.840 | So that's a dialogue that is reflective

01:07:38.600 | of defense mechanisms.

01:07:40.020 | Now, the person isn't gonna necessarily say,

01:07:42.220 | oh, I used a lot of sublimation which is good

01:07:45.360 | and then I started using reaction formation and avoidance,

01:07:48.320 | just as an example, right?

01:07:49.740 | But they're gonna understand that in words that they can,

01:07:54.360 | whatever words they put to it,

01:07:56.040 | they understand that there was a change.

01:07:57.460 | They can start putting, they put words to that.

01:07:59.720 | They can understand that process of change.

01:08:01.640 | It's not opaque, they're shining light on it

01:08:04.000 | and now they can gain a better understanding of it

01:08:06.900 | and they can change it.

01:08:07.880 | Even that realization that I was much more functional,

01:08:10.760 | things were different.

01:08:12.140 | I mean, that can be a treasure trove of very relevant,

01:08:16.820 | very important and very positive information

01:08:19.840 | to bring to the current situation.

01:08:22.340 | - I think we often romance the idea of the person

01:08:25.620 | who can just live life forward, who doesn't look back,

01:08:29.500 | who just doesn't really explore their past,

01:08:31.820 | is just action-oriented because after all,

01:08:33.940 | when we wake up in the morning,

01:08:34.980 | all we can control is our actions going forward.

01:08:38.580 | We can't rescript the actions of past, ours or others.

01:08:43.180 | - That is such a good point of what happens

01:08:45.620 | when we're just looking forward, right?

01:08:48.140 | We become like a sprinter who comes out of the blocks too fast.

01:08:53.060 | So if you think about the beginning of a 100 meter dash,

01:08:57.740 | they're the best sprinters in the world, say,

01:09:00.300 | and there they are in the blocks.

01:09:02.020 | And if they come out of those blocks in the right way,

01:09:04.780 | they will gain momentum, they will keep their form

01:09:07.280 | and they will run as fast as they can.

01:09:09.720 | But if they do not pay attention to what is behind them,

01:09:13.140 | the blocks that are supporting their body,

01:09:15.660 | the whole bigger picture here of the limitations

01:09:18.460 | within the body, right?

01:09:19.660 | They have to know what those limitations are.

01:09:21.660 | They have to understand themselves.

01:09:23.540 | That's how they avoid coming out of the block so fast

01:09:26.580 | and then sprawling headlong onto the track.

01:09:29.140 | And we see that happen too.

01:09:30.960 | So if we're just looking forward and thought and idea,

01:09:33.980 | that's how to live life, we will be tripping forward.

01:09:36.840 | And ultimately we'll be like that sprinter,

01:09:38.700 | no matter how great a sprinter,

01:09:40.540 | if you come out of the blocks too fast,

01:09:42.540 | you're gonna trip forward.

01:09:43.980 | - Yes, I know I said this in a different form

01:09:45.820 | a few minutes ago, but I think a lot of people

01:09:48.780 | are afraid of self-inquiry because they just don't want

01:09:53.780 | the thing that they discover,

01:09:56.660 | which resides in their unconscious, the abscess, if you will,

01:10:00.180 | or the damaging thought or thing that happened,

01:10:04.380 | which they are aware of, but are pushing down,

01:10:06.760 | to take over their daily life in a way

01:10:09.160 | that doesn't allow them to be at least as functional

01:10:11.620 | as they are in the moment.

01:10:13.620 | - If you go visit the person who had the abscess

01:10:17.300 | cured by the surgeon on post-op day one,

01:10:20.140 | that person will be less functional, right?

01:10:22.660 | They'll be in a hospital bed, right?

01:10:24.680 | They won't be able to get up out of the bed,

01:10:25.860 | they won't be able to exercise, they're gonna feel,

01:10:27.980 | they're not gonna feel their best, right?

01:10:30.000 | That's okay, right?

01:10:31.700 | It is okay that we at times can become intermittently say,

01:10:35.360 | less functional, right?

01:10:36.620 | In the sense that we're more upset

01:10:38.020 | that I'm spending more time crying, right?

01:10:40.100 | That's okay, because that's part of the energy,

01:10:44.380 | the effort, the choice that gets us to a better place.

01:10:48.660 | - Okay, so it's clear to me why exploring

01:10:50.260 | the unconscious mind can be and really is immensely valuable.

01:10:54.780 | It's just, I'm convinced.

01:10:56.620 | And I can't imagine anyone out there who would disagree

01:11:00.460 | with the idea that getting better mentally,

01:11:04.980 | being able to function better in the world as a consequence

01:11:08.500 | is not a terrific use of one's time.

01:11:11.500 | Even if it, you know, at the surface seems to take us

01:11:14.420 | off course a bit in the moment or not for even a few days.

01:11:19.280 | And I think it's also worth highlighting

01:11:21.540 | that it's not the case that if we do an exploration

01:11:24.940 | of the unconscious mind or look in any of these cupboards

01:11:27.940 | for that matter, that our entire day

01:11:30.200 | is going to be overtaken by it,

01:11:31.660 | or all of our sleep is going to disappear.

01:11:33.500 | I mean, we're not talking about a process

01:11:36.660 | in which everything is devoted to exploring these cupboards.

01:11:40.580 | I mean, there are instances, of course,

01:11:41.860 | where someone hits a crisis and they simply can't function.

01:11:44.260 | But in that case, the thing they absolutely need to do

01:11:46.720 | is to look in these cupboards.

01:11:48.460 | What are some ways that we can explore this other cupboard

01:11:51.180 | under the pillar of structure of self,

01:11:53.560 | which is the cupboard of the conscious mind?

01:11:57.120 | - So we can also approach this

01:12:00.140 | through the curiosity of self.

01:12:02.780 | We do a lot of things automatically, right?

01:12:06.340 | That we can stop and think about.

01:12:07.840 | Like, why do I do that thing, right?

01:12:10.580 | And it's amazing what that can provide, right?

01:12:15.060 | So for example, I'm working with a person

01:12:17.660 | who has been going to work for a long, long, long, long,

01:12:20.780 | long, long time, right?

01:12:22.320 | Didn't need to go to work a long time ago, right?

01:12:25.900 | And there's so many other things

01:12:27.580 | this person wants to do with their life.

01:12:30.100 | They're curious about things.

01:12:31.460 | They want to spend more time

01:12:32.480 | with the older people in their family, right?

01:12:34.700 | They had to stop and think, why am I going to work, right?

01:12:39.220 | Now, he's fortunate enough that he doesn't have to.

01:12:41.500 | He also earned, you know, he started working.

01:12:43.280 | He's diligent, he's fortunate,

01:12:44.840 | but he hadn't thought about it.

01:12:47.220 | He's been going to work automatically for a long time.

01:12:50.880 | And it was the thinking about it that made him realize,

01:12:53.220 | well, I do that automatically.

01:12:55.180 | Now, why?

01:12:56.000 | Because it's rooted in unconscious things,

01:12:58.840 | but that he's now bringing to the conscious mind, right?

01:13:01.480 | Because I value hard work and I value diligence.

01:13:04.540 | But him stop working doesn't mean

01:13:06.460 | that he's not innately hardworking or diligent,

01:13:09.580 | but he showed that for years and years and years.

01:13:11.620 | And he can show it in other ways,

01:13:13.100 | like by, you know, he wants to be attentive

01:13:15.360 | to the older people who need help.

01:13:16.660 | Like there's a lot he can do,

01:13:18.500 | but he had to go back and look.

01:13:20.340 | And then of course there's a reason

01:13:21.940 | why he didn't realize it, right?

01:13:24.020 | And even though it's not even a bad reason,

01:13:26.540 | but clearly there was then an overvalue

01:13:28.700 | of hardworking, diligent, and he didn't realize,

01:13:31.780 | oh, like I've done that, right?

01:13:34.180 | Like I've done enough that I've convinced myself,

01:13:35.900 | like I know I'm hardworking, I know I'm diligent.

01:13:37.820 | It's okay, I don't have to sort of serve

01:13:38.960 | that internal master anymore and then I can step away.

01:13:42.060 | And now his whole life has changed,

01:13:44.640 | but how the change come about by asking what one might think

01:13:48.900 | is such a simple question to make no sense.

01:13:51.100 | Like why do I go to work each day?

01:13:53.320 | Why have I been going?

01:13:54.880 | He's off on the road to change.

01:13:57.020 | So it's one aspect of how we can explore the conscious mind.

01:14:03.020 | It often leads us back to the unconscious mind, right?

01:14:05.700 | But it's awareness of our conscious choices, right?

01:14:08.540 | We can also then use tactics.

01:14:10.580 | So for example, cognitive behavioral tactics,

01:14:13.180 | like thought redirection, like if I'm aware that,

01:14:15.660 | hey, there's a thought that comes into my mind a lot

01:14:18.240 | and I start learning ways I can redirect away from it

01:14:20.880 | instead of thinking about it a hundred times, right?

01:14:23.260 | And if I learn how to do that,

01:14:25.340 | there's less sort of negative emotion

01:14:27.000 | that comes from thinking about it

01:14:28.460 | and I can start to feel better, right?

01:14:30.500 | It's the basic premise of it.

01:14:31.620 | But these are techniques that can really help us

01:14:34.300 | and they involve understanding and guiding

01:14:37.220 | the conscious mind.

01:14:38.320 | - I'm smiling because I'm recalling an experience I had.

01:14:43.220 | I have a female friend who's a very impressive person,

01:14:46.240 | really, as over-comaton,

01:14:48.700 | is a recovered alcoholic for many years

01:14:51.420 | and takes, at least by my read, great care of herself

01:14:56.060 | and the other people around her

01:14:57.140 | and has a spectacular sense of humor

01:14:58.880 | and a bunch of other things.

01:14:59.900 | But it was probably five, six years ago

01:15:02.260 | that we were in conversation about something

01:15:03.740 | I don't recall what, and out of apparently nowhere,

01:15:07.500 | she said, "I hate being busy."

01:15:11.040 | And it just stopped me in my tracks

01:15:12.720 | because I'm somebody who keeps very, very busy.

01:15:16.220 | My schedule is extremely full

01:15:18.140 | with things that I really enjoy,

01:15:19.580 | some things I don't enjoy or enjoy less,

01:15:21.460 | but fortunately at this point in my life,

01:15:23.560 | mostly things that I enjoy.

01:15:25.380 | At the time, I was very, very busy with many things,

01:15:29.140 | including many things I didn't enjoy.

01:15:30.940 | And her statement just halted me.

01:15:34.100 | And I realized, maybe I don't have to be busy.

01:15:38.820 | Like this whole notion of doing a bunch of things

01:15:40.860 | I don't want to do.

01:15:41.680 | Like, sure, we have to make our way in the world

01:15:43.660 | and make a living and take care of ourselves and others.

01:15:46.100 | But I realized that there was a lot of extra stuff

01:15:49.500 | that I was doing.

01:15:50.660 | - Right, 'cause I think what she meant

01:15:52.180 | and what you were reflecting on was,

01:15:54.940 | I hate being automatically busy, right?

01:15:57.780 | It's not good to be automatically busy.

01:15:59.740 | And then it makes you think about,

01:16:00.920 | wait, how am I busy in ways that are good for me?

01:16:03.420 | And how am I busy in ways that are not?

01:16:05.260 | Am I just taking up time to avoid something?

01:16:07.860 | You start really thinking about it.

01:16:09.500 | - Yes, and the conversation stays with me to this day

01:16:13.300 | because up until then,

01:16:14.700 | I never really thought about the possibility

01:16:16.940 | that some or a lot of the things I was doing

01:16:20.260 | were truly a waste of my time.

01:16:22.660 | Like mostly because I could be putting that energy

01:16:25.500 | into generative things, right?

01:16:28.540 | Generative tribes, things that would bring me

01:16:30.980 | agency, gratitude, peace, contentment, delight,

01:16:34.420 | these sorts of things.

01:16:35.640 | What I'm giving as an example,

01:16:37.180 | I realize is quite different than sitting down in a chair

01:16:39.620 | and asking oneself questions about oneself

01:16:42.940 | and one's schedule and what one's doing.

01:16:45.140 | - Same end point, right?

01:16:46.060 | - But, right, same end point.

01:16:47.500 | And I bring it up because I think it was the fact

01:16:51.580 | that it stopped me in my tracks,

01:16:54.540 | but also the fact that I can't seem to forget it.

01:16:57.940 | That means that it must have had significance.

01:17:00.620 | And I would say that has had significance.

01:17:03.200 | Because I think most people are familiar

01:17:05.100 | with seeing these news articles that come out,

01:17:09.220 | woman or man, 104 reflects on what really mattered in life.

01:17:13.240 | And it's almost always the same things.

01:17:15.200 | It's like close relationships.

01:17:17.580 | No one on their death bed says,

01:17:18.820 | I wish I spent more time at work.

01:17:20.300 | I might be one exception.

01:17:21.500 | I actually really enjoy my work.

01:17:22.720 | So whenever I see that one, I always think,

01:17:24.140 | no, like my life without my life's work,

01:17:26.260 | it would have been a diminished life for me.

01:17:28.520 | I think there are others out there as well.

01:17:31.320 | But I think it's very hard for us to place ourselves

01:17:33.620 | into the future of a person on our death bed,

01:17:35.740 | looking back and then make really good decisions now.

01:17:38.460 | I think there are ways to do that,

01:17:40.520 | but it seems that it's far more powerful

01:17:43.140 | to just think about what am I doing now

01:17:46.020 | and make some, you know, and come to some realizations

01:17:49.640 | about what is really a value now

01:17:51.980 | and what is of less value or no value now,

01:17:54.620 | and then make adjustments now,

01:17:56.500 | as opposed to doing the death bed exercise.

01:17:58.620 | - You have no other option if you're gonna make change.

01:18:02.200 | I mean, think about what a complicated

01:18:04.720 | and ultimately meaningless exercise it is

01:18:08.040 | to try and project ahead into a future

01:18:11.660 | when one is on one's death bed.

01:18:13.740 | And it's like, what is that like?

01:18:15.340 | Like, I mean, we can't imagine that,

01:18:18.640 | and we don't know who's there,

01:18:19.700 | like whatever that situation may be for any of us,

01:18:22.380 | it's not gonna be what we imagine.

01:18:24.060 | So then we just make something up

01:18:26.220 | and we try and what, extrapolate our lives

01:18:28.900 | in a way that gets us to this place

01:18:33.180 | where we're on our death bed and we're not unhappy.

01:18:36.620 | Okay, it just brings us right back to the future,

01:18:38.960 | like, because it's actually simple, right?

01:18:41.220 | That is so complicated.

01:18:42.780 | What are things gonna be like on our death bed?

01:18:44.120 | What will happen between now and then?

01:18:46.000 | All things I don't know, so it's impossibly complicated.

01:18:49.020 | So then you take it back to the present, right?

01:18:51.980 | Like, what is it I'm choosing?

01:18:53.220 | I am the I right now that is moving through time

01:18:56.560 | or is on the luge of life or whatever we wanna say.

01:18:59.140 | So what am I choosing right now?

01:19:01.840 | That's how we make our lives better.

01:19:03.380 | And we're aware, of course.

01:19:04.820 | I know there's a future.

01:19:05.700 | I wanna lead towards a better future.

01:19:07.180 | I can't, I don't have a crystal ball.

01:19:08.580 | I can't envision what that's gonna be,

01:19:10.520 | but I can do my best now to guide my life as best I can.

01:19:14.940 | And that's gonna have to lead me to the best future,

01:19:18.000 | whatever all the variables are that I don't know yet.

01:19:21.480 | - The next cupboard under the pillar of structure of self

01:19:25.320 | is defense mechanisms.

01:19:27.600 | I have several questions about defense mechanisms,

01:19:29.880 | but the first question is,

01:19:31.920 | can we be aware of our defense mechanisms

01:19:35.380 | and is there value in that?

01:19:37.360 | And if so, which defense mechanisms are accessible to us?

01:19:41.200 | And I guess the third question would be,

01:19:43.280 | how does one go about exploring defense mechanisms?

01:19:47.160 | - Well, it's sort of fantastical imagery, right?

01:19:50.160 | That there's this iceberg, right?

01:19:51.720 | Part is underwater, part is above water.

01:19:54.080 | And then from the part that's underwater

01:19:56.960 | come these sort of branches, right?

01:19:59.680 | So the way I imagine it is there are branches of ice

01:20:03.120 | that can be clear and have light pass through them

01:20:06.680 | in a way that has high fidelity, right?

01:20:09.160 | Or they can be sort of twisted and unclear

01:20:12.000 | and they distort the light that passes through them.

01:20:15.100 | Now they rise up from the unconscious mind,

01:20:17.980 | meaning defenses are unconscious, they're automatic,

01:20:20.760 | but they're not outside of our ability

01:20:24.360 | to go looking for them, right?

01:20:26.000 | They're in the unconscious mind.

01:20:27.580 | So it's not that we can't understand them,

01:20:30.080 | it's that they're elusive

01:20:31.180 | and there has to be a process of inquiry,

01:20:33.420 | but we can learn about them

01:20:34.920 | just like we can learn about other things

01:20:37.260 | in the unconscious mind.

01:20:38.960 | And here again, knowledge is power.

01:20:41.900 | So I'm not gonna learn anything new

01:20:45.040 | or I'm unlikely to learn anything new

01:20:47.260 | about my defense mechanisms

01:20:49.160 | if I don't think about them, right?

01:20:51.600 | But if I start to think about them,

01:20:53.760 | then I can start to learn things and to draw conclusions.

01:20:57.420 | How am I behaving now as opposed to before?

01:21:01.300 | Do I notice that like how I'm coping?

01:21:03.200 | We'll often think coping,

01:21:04.440 | but coping is conscious, but we can access that.

01:21:07.360 | How am I coping?

01:21:08.200 | What am I doing?

01:21:09.360 | And what does it mean?

01:21:11.280 | So for example, someone who after some difficult experience

01:21:16.280 | then starts avoiding, right?

01:21:19.640 | Can be doing that without an awareness of it.

01:21:23.040 | Avoidance is a defense.

01:21:25.420 | So avoidance of situations or people

01:21:28.460 | or potential negative emotion, right?

01:21:31.400 | So self-reflection can help us understand

01:21:34.840 | which defense mechanisms we're using

01:21:36.880 | and what may have changed in us.

01:21:39.560 | So an example, an example we see all the time

01:21:42.520 | is someone who say had as a primary defense mechanism

01:21:46.640 | sublimation before some difficult event.

01:21:49.200 | Then the sublimation is taking energy,

01:21:51.840 | taking say excess aggression,

01:21:53.700 | turning it into something positive, right?

01:21:55.920 | It's a good way of handling distress within us.

01:21:58.800 | So it's healthy, right?

01:22:00.040 | And now after some change in their life,

01:22:03.200 | they find that say they're drinking more

01:22:05.720 | and they're relying more and more on alcohol.

01:22:09.440 | And you might say, well, there's soothing with alcohol.

01:22:12.080 | Yes, there's soothing with alcohol in one sense,

01:22:15.240 | but what else might that mean, right?

01:22:18.040 | And oftentimes what you'll see

01:22:19.760 | is maybe the person is using alcohol

01:22:21.480 | because they're mad at someone, they're punishing someone,

01:22:24.400 | that someone is probably them.

01:22:26.840 | They get to have the short-term soothing

01:22:29.760 | but then to feel worse about themselves the next day, right?

01:22:33.240 | And the alcohol is in part a search for soothing

01:22:36.520 | but it's in part an acting out against the self,

01:22:39.340 | which is a different kind of defense mechanism

01:22:41.820 | that is not healthy.

01:22:43.400 | So the process of reflection or of inquiry

01:22:47.040 | can help us understand the branches

01:22:50.160 | that are coming up from the iceberg,

01:22:51.860 | from the unconscious mind.

01:22:53.180 | How are they in me?

01:22:54.800 | Are they arranged in a way that's sort of elegant

01:22:57.460 | and they're clear and the light is passing through them?

01:23:00.360 | Or are there things that have become sort of twisted?

01:23:02.340 | Okay, what is that?

01:23:03.600 | What exactly is that?

01:23:05.120 | How do I go change that, right?

01:23:07.380 | I don't want that branch that is sort of opaque

01:23:10.120 | and that the light can't get through or is distorted.

01:23:12.860 | So I can go look at that

01:23:13.880 | because even though defense mechanisms are unconscious,

01:23:17.040 | if I'm working on myself,

01:23:18.960 | I can take away that, so to speak, diseased branch, right?

01:23:22.700 | Or that branch that's not healthy

01:23:24.480 | and put in its place something healthier.

01:23:27.100 | That's how we can change our defensive structure, right?

01:23:29.920 | Those branches of our defense mechanisms

01:23:32.600 | because even though they're unconscious, right,

01:23:35.100 | we can reflect on them, bring them to consciousness

01:23:38.520 | and then bring ourselves to bear to make ourselves healthier

01:23:42.220 | and it can indeed get healthier.

01:23:44.280 | And as it gets healthier,

01:23:45.840 | it affects the next level around it,

01:23:48.800 | which is the person's character structure.

01:23:51.200 | So remembering, we're using fantastical imagery, right?

01:23:54.240 | Because around the iceberg, blowing above the water

01:23:57.840 | and the branches that come out

01:23:59.340 | of the part of the iceberg under the water

01:24:01.520 | and how they array themselves,

01:24:03.160 | we're imagining that there's a nest

01:24:05.340 | that's encompassing all of that,

01:24:07.020 | the unconscious mind, the conscious mind,

01:24:09.100 | the defense mechanisms,

01:24:10.560 | and that nest is the character structure.

01:24:13.500 | It's a way that we contain and define the self

01:24:18.500 | that rides on top of everything.

01:24:21.220 | It is into that nest that the self settles

01:24:24.360 | and from which the self grows

01:24:27.900 | because the character structure,

01:24:29.420 | it's more than just the conscious mind.

01:24:32.200 | It's sort of the conscious mind in action,

01:24:35.100 | the defense mechanisms in action,

01:24:37.760 | all the things that are going on underneath the surface

01:24:40.120 | and the unconscious mind in action.

01:24:42.520 | And then that's how we be.

01:24:44.880 | You think be as an active word, right?

01:24:47.800 | That's how we are or that's how we actively be in the world,

01:24:51.560 | how we're engaging with the world.

01:24:54.520 | - So you described the character structure as the nest

01:24:57.480 | that is up above the surface of the water

01:24:59.800 | and that includes things like these unconscious defenses

01:25:03.560 | and all other aspects of what comes from below.

01:25:08.320 | Then you also said that the self,

01:25:12.120 | our selves reside in that nest.

01:25:15.280 | And you, and I don't recall the exact wording,

01:25:17.560 | but you said something to the extent of,

01:25:19.780 | the self grows within that nest.

01:25:22.860 | And as you said that I immediately had the image in mind

01:25:25.560 | of a nest that is either incredibly nurturing

01:25:29.240 | and can really foster the self in its best ways

01:25:32.340 | and can give rise to empowerment, humility,

01:25:34.520 | agency, gratitude, peace, contentment, delight,

01:25:37.400 | generative drive, all these wonderful things.

01:25:40.300 | I also imagined a nest that isn't as clean as it could be,

01:25:44.740 | or that has some holes in it,

01:25:47.040 | or that isn't stable in the wind and these sorts of things.

01:25:51.260 | Is that sort of imagery that's coming to mind for me,

01:25:53.880 | is that a decent way to conceptualize this?

01:25:57.600 | - Yes, and I think it is a very important point.

01:26:01.400 | The self nests in the character structure.

01:26:05.560 | And from nesting in the character structure, it grows.

01:26:10.260 | We are the self that grows from within that nest.

01:26:15.260 | And that tells us a couple of things.

01:26:18.280 | One, I am something now.

01:26:21.600 | Right now, the things I've done, the things I've thought,

01:26:24.800 | the things that have happened to me,

01:26:25.760 | like there's a self now.

01:26:27.300 | So one might think then, what grows out of the nest, right?

01:26:31.760 | Is what I am now.

01:26:34.040 | Hence the concept of acceptance of self.

01:26:36.800 | That's what I am now, right?

01:26:38.840 | But I am also responsible for tending what is growing.

01:26:43.840 | I'm responsible for weeding it, right?

01:26:46.720 | I'm responsible for planting healthy seeds in it.

01:26:50.820 | And I think that captures the truth

01:26:53.160 | of the acceptance of ourselves.

01:26:55.720 | This is what I am now.

01:26:58.160 | This is who I am now.

01:27:00.060 | But isn't it beautiful that I can tend and nurture it?

01:27:03.840 | And we know, as you'd commented,

01:27:05.800 | what happens if you don't tend it?

01:27:07.120 | There's a lot of weeds.

01:27:08.420 | Things aren't going well.

01:27:09.580 | Things start to get unstable.

01:27:10.800 | I mean, that's not good.

01:27:12.360 | And we can go that way too, right?

01:27:14.680 | That's where agency, gratitude,

01:27:17.960 | part of how it all cycles through, right?

01:27:21.020 | Because our unconscious mind is still working.

01:27:22.780 | Like it's all still happening.

01:27:24.680 | And that's how we tend that garden of the self, so to speak.

01:27:29.080 | That's how we best tend it so that what grows up from it

01:27:33.760 | is a self that we recognize

01:27:36.180 | in the way that we want to recognize ourselves.

01:27:39.260 | We see a self that we can feel proud of.

01:27:42.160 | We see a self that we understand

01:27:44.000 | well enough to guide forward.

01:27:46.280 | We see a self for which we have enough respect

01:27:50.120 | and humility within us to understand

01:27:53.100 | that we don't understand everything.

01:27:55.160 | And it's from that self that we engage with the world.

01:27:59.540 | - I've heard many times before,

01:28:01.660 | kind of in the circles of psychology and self-help

01:28:04.380 | and elsewhere, that we need to all learn

01:28:09.380 | to mother and father ourselves to some extent.

01:28:13.300 | And I'm not a developmental psychologist,

01:28:15.440 | but my understanding is that the unconscious mind,

01:28:18.400 | the conscious mind, our defense mechanisms,

01:28:21.640 | the character structure, all the stuff

01:28:23.540 | that makes up the nest, which the self resides,

01:28:27.240 | and hopefully can grow our,

01:28:29.420 | at least at some stage of life, perhaps all stages of life,

01:28:32.380 | determined by genetics and by how we were raised,

01:28:35.720 | nature and nurture.

01:28:37.140 | But this phrase, we have to learn to parent ourselves,

01:28:40.560 | it is thrown around a lot these days,

01:28:43.840 | certainly on social media, but elsewhere too.

01:28:46.140 | And oftentimes that brings to mind sort of stereotypes

01:28:49.820 | of mothering and fathering.

01:28:51.140 | And these stereotypes break down quite a bit these days.

01:28:54.060 | Things like, we have to be nurturing to ourselves,

01:28:57.700 | self-respect, self-love, self-protection, right?

01:28:59.980 | Healthy self-protection and these kinds of things.

01:29:03.140 | And all of that sounds fine and good,

01:29:05.620 | but it's always seemed rather vague to me.

01:29:09.740 | Like, if I'm telling myself I'm okay,

01:29:12.560 | or is that mothering and fathering myself?

01:29:15.660 | I don't know.

01:29:16.500 | I mean, it doesn't seem as concrete as perhaps I would like

01:29:20.940 | and others would like,

01:29:21.820 | because it's not spelling out to specific actionables.

01:29:26.100 | What you're describing here makes so much more sense to me,

01:29:30.020 | even though some of these concepts are a bit abstract,

01:29:32.220 | because the idea of this nest in which the self resides

01:29:35.260 | and emerges from character structure,

01:29:38.340 | one can immediately see why it's so valuable

01:29:42.100 | and it's such a key component of mental health

01:29:44.060 | and self-care to tend to that nest.

01:29:46.880 | And written into that is the fact that the nest is malleable,

01:29:51.880 | that we really can make changes, right?

01:29:55.500 | That we can create a better internal environment

01:29:57.920 | for ourself by going through these cupboards.

01:30:00.660 | - You're pointing out another crucial factor here,

01:30:04.280 | which is if I am the garden of self

01:30:07.720 | that grows up from all of it,

01:30:09.220 | and I am responsible for tending the garden,

01:30:11.880 | I'm also responsible for tending to the whole structure.

01:30:16.200 | And that's so important.

01:30:19.220 | If I'm going to take care of myself

01:30:21.140 | in the ways that we've talked about,

01:30:23.380 | I'm gonna tend not just to the garden that's growing out

01:30:27.260 | that I can see on the surface,

01:30:29.100 | but I'm going to attend to all of me,

01:30:31.660 | to the entire structure of self.

01:30:33.700 | An example here that I think can illustrate it pretty well

01:30:37.100 | is, so imagine a person who's doing well.

01:30:41.100 | The part of the iceberg under the water is solid, right?

01:30:43.860 | The consciousness on top is solid.

01:30:45.740 | The defense mechanisms are clear.

01:30:47.200 | The nest is good.

01:30:48.260 | The garden of self is flourishing.

01:30:50.260 | And then there's a significant trauma to that person.

01:30:54.020 | There's a car accident.

01:30:55.460 | Someone is hurt.

01:30:56.420 | There's a death of someone around them.

01:30:58.300 | They have a serious illness.

01:30:59.700 | They lose a job, right?

01:31:01.300 | It can even be they spent too much time contemplating

01:31:04.620 | and looking at news from murders around the world

01:31:07.640 | and all the awful things that we can spend too much time

01:31:10.360 | with something traumatic

01:31:12.600 | then goes into the unconscious mind, right?

01:31:15.540 | The trauma happens.

01:31:16.940 | And what often happens, not always,

01:31:19.060 | but what very often happens is the guilt and shame

01:31:22.220 | that are raised causes to push the trauma

01:31:24.380 | underneath the surface.

01:31:25.700 | Now that's in the unconscious mind and it's impacting it.

01:31:29.960 | And that stability is threatened, right?

01:31:32.340 | I mean, it's all riding on top of this giant part

01:31:35.640 | of the iceberg that's underneath the surface of the water.

01:31:38.740 | And okay, we don't have to worry too much about it, right?

01:31:41.880 | If things are going well,

01:31:43.380 | but if it starts to get fragmented,

01:31:45.180 | it starts to shift,

01:31:46.220 | it threatens everything that rides on top of it,

01:31:49.660 | which is why taking care of ourselves means

01:31:52.980 | taking care of all elements of the structure of self.

01:31:57.380 | - That all makes very clear why tending to the garden

01:32:00.580 | is so key and why we as individuals

01:32:03.680 | are really the people most fit to do this, right?

01:32:07.060 | Of course, when one can,

01:32:08.180 | that work should be done with somebody

01:32:09.520 | who's a really terrific clinician of guide that process

01:32:12.980 | and where one can't work with a clinician,

01:32:15.600 | one would hope that they would take

01:32:18.020 | a structured approach to this,

01:32:19.480 | which is really what we're talking about here

01:32:21.940 | and in the other episodes.

01:32:23.660 | - Yeah, and keeping in mind,

01:32:24.820 | 'cause you're keeping in mind that tending to the self

01:32:28.740 | means tending to the whole structure of self, right?

01:32:31.860 | If we keep that in mind, we won't go wrong, right?

01:32:34.860 | We'll pay attention to the surface,

01:32:36.300 | but we'll pay attention to the things

01:32:37.780 | that are under the surface.

01:32:38.980 | We pay attention to the whole structure of self.

01:32:42.000 | We will shepherd ourselves forward as best we can.

01:32:45.500 | - I'd love for you to tell us about the function of self,

01:32:49.040 | the second pillar that resides alongside structure of self

01:32:52.740 | and that serves to geyser up

01:32:55.700 | into how we show up in the world,

01:32:57.940 | hopefully with empowerment, humility,

01:32:59.540 | agency, and gratitude, but sometimes no.

01:33:02.420 | And as we've established,

01:33:05.040 | there is always, always, always tremendous value

01:33:07.900 | to exploring these cupboards.

01:33:09.900 | So how does one go about exploring the different cupboards

01:33:13.720 | under the function of self?

01:33:14.680 | And we should probably start that conversation by saying,

01:33:17.700 | what are the cupboards under the function of self?

01:33:20.260 | - I'll start off by saying all the cupboards

01:33:24.000 | under the function of self

01:33:25.200 | will reference the structure of self, right?

01:33:27.520 | Which makes sense.

01:33:28.360 | There's a structure and the function arises

01:33:30.960 | from the structure.

01:33:32.860 | It's good for us to have that in mind

01:33:34.320 | as we're thinking about the elements

01:33:35.780 | of the function of self.

01:33:37.800 | So the deepest element,

01:33:39.240 | let's say the bottom of the pillar, right,

01:33:43.400 | is self-awareness, right?

01:33:45.620 | The sense of an eye, right?

01:33:48.460 | On top of that, next up the pillar

01:33:52.340 | are defense mechanisms in action, right?

01:33:56.060 | Up from that is salience,

01:33:58.620 | what we're paying attention to inside and out.

01:34:01.900 | The next level above that is behavior.

01:34:05.300 | And on top of that is our strivings.

01:34:08.780 | So if we go back to the bottom layer,

01:34:12.120 | the deepest, most complicated layer,

01:34:14.640 | it's the sense of self-awareness, the sense of an eye.

01:34:18.780 | And there are a lot of ways

01:34:20.460 | that we can foster self-awareness.

01:34:23.480 | So like the unconscious mind in the structure,

01:34:26.380 | we can't just go there and fully understand what the eye is.

01:34:31.260 | But we can do things that can really, really help us.

01:34:34.780 | So for me, thinking about like,

01:34:37.840 | what am I and how am I navigating the world

01:34:40.140 | and having in mind the structure of self.

01:34:42.780 | Like, wait, there's an unconscious mind

01:34:44.300 | working its way in me, there's my conscious mind.

01:34:46.740 | Even being aware of the first pillar

01:34:49.980 | can be part of fostering the self-awareness

01:34:53.200 | of the second pillar.

01:34:55.180 | Another way that can happen is self-reflection.

01:34:57.780 | For some people it can happen in meditation,

01:35:00.200 | contemplation of the self.

01:35:01.980 | There are many ways that we can help ourselves understand

01:35:05.740 | that living is an active process,

01:35:07.760 | that idea of the luge of time

01:35:10.120 | and we're moving down it, it's an active process.

01:35:14.580 | And that is the eye that I'm guiding through that process.

01:35:18.940 | We can foster self-awareness in a number of ways,

01:35:22.380 | but what we're trying to do here,

01:35:24.380 | the same as with the bottom of the structure of self-pillar,

01:35:28.740 | the most complicated parts,

01:35:30.540 | there's a lot that's unconscious,

01:35:32.180 | there's a lot that's unknown to us.

01:35:33.980 | So what we're trying to do is know some of it, right?

01:35:37.500 | And know more of it over time,

01:35:39.560 | bring some of those automatic or unconscious things

01:35:43.060 | to conscious awareness

01:35:44.300 | so that we can have a better understanding

01:35:46.240 | because if we have an understanding,

01:35:48.080 | we can utilize that to make everything better.

01:35:51.160 | - I can see right off how this first cupboard

01:35:54.000 | of self-awareness and an exploration of the eye

01:35:56.860 | is so critical and realizing that we have a physical body,

01:36:00.180 | that we have agency in the world

01:36:02.300 | to do at least certain things.

01:36:05.080 | And in an earlier episode, you mentioned a practice actually

01:36:08.940 | of looking in the mirror and focusing on this reality

01:36:13.140 | that we have a physical body, we reside in it,

01:36:15.580 | and then we have agency, we can do things in the world

01:36:17.960 | as a way to reinforce self-awareness.

01:36:21.060 | Such an interesting practice

01:36:22.500 | and one that I started on immediately after.

01:36:25.720 | Well, that evening, yeah.

01:36:26.900 | And the next morning, after hearing it from you,

01:36:29.240 | some interesting things came to mind

01:36:30.880 | and I encourage people to try it.

01:36:32.220 | It's done eyes open just for a few minutes or so,

01:36:35.920 | two, three minutes in my case.

01:36:38.280 | Some interesting understanding came about,

01:36:41.560 | especially when coupled with thinking about

01:36:44.500 | some of my life narrative and things that have happened.

01:36:46.320 | So I highly recommend people explore this practice

01:36:49.760 | that you described.

01:36:50.700 | I'm also interested in the sorts of narratives

01:36:53.780 | that we have about ourselves.

01:36:56.360 | I think everyone has narratives about what they're good at,

01:37:00.000 | what they're less good at, what's happened to them,

01:37:02.000 | why it's happened to them.

01:37:03.480 | Could you tell us what you think about

01:37:06.280 | exploring our narratives, right?

01:37:08.360 | Not just exploring the fact that we have a physical body,

01:37:10.600 | but exploring our stories about ourselves.

01:37:14.020 | Well, self-awareness is just the awareness of an I, right?

01:37:20.120 | So we can use our conscious mind to help that.

01:37:23.480 | So this aspect of function of self

01:37:26.800 | isn't about what the narrative means, right?

01:37:30.560 | That comes later.

01:37:32.280 | This is about the awareness of an I.

01:37:35.480 | So when you were talking about the narrative,

01:37:37.760 | you said something along the lines of like,

01:37:39.880 | there's stories and you're not thinking of like,

01:37:42.520 | oh, it's the same me in these stories.

01:37:45.520 | If you approach the narrative in a different way,

01:37:48.880 | the awareness, like there's an I, right?

01:37:51.220 | There's a me, like I'm the point of all these stories, right?

01:37:55.040 | That's why they're here.

01:37:56.280 | They're all in me in some way or another,

01:37:59.340 | because I remember them and they're important enough

01:38:01.800 | that I wrote them down.

01:38:03.240 | If you look at it that way,

01:38:04.700 | where you're just apprehending an I, like, huh,

01:38:07.900 | there's a me to whom all of this applies.

01:38:11.320 | That's how we can use the conscious mind and the narrative

01:38:14.620 | in order to foster self-awareness.

01:38:16.400 | It's not yet about meaning.

01:38:18.120 | It's about the awareness of an I.

01:38:20.680 | - So it's actually much simpler

01:38:22.040 | than I'm making it out to be at some level.

01:38:24.220 | - At that level, yes.

01:38:25.600 | - Got it. - Yes.

01:38:26.960 | - Okay, well then at some point we will return

01:38:28.620 | to this theme of narratives, narratives that serve us,

01:38:32.600 | perhaps narratives that don't serve us.

01:38:34.960 | Meanwhile, take us into that second bin

01:38:39.120 | under the function of self,

01:38:40.680 | the defense mechanisms in action.

01:38:43.060 | I find these infinitely fascinating.

01:38:45.240 | And I think many other people do too,

01:38:46.720 | because sublimation, denial, these kinds of things,

01:38:51.240 | they really provide so much of what does

01:38:55.520 | and doesn't happen to each of us.

01:38:57.400 | And yeah, so if you could tell us how we can think

01:39:02.020 | about our defense mechanisms in action

01:39:04.320 | in a way that can improve our health.

01:39:06.920 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:39:07.760 | And of course, defense mechanisms are

01:39:09.740 | under the structure of mind.

01:39:11.840 | Defense mechanisms in action are under function of mind.

01:39:15.720 | They're unconscious processes that we can gain,

01:39:19.080 | sometimes a very good understanding of,

01:39:21.300 | by directing our conscious mind towards them.

01:39:24.360 | And this is a place where we can use narratives, right?

01:39:27.600 | We can use an understanding of self.

01:39:29.160 | So as an example, someone who's thinking about themselves

01:39:32.760 | and what they want to do for a living,

01:39:34.660 | if they want their job or where they want to live.

01:39:37.200 | And you know, who's thinking about self can realize,

01:39:40.240 | you know, he's gonna feel good

01:39:43.520 | when I'm doing something for someone.

01:39:45.240 | And we hear this a lot, especially people

01:39:46.800 | who then direct themselves towards helping professions.

01:39:49.600 | Like, what did I like about that job?

01:39:52.080 | It wasn't that it had a great salary.

01:39:54.160 | It wasn't that the hours were good, you know?

01:39:56.040 | I like that it was really helpful to people.

01:39:58.820 | Or, you know, there were people that were underneath of me

01:40:01.960 | in the hierarchy that I could really kind of nurture, right?

01:40:04.640 | And I think, right, and I love putting food out

01:40:08.140 | for the birds and the squirrels.

01:40:09.640 | Like, it can be a realization of self

01:40:12.480 | that guides us towards consciously apprehending

01:40:15.480 | and thinking about altruism as a defense mechanism, right?

01:40:18.820 | 'Cause altruism is a defense.

01:40:20.320 | It's a healthy defense where if you can do something good,

01:40:23.760 | you do something good, make something good,

01:40:25.800 | that's the end point of it.

01:40:28.820 | Like, you don't need that to translate into something else.

01:40:31.560 | It's a defense mechanism.

01:40:32.760 | It's a good one.

01:40:33.600 | And you can certainly see how it fits with the good things

01:40:35.860 | we're trying to build on top of it.

01:40:37.560 | And sometimes through that process of reflection,

01:40:40.520 | the person becomes aware of that.

01:40:42.560 | They haven't chosen jobs by the obvious things

01:40:45.680 | that even they thought they chose jobs by.

01:40:47.680 | Where's the job?

01:40:48.520 | What does it pay?

01:40:49.480 | It wasn't that, that what they really valued

01:40:52.160 | and what they then started choosing upon

01:40:54.480 | might've been something that they weren't aware of

01:40:56.960 | until they think about it,

01:40:58.000 | and that leads them to the defense mechanism.

01:41:00.280 | The same way, another example could be rationalization,

01:41:03.160 | right?

01:41:04.000 | Someone who thinks about their life and they think,

01:41:06.500 | you know, I always kind of tell myself

01:41:09.700 | something is better than it is, right?

01:41:12.560 | And then ultimately, I got disappointing myself.

01:41:16.880 | You know, like I tell myself,

01:41:18.040 | like you're doing really well at work

01:41:19.440 | and you know, I'm not really working hard enough.

01:41:22.040 | And then when I have that review, I feel lousy, you know?

01:41:25.400 | And that last person who broke up with me and said,

01:41:29.440 | you know, you just weren't being a reliable partner

01:41:32.120 | or, you know, that person was right, right?

01:41:34.280 | And that can lead to, oh, like what's going on?

01:41:36.400 | I always think things are going pretty well

01:41:39.040 | when they're not.

01:41:40.160 | That's guiding us towards rationalization

01:41:41.960 | as a defense mechanism.

01:41:43.200 | And again, a person doesn't have to say,

01:41:44.920 | ah, I conclude I'm using rationalization

01:41:47.460 | as a defense mechanism,

01:41:48.840 | but there can be words put to that

01:41:50.560 | of seeing a pattern in the self.

01:41:53.240 | When this is done as part of therapeutic inquiry,

01:41:55.480 | we're often looking to identify the defense mechanisms

01:41:57.960 | and that can be great too, but it's not always needed, right?

01:42:01.220 | Defense mechanisms result in patterns, right?

01:42:03.880 | So if a person just sees the pattern,

01:42:05.920 | that can be enough to recognize the pattern

01:42:08.600 | and either say follow the pattern of altruism

01:42:11.440 | as a defense mechanism or how do we work against,

01:42:14.880 | how do I work against the pattern of rationalization

01:42:18.240 | as a defense mechanism?

01:42:20.120 | - Can we conclude that patterns that we don't like

01:42:24.560 | are the reflection of unhealthy defense mechanisms

01:42:27.760 | and that patterns that we like

01:42:29.960 | are the consequence of healthy defense mechanisms?

01:42:32.480 | - Usually, yes.

01:42:34.200 | It's worth some thought and some reflection

01:42:35.900 | and putting together like what exactly

01:42:37.440 | are the pieces of that,

01:42:38.640 | but basically the answer to that is yes.

01:42:41.200 | - In an earlier episode,

01:42:42.280 | you mentioned one defense mechanism in action

01:42:45.200 | that is often observed in people is acting out.

01:42:49.280 | This immediately sounds like an unhealthy defense mechanism.

01:42:53.160 | So to keep with this concept of the patterns

01:42:58.080 | are often more observable

01:42:59.980 | than are the underlying defense mechanisms,

01:43:02.880 | would it be the case, for instance,

01:43:04.080 | that if somebody has a repeated set of failures,

01:43:08.280 | like that's a pattern or is repeatedly in friction

01:43:13.640 | in a particular relationship in their life,

01:43:15.720 | like maybe even just with one person,

01:43:17.180 | like all other relationships are going great,

01:43:18.940 | but then they're in a lot of friction

01:43:20.220 | with this one other person.

01:43:21.400 | So there's a pattern.

01:43:23.220 | From that pattern, they could explore what?

01:43:28.220 | I mean, is it important that they get

01:43:30.000 | to a verbal identification of the defense mechanism

01:43:35.000 | or what sorts of steps would one take

01:43:40.360 | going from a recognition of the pattern

01:43:43.400 | to understanding of the defense mechanism,

01:43:46.380 | perhaps in a way that moves them forward?

01:43:49.120 | - The understanding of the defense mechanism

01:43:50.820 | can be very helpful, but isn't always needed, right?

01:43:53.960 | If you can recognize a maladaptive pattern,

01:43:56.720 | like, oh, this is happening a lot and it's not good for me,

01:44:00.600 | you become able to change that pattern, right?

01:44:04.960 | So understanding the defense can be helpful.

01:44:07.280 | I mean, again, the more understanding, the better,

01:44:09.120 | but it's not always necessary.

01:44:11.280 | Here, I think to understand the defense mechanism,

01:44:15.120 | we should first define acting out,

01:44:17.240 | because we think of acting out, just hearing the words,

01:44:20.060 | as something that's volitionally done, right?

01:44:22.800 | But that's not what we're talking about, right?

01:44:24.440 | Defense mechanisms are unconscious.

01:44:27.120 | So there's an automaticity to the response

01:44:30.320 | that the person can see by reflection,

01:44:32.840 | because this isn't conscious choice to act out.

01:44:35.800 | That's something different.

01:44:36.640 | That's bad behavior, right?

01:44:38.540 | But what we're talking about here

01:44:40.040 | is the thing that's automatic and unconscious

01:44:43.320 | until we bring it into our conscious mind.

01:44:46.760 | And acting out isn't always dramatic either.

01:44:49.720 | So here's one example, right?

01:44:52.720 | So let's say in a relationship situation, right?

01:44:56.680 | You have one person who always does the dishes.

01:44:59.920 | The other person does something different, right?

01:45:01.240 | That person does the dishes, right?

01:45:03.120 | And it's onerous.

01:45:04.640 | People have busy lives.

01:45:05.840 | It's onerous to have to do a lot of dishes.

01:45:07.660 | And every time, like things aren't going so well,

01:45:10.980 | there's a little bit of conflict between them, right?

01:45:13.660 | The other person makes twice as many dirty dishes, right?

01:45:18.260 | This is exactly the kind of thing

01:45:20.380 | that happens in relationship situations

01:45:22.860 | where this little thing becomes a little crack in the door

01:45:26.500 | that opens more, and then there's a foot in the door,

01:45:28.420 | and now there's a big problem,

01:45:30.000 | because we act out in these ways that we're not aware of.

01:45:34.720 | So again, the person isn't deciding I'm going to do that

01:45:38.080 | so that that person has to do more work,

01:45:40.620 | but there's an automaticity to it.

01:45:42.680 | And upon reflection,

01:45:44.240 | sometimes a person could realize I'm doing that, right?

01:45:47.660 | Or, this is a real example, person who realizes

01:45:51.480 | I just make much more difficulties, right?

01:45:54.840 | Around the house, like I make a lot more difficulties

01:45:58.480 | for my partner, and was like, whoa.

01:46:00.460 | You know, like this person

01:46:01.300 | doesn't want to be doing that, right?

01:46:02.800 | That's not, they love that person.

01:46:04.700 | They don't want to be doing that.

01:46:06.300 | But by realizing that when they can bring a process

01:46:09.260 | of change, of just being more self-aware,

01:46:11.060 | and saying, look, I don't want to do that.

01:46:12.380 | I don't want that to be a defense anymore.

01:46:14.480 | If I have conscious awareness, now I can control it.

01:46:18.020 | And maybe that person is doing that other places.

01:46:20.540 | Maybe the person is, you know,

01:46:21.380 | it kind of goes that way at work, too.

01:46:24.220 | You know, I could contribute to a project

01:46:25.980 | and make something easier on a person,

01:46:27.500 | and I realize I don't do that, right?

01:46:29.500 | If I'm feeling some negative way, then we can go find,

01:46:32.800 | okay, what might the roots of that be?

01:46:35.520 | For example, did a parent role model that behavior, right?

01:46:39.080 | Was that done to them?

01:46:40.960 | Were the parent was really good to them

01:46:43.000 | if they were behaving in the right way?

01:46:44.520 | And like, they make their breakfast, right?

01:46:46.200 | And if not, well, you know, you make it yourself.

01:46:49.480 | Or, oh, sorry, there's no milk.

01:46:50.840 | I mean, like these things happen,

01:46:52.240 | and then the person gets in them

01:46:55.280 | some array of circumstances, feelings, responses,

01:46:57.800 | all the stuff that goes on in the unconscious mind

01:47:00.200 | that then throws up to the surface

01:47:02.160 | this kind of acting out as a defense mechanism.

01:47:05.160 | So I think it's important to point out,

01:47:07.640 | and it's a good example, because it is unconscious,

01:47:10.500 | and a lot of times how we're doing it is not dramatic.

01:47:15.500 | - What about salience?

01:47:17.520 | You know, this cupboard under the function of self

01:47:20.360 | that I think we are all too familiar with.

01:47:24.680 | You know, like what we pay attention to

01:47:27.520 | internally and externally.

01:47:30.220 | I have a sort of bizarre meditative practice

01:47:32.880 | that I've talked about before on the podcast.

01:47:34.420 | I don't know why I came up with this,

01:47:35.600 | but it's more of a perceptual exercise

01:47:37.460 | that I do from time to time,

01:47:38.580 | where if I feel like I'm too in my head,

01:47:41.700 | I literally focus my visual attention outward.

01:47:45.740 | I try and place it on a horizon or some object out there.

01:47:49.240 | And other times, if I'm sort of in the world too much

01:47:53.500 | and I want to get back into myself,

01:47:54.760 | I'll close my eyes and do a moment or two

01:47:57.800 | or more traditional, what traditional mean,

01:48:00.420 | what people think of as meditation.

01:48:01.800 | The practice involves setting aside a minute or two

01:48:05.140 | and deliberately stepping through a closed eye meditation.

01:48:09.880 | Like just, it's not really meditation.

01:48:11.240 | Again, it's just recognizing I'm a self,

01:48:12.820 | like here contained within the skin of my body.

01:48:15.580 | Then I open my eyes, I look at my hand.

01:48:17.600 | This all sounds very silly as I describe it,

01:48:19.420 | but it's, and then I think about a bridge.

01:48:21.680 | Like my perception can be split

01:48:23.220 | between my awareness of self internally and my hand.

01:48:26.580 | Then I look out some distance, 10, 12 feet or so,

01:48:30.140 | and do the same.

01:48:32.580 | I sort of bridge self-awareness with external awareness.

01:48:36.180 | And I step out to the horizon.

01:48:38.500 | And then I sometimes like to do the exercise of,

01:48:41.820 | it goes with a popular meme, you know,

01:48:43.220 | this we're just like this like pale blue dot.

01:48:45.220 | I think about myself in right here,

01:48:48.400 | but then the fact that I'm a planet

01:48:50.700 | that's like spinning in a, you know, in space.

01:48:53.320 | And then right back into myself.

01:48:55.600 | And then I go about my day.

01:48:56.960 | And I developed that a few years ago,

01:49:01.040 | more on the basis of what I know about visual perception

01:49:03.600 | and interoception, our recognition of inside

01:49:06.020 | versus extra reception, just fancy language for recognition

01:49:09.080 | and perception of what's outside.

01:49:10.920 | But that's my practice of orienting myself in life,

01:49:15.140 | because then I feel like I have better buffers

01:49:18.480 | against what happens around me

01:49:19.880 | and how much I'm reacting or not reacting.

01:49:22.300 | That's my practice.

01:49:23.840 | I have a feeling it touches into a few of these bins,

01:49:27.360 | but it certainly doesn't get it at, you know,

01:49:31.120 | approaching a specific problem

01:49:33.400 | or thinking about where problems might exist

01:49:36.760 | beneath the surface that I'm not aware of, right?

01:49:39.800 | - Because there's only one part of the equation, right?

01:49:41.840 | It's paying attention to saliency.

01:49:43.520 | What you're doing then, you are grounding yourself

01:49:46.900 | in order to change salience, right?

01:49:49.960 | And that is a strategy.

01:49:51.560 | You said, oh, maybe it's silly or this or that.

01:49:53.420 | No, it's an understood and known strategy.

01:49:56.320 | For example, variations of that are what people can do

01:50:00.180 | to prevent panic attacks, right?

01:50:02.140 | To change the salience.

01:50:03.300 | If the salience is I'm going inside of me

01:50:05.320 | and I'm feeling panicked

01:50:06.860 | and I just have a feeling of awfulness, right?

01:50:09.760 | You can change that salience by grounding yourself

01:50:12.200 | to the world around you, right?

01:50:13.700 | We tell people, place your hands on the table,

01:50:16.160 | look at the specifics of exactly what time it is.

01:50:18.400 | Look at the shape of a doorknob, right?

01:50:20.340 | Ground yourself so that you can change salience.

01:50:24.000 | Because now as we move up the hierarchy of function of self,

01:50:28.640 | we're getting to using the conscious mind, right?

01:50:32.160 | Things that are salient to us can be external,

01:50:35.040 | they can be internal, and if they're internal,

01:50:37.560 | they can be conscious and sometimes they're unconscious.

01:50:40.180 | So it's not all about the conscious mind,

01:50:42.180 | but we're bringing the conscious mind to bear here

01:50:45.100 | to think about salience, which combined with everything else

01:50:48.540 | can help us see what's under the surface.

01:50:50.960 | Most of the time what we're doing

01:50:52.720 | is that act of self observation, right?

01:50:55.920 | What is going on inside of me?

01:50:57.420 | Which can be, what am I thinking?

01:50:58.720 | This is how the person can realize over and over,

01:51:01.380 | oh my goodness, I'm saying to myself X,

01:51:04.400 | and for the first time they say out loud

01:51:06.600 | and realize the thing they've said to themselves

01:51:09.000 | 10,000 times, right?

01:51:10.640 | Or it can be a feeling state, right?

01:51:13.320 | Wow, what's salient to me is a feeling state,

01:51:16.020 | let's say of vulnerability, and then everything

01:51:19.040 | seems threatening, right?

01:51:20.760 | So salience, it's a form of self awareness

01:51:23.800 | that we could say is using the conscious mind now

01:51:27.360 | to tend to that garden of self, right?

01:51:30.080 | To look at that garden of self and say,

01:51:31.820 | what's really growing from it, right?

01:51:33.960 | Is it all things I like, right?

01:51:35.680 | It's gonna be never all things we like,

01:51:37.100 | 'cause it's a process, but am I happy with it?

01:51:39.760 | Am I not happy with it?

01:51:40.960 | Are there weeds that are coming up all over the place?

01:51:44.360 | That could be the intrusive thoughts, right?

01:51:46.220 | So we're using metaphors,

01:51:47.860 | but it's actually very, very concrete, right?

01:51:50.720 | The salience part is what is going on inside of me,

01:51:55.080 | and that's a very interesting inquiry and informative, right?

01:51:58.860 | It's interesting because it's informative.

01:52:01.240 | - Do you think that's an inquiry that's best done

01:52:04.700 | in meditative-like states, or setting aside

01:52:08.320 | some deliberate time to think about,

01:52:12.540 | like, what am I thinking about?

01:52:14.180 | What am I paying attention to?

01:52:15.560 | How am I allocating my thoughts?

01:52:18.920 | Or are my thoughts being allocated?

01:52:20.360 | I guess we have to respect the unconscious component here.

01:52:23.100 | Like we're not, we don't just walk around and say,

01:52:25.640 | I'm gonna place my attentional spotlight there,

01:52:27.640 | and then my thinking here, you know.

01:52:30.000 | - We always wanna be aware of what we,

01:52:31.640 | there are things we don't know.

01:52:32.980 | That's respectful, that's appropriate humility,

01:52:35.600 | because it's true.

01:52:37.160 | - So I'm assuming this ratchets directly

01:52:39.440 | into the cupboard of behavior.

01:52:43.400 | You know, what we're actually doing.

01:52:45.200 | Is that covered best explored by listing off,

01:52:51.020 | perhaps on paper, in our minds, what we're doing each day?

01:52:55.100 | Is that one way to explore?

01:52:56.540 | Like, how am I spending my time?

01:52:58.240 | Again, not as an efficiency exercise,

01:53:01.740 | but as a way to start to explore the self and the mind,

01:53:06.740 | for sake of building up to more agency and gratitude.

01:53:11.460 | - Right, right.

01:53:12.540 | You know, the routes to most effective self inquiry, right?

01:53:16.940 | To bringing the conscious mind to bear

01:53:19.200 | really differ widely by person.

01:53:21.540 | There's some people who they're so well-served

01:53:23.740 | by doing that when they're meditating, right?

01:53:25.980 | There are other people who like,

01:53:27.060 | they can really get at that when they're playing a sport.

01:53:30.060 | You know, it's going on inside of them,

01:53:31.540 | along with the other things that they're doing.

01:53:34.400 | Some people find it in the shower,

01:53:35.940 | or they find it when they wake up in the morning,

01:53:37.540 | or they find it when they're with an animal they love,

01:53:40.860 | or they might find it when they're reading

01:53:42.500 | a certain kind of material, and then they read it,

01:53:44.440 | and then the reading trails off, and they're thinking.

01:53:47.300 | They're a reverie sort of inside.

01:53:49.180 | So how we can engender the best use of our conscious minds

01:53:53.540 | is gonna differ by person.

01:53:54.960 | But again, we can think about that.

01:53:56.220 | Like, what really works for me?

01:53:57.380 | Let me do more of that.

01:53:58.260 | Someone, and it's interesting, we see people sometimes,

01:54:01.160 | I see people a lot of the time who are,

01:54:03.300 | they're trying to meditate to understand themselves,

01:54:05.980 | and it's like not working, right?

01:54:07.320 | And it's like, I must know how to meditate

01:54:09.340 | in order to understand myself.

01:54:11.440 | Well, it's not necessarily true.

01:54:12.640 | It might be, I must go on more hikes

01:54:14.820 | in order to better understand myself,

01:54:16.180 | because that's how it works for me.

01:54:18.080 | So that process of reflection can be very, very helpful

01:54:21.220 | to us, because we're using our conscious mind

01:54:24.040 | to try and either look inward, what is sailing it to me,

01:54:27.880 | including understanding that I don't understand everything,

01:54:30.780 | but I can understand a lot of it,

01:54:32.460 | and outward, what behaviors am I engaging in?

01:54:35.700 | What are my behavior patterns?

01:54:37.820 | And to be reflective about that, to think about that,

01:54:41.740 | can be immensely helpful to us.

01:54:44.460 | Like, how am I spending those hours of the day?

01:54:48.240 | What am I doing with my time?

01:54:49.420 | Am I wasting my time?

01:54:51.880 | Do I always get mad and say something mean to somebody?

01:54:55.960 | Why?

01:54:56.800 | Because I had a negative thought about something?

01:54:58.620 | Am I doing that?

01:55:00.220 | No, have I kind of changed

01:55:02.020 | since something unpleasant happened,

01:55:04.500 | and now I'm not so nice to someone in the household?

01:55:08.940 | Or am I taking a lot better care of myself?

01:55:11.980 | Like, since I started doing X, whatever X may be,

01:55:14.820 | learning more about myself, doing more of the things I like,

01:55:19.100 | left that old job, it was so hard for me to leave.

01:55:22.580 | I do actually get myself to the gym.

01:55:25.040 | So it's a reflection upon self,

01:55:26.940 | because a lot of what we do, we do automatically.

01:55:31.060 | And that's very important.

01:55:33.980 | The example that often is given is,

01:55:36.260 | okay, think about how you last brushed your teeth, right?

01:55:39.600 | And the answer by like, a blank, right?

01:55:41.540 | Because you brushed your teeth in an automatic way, right?

01:55:43.800 | Most of us don't remember that

01:55:45.860 | because we just skip right over it.

01:55:48.260 | So it makes sense.

01:55:49.400 | It lets us think while we're doing things.

01:55:51.540 | It lets a lot happen automatically in the physical world,

01:55:55.180 | right, just as it happens inside of us automatically.

01:55:58.300 | But we can have sort of too much of a good thing

01:56:01.420 | where too much is happening automatically,

01:56:03.900 | and we wanna stop and think.

01:56:07.080 | And it's remarkable how sometimes when people stop and think,

01:56:09.540 | they might say, like, a real example is,

01:56:11.840 | I don't wanna be spending five nights a week at the bar,

01:56:15.940 | and I'm spending five nights a week at the bar, why?

01:56:18.100 | Because I go home a certain way from work,

01:56:21.740 | and there's a bar along that way,

01:56:23.620 | and then I think, oh, I'll just stop in

01:56:25.440 | and maybe see a friend.

01:56:26.520 | And then I know that once I get in there,

01:56:28.620 | I'm gonna have a drink, and I know once I have a drink,

01:56:30.520 | I'm gonna get three, and I'm gonna have three,

01:56:33.440 | and I see this pattern of behaviors

01:56:36.220 | and how, like, I don't decide.

01:56:38.900 | I'm gonna go to that bar instead of going home

01:56:40.940 | to see my wife or my husband or my kids

01:56:42.900 | or whatever it may be,

01:56:44.460 | and I don't wanna behave that way, right?

01:56:47.420 | Because there, it's a great example

01:56:49.300 | of how you can stop that from happening,

01:56:52.880 | but once it starts happening, the dominoes start falling.

01:56:55.680 | It's very, very hard.

01:56:57.000 | The people don't generally realize,

01:56:58.620 | oh my goodness, I'm in the bar and I've had one drink,

01:57:00.300 | now I'm gonna have two more.

01:57:01.540 | That's not the time, but the understanding,

01:57:04.340 | the reflection upon behavior patterns

01:57:06.600 | can lead a person to stop those behaviors,

01:57:09.560 | to understand and recognize them,

01:57:11.600 | get their arms around them, shine the light of day on them,

01:57:14.540 | and then have greater agency, right?

01:57:17.700 | Greater gratitude.

01:57:18.620 | I'm grateful I can go home to my family,

01:57:20.500 | and that's what I choose to do, right?

01:57:22.200 | And I can do that.

01:57:23.120 | I do not have to end up at that bar,

01:57:24.620 | and I'm not gonna end up at that bar.

01:57:26.300 | I'm gonna drive a different way home,

01:57:28.180 | and if I can't get myself to do that,

01:57:29.840 | I'm gonna have a friend in the car with me,

01:57:31.800 | and if I can't do that, I'll be in the back seat, right?

01:57:34.580 | But I'm not doing that thing I choose not to do.

01:57:38.420 | And that's a more dramatic example, not an uncommon one,

01:57:42.700 | but we can apply that the whole way up the list

01:57:45.620 | from nuances of our behaviors

01:57:47.420 | down to more dramatic behaviors.

01:57:50.540 | - I've heard you describe the unconscious mind

01:57:54.260 | and some of its other interconnected workings

01:57:58.840 | with the analogy of a phantom in the driver's seat

01:58:02.820 | and we're in the back seat.

01:58:04.460 | Sort of, you know, of course, all within one person, right?

01:58:07.900 | This idea that we're just being taken places

01:58:10.340 | that we don't want to go or that we know we shouldn't go

01:58:12.900 | or that we can't really figure out why we're going there.

01:58:15.900 | And we have some idea,

01:58:17.060 | but we're just not certain about what's going on.

01:58:21.500 | You know, it's not necessarily related

01:58:24.820 | to really destructive action either.

01:58:27.580 | I mean, it can be, but what you're describing

01:58:30.560 | sounds to me a lot like climbing out of the back seat

01:58:34.100 | and maybe sitting in the passenger seat

01:58:36.340 | and looking into the driver's seat and like,

01:58:39.020 | oh, like there's something else going on here.

01:58:41.820 | Of course, all of this is one mind.

01:58:43.640 | And in doing that, taking some control of the vehicle.

01:58:50.020 | - Right, it's about understanding what is that phantom?

01:58:54.260 | Where did it come from?

01:58:55.740 | That's how we get rid of it.

01:58:56.580 | It's like, how do we get back in the driver's seat?

01:58:58.380 | We don't grab the phantom and throw it out the door

01:59:00.420 | or throw it in the back seat, right?

01:59:01.900 | It's ephemeral, we can't grab it, right?

01:59:04.500 | So how does it go away?

01:59:06.060 | It goes away through understanding.

01:59:08.860 | So very common example that the phantom

01:59:11.800 | in the driver's seat is trauma,

01:59:13.980 | that we have pushed in an unconscious place

01:59:16.420 | and now that hole under the surface structure

01:59:20.400 | of the iceberg is fragmented and it's sort of roiling

01:59:23.800 | and there's a big problem there.

01:59:25.860 | And if we go at that problem

01:59:28.060 | and whatever it's spinning off, right?

01:59:29.900 | That's the abscess, but it's a bad one

01:59:32.180 | and it's spinning off a lot of problems.

01:59:34.180 | And that's why the phantom is in the driver's seat

01:59:36.180 | because healthy things are not built

01:59:38.340 | on top of that fracturing and roiling part of the iceberg.

01:59:42.420 | We see that a lot.

01:59:44.380 | The phantom could also be something different.

01:59:46.580 | It could be one defense mechanism that's unhealthy

01:59:50.220 | that we are really over relying on

01:59:53.020 | and then we can understand it through that lens.

01:59:55.320 | So there are just a few examples,

01:59:57.140 | but if we sort of wake up in the backseat of the car,

02:00:00.220 | so to speak, and the phantom is driving recklessly,

02:00:03.360 | then how we get the phantom out of the front seat

02:00:05.800 | is by understanding it.

02:00:06.900 | Then I always imagine proof it goes away

02:00:09.400 | because now it's not driving my life anymore, right?

02:00:12.220 | I'm driving my life, it's gone.

02:00:13.860 | - The message that I'm hearing over and over again

02:00:17.420 | in my head is that no matter how well

02:00:20.900 | or how poorly any of our lives happen to be going,

02:00:25.140 | that by looking in these cupboards

02:00:28.420 | under structure of self and function of self,

02:00:31.040 | we can have so much more positive control.

02:00:34.500 | - Yes, yes.

02:00:36.660 | That's why ultimately what we're talking about is optimistic.

02:00:40.940 | We can't help ourselves if we don't honor truth, right?

02:00:43.840 | And the truth is that there are complex aspects of this.

02:00:47.240 | So, okay, we wanna go look at that

02:00:49.040 | and we wanna look at how things can go wrong

02:00:50.740 | and that's all very, very important,

02:00:52.820 | but that's all wrapped in the best truth,

02:00:56.060 | which is that we can change it.

02:00:58.420 | We can make it better.

02:00:59.800 | That's why the self, the garden of self,

02:01:02.340 | is on top of the structure of self, right?

02:01:05.780 | And the top of the function of self are our strivings.

02:01:09.660 | That's what comes next after behaviors.

02:01:12.860 | It's like, what are my behaviors doing?

02:01:14.540 | What am I doing?

02:01:15.380 | What am I striving towards?

02:01:16.940 | What am I doing, literally?

02:01:19.580 | Am I going to a job I hate?

02:01:22.380 | Am I doing things I don't wanna do?

02:01:24.340 | Am I accepting treatment that I don't wanna accept?

02:01:27.420 | Am I treating people in ways I don't wanna accept?

02:01:31.140 | How can I strive for better?

02:01:33.260 | And striving and hopefulness are so intertwined.

02:01:36.540 | So the pinnacle of the function pillar is striving.

02:01:41.020 | The pinnacle of the structure pillar is self.

02:01:45.580 | And we can see how the self, the strivings, right,

02:01:49.180 | what we're doing now is combining the pillars,

02:01:52.380 | where it comes together and your imagery of it.

02:01:55.500 | That's where the geyser comes from.

02:01:57.500 | And we want that geyser to be healthy, right?

02:02:00.300 | It's a stream of clear, clean water that's coming out of it.

02:02:04.820 | That's where our empowerment is.

02:02:07.100 | But empowerment is a condition of being, right?

02:02:09.580 | I am empowered.

02:02:10.620 | Empowerment rests within me.

02:02:12.740 | That's where humility comes into the picture.

02:02:15.700 | Humility also, something within me, right?

02:02:18.660 | I have humility, they're not verbs.

02:02:21.340 | But empowerment and humility then gain their expression.

02:02:26.340 | At the top of that geyser, when agency and gratitude,

02:02:30.460 | those verbs arise from empowerment and humility.

02:02:34.780 | - What you've drawn for us

02:02:35.740 | is an incredibly compelling picture.

02:02:38.900 | Because the picture, the map, is really a roadmap.

02:02:43.900 | It's a path to ideals.

02:02:47.220 | And you've been talking about these ideals

02:02:51.220 | of agency and gratitude across this series.

02:02:54.440 | And they just encompass so much.

02:02:56.920 | And as you mentioned before,

02:02:57.760 | they are interconnected and they are verb states.

02:03:01.860 | And a critical component of the geysering up

02:03:04.900 | from the pillars toward agency and gratitude

02:03:08.300 | are these two components of empowerment and humility.

02:03:12.220 | Tell us a little bit more about empowerment and humility

02:03:15.320 | and how we should view empowerment and humility

02:03:18.620 | in the context of self-care.

02:03:20.580 | - Empowerment is a state that we can create for ourselves

02:03:27.000 | if we're taking care of the pillars, right?

02:03:30.120 | So we're looking in the cupboards.

02:03:31.440 | We're doing the things that make our map clearer and clearer.

02:03:34.980 | This idea that, oh, that seemed like a good path,

02:03:37.020 | but it gets clearer and there's a swamp there, right?

02:03:39.800 | Or that didn't seem like a good path

02:03:41.460 | because it's circuitous.

02:03:42.980 | Oh no, but there are good things along that path.

02:03:44.980 | So the map gets clearer as we tend to the cupboards

02:03:48.880 | in the pillars and that empowers us, right?

02:03:52.440 | We're in a state, there's a state inside of us

02:03:55.140 | that is a state of potentials

02:03:56.540 | that are now skewed in a good way, right?

02:03:59.000 | That's what empowerment is.

02:04:00.240 | It's like, it's not something that happens.

02:04:02.660 | It's a state that we then bring to bear on what happens,

02:04:06.060 | right?

02:04:06.900 | The same is true of humility.

02:04:09.260 | You know, humility does not mean not acknowledging things

02:04:13.320 | that are good about you, right?

02:04:15.020 | And we often can very much mischaracterize humility.

02:04:19.580 | Like, is that person being weak?

02:04:21.000 | Is it false humility?

02:04:22.220 | Or people often who are conscientious

02:04:24.280 | don't wanna acknowledge good things about them.

02:04:26.000 | Oh no, no, I'm not that smart.

02:04:27.220 | Like, that's not humility, right?

02:04:29.080 | Humility is consistent with truth, right?

02:04:33.660 | So if you keep saying you're not that smart,

02:04:35.840 | but the world around you tells you that you're that smart,

02:04:38.480 | right, then acknowledge that you're that smart, right?

02:04:42.460 | That's coming through the lens of truth, right?

02:04:45.980 | And we can go down to the pillars and the cupboards

02:04:47.960 | and say, okay, how does a person get

02:04:49.060 | to acknowledging that truth, right?

02:04:51.400 | So it's only by squaring away the things

02:04:55.400 | that humility isn't, right?

02:04:56.860 | It is not denigrating ourselves.

02:04:58.960 | And we see that in a lot of people.

02:05:01.100 | I'm humble, so, and then that person often tells you

02:05:04.280 | why they're accepting something that's not good to accept.

02:05:08.820 | So humility is about acknowledging truthfully

02:05:11.760 | the characteristics that you have

02:05:13.920 | within yourself, good and bad.

02:05:15.860 | And here is where we can identify things

02:05:18.020 | that we're not so happy with, right?

02:05:20.120 | We have to have humility within us

02:05:21.800 | in order to make ourselves better, right?

02:05:23.800 | Just like I have to say, look, I'd like to be more fit

02:05:26.640 | if I'm gonna then get myself in a more fit state, right?

02:05:30.920 | So saying, look, I can be, you know,

02:05:32.880 | I can be a little bit so snippy with people

02:05:35.200 | if I'm irritated, or I can be a little bit condescending,

02:05:37.920 | or, you know, I can be a little selfish at times, right?

02:05:42.520 | It's hard to admit these things to ourselves,

02:05:44.620 | but if we have the humility to acknowledge those things,

02:05:48.880 | right, then we also get to have that broader humility

02:05:52.200 | about just being a person.

02:05:53.640 | Like, wow, look how complicated this is to navigate life.

02:05:57.320 | I mean, these pillars are not simple.

02:05:58.820 | And when we go down to the real base elements of them,

02:06:02.040 | it can get very complicated.

02:06:03.760 | So then we have a compassion, right, for self and for others.

02:06:08.440 | You know, like sometimes I'll say to a person,

02:06:10.480 | oh, I should be doing this, I should be doing that.

02:06:11.800 | They think they should be doing something perfectly.

02:06:13.760 | And I will say to them,

02:06:15.120 | it's amazing that we're moving forward, right?

02:06:18.380 | I mean, let's start with, wow, it's not easy to be human.

02:06:22.160 | It's not easy to navigate this world.

02:06:24.280 | And that kind of humility can then allow us

02:06:27.480 | to feel good about what we build on top of it, right?

02:06:30.280 | It's not easy to navigate this world.

02:06:32.440 | And humans are pretty vulnerable by and large,

02:06:35.240 | but I'm applying myself, right?

02:06:37.840 | And I'm proud that I'm applying myself

02:06:40.360 | or that I'm perseverant,

02:06:41.400 | but also I'd like to be a little more compassionate.

02:06:44.120 | Like, it's that sort of thing

02:06:45.940 | that combines with empowerment.

02:06:48.180 | So empowerment and humility are these potential states

02:06:52.540 | that then express themselves or become enacted,

02:06:55.920 | however we wish to put that,

02:06:57.120 | but they change into the active verbs

02:07:00.600 | of agency and gratitude.

02:07:02.580 | And agency and gratitude are ways of being, right?

02:07:07.380 | They're verbs, they're active.

02:07:09.340 | So that's the point of it

02:07:11.560 | from the sense of how we are living, right?

02:07:14.200 | How we are being.

02:07:15.820 | That's why agency and gratitude is,

02:07:18.400 | in some sense, its own endpoint, right?

02:07:21.320 | But because there's a circular aspect of this, right?

02:07:25.120 | Our active being is not the endpoint.

02:07:28.200 | If we're being in a healthy way,

02:07:30.920 | then we get to experience things, right?

02:07:33.860 | Peace, contentment, delight.

02:07:36.400 | We experience them because we are healthy.

02:07:39.660 | So we get to be through the lens of agency and gratitude.

02:07:44.360 | We get to experience peace, contentment, and delight,

02:07:49.160 | and that makes a healthier us.

02:07:51.880 | The drives and their expression are in better balance.

02:07:55.240 | The generative drive is fostered and strengthened,

02:07:58.400 | and the drives underneath of it,

02:08:00.240 | the aggression, assertion, proactive, right?

02:08:03.860 | We're really using that in a good way,

02:08:05.780 | and we're mining all of it within us.

02:08:07.720 | Like, I wanna bring that to bear,

02:08:09.000 | and I can bring more of it to bear, right?

02:08:11.040 | That's very, very good.

02:08:12.640 | And the pleasure drive is active in us.

02:08:15.480 | I'm enjoying the things I do.

02:08:16.840 | I feel good about the things I do.

02:08:18.280 | I'm making good choices.

02:08:19.800 | And that state of health,

02:08:21.920 | it promotes the pillars, the cupboards,

02:08:25.320 | to stay clean and clear and healthy, right?

02:08:28.880 | But life is life,

02:08:30.920 | and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

02:08:34.080 | the slings and arrows of life will continue to come at us

02:08:37.200 | and cause us to go back

02:08:38.720 | and look at the pillars and the cupboards.

02:08:40.640 | And even if they don't come at us,

02:08:42.760 | those things are never perfect, right?

02:08:44.940 | But that's not bad because by tending to them,

02:08:47.800 | where do we bring ourselves?

02:08:49.760 | We bring ourselves back to the active verbs

02:08:52.480 | of agency and gratitude,

02:08:54.720 | the active verbs of living.

02:08:56.720 | And here we are in this cycle

02:08:58.940 | that if we pay attention to it,

02:09:01.000 | we use it to understand ourselves,

02:09:02.680 | we use it to improve ourselves,

02:09:04.580 | can bring us to better lives.

02:09:07.720 | - How do you think about a person,

02:09:10.680 | and I confess I've been this person,

02:09:14.000 | perhaps still am to some extent,

02:09:17.200 | who can really have a sense of agency and gratitude

02:09:22.200 | in certain domains, maybe even many domains of life,

02:09:25.900 | and yet feels as if there are certain areas of life

02:09:31.220 | that are just so much more challenging than others

02:09:34.280 | by this like stark contrast,

02:09:36.200 | like this stuff works, can do that,

02:09:38.120 | but like this stuff is just really, really hard.

02:09:40.840 | And maybe that continues long enough

02:09:43.680 | that it almost starts to feel like,

02:09:45.880 | or the person wonders whether or not,

02:09:48.360 | maybe that part of life is inaccessible to me,

02:09:52.040 | it's just never going to be successful for me.

02:09:54.340 | How do you think about these carve-outs

02:09:58.760 | of functionality and lack of functionality?

02:10:02.520 | That's probably not the right language,

02:10:03.800 | but I think this is important

02:10:06.920 | because it relates directly, I believe,

02:10:10.160 | to the kind of narratives that we tell ourselves.

02:10:12.520 | I mean, they are narratives, right?

02:10:14.600 | I think it's important to think about these

02:10:15.960 | because they are intermeshed with,

02:10:20.140 | and perhaps even the consequence of narratives that we have,

02:10:23.460 | like stories about ourselves that we have internally.

02:10:26.160 | And again, I'll be the first to admit

02:10:30.800 | that I've felt this way for much of my life.

02:10:34.360 | Certain things I can do, other things are far harder,

02:10:37.720 | and sometimes it felt outside the reach of possibility.

02:10:41.780 | I have a very concise answer to this one.

02:10:44.600 | In fact, it's nine words.

02:10:46.580 | Don't make yourself special in ways that hurt you.

02:10:50.800 | And we tend to do that as humans.

02:10:53.980 | Oh, I get to have A, B, and C, but I don't get to have D.

02:10:57.780 | I get to have professional success,

02:10:59.260 | and I'm in pretty good shape, and I have a lot of friends,

02:11:01.140 | but I don't get to have a relationship.

02:11:03.380 | I mean, over and over and over.

02:11:05.940 | Because the relationship part is so emotionally laden,

02:11:08.900 | it's the part that gets carved out, right?

02:11:11.260 | Falsely carved out the most, right?

02:11:14.340 | But it can happen in any arena of life

02:11:17.020 | where we make ourselves special

02:11:18.820 | in a way that really is black magic

02:11:20.940 | or is being cursed, right?

02:11:22.540 | You have the machinery, right?

02:11:24.420 | The ability, the function to go about

02:11:28.600 | pursuing the things you want and get them, right?

02:11:31.620 | That sounds like a pretty good paradigm.

02:11:34.100 | Accept about something really important to you, right?

02:11:38.140 | That can't be, right?

02:11:40.300 | We're applying the same machinery of self

02:11:42.940 | because we're talking about things people want

02:11:45.660 | on a broad scale, right?

02:11:46.700 | Like, I would like professional success.

02:11:48.220 | I would like personal success.

02:11:49.520 | I would like to do well in my family unit

02:11:52.420 | and be a good family member.

02:11:53.780 | I would like romance, right?

02:11:55.060 | So we're talking about areas of self, right?

02:11:57.780 | And we will make ourselves special by carving out one

02:12:01.340 | and then applying black magic or some cursed state

02:12:04.900 | that then takes that away from us,

02:12:07.380 | and that creates tremendous consternation.

02:12:09.780 | That will throw all of those cupboards

02:12:12.480 | in those pyramids off balance

02:12:14.860 | because we don't like that.

02:12:16.820 | Like, that seems mysterious and ominous.

02:12:19.700 | You know, what is there that you don't know

02:12:21.660 | that's about being cursed so you can't have something?

02:12:24.460 | And then that makes anger and frustration in us

02:12:27.460 | and more likely that we'll act out or we'll be frustrated

02:12:30.540 | and we start enjoying things less, right?

02:12:33.180 | Sometimes a person can wall something off like that

02:12:36.020 | and they can go forward with the rest of life.

02:12:37.900 | I mean, it affects them, but it's not obvious.

02:12:40.180 | It's not on their mind all the time,

02:12:42.020 | which is why the process of self inquiry

02:12:44.140 | can reveal important things.

02:12:46.180 | Like, oh, like I pretend that I don't even care

02:12:49.460 | about professional success and it's the only,

02:12:51.420 | why do I do that?

02:12:52.260 | It's the only thing I'm not doing very well

02:12:54.420 | and because I think it's impossible for me.

02:12:58.020 | It's not something I get.

02:12:59.620 | Why?

02:13:00.460 | Because I got other things so I don't get that.

02:13:02.740 | Okay, now we're really curious about that.

02:13:06.180 | And sometimes it causes very, very big problems

02:13:08.860 | where a person can build an external sense of self

02:13:13.720 | that sues some of their vulnerability

02:13:16.340 | so they can present in a certain way.

02:13:18.660 | But underneath of that, they're hiding the sadness

02:13:21.820 | or the pain of what is missing,

02:13:24.340 | but that is then sort of eating away at them

02:13:27.940 | and their feelings of self on the inside

02:13:30.220 | don't match what people see on the outside.

02:13:32.820 | We see a lot of this and the process of self inquiry,

02:13:36.420 | of self exploration, of curiosity about self

02:13:39.180 | can lead us to realize what we've carved out

02:13:42.220 | if we don't already realize it or it can help us to see

02:13:45.740 | that the carve out makes no sense, right?

02:13:48.900 | It's as if you said, well, you know,

02:13:50.900 | there are nine roads around my home

02:13:53.060 | and they're all just regular old roads.

02:13:55.900 | I can drive on eight of them, but not the ninth.

02:13:58.260 | And you say, well, it doesn't make any sense

02:14:00.620 | if they're similar, it requires the same set of skills,

02:14:04.660 | right, if they know how to drive the car

02:14:05.860 | and the visual acuity,

02:14:07.220 | why wouldn't you be able to drive down the ninth?

02:14:10.620 | But even though that's a very mundane example,

02:14:13.500 | but it's that, that we apply to very important

02:14:17.580 | and emotionally charged aspects of our life.

02:14:20.660 | You know, I get to have physical fitness and friends

02:14:23.840 | and career success, but I don't get to have love.

02:14:26.980 | I mean, we hear people say this

02:14:28.860 | and that's a very powerful way of taking us away

02:14:33.860 | from what we want to achieve in life.

02:14:36.300 | It takes us away from the active agency and gratitude

02:14:40.020 | and all the good that comes of that.

02:14:42.240 | - What you just said makes a lot of sense,

02:14:44.500 | especially the point that, you know,

02:14:46.660 | if we have nine roads around us

02:14:49.140 | and we can drive down eight of them, why not the ninth?

02:14:51.940 | Because it places us back into the verb tense

02:14:56.920 | and the action tense of like the car, like we're a vehicle,

02:14:59.800 | the I that we can take through the world, right?

02:15:02.180 | Sure, conditions matter.

02:15:03.440 | Maybe road number nine has boulders on it,

02:15:06.240 | but you know, it can't be that roads one through eight

02:15:10.480 | were all just smooth super highways either, right?

02:15:13.420 | Those had challenges and we, I'm not going to use myself

02:15:18.260 | as a example, I, for whoever's doing this sort of exercise,

02:15:22.100 | had a mind that was able to work around those boulders,

02:15:25.560 | right, of challenging people, of, you know,

02:15:28.180 | limited finances of these are all things I've experienced,

02:15:32.060 | you know, and of course people come into the world

02:15:33.860 | with different levels of challenge and privilege

02:15:36.020 | and accessibility, et cetera.

02:15:37.380 | We don't want to deny all of that,

02:15:38.660 | but those other eight roads are rarely, if ever,

02:15:43.660 | perfectly smooth roads.

02:15:45.700 | - That's why it's completely about the self, right?

02:15:48.460 | And it's the realization that if I brought myself to bear

02:15:53.500 | and I got down the first eight,

02:15:56.840 | I can bring myself to bear and get down the ninth.

02:15:59.760 | And as you're pointing out,

02:16:00.640 | it's not like the first eight were easy, right?

02:16:03.040 | Maybe one of them was really pretty smooth, right?

02:16:05.840 | But there's going to be a couple of them in there

02:16:07.720 | that have raised really strong difficulties,

02:16:11.860 | things to surmount and to overcome.

02:16:13.800 | And it's from that place of understanding

02:16:17.040 | that we find within ourselves the courage, the strength

02:16:20.340 | to go down the ninth road.

02:16:22.000 | Even if we see greater barriers,

02:16:23.860 | even if we're, okay, I'm aware now,

02:16:26.080 | but I'm also aware that I avoided that ninth road

02:16:28.580 | for a reason, right?

02:16:29.880 | The boulders and the potholes, right?

02:16:32.160 | They're more severe on that road.

02:16:34.700 | In fact, I'm kind of worried that it's impassable,

02:16:38.120 | but I mean, it can't be impassable, right?

02:16:40.960 | If there's boulders there, I'll, you know,

02:16:42.400 | I'll go rent some excavating equipment

02:16:44.660 | or I'll fill in the potholes, right?

02:16:46.280 | And that's how we get ourselves to go forward

02:16:48.320 | and to acknowledge and validate.

02:16:49.920 | Like, I'm afraid of doing that.

02:16:51.240 | If I weren't afraid of doing it,

02:16:52.400 | I would have done it already, right?

02:16:54.200 | But I now realize what the truth is

02:16:57.080 | and what I brought to bear in the first eight.

02:16:59.560 | And I'm gonna bring myself to bear for the ninth.

02:17:02.040 | That's also when we recruit often resources around us.

02:17:05.240 | We might say, let me tell a couple of good friends

02:17:06.920 | about this or a clergy member or a therapist

02:17:09.560 | or, you know, a trusted other.

02:17:11.120 | And let me explore this more in myself.

02:17:13.940 | And that's often how in making ourselves better,

02:17:17.800 | we engage more with the people around us

02:17:20.640 | and then the support from someone else

02:17:22.440 | that may help a person do that, right?

02:17:24.560 | Is support given back to the other person?

02:17:26.840 | And this is also how we build the beyond self

02:17:30.320 | is that the path to travel down the ninth road,

02:17:33.600 | so to speak, we don't have to travel alone,

02:17:36.360 | you know, much of the time,

02:17:37.840 | but that often almost always wasn't in the person's mind,

02:17:42.320 | right?

02:17:43.160 | They perceive, it's a three person job, you know,

02:17:46.940 | to go down and say, great, you have two friends.

02:17:50.160 | Yes, certainly where I've been able

02:17:52.720 | to travel down certain roads,

02:17:54.900 | the key features have been a desire to go down that road,

02:17:59.580 | a recognition of the landscape,

02:18:02.720 | but not trying to take on the whole thing all at once

02:18:05.800 | and then finding really good people

02:18:08.240 | and frankly, really trying to avoid people

02:18:10.960 | that seemed, you know, poisonous to the journey, right?

02:18:15.560 | That we're going to, you know,

02:18:16.800 | throw toxic things into the engine of my vehicle.

02:18:20.240 | And that's putting a lot on them,

02:18:21.760 | but, you know, it just felt as if going down

02:18:26.240 | those other roads was too valuable an expedition

02:18:30.400 | to spend time on and with people

02:18:33.480 | that it wasn't helpful to spend time with.

02:18:37.600 | And at the same time, there have always been good people

02:18:41.580 | that have presented themselves with examples.

02:18:45.560 | I think, you know, this is where it comes to mind,

02:18:47.520 | you know, it's not always the case that, you know,

02:18:49.960 | you got a friend who's saying you can do this

02:18:51.720 | and here's why, or a therapist that says you can do this

02:18:54.960 | and here's why, but that there are examples in the world

02:18:58.120 | of like, well, this person did this.

02:18:59.920 | I think when we have challenges in a certain domain,

02:19:03.520 | you know, that ninth road, so to speak,

02:19:05.520 | I know for myself that I know I'm in a place of futility

02:19:10.900 | when I start to reflexively orient towards others

02:19:15.380 | that have had a problem getting down that road.

02:19:18.280 | You know, like, oh, like I recognize this other person

02:19:20.220 | who's been good at roads one through eight, but not nine.

02:19:23.880 | And it occurred to me during the course of this series,

02:19:26.920 | really that, you know, why not pick different examples?

02:19:31.920 | - So if you're going on a journey, right,

02:19:34.340 | and it's a really important journey

02:19:36.460 | and it's a difficult journey, but it can be awesome.

02:19:40.120 | Bring good people, right?

02:19:43.680 | Have them on your journey, be on their journey.

02:19:47.420 | And then you think, well,

02:19:48.900 | why would a person not bring good people?

02:19:51.300 | If I were going on a journey and it's gonna be arduous,

02:19:53.620 | but wow, we could see amazing things along the way,

02:19:56.460 | I can bring a couple of people with me.

02:19:59.020 | I don't wanna choose a couple of people who are lazy,

02:20:01.540 | you know, some who, you know,

02:20:03.280 | don't look at the world around them

02:20:04.940 | and, you know, some that won't be helpful

02:20:07.660 | to somebody else's needs.

02:20:08.700 | Like, why would one choose that, right?

02:20:12.580 | It comes back to the self, right?

02:20:15.480 | If a person, now we're talking about any journey, right,

02:20:17.480 | 'cause it's the journey of life, right?

02:20:19.440 | If a person is choosing people,

02:20:21.260 | you wouldn't choose to be on the journey with you.

02:20:23.340 | It's because you don't think that you're worth better, right?

02:20:26.440 | And if you think that you're worth better,

02:20:28.460 | you won't choose the people.

02:20:30.380 | You'll say, I want other people like me.

02:20:32.460 | I'm gonna be diligent, perceptive, collegial, cooperative.

02:20:36.800 | So I'm gonna surround myself with people like that.

02:20:40.040 | And if we look beyond ourselves at groups of people

02:20:42.800 | and at culture, the healthier we are,

02:20:45.380 | the more we ally with healthy people

02:20:47.420 | and the more healthy we are

02:20:49.580 | because we're making ourselves healthy.

02:20:51.580 | We get healthier groups of people.

02:20:53.540 | The journey is better for all of us.

02:20:55.560 | And this is how we can make the whole culture better, right?

02:20:58.940 | Potentially, this is how we can make life

02:21:00.660 | on the planet better, but it has to start somewhere.

02:21:03.620 | So it has to start with the I.

02:21:08.940 | I love, love, love the message

02:21:11.700 | that if you're heading off on a journey,

02:21:14.100 | that's really meaningful to go with

02:21:17.100 | and make sure that you interact with good people.

02:21:20.920 | This is actually a place where a reference to social media

02:21:25.920 | and online communities is actually worthwhile

02:21:30.600 | and can be very beneficial.

02:21:32.700 | I think it's easy for us to kind of roll our eyes

02:21:35.600 | at self-help and things like that.

02:21:38.120 | On the other hand, there are communities online

02:21:42.100 | that I consider myself a part of,

02:21:43.740 | but for which I and many other people

02:21:46.500 | derived a lot of strength,

02:21:48.840 | a lot of reassurance and confidence, right?

02:21:53.480 | Because a lot of people are isolated.

02:21:56.120 | They might have access to one or two people

02:21:57.960 | in their community that they really value,

02:21:59.360 | but those people are perhaps also busy with other people.

02:22:01.760 | Or I can remember being a student alone

02:22:04.180 | in my studio apartment as an undergraduate.

02:22:08.140 | I'm feeling very much against the grain

02:22:11.160 | of my local environment, you know,

02:22:13.180 | too much partying for me at the time,

02:22:15.380 | meaning I wasn't partying

02:22:16.740 | and there was a lot of partying around me.

02:22:18.100 | And had I been a better student in high school,

02:22:20.180 | I probably would have been able to healthily engage in that,

02:22:23.240 | but I just wasn't able.

02:22:24.080 | So feeling pretty isolated, but knowing I was on a path.

02:22:26.900 | So in that case, it was one professor,

02:22:30.420 | one graduate student,

02:22:32.420 | and a hell of a lot of books and music

02:22:35.180 | that to me just carried me through.

02:22:37.560 | You know, nowadays,

02:22:38.400 | I'm fortunate to have many more direct resources

02:22:41.300 | in my life of amazing people.

02:22:43.460 | But I just want to mention that

02:22:45.260 | because I think in this discussion around self-care

02:22:47.940 | and the various practices,

02:22:49.700 | I think there are sure to be people who are, you know,

02:22:52.940 | that kid, that woman, that man that's, you know,

02:22:55.480 | like alone in a room thinking like, okay, but how, right?

02:22:58.280 | I see the grocer once a week

02:23:00.780 | and I see my neighbor and they don't even say hello,

02:23:03.580 | you know, and you know how to start to access

02:23:06.900 | some of these better connections.

02:23:09.180 | - Right, navigating the online world

02:23:12.020 | is navigating the world, right?

02:23:13.940 | It comes down to understanding and choice.

02:23:16.980 | So if we're understanding as best we can,

02:23:18.940 | we're making choice as best we can,

02:23:21.000 | then we'll find great things online.

02:23:23.340 | There are great things to find online.

02:23:25.380 | Same is true of life.

02:23:26.880 | If we're searching for something that, for example,

02:23:29.580 | allies us around hatred, around acting out,

02:23:32.780 | around things that make us unhappy,

02:23:34.180 | even around commiseration,

02:23:35.880 | instead of thinking about how we can make things better,

02:23:39.220 | right, then we bring ourselves in a different direction.

02:23:41.960 | That's life.

02:23:43.160 | If we understand and we choose as best we can,

02:23:46.460 | we will lead ourself to better places.

02:23:50.240 | - Such an important message.

02:23:52.540 | And as a perfect segue into a question that I,

02:23:54.580 | and I'm certain many, many other people have about anger.

02:23:59.580 | And, you know, not just anger from interpersonal conflict,

02:24:02.860 | like somebody said something and it really upset me,

02:24:05.640 | but stuff that we see, stuff that we observe in the world.

02:24:08.640 | It could be acts against other people,

02:24:11.940 | words against other people, or, you know,

02:24:14.140 | that we take reference to.

02:24:15.460 | And I think many people feel yanked around by,

02:24:20.220 | you know, even dragged by something they see

02:24:23.380 | and they can't get it out of their head.

02:24:25.660 | Now, there could be all sorts of reasons

02:24:28.060 | related to each and all of us,

02:24:29.820 | why we can't get it out of our head,

02:24:31.260 | work that we need to do, et cetera.

02:24:33.600 | But according to the map of mental health

02:24:36.300 | that you've laid out for us,

02:24:37.800 | things that get in the way of that generative drive

02:24:41.860 | are really quite poisonous to our wellbeing

02:24:44.860 | and the wellbeing of the world,

02:24:46.220 | because that generative drive is about learning, creation,

02:24:49.580 | and tends to be pro-social in so many ways.

02:24:54.320 | Tell us about anger and how, from a frame of reference

02:24:57.040 | of trying to engage in self-care,

02:24:59.700 | we should think about our anger and work with our anger

02:25:02.900 | in ways that can perhaps even help us and not harm us.

02:25:06.680 | - In order to really understand this,

02:25:09.700 | and I think this is so important,

02:25:11.940 | we have to define three words, right?

02:25:14.460 | And the word to start with is affect.

02:25:17.060 | So affect is aroused in us, right?

02:25:20.300 | Meaning we don't have control over it.

02:25:23.880 | So anger is an affect.

02:25:26.260 | It is aroused in us.

02:25:27.820 | The idea being that if a person is walking down the street

02:25:31.300 | and someone jumps in front of them and shoves them,

02:25:34.180 | anger is aroused in them.

02:25:35.580 | They don't choose to be angry.

02:25:37.560 | In fact, the body reacts

02:25:39.680 | and has all sorts of fight or flight responses

02:25:41.420 | before the person even realizes that they're angry.

02:25:44.600 | So we can't control what is aroused in us

02:25:48.400 | in the immediate term.

02:25:49.600 | We can in the longer term.

02:25:51.640 | If I have a short fuse and I get angry really easily,

02:25:54.960 | you know, I can't really control that

02:25:56.240 | in the next 10 minutes, right?

02:25:58.040 | Meaning the affect that's aroused in me,

02:25:59.640 | I can do different things with it,

02:26:01.000 | but I can't change what's created in me.

02:26:03.400 | But if I'm living a better life,

02:26:04.960 | taking better care of myself,

02:26:06.640 | the generative drive is better expressed,

02:26:08.680 | I have more pleasure in my life,

02:26:10.440 | then what happens is the mechanisms that arouse

02:26:13.280 | so much anger start to arouse less anger.

02:26:16.160 | So by taking care of ourselves, we arouse less anger,

02:26:20.800 | but anger is aroused in us, okay?

02:26:23.240 | The next word is feeling, right?

02:26:27.200 | And there are different definitions for these words,

02:26:29.680 | but the way we're defining them, affect is aroused,

02:26:33.920 | feeling is when we take that affect

02:26:37.460 | and we relate it to the self.

02:26:39.400 | It's the next thing that happens on the way up

02:26:42.200 | 'cause the arousal of affect is very deep in the brain.

02:26:45.360 | As it comes up, the next thing it does

02:26:47.640 | is relate that affect to self.

02:26:50.120 | So this is where the classic example

02:26:52.600 | of a person who spills something,

02:26:55.580 | they are angry that thing is spilled,

02:26:58.240 | it raises anger in them.

02:26:59.560 | Then they become aware and they match the anger to self

02:27:02.240 | and say, what a dummy, right?

02:27:04.160 | What a jerk, I'll never do anything right.

02:27:06.320 | They say it inside, right?

02:27:07.400 | Because the anger gets enacted against the self.

02:27:11.320 | Now, how would we like that to go?

02:27:13.860 | Where the person's taking better care of themselves

02:27:15.960 | so when they spill something, less anger is aroused.

02:27:20.100 | And by the time it gets to consciousness,

02:27:22.280 | there's less anger so it's easier to manage

02:27:24.440 | and there's a stronger sense of self,

02:27:26.560 | all the other aspects of the pillars

02:27:28.560 | and the cupboards are in a good place,

02:27:30.820 | then the person is better able to manage

02:27:32.620 | what anger makes it, right, to feeling.

02:27:35.360 | And then to say, you know, okay,

02:27:37.440 | everybody spills something now and then, whatever,

02:27:39.120 | and then to clean it up and the person doesn't have to

02:27:41.240 | enact the anger towards themselves, right?

02:27:44.160 | So affect, feeling, and then emotion.

02:27:47.360 | So emotion is when we relate the affect and the feeling

02:27:51.820 | to others in the world around us.

02:27:54.460 | So for example, a person might spill something

02:27:58.620 | and then it arouses anger and now they get

02:28:01.520 | to the feeling part but they have a set

02:28:03.560 | of unhealthy defenses and they don't think

02:28:05.680 | they're responsible for things they're responsible for

02:28:08.400 | so they just keep that load of anger, right,

02:28:11.800 | that affect upwards until they get to emotion

02:28:16.040 | and then they decide, that wasn't my fault, it was yours.

02:28:19.140 | And that's why maybe they kick the dog

02:28:21.280 | or they slap somebody or they say something mean

02:28:24.020 | like this happens.

02:28:26.080 | So if it happens a lot, like this is part and parcel

02:28:29.340 | of what's going on in us a lot about negative emotions.

02:28:32.680 | Maybe there can be dramatic examples

02:28:34.960 | but there's smaller examples that are winding their way

02:28:37.960 | through our lives and the better we take care of ourselves,

02:28:41.840 | the less aroused negative affect we have

02:28:45.380 | and the better we cope with it when it gets

02:28:47.740 | to the level of the I and when it gets

02:28:50.400 | to the level of the you, right?

02:28:52.880 | And if we think about pro-social, collaborative behaviors

02:28:56.720 | versus the inaction of anger on a large scale, right,

02:29:00.480 | if by the time it gets to you, there's still a lot

02:29:03.640 | of anger there, it is very easy to then paint

02:29:06.140 | with a broad brush, right?

02:29:07.720 | Oh, the problems are that demographic, right?

02:29:09.960 | The problems are those people who aren't like me, right?

02:29:12.640 | That's where anger is at its most dangerous.

02:29:17.160 | So the idea of having the negative affect under control,

02:29:20.800 | having the understanding and the control mechanisms, right,

02:29:24.800 | keeps us from getting to that broader level,

02:29:27.840 | the level of you and then working in ways

02:29:30.700 | that are not pro-social but are anti-social

02:29:34.360 | and this I think also relates to what we can find online,

02:29:37.720 | right, we can find online everything we can find

02:29:40.100 | in the world.

02:29:41.020 | So then we have a choice.

02:29:42.520 | Are we gonna work on understanding what choices

02:29:44.880 | are we gonna make about how we're engaging in the world

02:29:48.160 | and if we're choosing the good things,

02:29:50.320 | we're taking better care of ourselves

02:29:51.920 | and we're better citizens of our relationships,

02:29:54.840 | of our family units and ultimately of our societies.

02:29:57.860 | - I've observed anger directed my way, certainly.

02:30:02.920 | I'm far, far from perfect.

02:30:05.040 | I have thousands of flaws and I've directed anger

02:30:07.360 | towards others in ways that I wish I hadn't.

02:30:09.580 | A common observance I've had about myself and others

02:30:13.360 | is that when angry, a lot of valuable time is wasted.

02:30:17.780 | Instead of placing my efforts within the generative drive

02:30:21.280 | and creating things that I really value,

02:30:23.960 | the anger becomes an immense distraction.

02:30:26.480 | And I've seen this a lot, not just on university campuses,

02:30:31.240 | but one place I have seen it is when I was a graduate student

02:30:35.080 | or postdoc, there would be some interaction

02:30:38.320 | either between them in the laboratory I was in,

02:30:41.440 | although rarely, but more often it was about

02:30:44.840 | some interaction between a student or postdoc

02:30:47.720 | and someone in the outside world.

02:30:49.240 | And so they'd come in and they'd be really upset about it.

02:30:51.520 | And there's a tendency to try and support one another,

02:30:54.480 | which I think is healthy.

02:30:55.840 | But then it was like this would just continue and continue

02:30:58.240 | and the person would be like sitting in their chair

02:31:00.000 | and it was like really upsetting and sometimes

02:31:01.440 | these were really upsetting occurrences

02:31:03.600 | that warranted taking some time and just really stopping.

02:31:07.360 | But often I felt like things just kept spiraling up

02:31:10.400 | and spiraling up and it was like halfway through the day.

02:31:12.960 | And again, I'm not immune from this,

02:31:14.560 | but I observed it more than I felt it certainly.

02:31:17.360 | It's like, wow, that's a lot of time wasted.

02:31:21.100 | Like just days and perhaps even weeks and months.

02:31:24.800 | And then there's the sleep loss that goes with anger.

02:31:28.220 | I think that's one of the things about social media

02:31:30.620 | and online communities that's new and unique

02:31:33.020 | is that it used to be when kids went home from school

02:31:35.420 | or we go home from work,

02:31:36.620 | something might've happened there,

02:31:39.180 | but you didn't have access to more incoming.

02:31:41.620 | People weren't calling you on the phone telling you

02:31:44.940 | things that you don't like or talking about others

02:31:46.900 | in ways that you don't like.

02:31:47.740 | Whereas all you have to do now is pick up social media.

02:31:50.100 | And if you're not really deliberate in how you interact

02:31:53.300 | with social media and on the internet

02:31:56.340 | and which news articles you read

02:31:57.920 | and which ones you scroll past,

02:32:00.460 | that could be accessible at two in the morning

02:32:02.780 | when you're up about the thing

02:32:03.700 | that was angering you during the day.

02:32:05.560 | That is new and requires elevated levels of diligence.

02:32:10.560 | - High levels of anger bring volatility and confusion.

02:32:16.480 | And that doesn't serve anyone or anything well.

02:32:19.500 | Lower levels of anger can be healthy.

02:32:22.060 | I'm angry at that and I want to try and make it right.

02:32:25.580 | Or I'm angry at that and I'm gonna have my say in it

02:32:28.480 | or I'm gonna have my vote in it or whatever it may be.

02:32:31.120 | Lower levels of anger, okay, they can inform us,

02:32:33.520 | they can guide our behaviors.

02:32:34.920 | But when we get to high levels of anger,

02:32:37.680 | it's volatility and confusion.

02:32:39.400 | The person ceases to then be effective.

02:32:41.800 | And here's an example.

02:32:43.160 | When you were telling me about how you feel

02:32:45.500 | when you're doing the solo podcast, right?

02:32:47.800 | And how your agency and your gratitude

02:32:50.840 | are like really in action and you're feeling,

02:32:53.200 | you're feeling the peace and you're delighted

02:32:57.160 | and the generative drive is at the fore in you, right?

02:33:00.580 | And then I had said,

02:33:02.180 | what if we add a little bit of anger even, right?

02:33:04.860 | To kind of make you, and then your response is like,

02:33:06.700 | oh, it would all come offline, right?

02:33:08.520 | Because there you're doing something

02:33:09.880 | that calls for like you to really be at your best,

02:33:12.360 | firing on all cylinders.

02:33:13.920 | So even a little bit of anger is too much.

02:33:16.680 | But it's a good example because it shows

02:33:19.620 | like you're able to do this thing that is so good for you.

02:33:22.400 | You're living in the place.

02:33:23.880 | If you could have all of existence

02:33:25.200 | be like you feel then, right?

02:33:26.720 | You would love it.

02:33:27.560 | You could bring it to all the rest of your life.

02:33:29.120 | Like that's the nirvana we're going for

02:33:31.360 | and you're actively living it.

02:33:33.600 | But we could throw it off and ruin it

02:33:35.480 | with even a little bit of anger, right?

02:33:37.640 | So it's an example that kind of models for us

02:33:41.180 | how higher levels of anger cause problems

02:33:43.840 | in situations that are not so rarified as that.

02:33:47.320 | High levels of anger, maybe there's somebody blurting out,

02:33:49.420 | somebody attacking somebody,

02:33:50.600 | somebody saying something they shouldn't,

02:33:52.080 | somebody making a bad decision.

02:33:54.040 | Anger isn't good for us at high levels

02:33:57.120 | and we can decrease it by making ourselves healthier.

02:34:00.280 | Then we make less of it and we control it better

02:34:03.160 | and we keep ourselves at the low to moderate levels

02:34:06.200 | of anger, hopefully low.

02:34:07.520 | Again, no anger is not good, high anger is not good.

02:34:10.040 | Let's try and live in the low range.

02:34:11.520 | Occasionally something is very distressing,

02:34:13.360 | we rise up to moderate.

02:34:14.800 | That's where we have anger in a healthy place.

02:34:17.840 | When we set out on this journey to explore

02:34:22.160 | what is mental health, I had no expectation

02:34:26.920 | that you would deliver to us this incredible map

02:34:31.740 | of how to explore our inner territory

02:34:34.440 | and that you would spell out such crisp and clear ideals

02:34:38.520 | of states and ways of being and things to access.

02:34:43.960 | Nor did I know anything about the generative drive

02:34:48.960 | and the other drives that reside within us.

02:34:52.640 | In thinking about self-care

02:34:54.160 | and in thinking about the sorts of things

02:34:57.680 | that people are challenged with often,

02:35:00.240 | I made out a little list, not just anger,

02:35:02.720 | but things like scared, embarrassed, grieving,

02:35:05.480 | dejected, tired, confused, stuck.

02:35:08.800 | And then I wrote infinite number of these.

02:35:12.360 | I mean, there have to be an infinite number of challenges

02:35:17.200 | that people face, an infinite number of circumstances,

02:35:21.680 | and perhaps even an infinite combination

02:35:26.880 | of those things that people face in circumstances

02:35:29.420 | that can make it all seem like a giant oppressive cloud

02:35:32.520 | within us and around us.

02:35:34.040 | And yet what you've provided is really a path of clarity

02:35:40.540 | because it's a path that certainly includes

02:35:44.280 | a lot of complexity down in those pillars at the bottom,

02:35:47.240 | you know, the structure of self, function of self,

02:35:49.720 | but you've directed us toward looking into that complexity,

02:35:52.800 | looking into those cupboards as a way to arrive at answers

02:35:57.320 | that bring us toward more simplicity.

02:36:00.020 | You know, empowerment, humility, agency, gratitude, peace,

02:36:04.100 | contentment, delight, and this incredibly attractive thing,

02:36:09.380 | the generative drive that is really accessible

02:36:12.760 | to any and all of us.

02:36:14.820 | - It's there in every one of us.

02:36:17.000 | - In providing this path of clarity.

02:36:19.700 | And again, I want to remind people

02:36:21.520 | that whether or not you feel you're doing well in life,

02:36:24.880 | maybe even in all domains of life,

02:36:26.360 | or whether or not you're experiencing challenge

02:36:28.240 | in any or perhaps even all domains of life,

02:36:31.560 | going into those cupboards is clearly of immense value.

02:36:35.540 | And you've so graciously spelled out how we can do that

02:36:39.840 | regardless of resources, really.

02:36:43.540 | It sounds like all it requires is a desire to be better

02:36:47.680 | and feel better and do better and a willingness to explore.

02:36:52.400 | - Curiosity, right?

02:36:53.720 | If I had to summarize the whole thing in two words,

02:36:55.840 | I would say be curious, right?

02:36:57.840 | 'Cause curious opens the door to all of it.

02:37:00.400 | Curiosity about self, curiosity about life

02:37:04.040 | leads to all the good things.

02:37:05.540 | - Well, what you've given us is of immense value.

02:37:09.580 | And it's something that I know that I

02:37:11.060 | and many, many other people are going to take on

02:37:15.540 | as a positive set of goals,

02:37:18.740 | not just for immense challenges,

02:37:21.300 | but really for always, right?

02:37:24.240 | For living forward and understanding the past.

02:37:26.900 | I mean, never before have I been presented

02:37:31.260 | with something that felt like it had as much power

02:37:34.400 | and potency to do good as this.

02:37:37.560 | - So that's great, I'm happy to hear that.

02:37:40.000 | - Well, it's absolutely true.

02:37:40.980 | And I really want to thank you on behalf of myself

02:37:45.640 | and everybody else for sharing with us your time,

02:37:50.300 | your intellect, your willingness to build this structure

02:37:53.680 | specifically for this series.

02:37:55.480 | And for lack of a better word, it's so generative.

02:38:00.820 | - It's, thank you.

02:38:02.800 | - And I'm sure that people will have tons of questions

02:38:07.740 | and tons of experiences of their own to share

02:38:10.840 | in terms of using this and they can share that with us.

02:38:13.380 | And that's one of the wonderful things about podcasts

02:38:15.860 | is they can put those to the comments on YouTube

02:38:18.220 | or elsewhere where really the comments on YouTube

02:38:20.820 | would be the place to share those questions

02:38:23.240 | and comments and feedback.

02:38:24.940 | And perhaps going forward, we can explore the self,

02:38:29.340 | the psyche relationships and ways to improve all of that

02:38:33.400 | and our lives going forward.

02:38:37.040 | - Yes, yes, this has been great.

02:38:39.400 | It's been invigorating and fun and thank you so much.

02:38:42.940 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:38:45.060 | all about true self-care with Dr. Paul Conte.

02:38:48.420 | This marks the ending of the fourth episode

02:38:50.820 | in our four episode series,

02:38:52.220 | all about mental health with Dr. Conte.

02:38:54.920 | You can access each of the episodes

02:38:56.340 | by going to Hubermanlab.com

02:38:57.820 | where it's linked out to all formats.

02:39:00.100 | And regardless of whether or not you have now completed

02:39:02.640 | or you are still in the process

02:39:04.500 | of digesting the material from this series,

02:39:06.820 | I hope you found it to be as enriching

02:39:08.820 | and as useful in your life as I have.

02:39:11.380 | And on behalf of myself and Dr. Conte,

02:39:13.740 | I want to thank you again for your time and attention.

02:39:16.420 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

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02:39:34.360 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

02:39:36.700 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

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02:40:07.240 | Not on today's episode,

02:40:08.500 | but on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:40:10.980 | we discussed supplements.

02:40:12.340 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

02:40:14.500 | many people derive tremendous benefit from them

02:40:16.420 | for things like enhancing sleep,

02:40:17.880 | for hormone support, and for focus.

02:40:20.180 | If you'd like to see the supplements discussed

02:40:21.780 | on the Huberman Lab podcast,

02:40:22.900 | you can go to Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S,

02:40:25.360 | so it's livemomentous.com/huberman.

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02:40:30.520 | it is a zero-cost newsletter

02:40:32.100 | called the Neural Network Newsletter.

02:40:33.800 | And in the Neural Network Newsletter,

02:40:35.660 | you get free podcast summaries as well as toolkits.

02:40:38.440 | The toolkits are brief PDFs

02:40:40.560 | that list off the specific science-backed protocols

02:40:43.300 | for things like improving your sleep, improving focus,

02:40:45.660 | optimizing dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

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02:41:00.860 | Thank you for joining me and Dr. Paul Conte

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02:41:04.180 | And last, but certainly not least,

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Dr. Paul Conti: Tools and Protocols for Mental Health | Huberman Lab Guest Series

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