Welcome to the huberman lab, guest Series, where I and an expert, guest discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman. And I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode marks, the second episode in our four, episode series with dr. Paul Conte, about mental health. The first episode in the series, dealt with how to understand and assess your level of mental health. Today's episode is about how to improve your mental health. I do want to emphasize
Eyes that you do not need to have heard or seen the first episode in order to understand or glean important information. From today's episode about how to improve your mental health, but I do encourage you to go and listen to the first episode at some point if you have not already today's episode deals with several topics important to all of us as well as protocols to improve one's mental health. For instance, you will learn how to guide yourself through a process of self inquiry in which you address certain key, questions about your drives, your level of aggressive Drive, pleasure, Drive,
The so-called generative Drive. These are essential things to understand about oneself. If you want to guide yourself toward your aspirations and if you want to understand how your subconscious processing is influencing your thoughts, and your behaviors, and your feelings in ways that sometimes serve your aspirations, and in other ways that can hinder your aspirations dr. Conte shares with us a way of assessing our internal narratives, as well as a way of creating a constructive self-awareness and an understanding of where those narratives and
Self-awareness stem from in our childhood so that we can navigate forward with the greatest sense of agency. We also talked about how to move past common hindrances to improving one's mental health, such as overcoming, intrusive thoughts. And perhaps most importantly, today's episode provides information and protocols that anyone can use to cultivate their generative Drive, which is a Hallmark of mental health, just a reminder that dr. Paul Conti has generously provided a few diagrams that we include as PDFs in the show notes captions, they are completely zero cost to access.
And they can help you understand some of the material that was discussed in the first episode of this series, as well as the current episode about how to improve your mental health. And while those simple PDF diagrams are certainly not necessary in order to understand the material in today's discussion or in the other discussions of this series, many people find them useful. So I encourage you to check out those links in the show notes captions. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and
It's related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is better help better help offers Professional Therapy with a licensed therapist carried out online. I personally have been doing weekly therapy for more than 30 years and while that Weekly therapy was initiated not by my own request, it wasn't. In fact, a requirement for me to remain in high school over time, I really came to appreciate just how valuable doing quality therapy is, in fact,
I look at doing quality therapy much in the same way that I look at going to the gym or doing cardiovascular training, such as running as ways to enhance my physical health, I see therapy as a vital way to enhance one's mental health, the beauty of better help is that they make it very easy to find an excellent therapist. An excellent therapist can be defined as somebody who is going to be very supportive of you in an objective way with whom you have excellent rapport with and who can help you arrive at Key insights that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to find
And because better help therapy is conducted entirely online. It's extremely convenient and easy to incorporate into the rest of your life. So, if you're interested in better help, go to better help.com huberman to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. Spelled heelp.com, hubermann. Today's episode is also brought To Us by waking up, waking up as a meditation app that offers dozens of guided meditation sessions, mindfulness, trainings Yoga, Nidra sessions and more. By now, there is an abundance,
Of data showing that even short, daily meditations can greatly improve. Our mood reduce anxiety improve. Our ability to focus and can improve our memory. And while there are many different forms of meditation. Most people find it difficult to find and stick to a meditation practice in a way that is most beneficial for them the waking up app, makes it extremely easy to learn, how to meditate and to carry out your daily meditation practice in a way that's going to be most effective and efficient for you. It includes a variety of different types of
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of you that have not meditated before or getting back to a meditation practice, that's fantastic. Or if you're somebody who's already a skilled and regular, meditator waking up, has more advanced meditations in Yoga. Nidra sessions for you as well. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to waking up.com huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's waking up.com hubermann and now for my discussion about mental health with dr. Paul Conte dr. Conte, welcome back. Thank you in the first.
Episode of this series, you laid out for us in a very structured way, you know, what true mental health looks like, essentially what we should all be aspiring to and he touched on these themes of agency. And gratitude, as verb States, really ways of being in the world, is that allow everybody to have some sense of well-being to have some sense of themselves in a way that is kind to themselves and to others, and really to feel good and do good.
In their life and without question, this is what people want, right? You also spelled out for us, these two pillars, the structure of self and the function of self that consists of a number of different things that from which guys are up, were kind of, you know, give rise to these feelings of empowerment, humility, agency, and gratitude. And reminded us several times that when we are challenged when we're not doing as well, as we would like that, we need to look back to the structure of self and the function.
Self and ask specific questions in order to arrive or re arrived at the sense of agency and
gratitude. If I
think it would be wonderful for us if you could just recap the overall model because it has the components that I just mentioned but some subtlety and some really key aspects of these pillars structure of self and function of self. I think, if people keep in mind for today's episode, which is about challenges that people commonly face,
And even if you will, phenotypes that we see commonly out there for people that haven't heard of phenotypes phenotypes are the typical appearance of something. So there is the phenotype of the anxious person, the phenotype of the person who just can't seem to get out of a rut, there's the phenotype of the traumatized person and these things play out differently in in different individuals, men and women boys and girls. But we're going to visit many of the most common phenotypes out there and think about how to
Better be better feel better through the lens of the model that we spelled out in episode 1. And of course, if people have not seen or heard episode 1, today's discussion will still be entirely accessible to them. So, in keeping with that, if you could just give us an overview of what this structure of the healthy self looks like as a roadmap, for where we're all headed today.
Thank you. Thanks very much. Revisiting the pillars is, I think the best place to start because there really
Our routes to understanding. And if we understand that, then we can strategize, we can make change, right? We can make things better. So the, the first pillar the structure of self starts with the unconscious Mind by this incredibly complicated biological supercomputer. That's firing a mile a minute right underneath the surface in us and is throwing up to the surface. All sorts of thoughts and ideas and states that then the conscious mind apprehends and our awareness comes into play.
And then we have defense mechanisms that sort of Rise Up from the unconscious mind, and they Circle and sort of gird themselves around the conscious mind, which they can do in an unhealthy way or in a healthy way, or any anything in between. And then the, the character structure is sort of the nest around all of that. And it's from the character structure that we, that we are engaging in the world, in the ways that we're engaging rights are active engagement with the world around us. And the idea is that the
self grows out of that, it grows out of that Nest sitting on top of the unconscious mind to the conscious mind Rising above the defense mechanisms in the character structure. And and if we go back to that, when we're trying to understand ourselves, you know, we're trying to understand states of Health, as well as states of unhappiness or states that aren't healthy by going back. And looking at the structure, we can learn a tremendous amount and the other side, the the other pillar is the function of self and it really starts with a
Self-awareness right, the awareness and hey, there is an I right I am in the world, right? Is 24 hours in the day or going to pass today and I'm going to be doing one thing or another. I'm so I'm to some very significant extent deciding. How am I going to engage in the world around me during that time? So on top of that are the defense mechanisms in action so defense mechanisms, remember our unconscious. So there's a lot then going on inside of us that's determining sort of the field set of options, right. There may be a lot of automaticity that narrows down.
Down the set of options of what we may entertain, what we may be aware of what we may decide. And that could happen For Better, or For Worse. Depending upon the health of the defense mechanisms, but on top of that lies Salient. So the idea, then we would next visit, okay? What are we paying attention to, right? What's coming from inside what's coming from outside? And we have to not pay attention to many, many, many, many things in order to pay, attention to, whatever our attention is alighted on at the moment. So it's a complex process.
And it's worth looking at very closely if we want to understand ourselves. So after thinking about the the defense mechanisms in action, right? The unconscious aspects of how were engaging with the world. Then next to consider is salience, which is sort of, where does the Mind arrive at rest? Or where does the Mind Trend towards? Is it something internal? Is it something external? What are all the things were not paying attention to, in order to pay attention to something and is that thing healthy?
Is it not healthy? Is it serving us? Well, so there's so much to understand about salience, and then The Next Step Beyond that is understanding Behavior. Right? How are we engaging with the world around us? What are our behavioral choices? What are our automatic behaviors? And then sitting on top of all of that are strivings. So we have a sense of wanting something in the world around us and what is that and how we trying to get to it and how does it make us feel? So if we look at the 10 elements, right? The five
The structure of self and the five under the function of self. Then what we're really looking at is is sort of like looking at 10 cabinets, right? And we're trying to understand ourselves, whether we're trying to just generally understand ourselves or we're trying to get it a problem. Then looking at all ten of those cabinets make sense, right? Some of them will be bear, meaning that they may seem to have very little to do with the problem we're bringing and we kind of maintain an open mind, right? We may be led back to that cabin and there may be something there. But what usually happens is if
we look in all ten places, we find a couple where there's, there's some rich material to explore. So, to the x marks the spot and then we go and we dig there to sort of mixed metaphors, we dig in the cabinet where we're going to find something, right? And then it leads for to process of understanding. And if we're bringing those things into line, where we have a healthy structure of self and healthy function of self, and we're aware of all this and we're working on it, we're self-aware and we're paying attention to everything built on top of that. Then what we end up,
Is a sense of humility because one cannot be anything. But respectful compassionate, understanding the complexity of of all of this and understanding. How does it manifest itself in us? And and just the very fact that we can wake our ways in the world, right? Is so just so impressive and in a way I think it brings to us a respect yourself. Respect for being here, navigating the world and I think of that respect is born humility the complexity of us. The fact that millions of
Of things are going on underneath the surface millions of of neurotransmission, and endocrine a logical function. All this is going on into the service. I'm not even aware of it and then it kicks up to the surface. Generates a tremendous amount of respect for the complexity and also the diligence and perseverance. It takes us to navigate through the world. And I think built upon that understanding is a sense of humility and a sense of empowerment and the humility and empowerment in action, right? So, so expressed right.
Come agency and gratitude and agency and gratitude. As you said at the beginning, we're seeing as verbs, right? That's like how we're living life, it's through the lens. So to speak of agency and gratitude that were actively living. And again I would put forth that when we look at measures of human happiness, right across disciplines and across time, this is always what we see. Is some way of describing how agency and gratitude together as verbs manifest and then create
Happiness. It's the state that were seeking to be, right? Because from that state of active, agency, and active gratitude, we achieve what it is that I think we're really searching for and, you know, there are by infinite words throughout human history to describe what that is. We might choose to use words like peacefulness a sense of Peace, a sense of contentment being delighted by things like just being amazed and impressed by things in the world around us like this.
Is a state that we are striving for. And I think when people talk about happiness, and what we're really trying to get to its this right? But it's not that these things are passive, right? These things are coming from the active agency, the act of gratitude, and their then interacting with a generative Drive within us. We have an aggressive drive. We have a pleasure drive, like this has been thought about now for a long, long time, within mental health and validated in a lot of ways. But what has it been?
Outdated is that they're the only things, right? We see human beings striving, we see human beings wanting better for themselves and for the world around them, we see acts of kindness that seemed to be routed to nothing other than the act of kindness we have within us a drive, to know to understand to learn to make better and that has been described as many, many things across human history, but I think the words we might choose our generative drive a drive to create and to make better and it's the the
Have dried as something active within us, right? That is then allying with agency and gratitude the active ways in which we express ourselves and then that all together brings us the peace. The contentment the sense of delight sometimes that may exist in us in a state of rest, right. But very often it's in its existing in us in a state of activity. And that's why people find, you know, the quote unquote happiness like what people are seeking not just in
You know, meditation. Sometimes we can find it there, but people also find it in in action, right? They find it in doing that thing that they love to do or taking care of someone and learning something. So when we look at all of this, we can then we can then have a route of understanding. What is going on inside of us and how we can make the changes that let us be in this state which is really the state that we are seeking.
I really appreciate that. You highlight the agency and gratitude our verb States.
From which peace contentment and Delight emerge. And also the way that you explain the generative drive, that is distinct from aggressive drives and pleasure drives that exists in all of us. You know, I'm smiling because the number of examples of Peace contentment and Delight while in action come to mind. I mean for me podcasting and in particular preparing for a podcast and a mind, the literature and figure out you know where the
Gems reside and where the confusion could could emerge and all of that brings about such peace contentment and Delight for me. But is it's anything but passive. It's likewise a yesterday, had the experience of running into a puppy. It's been a while since I've owned a dog. And dogs are delightful puppies, are
particularly tied, the experience of seeing you like that when you've added to the
puppy you know. I and you did and and I'm still buzzing from that short interaction with the puppy downstairs.
We ran our puppy. It's just that, I don't know why, but I just Delight in animals of most all kinds, not a fan of reptile, sorry reptile fans so much, but just drive so much energy from it and felt like life energy. And the, the way they animal is sort of attention lie scattered as amusing to me as compared to the dog that he will eventually be, which is going to be more linear and it's thinking like it encapsulates so much of the other things. I love like brain development Etc. Anyway, I highlight those examples because
There's nothing passive about it. It's pure delight and joy for me and it intersects with other Delights and joys. And I think that as you describe agency and gratitude, peace, contentment and Delight in these generative forces as well as other forces that exist in us. I think it's really critical that people understand that these are not states that you sit down and place yourself into. Although perhaps one could through reflection or meditation or
Waking up from a really great night sleep, things of that sort, but that these are things that we can find ourselves a wash in. If we are doing the right things and those things can often times, be very challenging. So assuming I understand the way the model is spelled out correctly. I'm more and more delighted at the fact that this is not just accessible in one domain, but is accessible in many, many different domains for everybody. This is not something unique to my experience, even though I give
examples from my own life but that we really all do have access to this. If we're looking in those cupboards, those 10 cupboards and asking the right questions
and and to maybe come and even a little further on the experience of you and the dog, right? So so it was a experience of delight and and you enjoyed it and brought a sense of peace and contentment like all of that happens, right? The think about what that's linked to like.
I believe there's a strong sense of agency in you that you are enacting. There's a strong gratitude in you that you're enacting your, you're handling your life in a way. And, and also, for all of us. Good things always come with Good Fortune but it comes with our strivings in our achievements, that you're in a place to Delight in that, right? If you are unhappy, like I don't like what I'm doing, I'm I'm angry, I'm frustrated, but then, there's no room in you, two to find the delight, and the Delight that you find is also very much linked to the generative draw.
I've right there. It makes me think of how you loved and nurtured Costello, right? So you have it in you to love and nurture a dog. And you have done that in a really wonderful way and that generative Drive is part and parcel of the Delight you feel when you see a dog because you love dogs and you think about nurturing and it all comes together the the agency and the Gratitude expressed as verbs, put you in a position to have that sense of delight, which is so intertwined with your generative drive with a sense of
Caretaking a sense of creating the the Beyond self because although you enjoyed and loved Costello you enjoyed and loved his happiness, right? So it all comes together and I think it's interesting because in some ways it's a simple example. But like that's life, you know, life has its it's big moments but so much of our lives are the smaller moments that link together and I think that smaller moment becomes a big
example.
I appreciate that. You mentioned, Costello for listeners of this podcast, that have tuned into early episodes. A Costello was the source of the the background snoring. For those of you that haven't, you can go check. He's a was a 90-pound English, Bulldog Mastiff, who, who had many skills, the best of which was snoring. So, in addition to the generative Drive, which is something that we certainly want to talk more about today, you mentioned, these other drives aggressive drives and pleasure drives and much of what we're
Came out today, it's going to be where people can go wrong, or where people struggle. We are also, of course, going to go deeply into where people succeed, and in particular, where people can ask questions of themselves particular what is working for them. And why as a route to understanding, how to sift through those cupboards and understand what's not working, and why and come up with real actionable answers. And
Then the ability to move forward. So if, if you would, could you tell us a little bit more about drives generally like, you know, when I hear drives I can't help as a neuroscientist but default to. Okay, the dopamine circuit or the the endogenous opioid circuit or the serotonergic circuit. But you know, how do you conceptualize drives within us and and then, perhaps you could tell us what the nature of aggressive drives and pleasure drives and
Of
drives. So that the concept of a drive, the definition of a drive is is something that's intrinsic to humans. So we could look at it as a motivation, right? I mean we don't just lie on the ground and do nothing until we passively die, right? So something is going on inside of us, that is driving us to do something, other than that. And historically, the thinking in the field arising from
Early. Psychodynamic principles of the, the theory in the field, that has really dominated the field. Either directly or indirectly in so many ways has been that there are two drives within us that there there's aggression and pleasure. And again, these are just words. Write it. We so we could put apply Many, Many Words. Which is why? Of course we want to Define what that means, right? So aggression, even though we're using that word for it, because the word for it is commonly used, right? But it means, it means sort of
Forward active engagement, right? So so a good healthy amount of aggression, using that word for the drive would be a strong sense of agency. So, so to little aggression, can be a problem, right? Then, the person isn't bringing themselves to Bear, right? So there's too little in the way of self-determination forward movement empowerment agency, right? And, and in the same way too much of this drive becomes
Actual aggression. So the idea that I want more and if I can't get it in in certain ways, I'll just take it right. So that so it starts to become, you know what, we more map to the word aggression, which would be something negative in most
cases, like a desire, or a tendency to harm
is that sure we, as aggressive drives get higher, which you see why they're in us? Because let's say we're defending ourselves, or you're defending a family member, right? Or like an entire family, right?
Right. Then it makes sense to have high levels of aggression. If like your family is threatened, right? So those drives are in us with with a potentially those high levels for a reason but we can certainly access very high levels of aggression without the indication of preservation of life, or preservation of safety. So the thought is that a drive in us and that gets us up and off the ground so to speak, right? And that the other drive then is pleasure which again, doesn't
Just mean that like we all want to be hedonists, right? So, pleasure could be even the pleasure of relief and safety, right? Like we're like, you know, we're all back in the cave together and we roll the stone in front of the door. We're safe, you know, throughout human development. No, pleasure comes in a lot of ways. It can come to the pleasure of food or other people, you know, friendship, romance sex. There's a lot of ways we can achieve pleasure can be relief of things that are unpleasant, you know, relief of pain. But
But there's a drive towards this in humans which again really does make sense and and too little of it again can be problematic because the person then isn't motivated to sort of seek things because they're not anticipating or don't receive gratification and too much of a drive for pleasure can also create problems. So so we can kind of see how these two drives like okay? They get us up and off the ground so to speak. But the question is, do they explain everything right? And it's a very
very important question because if they explain everything, then
There's not really there's not room for behaviors and choices that are beyond the self, right? There's not an explanation. For the person who will give you an example of a person I've taken care of who's there's a very strong swimmer, you know, knows how to swim and swim throughout his life. Who was in a place, I saw video of it, where there had been a hurricane, and the waves were so frightening, you know, they were just Hugh this huge Surf and
There were people who had gotten dragged out and you just see him. He runs into the water, right? He runs in and he goes and he was really at risk. You need to be saved himself, but he saved them. And I do not believe you can explain that if we these drives. I don't think you can say, well, that was, he was aggressive. He wanted to go and do something. You know that was imposing himself on the world or he got pleasure in thinking, I'm strong enough to go do this. I mean I think we're really
Really gyrating, you know, we're contorting ourselves right? In order. I have to explain it that way, if we think there's a goodness in that man's heart, like, I know there's a goodness in that man's heart. I know him right. And and that goodness sees his in the moment and, you know, he knows that maybe he can save them, maybe he can't, he's not sure, but maybe he can. So the next thing, you know, he's in the water. And I think things like that love and nurturing of of other people. You know, of children, love and nurturing of animals of plants, right? Like, there are things inside of us a week.
Explain with those two drives and and I think they have led to a very sort of Darker way of just conceiving of humans, you know it. I think it's a reason why. Now you know you look at us in the modern day and age, we comment humans through the lens of pathology, right? I mean is that there's a very, very thick book that if a person is assessing another person that, you know, is thinking about like, okay, what number is in that book. Apply right. Which is like, that's not the way to go about understanding humans and I think if we just
Just think there are those two drives we're not doing Justice to humans, right? One. I think it's not true. I think it's evident that. It's not true and then we're framing it in a way. That's not true. We are not appropriately respectful of humans and if we come from what I believe to be the truth, that there is a generative, Drivin us a drive for the Beyond, self a drive to make things better. Whether it has anything really directly to do with me or not. And as with the other drives, there can be more or less in
Oil combination of Nature and nurture. You know what, what genetically is in us, a predisposition, you know, based upon the genetic lineage that comes down to us and the recombination. And now we're unique person with a unique set of drives, but they are impacted by the genetics and then they're impacted by life experience. So more strongly formative life experience, right? So the younger, the person that does this sort of deeper the impact of events they have nurturing versus abuse right on the the array on the relative weighting of
Drives within people. But ultimately we get to these three drives and how they're functioning in a person, being a way of understanding, and assessing like how healthy or not healthy. The person is and then we look back to those 10 cupboards, right? For the answers, if we're finding things that we don't like these drives are out of balance and there, and here are the problems they're causing so very, very concrete issues, right of problems in
Whose lives we can look and see. Where is that out of balance? And if it's out of balance, there's something in those pillars that are not in the right place, we can then go back and look in all those covers for like, Oh, Where Do We dig to find the answer, right? We learn things we bring things more into balance, right? So the pillars are in a healthier place and then what sits on top of it, as you use the word geyser, right? The guys are that, then comes up and Float. Everything on top of it can do that in a in a healthy way
and during
So done-- we touched on some of the similarities between understanding the self and building towards a healthy or healthiest version of self where agency and gratitude are the states that are being expressed and one of the themes there was this idea, you know, people perhaps want to be healthy so that they live a long time. But presumably, they also want to be healthy so that they can walk up flights of stairs, pick up their kids move objects not get injured perhaps even do sport.
Or and of course, some people want to be healthy for aesthetic reasons as well. And if we were having a discussion about physical health, we could dress the major pillars there which or were items within the covered. Like, you know, most people want some ability to have endurance or stamina to walk some distance, or maybe even run some distance. As I mentioned before, walk up a flight of stairs have some strength, some degree of flexibility, certainly some Mobility, maybe even Dynamic, Mobility Etc. And
And in order to address those or improve upon those, they could look in those covers and say well how much you know running swimming, you know, long-form cardiovascular exercise in my doing per week. How many steps you might take a day? How many times a week do I lift objects that are slightly heavier than is comfortable for me to lift etcetera. That it's a very tangible. Very concrete here, you're making the psyche, and the, and, and the self, and mental health, very much concrete. In some of the same ways saying there are 10
Words, that one can look in and these drives as you refer to them as generative Drive aggressive Drive in pleasure Drive, you'll probably tell us in a few minutes can be expressed to varying degrees in different people and how that shows up, and what that looks like. And I just want to frame this in people's minds as very similar to addressing whether or not, okay. If somebody can run very long distances but they're always it, you know, having aches and pains that were they they feel weak or they are weak. No, they're good.
Reasons for that, they're over emphasizing one form of exercise. The expression is more along the lines of endurance and stamina not strength or vice versa that the power lifter who can, you know, lift 750 pounds from the floor and a deadlift, but walks up two flights of stairs. And as you know, belly breathing and has to stop at the top of the stairs. You know, it's obvious in the Physical Realm. It's slightly more cryptic or more cryptic in the psychological realm, but here it's becoming concrete for us. So I think it's
Is very interesting and very ironic, right? So the field that I'm in the field of Psychiatry has historically, wanted to be sort of part of the rest of medicine or like the rest of medicine. And, and what I believe, it's ended up, doing is glorifying a taxonomy, right glorifying a category mechanism of understanding human beings. So, in the way that, that if, okay, if I'm a practicing general medicine, and you come in, and you're congested and, and
I determine like, oh, you have, you have bacterial sinusitis. Right? So now I've made a diagnosis and now the I know what I'm going to do about that, right? So the okay, I'm going to prescribe an antibiotic now, the thought comes in of like, what antibiotic, right. But the identify sinusitis now you need an antibiotic is like kind of how medicine works, right? So the thought was Psychiatry is going to categorize everything, right? So we'd say, okay, I've listened to you, like, I know your number or your numbers, right? And then
Once I've given you the numbers. Now, I know what to do. I prescribed, this medicine that medicine, these many sessions of a certain kind of psychotherapy and like that doesn't work, right? It doesn't work in mental health. It may I mean she's it's not that, it never works but if you're going to try and understand people like it's different, the problem of self. Like, if I have a lack of confidence in one area of life and not in others, right? That's a significant issue. It is not like bacterial sinusitis where then, you know, okay,
Okay. Arrow goes to prescribed antibiotic and I think what is ironic is that this route of approach, right? Actually does bring Psychiatry and mental health into line with the rest of medicine, right? Which is why you can make that parallel. And, you know fits well, right? When you're making the parallel to physical health and to, I want to be healthy. Okay? What are the components of that? What am I doing to achieve that? If something is not the way I
Me go back and look at those components. I mean it may be because it's more tangible is sort of essentially easier and to comprehend, right? Musician is more concrete but but I don't innocence see it as cryptic just less obvious, right? But if we go, and we look at it and we say, oh, that really makes sense, right? And and in a sense, it makes sense that it makes sense, right? If there's a mechanism of understanding that applies to lots and lots of things that are more concrete. Why?
Would a similar kind of mechanism? Like understand what the components are understand? What's built on top of them. Like this, I believe is how Psychiatry actually fits with the rest of medicine, not by glorifying a taxonomy. But by coming through the lens of understanding,
I couldn't agree more and I think that what's so reassuring is that both in terms of creating physical health across the various domains of, you know, heart health, long health,
Endurance, strength, Etc, cognitive Health, as well as mental health is verbs. You know, comes back to action items that we each and all should engage in in order to arrive at the states. And, you know, ways of being that we all want to be in, right? We want to feel healthy, look healthy, you know, etcetera? We want to be happy, right. I know very few people who don't want to be happy. I mean certainly there are people who give up but we'll talk about that today and routes out of that. But at the end of the day, it's
All about looking in those bins asking specific questions and then moving forward in specific actions, to get to the place of empowerment, humility agency, gratitude peace, contentment Delight, Etc. As opposed to Simply using words and understanding to arrive at insight and then stopping there and expecting everything to change. And I think that's where a lot of people are confused about psychology therapy and Psychiatry, and as you mentioned, Psychiatry, has its own
Shadows, if you will within it where the the use of drugs which certainly can be very useful even life-saving. Absolutely often times is seen as a fix-all that somehow could reorder everything within the cupboards and make the recipe just right. When in fact we'll talk about today that that is generally not the best route but again with the understanding that drugs can be very
powerful tools. Yeah roll. Yeah right. But it's important we understand what
Was appropriate for them, and that's where we often go astray.
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Special offer. So, as we move forward here and defining, and helping people gain, for lack of a better word agency over their own mental health, and self-understanding, and defining for them. What, what action items to take, you know, I think I'd like to ask you about some of the things that I observe in the world and hear a lot about in particular, from the audience of this podcast. You know, it's obvious to me that people vary in terms of their level of
Of Drive pleasure drive, and presumably generative drive as well. One common question is, how do I become more motivated? You know, and of course, that opens up a bunch of other questions like are people afraid of failure and that's why they're not motivated. People afraid of success, it's not whether or not motivated is there some underlying childhood trauma or unconscious process? That's driving that fear and so on.
But if we were to take the psychiatrist perspective, your perspective, if someone comes to you and says, you know, I you know, I just don't really feel like trying, it's, you know, schools hard school loans are, you know, are excessive, which is true, by the way, you know, it's not even clear that with a degree, I can do much, you know, or I had a series of failures and in the work domain or in the relationship domain, and they're just feeling way down as if it's not worth trying.
You know, what does that tell you, in terms of where to look and what does that tell you in terms of their drives? I mean, do we conclude something about their innate level of aggressive Drive where their pleasure driver, their generative Drive? I mean, I think there are many such people out there and then we'll consider some other kind of phenotypic
examples. So it's a great example because so any good clinician, right? Could hear that story and then and have thoughts about it, right? That
That could in would hopefully be helpful, right without necessarily referring
to drives,
right? So, so I think you can anchor, any set of Assessments any evaluation any attempted understanding to drives, but it doesn't have to be that way. So for example, you might ask that person more questions about what they're doing, how they spend their time because you're telling me about someone who's not in getting enjoyment or gratification
Of anything, right? And and that then Becomes Of Interest to me is there, is there something this person does enjoy or something they'd rather be doing? Like, do they do? They go to college and take on a bunch of loans because they thought that was better because they felt they were going to do something that now they actually don't want to do right? Or that opportunity isn't there another frustrated? Like what is inside this person that might seem different than that. And again the answers could be complicated. It could be
Maybe that person enjoys what they're doing, but the cost of living where they are, is so high that they still feel miserable, there's a sense of privation and then that gets back mapped to like I don't not getting any pleasure out of anything, right? So the answer could be as simple as you strategize with the person of. You know, for example, does a person like that move your move to a different area? So it's like there's so many ways of looking at this in so many ways of understanding this. But you're describing someone to me who, who is kind of really complaining that
Is feeling good, right? Nothing's providing a sense of enjoyment or pleasure, right? So I would probably be interested in that first and think maybe the pleasure Drive is higher than, what's being fulfilled, right? Maybe the pleasure Drive is low and that's an issue in and of itself. What we sort of learned those things, right? Maybe the aggressive Drive is low and if that person just put a little more energy into it, right? Like they could be in a different place, right? So you try and help the person.
Essen understand themselves, so that you can make change. And again, that understanding doesn't have to be anchored to the drives, but I do believe the drives are at the root of all understanding. Because if you sit with that person and you talk to that person, then you're going to be able to understand what is out of balance, right? Either in the the actual array of the drives or in how they're being being experienced. Because again, if you have a high pleasure Drive,
For example, and it's not gratified, right? Like that represents a problem. You
know what, what about people who can experience some pleasure or can keep busy say, for instance on social media or playing video games? And I should also say perhaps it's bringing them to a place of Peace, contentment and Delight. But in some sense it's not really generative, right? It it, you know, I'm not going to cast judgment and say that video games and social media are all a waste of time. I mean I'm on social media, trying to provide value to people and learnings and
And and I derive value and learnings from other accounts as well. But, you know, there are these Milestones if you will in life, I mean, not that everyone has to, you know, go to college and get married and have a family man there a lot of different paths through life that I would consider successful. But in some sense we, you know, there are Milestones like we want to move forward, there's this phenomenon nowadays of a lot of young people so called Failure to Launch. Like they're not leaving home.
Where they're not finding a vocation, they're not, they're not feeling as if they're good at anything or they have the sense that unless you're going to be a pro, you know, like top 1% in something. It's not worth trying but they can still find. You know what most people describe as Pleasures like they might enjoy food. Maybe a little too much. They enjoy alcohol. Maybe a little too much, they enjoy social media or video games. Maybe a little too much ice, a little too much because it it's providing more or less a sink or a or a
Reservoir for their aggressive and pleasure drives, that's not moving them forward in the standard Milestones of life. I hear about that a lot. I see that a lot, you know, so it's a slightly more complex phenotype than described before is just simply the a motivated or non motivated person but you know, what does one, you know, what do you think of that of the phenotype? I just
described because
Were unique, right? Each person is unique on the Wii Fit categories, right? So there are categories a person, there could fit that could be different from what I'm saying, right? But I think most people just say on balance right what what is most prominent right? I think what is most prominent in that situation is there's something out of balance in the generative drive, right? And what you see, a lot of times is the person is a generative Drive in them, that's high.
Higher than their ability to realize that drive the generative drive. Then is frustrated. So I'll give an example. It's a real true story of a person who had worked very, very hard going to school for a long time and it achieved a very high-paying job and like that was the goal, right? It's a prestigious job as a high-paying job and the person for a while was doing quite well at it. And, you know, things went relatively rapidly in a negative Direction. So maybe for a little
The person's doing, okay? Then the person becomes very negligent of themselves and their environment when they're not at the job. So the, you know, the house is a mess, things are dirty. The person is wasting time with things. So, this is a person who enjoys it wasn't exactly video games. I would say it, let's say it could have been right, well, enjoys them to a certain degree and can really gain pleasure and feel good about the time spent, right? But start spending too much time. Right now, what was pleasurable starts becoming
Being a distraction mechanism, right? And then what that transition to was over use of alcohol, right? So now you have either something that is actually destructive and was - to job performance, right? Towards the person, this wasn't a person who is drinking a lot before and this is a person who is miserable when they were drinking or they were sort of wasting their time, right? And we're aware of all of this. Well, there's a very clear problem, which is that, that person had no,
Just in what they were doing. None whatsoever. It felt like the majority of waking hours were spent in an automaton like way but being awake and aware of the tedium of it. The frustration of it, the
national side. So they said she has had very little intrinsic curiosity or desire to do the job that they were successfully doing, right? Which comes out only
after exploration because it seems go. What's going on with this person and this person as a good job.
Job and their life was going really, really well and and they're doing well financially and you know, is this person trying to now you know overly indulge themselves right? Like is that why they're drinking what's going on right? And what you feel is that this person have strong generative drive and it wasn't met one little bit by what he was doing which was creating such frustration inside of the person was either taking himself online or doing something that was punitive and self injurious. And like, this is a real story that the person
Exchange that job for a job that paid a tenth of what the job they had paid and the change in the person's. Life was amazing. Like I didn't know this guy could smile, right? He became happy, he loved what he was doing. He sold the larger house, bought a smaller house, kept it beautifully, like he was happy, that's what he needed to be happy because then the generative driving him, he loved what he was doing, right? Gets enacted, it gets expressed and then other other things can come.
Then into line, right? He's not being over aggressive towards himself and drinking too much, you know, because he's saying, oh, to hell with you to the world around him and to himself, right? He's not taking something that serves a purpose in his life. Like again, if the example had been video games, it would be like yeah, great, you enjoy doing that x amount of time and like go do that and get gratification from it as opposed to then over relying on it and then it's not providing gratification it becomes a distraction so those things came back into balance in his life.
But there has to be the understanding. And I think there's a lot of that in people who have a generative Drive in them, that they feel is frustrated by a world around them, that isn't cooperating now. Do I think we can understand that and change that in the vast majority of people who are in that place? Yes. But it has to be looked at first, right? Because when it's not always that, it's just that a lot of the time, right? So it has to be understood. What is it in that person and then how do you go back to those pillars? And look at what's going on? That the person is in that
That place because the world can bring us a lot of difficulties right in that person who now is saddled with a lot more loans than they expect. Like, I have tremendous compassion for that, and sympathy for that, like, that's real, right? So, people can be up against a lot of things, and that's just one of them, right? But it doesn't mean that life can't be okay, right? It doesn't mean that, but the person has to feel that there's some way they have to understand enough about themselves is. Okay, this is what this is and I kind of see
This is and why and how I'm here. And from there I can start to plot a route to something that is better because yes, we have our difficulties and we can have a lot of them, right? But it's not for the vast majority of us. It's not like they're not surmountable we have to just understand them and let's say if that person goes and so I'm going to get some help and they go. And someone says, okay, right? You get 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy and you try and like how can that person think differently than they'll feel differently. And look cognitive behavioral therapy has its place.
Ace right? But it's not going to solve that, right? Like that person needs to understand something about themselves, not redirect their thoughts to better places, right? So if the person gets a reflex because that reflex works well for the system, right? It reflux works well for the system. That's treating that person for the medical system. The insurance system that person is in helped one bit, right? And maybe a medicine can help, right? Maybe a medicine helps to just take down the anxiety and the tension in the person and the person can sort of think more about it and truly
So did help this person because the idea of leaving the job I'm leaving the prestige. I'm leaving the money. Is that okay? To do like it generated a lot of anxiety and it helped to kind of bring the temperature down a little bit of that. So that he could think about it engage in therapy, ultimately navigate to where you want it to be. Then we could back away from the medicine. So like medicine has a role but if he just got medicine, I mean, what are the possibility? What are the odds of that? Helping like zero, right? Because it's not going to make the answers, Unless somehow the person feels a little bit better and figures it out.
On their own, it's not how it works, right? So medicine has its place, but a kind of therapy that recognizes the limitations of medicine in most situations and is designed to really help the person understand like that's what we need
it. With the example you gave is a spectacular one because as you mentioned medication, had its place. Perhaps even redirection of thought in some sense had its place. Because as I recall under the pillar of function of self, one of the
The key items is salience. You know what, we pay attention to internally or externally what our internal narratives are. But in staying with the example of this individual again, as a as a phenotypic example, for everybody to learn something from the
Asking of better questions about oneself, is really what leads to the understanding, so that like better forms of inquiry? I think the to me these are the these better forms of inquiry. Better questions are really the cardiovascular exercise, the strength training, the flexibility training, the mobility training, coordination training of physical health, just translate to, to mental health.
It's so interesting, right because I think
Had it. In example, I gave both the therapy part from through the system, right? The the CBT has a place, right? And the medicine part also had a play. So both of those things have their role, but if we build the whole story of like this is what this is, and this is how you're going to be helped around those things. We don't help that person at all. In fact, we ultimately, if you take on balance, you take all comers, we end up doing
harm. Well, in some ways about we stay with the analogy of physical health would be.
Like the person who wants to get in shape and then they get a, I'm not picking on Peloton as a brand, but it is a stationary bike and they pedal every morning and they lose weight. Their blood pressure goes down there, doing better. But then at some point if we know for sure with certainty that if you just do the same form of exercise over and over again, like sooner or later, you're going to get overuse injuries. So there's like the lower back piece and another piece and, and you become out of balance. So if there's just but, you know, I guess this is stealing from the Lance Armstrong book, but it's not about the bike right Amanda, you know.
Not about the bike, it's about the elevation of heart rate. It's about the whatever other healthy activities. Go along with exercising first thing in the morning and all the things that you're not doing as a consequence of exercising in the morning. So it seems to me that these, these better lines of inquiry as the path to better mental health, better life, that sit under these pillars of structure of cell function of self a really the key.
So, in this example, right the parallel that you made is
Even more dramatic, it wouldn't be that the stationary bike, right? Because the stationary bike is achieving a lot of ends, right? It would be more, like telling the person, you know, you should walk more briskly when you're going upstairs, right? Like that's a good idea but that's not going to make the change, right? So the idea that some CBT, some medicine makes sense. It's more like that, right? It's not that walking more briskly up. The stairs isn't a good thing. It's that we can't build the story around. Your whole health is going to change.
Change based upon that. And then that's a problem. Then if the person thinks just walk, more briskly up the stairs and you'll be healthier because when it doesn't work, now they've failed, right? And this gets used a lot in. Mint off that person failed. This therapy failed that medicine, right? And I think it's so also ironic because that's often what the person. Internalizes, well, they failed because we set them up 100% for failure, right? Because we took
Things that have their role at least potentially have their role and we built the whole story around them because that story is convenient for the systems that are providing. The care is to it's convenient for the Healthcare Systems is convenient for the insurers, CBT packages, very nicely. And you could see how, you know, if you start changing thoughts and how they make you feel like you know, you can get some movement on the surface even if there's no movement underneath, right? And again, I'm not
Saying CBT is bad but to see it as the whole answer guarantees failure in so many situations, same thing with the medicine. If you build the whole story just because it's convenient and and by and large medicines are cheaper than people, right? So so you can prescribe medicines very reflexively psychiatrist with 15 minutes with a patient that they can't then see back for a couple of months. Like, how does that go? Well, the answer is it only goes, well, the way a broken clock is, right? A couple of
Times, you know, twice a twice a day, right? I mean some look, sometimes it goes well, we're just somehow, it works out and that person can do a little bit of therapy and 15 minutes and choose the right medicines but by and large, we do those things because they're convenient for the systems even though that's why people don't get better. Like we think they would. That's why they stay in systems that's why they come in and out of emergency rooms. That's why they're not able to stop the drugs that end up, you know, only being stopped when the person dies like this happens all the time.
We don't stop it because we're coming from a perspective, that is so limited. That's not saying, let's take a step back and look, can we really like help someone? Can we really help that person understand? Can we help that person make change? Which ultimately would be, of course, so much better for the person and so much better for society but is also better if we just look at bottom line dollars and sense, right? Because the short-term view of it is cheaper today to have a psychiatrist at a
Minute appointment reflexively prescribe a medicine that is cheaper. Today is that cheaper across time when that person is utilizing, more resources, are there in and out of emergency rooms, it's so short-sighted with which fits with many ways and how our society works, right? That we want gratification, we want gratification rapidly. That's why a person would accept that their problems could be changed by a medicine, right? We're kind of condition that
way. Well, Nev, of course, there's the the cost we don't see which is that person doesn't get the opportunity to express their gender.
Drive. And so, the, and the, the consequence of that is
incalculable, right? Yes. And if we take a step back, and we look at that, I think that what we will see is that we have, it's not quite like, painted ourselves into a corner, but it's like, you know, the idea that if there's a beautiful tapestry, that's the size of the wall, right? That you can see that only standing back from it, right? I mean, this goes back, you know, I think a couple thousand years like this, this suit of thought and idea. But if you come up to close to it, then you keep
Can't see what it means anymore and we're up so close to it that we're thinking well, okay, how could one parameter change? And you know can can this person get a 15-minute visit sooner rather than later? We're how about this medicine instead of that? And then it's like our noses are right up against the tapestry and we don't see that we're not doing right by individual people. A lot of the time and we're not doing right by society which then if you stop and think about it we're not doing right by us. Is anyone of us
Be in that position. And many of us have been in that position being on the other side of things, and Willie needing help and needing to understand. So any of us can be there. So if we're failing a lot of individual people and were failing, the society, it is a matter who we are. Listening to this like, ultimately were failing
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To save up to $150 off their pod, three cover eight sleep, currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eight, sleep.com hubermann. Let's therefore talk about what does work. And again, placing on the Shelf, the the fact that medications can help and CBT cognitive behavioral therapy can help, but it's, they are just but two components of a much larger picture.
The map that we described briefly at the beginning of today's episode and that is by the way available as a downloadable PDF in the show, no captions. If people want to look at it visually and that was described in a lot of detail in episode 1, which I hope people will take the time to listen to, because it's so rich with depth of understanding. And I'm certain everyone will learn a ton about themselves and others simply by listening to your words. Absolutely, certain of that that map provides essentially a
Option of the bins. The cupboards to look in to arrive at better answers. And and even the sorts of questions that one might ask. If we could just talk about that in the context of the example that you gave of this person who made this really incredible choice to move away from this higher paying job, you know, they were over indulging in certain maladaptive behaviors and again, we will use this example but this example is but one of
An infinite number of examples that we could use of a person who's, you know, in a struggle right there, doing something that's not working for them. And they're also not doing things that they know, they ought to be doing. Okay. This is important for people to understand, because they're going to be people out there thinking, oh, like this poor guy. Like he's making tons of money, poor him, you know? But, you know, he was experiencing deep, his misery lack of satisfaction. So it could, it could have been the reverse example, like, the person isn't in a job that that brings about enough wealth for them to thrive.
Because their financial realities to life. So it's
just one example, right? Right. But it's a good one. I think, because the person left the money, right? So as I won't would make you leave that, right? And is what we make you leave that is if you're miserable in the situation with that and you're happy in the situation without it,
right? So it's about leaving misery and and finding happiness. That's so if you'd be willing to share with us a little bit of your mindset during those sessions meaning, the sorts of questions you asked him about the
sure of his cell for to reveal the structure of his self in the function of his self that allowed the both of you to eventually set him down. This far, better course, you know what's better than moving away from frustration and overindulgence in maladaptive Behavior to deep satisfaction peace, contentment and delight and to become a generative human being,
right? So we can look in each of those 10 cabinets, right? So let's say we look in the unconscious mind cabinet. There's not much there, right? When the person was growing up. It was very clear that having
More money and having a job that impressed people was an important thing. He internalizes some of it so some of its unconscious but by and large she's aware of it. And then
that was a real to you how he you know, you would ask him a question about you know, like tell me about your upbringing and he would say yeah. Like you know money was important in my family but we always felt like we had, you know, enough with it wasn't super wealthy but it had enough. And so when you say there wasn't a lot there, do you mean that there was no kind of like x marks the spot or like like blinking red light? Like, whoa.
There's something really in his unconscious mind. That's in his way. Is it? Do I have that right? Well, more because it was
conscious, right? So he was aware that it was very much like beat into him, right? Like this is the only way to be okay, right? Is to have a prestigious job, that makes a lot of money, right? But he's aware of it, if he weren't aware of it, we have to bring that to light, right? But he was aware of the book, it has a big impact on me. It makes it hard to step away. Like, I know, I don't really care that much about the money, but I also kind of do, you know,
sure I would say money can't buy happiness.
- but it certainly can buffer certain stressors in life? I mean nobody. But, you know, sometimes you hear people who have a lot of money saying, like money can't buy happiness because, you know, the a lot of miserable rich people but it's like, you know, it's very different to have a two night, nurses to take care of a baby. Then to be the person who has to stay up all night, taking care of her kid, especially or a single mother versus a mother that has a partner who's willing to pitch in, you know, Doug. You
just can't compare. And why, that's absolutely true. In this case, we're just looking at money asthma.
Money, as an endpoint, right? The idea that no matter, no matter what, right? How secure and safe like, is more money better, right? And he had an intrinsic over value of that, right? So so it made it harder to step away from it because he was overvaluing it, he knew he was overvaluing, it just in and of itself and I didn't for what it gets you, right? But for the psychological meaning of it, right, then we look at his defensive structures. If we look in that cupboard, you see that they've really shifted, right? They shifted from healthy places.
Other sort of Twisted and distorted and he's doing a lot of denial, a lot of avoidance, a lot of rationalization right there. He's enacting a lot of aggression towards himself. And he's progressed, he's, he's doing a lot of projecting right. He's harming himself with the alcohol. He's punishing himself like so his defensive structure, it can be healthy. We know that because it was healthier, right? But with them, we see that it is so Twisted. So we learn a lot from that, right? A lot is conscious in this person did
Defensive structure can be healthy because it was healthy. But is
eventually it was
healthy. What was healthy before I see it was healthy before so you know that it can be healthy again, right? He has it in him to have healthy defenses. They just started getting away from him as he felt less and less satisfied with his job and more and more angry with himself and more
miserable. This is a really key point for me and everyone else to understand. Yeah. Throughout the years of high school and college and friends and things of that sort.
Work out here. This like I used to be really good at Fitness or I used to, you know, if I had a dollar for every time someone said, you know, you should have seen me in high school, you know, like the person who lets himself go and and arguably is very busy with was professional duties and family duties, and you can understand why their time is more compressed than it was when they were in high school. But nonetheless, you know, you hear these sorts of things all the time. Like, I used to have this sense of, like, I could do things or that, like, things could work out.
Out or that. And then it says, if there was a previous version of themself that is completely atrophied and the new version of themselves for the later version of themselves, rather just simply like doesn't have access to that anymore, right?
And that, but it seems active trauma. Yeah, right. Okay. Whether it's big trauma or it's a big event or it's multiple things like Oh, The World Isn't rewarding me. I'm trying the world's not rewarding. I'm trying the world's not rewarding me and people become dispirited. Right demoralized, right? So so
It's the trauma of that, that takes away the, the sense of self the sense of agency. Like, I thought I could do things before now. I don't think I can do things, right? But nothing has really changed in me. I mean, that's, that's a problem, right? And it's a problem. The vast majority of times it's born of
trauma. It does that necessarily mean Early Childhood trauma or suppose it could be later, life trauma. I've been one of the things that I like, about what you're saying so much is that, you know,
You the psychiatrist is here's I used to be able to do something well or feel well and and that's like it sounds like his a signal. It's really a beacon of Health that still exists in the person but that they're out of touch with I think for for most people, when they think about themselves are people who talk about how they used to be functional in some domain. And they're no longer functional in that domain any longer? It sounds as if like, things are fundamentally broken, like, like as if a piece
Of them that was, that was functioning like drifted out of their body and left, right? But I love the optimism, right? Because I think so much of what we're interested in covering today is not just what's not working and why but also what's working and why and what used to work and why and and the idea that, you know, within these cupboards there can be the discovery of problems clearly. That's why one goes to the cupboards, right? As we're defining it, but that there are a lot of answers. There are their arrest, the ingredients for success.
Us already exists within us,
right? Especially if we know we've had that ability before, right? Because we know that we had, it was I think about in this man. He he felt that he couldn't make change. Like now he's stuck right? A guy I got a lot of things done. I was able to get myself into this school and achieve this and you know and then get this job like he could do all those things but now he feels like he can't do anything to make himself happy. So like we know he could do that. He had a strong sense of agency. He does
Now, right. And and like, people often do they feel a sense of loss, like, naturally? I've had this happen in myself, like, it feels like something's cut out of you and there's something Hollow I had that thing. And now I don't write, hence the unbroken, I'm hopeless. The things that we hear over and over and over again. So think about the shift in this person to like what's actually going on which isn't that hard to discern? We just pay attention to it. So then if we run up the structure of self, we say, okay not a lot of it is rooted in the unconscious mind
Mind right there are problems of overvaluing certain things but they're in the conscious mind.
He knows like in his household over dinner, it was you know, Dad or Mom, you know, being proud of some dollar amount that he can achieve so that narrative exists in and he's like yeah you like money was a big deal in my family kind of thing right by the way. I'm not speaking about my family, but rarely were there discussions about money. There were discussions about other things of course. But in this hypothetical and he knows not where a real patients are he knows he over
values it.
Right? He knows it independent of what money buys and what he needs and all the he just puts too much importance in money and he knows that. Right? So okay. They're conscious mind issues, he's pretty aware of them and they're pretty kind of set in him. Like those are the issues in there there. Okay, we learned that, then we go. Look at his defensive structure boy. That's very very helpful to talk about. Why like you had a very healthy defensive structure? What were you doing before? A lot of sublimation, Rite Aid, you explain some women should take anxiety tension or something. Something - in the self or the
It'd be - any channel it towards something positive, ready, channel that energy towards learning righty, channeled, some of the aggressive drive right into sense of agency that that got achievement. So you look and he said, write those, you know, the that Network right of defense mechanism to comes up out of the unconscious mind, was, like, looking pretty good, right? It was pretty clear, light was coming through it, in a, you know, in a way that wasn't distorted. And now we can look at, wow, that things are pretty different. Now, right is as he saying,
No, it's okay. Like what do you mean? I spent 10 hours of my weekend utterly wasting time and what's wrong with that, right? Or, you know, he's rationalizing even that he likes to drink when he doesn't because he so mad at himself like the defensive structure now is Twisted, right? So we can say, okay we that's a big observation, right? And then the character structure when we look at that, we find a person who's pretty good at figuring out and understanding things and coming right up to the
The precipice of change, but is a long history of than difficulty making the change, right? I know it and I'm on the verge of it but I don't I can't bring myself to do it like that's in his character
structure by the way. Such a common thing. I mean people that know better know they know better sometimes you almost have to wonder whether or not it's like it's like a medication in the pocket. Like they could take it if they wanted to that, that might even give them some comfort but they just don't do it.
They just don't engage in the proper actions to move their life from one place to the
next, right? And if we look then at the level of strivings, like he does know what he wants. Like he wants a feeling of contentment is really what he wanted. Was a feeling of contentment, a feeling of like I'm taking good care of myself. I'm doing something that's a value. I'm enjoying doing it. Like he wanted those things and even when we talked more he had ideas of what jobs would do that in the beginning. He said he had no ideas what he really meant that he said to me.
Me but was also saying to himself. As I have no ideas of jobs that would meet these requirements for me that pay as much as the one, I have, right? So, but within him, which we got to were where he knew that there were jobs, that would make him happy, he just had to get over that they were lower-paying. So think of what we learn about that is nothing lost in this man. There's nothing cut out of him, but he's not damaged. He's not hopeless. And now he can understand that. He that he understands itself, actually pretty well, right? And, and his conscious mind,
Is apprehending pretty well what's going on and where he wants to go? But boy, as he hasn't taken good care of himself, the defensive structure gets sort of warped and then it makes it a lot harder to take care of yourself. It's ice making other problems in life and he starts like feeling lousy about himself. Like maybe I can't do much of anything, right? Why? Because work isn't going as well, because he's drinking too much and it will performance goes down, right, so we can see that. And then, you know, what's of most interest there is that there's a character structure that can.
In come right up to the precipice but not, but not pull the trigger so to speak on, what the thing. The thing, the person wants to do because now we start getting okay and understanding of what's actually going on, right? And then if we look at function of cell, let's look in those cabinets to write, to help him be more aware of. There's an eye here, which he was pretty well aware of, but not enough. Like there's a person here, I'm shepherding through 24 hours in the day, right? Like, I am and I and I'm aware of what's going on inside of me and it can make me happy. We can make me miserable.
Like let's let's let's be more aware of that. How did he go about doing that? Because
I find this this first step with in addressing the function of self you know self-awareness and really understand that there's a there's a, there's an eye, there's a me and I'm moving myself through life. I I find this to be so interesting. And on the one hand kind of obvious like, okay, there's a, there's a mean like tangible thing. You look in the mirror, you see yourself, but at the same time it's a bit abstract, I think, to me, and to many people out there like
Like, how does one go about building up a sense of self in a way that provides positive agency in the world? Is it to tell? You know, we hear all the time about these like affirmations, and I'm sure, there are people look at themselves in the mirror and say, you are enough and these and I'm not making fun of these people, right? I actually have my own internal list that I tell myself on waking every morning which has nothing to do with positive affirmation. It's just actually defining the different roles that I play. I don't know why this is useful to me, but I find it incredibly useful to me.
It reminds me who I am. It also reminds it's reassures me that I don't have any dementia yet so, you know, we'll see going forward but hopefully not. But, yeah, let's talk about this. This line of inquiry within the category of self-awareness, that people can do regardless of whatever challenges they might be having or not having. What does that look like? And what do you think that accomplishes at the level of self, understanding and agency in the world? So,
One way of looking at that is in this, not the words I would use, but like what's pervading a person. And so to set set setting the stage right, which you can discern by inquiry. So so for example, in this case the person, so there's a person right? Who would really not think this is okay, right? This person taking a job at 10% of the previous pay and the job as less Prestige, right? There's a person who would be very unhappy about that and very faulting of that and and talk to this person.
And my patient through the lens of it, he should feel shame for that. That person is not alive.
The person is not alive. So, one way of looking at is, what Master, are you serving, right? And a lot of the like the Givens, right? The automaticity in him was as if like that person was alive inside of him. Really telling him like how this wasn't okay, who's fighting that? He wasn't aware that. Hey that's some other person's voice. They was like he's like no. I'm very very conflicted about this actually. He wasn't very conflicted about this way when he starts focusing on the I like what do I actually think we're actually.
I don't, I don't care if I make 90% less like I don't care. My needs are met. I put some money away. I want to be happy. I'm not conflicted, like so, but in order to get there, we have to look at the eye. How much is the eye at Center Stage, right in all? The I don't mean it in some way, like paying too much attention to this L feel like we're all acting through the lens of the eye, no matter what we're choosing, right? So, to be aware of that and do I want to be impacted by the opinions of this other person? Because I can let someone else's
Onions, very much. I mean, we all do, right? Very much impact, my thoughts. But I want to kind of decide that. Do I really value that person's opinions? I don't want them automatically inside my head. Telling me how I feel about myself. I
can't tell you how many people I know come to me in a place of struggle, even though I'm not a clinician and as I listened to what they're struggling with, it's so clear that they know the best answer and Route forward, but that they're dealing with
Internal oppressive voice about whether or not they are a good person or a bad person whether or not the choice, they want to make is really a good choice at all. Sometimes those voices are the voices of parents because, you know, in these particular examples or the voices of peers and so I think, if I understand correctly, what you're talking about is getting really firmly rooted in who a person is for themselves. And what they really
You and what they, what they really know to be true for themselves and really trying to necessarily quiet those voices. But see those voices, truly as other, even though they come from with within their head. Yeah. Is that
right? Yes. Yes to stop and think what voices do I want inside? So, maybe I want the voice of a Kind Mentor who still held me to account, you know, for a very high standard. It's a good voice to have inside of me. I have a few of those and hey, I don't know.
Not be a good voice is like saying not so kind Mentor for whom you could never do anything good enough. That's not so good. Maybe you take part of that new Leaf part of that but the earlier and more formative the voices are the more they're in our head automatically. I think about that man thought that he was deeply conflicted. Absolutely 100%. I could tell her and he was right? Like his experience was to be deeply conflicted but when you go in and dig does that if you just dig and you and you get to like okay the eye is going to assess this. He's
He's not conflicted at all, which is why? Then if you're coming up the function of self ladder and you look at defense mechanisms in action, right? And what's on top of that salience right now is when it creates an immediacy, right? So defense mechanisms in action, sort of inform the process and say, hey, the defenses are shifting to denial acting out, right? And that's what sort of gives us a Time Horizon like this thing's, this is not going to be okay, right? That if he kept down this path, what was very clearly going to
You have to roll the tape forward that much to see that he's going to lose his job, right? He's going to feel very ashamed of that, like a bunch of negative things are going to happen. So it helps the person apprehend that like there's something going on here. Like I'm changing, right? Because I can somewhat, I'm thinking now that it's okay, that I'm wasting 10 hours on something that I could really enjoy. If I spend 90 minutes on it, like what? Well, I'm kind of losing a little bit of perspective there, right? So, it adds a sense like a frames a situation, right? And the salience
of it could you elaborate a little bit on this defense.
This mechanism in action of acting out, you know, I think we covered in episode 1 and I'm sure it will come up several times more during today's discussion about things like denial projection, displacement, Etc. That those defense mechanisms seem to have their own intrinsic definition. But, you know, acting out is something that we hear more and more about these days like they're acting out what is acting out? Is it, is it acting out of some conflict is
Trying to, you know, demolish a struggle by going and doing something else.
We can think of it as by and large and unhealthy manifestation of a lot of aggression which could be a very high aggressive drive or an aggressive drive. That's not too high. But is then furthered, its powers furthered by a negative situation, right? Say like this one, right? Because the the acting out what was going on here. Inside of this person is he was very, very
Very mad. Alright, and this isn't a person who who expressed a lot of anger, right? So it'll read outlets for right? He wasn't going and running 10 miles, or this was all inside of him. He wasn't getting it out in one way or another. So what he starts doing is he starts acting out the anger. Now he's angry at the world around him because he's unhappy in it, and it's not giving him more choices. Now, of course, this is about him and not the world around him, right? But but he's feeling and anger towards the world that won't cooperate, right? And he's angry towards himself.
Of right? Because I Ki can't make himself happy. Like, look at all of this. Look at all that he did, and look how miserable he is, right? So a way of acting out then was, is the drinking, right? Because the drink is to hell with the world, right? You think I shouldn't be drinking at night and coming to work hungover. I'll do it. Anyway, right. You how was the world? So we have snubbing his nose at the world, right? He's also snubbing his nose at him. Right to hell with me, right? The guy who now doesn't come across the way he did before because I'm showing up at work, not in the
The way I showed up before Ben Wade, it's a little disheveled function. Is lower to hell with me, right? So for himself denigration, like let people think worse of me, right? Because why? Because I'm so mad at myself and I think it's Justified, right? And then there's also the inviting of hey, if I really have an addiction problem here, I lose my job is like fine. I deserve that too, right. Like you know, there's an acting out against the self that if the person doesn't stop and look at that, that can become true, right? Because that person didn't really wasn't built to say to hell with the world and with me or do not even understand.
What's the hell? The with the world? Mean it also means to help with me and it's not good for the world or me, right? But he was able to understand that because we'd look like, wow, what shifted in you? This is a person did a lot of sublimation before who now all that's going into acting out. So they're not taking negative energy and doing something good with it, they're taking negative energy and doing things that are bad with it. Why? Because there's too much there's a lot of negative energy, it's overwhelming everything else and then it's going down these Pathways where the unhealthy defenses are always beca
Ting us and the energy down here. It's easier to avoid than it is to face something in. Figure it out, right? It's easier to just act out than it is to hold what's inside of us and then think about why it's there. So the unhealthy defenses are beckoning us, and for him to see, hey, look, you, you have had a healthy defensive structure like, you can be healthy again. You're not broken, right? But to also see the way these defenses are going is bringing real risk to, you know, do your ability to you.
Be happier. You get further down the shame and lost path. It can be hard sometimes impossible for the person to get back. So it sets the stage like, this is very, very important what these defenses are, how they're being enacted and for him to be able to see that like, oh, this could be healthy, but
it's not now. Yeah, these slow, you know, degrading forms of acting out and self-sabotage and sabotage of others. I think our
The particularly Dangerous Ones because because they're slow and the sometimes the change is imperceptibly slow. And then one day somebody arrives at a place where as you said you know the for she can't get back or that we requires going into residential treatment or things. That really, you know, big departures. Yes. Big departures in order to get back into life and you know, I would never wish for somebody to choose to act out by driving off a cliff instead. But but there are other forms of acting out that immediately way.
People up, but it seems like people don't often select those a select, these more subtle forms of acting out where they don't get caught and they were they or no one's calling them out, on it on it because, you know, you know, plenty of people have five or six drinks at happy hour, right? As opposed to 50. All right, you know, so so itself, slow self-sabotage, as opposed to immediate self-destruction. And again we're talking about alcohol but we talk about food video games, social media arguing with
House. I mean, all of these kinds of things that build up over time to eventually deliver people to a place of real. Real problems, I'm curious for this particular individual you worked with sounds like that's not what happened. They started this process of self-inquiry around self-awareness and did you see that the salience that is what they paid attention to internally and externally immediately shifted and the defense mechanism of acting out immediately.
Solved. I mean, what was the kind of Contour in Time? And Time
course this is, it was less of. So maybe we're looking in the cabinet's, there's a lot in the defense mechanisms in action cabinet. There's not as much in the salience cabinet because this is the major thing on his mind, right above all else, like it on, he was having intrusive thoughts about it and is self. Talk was about it, but we kind of already knew that, you know, just like we knew it was in the conscious mind. So you think where's the money at, right? It's not as much in that realm because he's aware of it. If he thought, oh, I'm not, this isn't
Bothering me very much and he said, well, all his internal dialogue is about it right then like okay there's a lot there's a lot to achieve there but just as he brought a lot that was unconscious into the conscious mind was aware of it. It was sailing at there's less to do there, right? Because the things to understand and change are not residing so much there
for people that are no doubt. Everyone is singing about their own internal processes and and where they could ask better questions and
Arrived at better answers to help themselves along. Perhaps you could elaborate a little bit more on this salience covered under function of self. You know, to me salience is what's most apparent. And and as you talked about yesterday and again today, you know, there's this internal narrative like what's on my mind often or what kind of jumps to mind. I've started doing this recently based on our discussions here and I've noticed that under different states
Of arousal. And here, I'm talking specifically about sleepiness versus alertness type arousal. Like, when I wake up in the morning or when I'm tired in the evening, you know, where my mind is at where it defaults to and what I'm paying attention to throughout the day, is that just asking myself to notice and I've certainly noticed some, some, some patterns, for instance, I've noticed at any time, my overall state is elevated more alertness or
Except my mind goes to some not so pleasant thoughts. And it's interesting to me, it's like, wow, this is strongly correlated with states of internal arousal that are healthy exercise, you know, within a limited frame is or exercises, I in general, if done in a healthy way, is healthy. And when I'm sleepy, those thoughts never come about. When I wake up in the morning, certain thoughts tend to LEAP to mind other thoughts. No, so, sort of categorization of different types of thoughts, depending on my internal state is,
Is that the sort of line of inquiry that you're that you're suggesting or describing
here? He has a, I think it's quite a half the picture because half the picture would be what's going on in your mind when you're mind is sort of, at rest, right? What, what is then starts playing itself? Right in your mind, right? The other side of it is what comes to the fore, when there's a lot of competition for attention, right? So I'm making this up, but the idea that like, if he stubbed his toe really badly, he'd still be thinking about this.
Right? Because it's so much power. Now again, maybe if God forbid, he is a badly, broken bone. There's a lot of pain like he's going to think of that for sure, but it takes a lot of other stimulus to be more Salient than this, right? So you can look at what's coming in your mind. When you're mind is sort of free and open. That's very, very important and relevant and then what's winning out when there's maybe a high arousal State and a lot of competition for attention,
That's very helpful. Again, I think along with this self-awareness piece, the asking of oneself. You know what is happening in my mind when I'm in different states or throughout the day and as you're describing now, also, including when there are other things available to think about, like it does that include how often I'm distracted by a particular thought.
Like how many times throughout the day? My mind goes from the conversation I might be into something else or
if yes yeah this is it hijack. Your attention you know this is one way of putting a
lot of people mentioned to me challenges with intrusive thoughts. What can be done about those intrusive thoughts or is it simply a matter of paying attention to the fact that they're there and and then thinking about that the origins of those
thoughts? Absolutely.
When exam, we could have intrusive thoughts because there's trauma in your background, may be very clear trauma that you're not facing in Agra and addressing then you have intrusive thoughts and say I'm not safe, okay. Go look for what's still in the unconscious mind or when it comes out a little bit. You you push back into the unconscious mind. That would be a vet's. A very different scenario than like, in this case. This man was having intrusive thoughts about his job. Situation is overall situation and it made sense that he was having those intrusive. They were markers.
Of the Acuity of it. All right, I'll look you have to do something about this or like something very bad is going to happen. So the intrusive thoughts there and says made sense right? And like this is not going well and and your - in forcing you to pay attention to this because time really kind of is of the essence your real risk now. So intrusive thoughts can be anything from as they often are they can be markers of something that is traumatic, something that's underneath the surface. Something that is really bothering us that we shove down that's making guilt shame distress.
Vulnerability. That's a that's very often the case but sometimes intrusive thoughts are a marker of like oh right? That's the thing to pay attention
to.
And once we identify the intrusive, thought mean, how do we eradicate it? I mean, how do we work with it? I mean, talking about trauma. Now, you know, of course, it might map back to a childhood experience, some internal narrative, but is there some roadmap for moving? Intrusive thoughts from a place of intrusive and disturbing to Simply there and kind of met, I mean, to be wonderful to hit it.
Eat switch. But obviously, we don't work like
that. Well, shit, let's take a look if we could at this example, right? Which is a little bit different, if we, if we run through this example of the person in the job because then we should talk about trauma, driven, intrusive thoughts, which is, I think, in many ways the biggest topic about intrusive thoughts but think of this person here, if we go up from salience, we look at behaviors, right? And behavior. Actually, now is very, very important, right? This person is drinking. They're still going to that job. They don't want they haven't.
Got an interview for the jobs they want, right. So we start looking at the behaviors that are making problems the changes in behaviors, that could make things better, right? And then on top of that, we arrive at strivings and I think when I was talking about structure of self, I think, at least one time, I misspoke and said, said striving instead of self. I, at the top of these pyramids self and striving have a lot of overlap, right? Because if you're growing a healthy self right out of, you know, the sort of top of the structure of cell.
Pyramid. Then that self is going to be aware of strivings and and it's going to be better able to enact them. So, you know, here's his sense of self was shaken here, but he was aware of the striving for a better life, right? So now let's see, the roadmap, it's interesting because the roadmap is his road map, right? If we look in those 10 cupboards, we come up with a road map and there, and road map doesn't have a spending very much time and like unconscious land, right? Because it gives a really neat that right, if we look at what makes the difference for,
Or him. What did we do, right? We really cultivated the self-awareness. The eye that is making decisions for him. We looked at how his defensive structure had changed and the things he didn't want to be there now and the good things that were there before and how could he get back some of that? How could he Trend back towards what was working before? So we start to really look at that and then we go from there, really to changing behaviors, like it requires a behavioral change which is not to walk up to the Press.
This of doing this each day, but to actually do it, right? Because it was very clear all the vectors so to speak inside, and we're pointing towards doing it. And that was consistent with the self being healthier that garden growing on top of the structure and the strivings then being realized. So for him, that was the roadmap and the, in the, in this alien. So it wasn't really part of it because the intrusiveness, the salience bias inside of him made sense. Then like of course, it went away once he made the
Asians, right? Because the intrusive thoughts of like, you have to figure this out. Used to figure this out, weren't there anymore. Along with the intrusive thoughts of you'll never figure this out, right? Like it goes away because he made the change, when he made the change, because we looked at self-awareness and we strengthen self-awareness. We looked at defense mechanisms how they could be versus how they are. We looked at the behavioral change, which was really necessary. And then, also referencing a character structure that had has difficulty right coming coming across the precipice, right?
So we said, okay, that's a baseline characteristic of him. We kind of understand that, but how do we help him change the behaviors? Anyway, when he does that, the self is in a better happier healthier place. The strivings are realized this person that stops drinking in the way they were. They start doing the enjoyment aspects of their life. They start doing them within reasonable bounds. Again, they're taking care of themselves person, smiling that the. And now think the generative Drive is much more fulfilled. So so what
Comes on top of those pillars, right? Is that person is a sense of humility, right? Enough, humility to say. I'm going to walk away from this job. I don't. It's okay that the people in the job will think I'm crazy. How could you leave that? And, and like a trigger? Something in me in some way. But like, it's okay, right? Like I don't have to, you know, I'm not out there for that. I'm not out there for the big thing that everybody is is guiding I can have the humility to go to the job that I do makes a difference in. Feels good to me, right? He's empowered to make change. He's what moving away from
This is the disempowerment of the alcohol in the avoidance, right? So there's empowerment in humility and absolutely talk to that person on the other side of it, like shortly as it was enacting it right. Getting just to the other side of it, who is so much empowerment and so much humility, which were then brought to bear through a sense of agency that made the changes right. That change, the job that stop drinking the dealt with the people who thought negatively of it, right through a sense of gratitude of, it's not awful that I I'm going to go make less money, a lot of people
Said that to him, like how could you do? It was so terrible. It's not terrible, right? I'm grateful. You know what? I'm going to do, I'm going to go make an amount of money that it, that's all that I need, right? So it was like, that's what helps a person do that thing, and that's actually true, right? That's What mattered to him. So, and activated and active of verb sense of agency and gratitude, then leads them to the place where there was a peace contentment Delight. You was delighting in the job that he chose and his generative Drive.
Is in accord with it. You know then engine. We stopped at some point working together. He didn't need me anymore. You could always come back, but we didn't need me anymore. And you look at. How are those last sessions? A lot of the last sessions where him like in an excited way telling me what he was doing, right? Like oh and then we did this and I did this. I figured this out like he was so happy about it and you can see that man's generative Drive, which naturally naturally is quite high in him, but was being squelched, right? That brings him out of balance. Now,
the generative Drive was in quite a good place and he had enough aggression or assertion right to go and do that job and to do that. Well, and even enough to counter anybody who would still kind of rise up and say that wasn't a good idea. He could counter all that. He was getting pleasure from it. He didn't need to seek pleasure by what not even pleasure because alcohol was pleasurable. No pleasure, because harming himself, and saying to hell with you to the world and to him was pleasurable right now getting pleasure, that way he's getting pleasure in healthy ways, taking care of himself doing the job.
He loves doing his leisure activities, like the man comes into balance and then like life is good and we say, okay, come back in a couple of months, like comes back in a couple of months. I maybe in six months comes back, one more time, I don't see him again. That's great. He totally doesn't need me again and I atrophied right from his life. Great. That's that's the success
State. I'd eventually arrived. It being truly wealthy. Yeah, with all with all, the components of mental health and peace, contentment Delight.
As you described his story, which is a remarkable one, it occurs to me that the narratives that we hear as children.
End up being so powerful. Yes, and I'm sure there are people out there that receive such direct messages from their mother and our father. Like you have to do this, you cannot do that. But often we get messages through observing in overhearing, right? The way that our mother talks about our father when he's out of the room. The way that our father talks about her mother when she's out of the room. Like, and some of this could be nonverbal like a rolling.
Eyes or a somebody saying. Yes. Yes, agreeing and then they walk out in these, you know, and come blowing in them off, right? I mean, kids are we are also aware and integrating all of that all the time. And I do think those messages get woven into us at a very deep level. Absolutely. And then, of course, there are the conscious narratives that we build up as we go through particular, I think elementary and middle school and high school. I mean, I can still remember
- comment somebody made about a jacket that I was wearing and like, the third or the fourth grade, I forget everything else that happened that year. Remember that? Yeah. And I'm not, you know, I'm not insecure about the clothing that I pick, you know? I mean obviously it's a black button down shirt, I've had similar shirt since the first great, just kidding, but you know that but we the fact that that's embedded in my memory systems it's like just shoot speaks to the the salience of - of insults, basically was an insult
And I'm sure I've insulted plenty of kids and coming up, you know, as a teenager and and back and forth. And and so but these narratives get so deeply embedded and the idea that one could pick a different path of vocation or like your miss the opportunity to be truly happy at a deep level based on these narratives. I mean, on one hand, it's obvious on the other hand, you just go like, whoa, this is, this is not good. This is it. This is a flaw in the design.
Mine and yet you're giving us a road map to, to understanding and to
overcoming it. Let's say, we take your examples and we will look, they're great examples and we look at that, right? The the person making fun of the code in third grade, right? We're assuming it hasn't harmed you. It doesn't change the course of your life, right? What does it tell us? It shows that negative stimuli are very Salient, right? I'm sure you got a lot of compliments in third grade to write, but it's a - that stands out which just shows that there's a salience bias in US.
Towards the negative. And that's probably about survival and threat sensing, like, in some ways, it makes sense and around human survival, but it doesn't make sense around human trauma, right? So then the, you'd given the example of what gets communicate to the child when say mother says something negative about father, when father's out of the room, father says something negative about mother when mothers out of the room just to give an example, right? So children because the the complex cognitive mechanisms haven't been formed yet, right?
Right then, the natural way that the brain functions is in a self-referential way, right? So, the child generally doesn't have the capacity to say, like, oh, Mom, and Dad aren't really getting along well in this certain way. So, when dad's not here, Mom vents a little bit about something about him by saying child isn't thinking about that, right? Then what the child will often, internalized is okay. There's me and there's mom and dad, and mom says, Dad is bad, and dad says, mom is bad.
And I must be bad to write because in general, if your parents are bad, then then the child takes out on themselves. Now, again, I'm giving a simple example what I'm very much extrapolating. It. I mean, imagine if that were very, very aggressive where the mother when this happens, right? Just tells the child, how awful the father is and the father does the same, you know, you're not going to someone's not going to come out the other side of that being like, you know what, maybe they're both awful, but I'm not, that's not how that goes, right? So the lessons the, the traumatic lessons of childhood get in.
Journalized right? And they don't even always have a solution. Stay. So do you think about the man who knew like, okay, you have to go get this job and like all those things, he internalized, you might say, well, I mean, he got to a good place for him, right? So, so For Better, or For Worse, at least. It was a place to go, right? To like to go, go work hard, go succeed, go check this box, you've been told you're supposed to check, but oftentimes there is no solution. Stay. So, how many children? I mean, it's terrible. That this is such a high percentage of the work. Adult practitioners do.
Do is, is helping people who has children were told one way or another, that they were worthless incapable bad, right? That gets that gets put into the child, unfortunately, far far. If I mean one time on the planet is too frequent little and how long often
this happens, that example makes really good sense could we? And this is a question, could we add to that? The example whereby the child overhears again examples of
Say men should be like, or women should be like, like he is things that it's not so much like you did wrong Andrew, or, you know, you did wrong Paul, like, or telling the DAR, like, you screwed up, but but it's more, again, narratives that we over here, or even a parent showing Delight or excitement about a certain phenotype in the world. Like oh wow, look at that person. Or look at them like like isn't she beautiful right that the young child thinks like okay, well then that's
The epitome of beauty through the lens of the parent or gosh, like this person like, you know, like then that child, internalizes that this is, the epitome of discussed with another human being and I think children are so Savvy without realizing it is to like, okay, well, then I guess you move toward that and he, and you aspire to that and you deflect from that. And you can see how these trajectories can be set very early on. I mean, the these are the, these are the four lane highways that we were talking about at in episode 1.
We're just routes of neural processing that can bring us two choices in life and places in life that often times. You'll like, I don't want to go down this path anymore. And and so that the exploration of early narratives, both direct and indirect, you know, first-person and third-person seem so critical. How does one go about that? I mean, clearly with a trained clinician like you, you would guide somebody through the process. But if somebody were to try and do this in some sort of structured way for themselves, what are those
Lines of inquiry look like because we have vast number of experiences from childhood, but some messages are going to be more Salient than
other. Sure that you that reflective self scrutiny, you know can help us, I think is a great idea. It's a great concept and and we do a lot of different things. So the inside and were guided to do a lot of things inside. But this I think should overshadow many if not most of all those other things have like what's really going on inside of me? Because if you think about it, a lot of people will come through that.
And they'll learn, right? So the person is told like, this is what beautiful is, this is what successful is, this is what good enough looks like, right? And and that person may through all sorts of experiences, there may be other people in their lives who are more balanced. Be I would arrive on the other side of that, even still sometimes going through the midst of it, depending upon age and situation and I like, okay, like that's what you know, my father mother thinks like this is what beauty is this is what success is but it's one set of opinions and there's not a set of opinions that are going to do.
Fine me like sometimes people get to that place but a lot of times they don't and they carry that lesson forward and they're not aware of it, right. So they think that they're very unattractive even though other people are giving them different signals. They think that they're very dumb even though other people are giving them different signals and their own grades and their own success, maybe giving them different signals, right? But they're not putting the two things together and that's going to generate tension, right? That might be why that person doesn't follow up on.
On potential relationships, right? They just don't think they're good enough in the person's eventually going to reject them because of what they look like, right? They are taking that with them in this in this example from childhood, right? Or they're not satisfied with the job that in other ways is like really great, right? They enjoy the work, they enjoy doing but doesn't pay enough, right? Why. Because they have some false idea inside of what it's supposed to pay, right? Because that's what the parents said. So so by self scrutiny of like what are the Givens? I always think it goes back to the math, minor, right? If
Can't solve the problem. Go back and look at the Givens. Right? What are you taking for granted like, oh, I know that every time I see an X at x equals 4. Really, maybe, you know, maybe you wrote down for somehow, because you are thinking of four at the time and X actually is a three, right? So, like, just go back and look at what you're taking for, granted, right. And a lot of times, this is what we're doing in the therapy process, and then that's when the person can realize. So, I'm simplifying, but for the person to realize like, oh, there's a voice in my head, so,
To speak as a natural voice. That is the voice of this person, right? Who may not even be around anymore. Whose opinion doesn't mean as to me what it did before, but that voice is saying, you're unattractive. You're not making enough money. You're not good enough, right? And you know what? I don't believe that, right? I don't, they can identify that and then you can say, it doesn't happen all at once, but you can get it out of you. We generally don't get it out of you. Unless you realize that it's
there. What is the process of getting it out? Because I think that
We all have the capacity to remember certain things and to arrive at a place where we can understand. Okay. I'm taking for granted the fact that there's a voice in my head that says blank actually, I have a brief anecdote to say about this, in this. Isn't that the court? I have a friend thing. I literally have a female friend who the other day called me laughing and crying, because she was being evicted from her her apartment. And she told her mother about this over the phone,
Phone and her mother's response was? Well, at least you're thin. Wow. Like it like it like it and and and she was laughing and crying about it because it reflected so much of her childhood right there like no other accomplishment of having a job, having an apartment Etc like you don't matter. It was it was it was about one thing. It was about as certain form of aesthetic beauty that I'm not even sure she subscribes to, you know, she happens to be thin, right? So, so the fact that her mother would lift that from the
And there's such a deprivation of so many things in that interaction, but, but it really wasn't about that interaction. It was, you know, she was calling me because it was really about her entire childhood, right? And obviously, I'm not equipped to solve the problem and it wasn't a request for money. Or anything of that sort. It was just, it was almost like the, the hilarity and the, and the sadness of the whole picture, right? But again, it's speaks to that these narratives that we internalize and that sometimes show up
In very glaring ways in the real world like to hear that I think was shocking to her. I think she needed to tell me to like like is this real, but then it was clear that that message it existed in her head for a long time. Anyway,
that can be very pivotal if she realizes that. Right? And even the power of the humor of it is this is absurd, right? That can be very powerful in in creating change because if there's some Vestige of that inside of her, right? We're like she still believes like I'm not good enough because I achieved a b and c but I don't look like X or whatever it can.
Very much help because there's a lot of power behind realizing that absurdity of like, oh my God, that's bizarre, like, so, but but wait, is any of that inside of me? Am I carrying some of that with me? I mean is an incentive for self scrutiny and you know, through what you're describing. Because what what's the ideal amount of that to still be in her
zero?
So is as one comes to realize the messages they've heard or perhaps like in this case that they're still hearing is the process of overcoming those messages and really arriving at the self. It sounds to me like it's a two-part process at least two part process its to look in the bin of what are the Givens, whatever. Whatever, what am I taking for granted about the internal narratives? And I'm thinking about their origins in childhood or elsewhere. But then also cultivating the self-awareness piece that's under the function of
Like wait, what's really true for me? At the level of me that has that, that isn't the, and this is really, I think about separating out the voices in one's head, these internalized narratives from the person that we really truly
are because the idea is that those two pillars and Compass everything we need to look at right? Those those 10 cupboards Encompass, everything. So it's all that right? The person who's going and looking at the Givens, they're trying to understand what might be in my unconscious mind that. I'm not aware of right? And huh. Wow, the
You know, the last time I got this like big award at work, I this reflexive thought of like, but you're not thin enough. Wow. Whoa, right. Like there could be a process like that's going on inside of me. I don't want that going on inside of me, right? So the process of try, what is unconscious in us? That may be causing us harm, which is often where, that, that's where the trauma goes, right? It's ways where the childhood trauma seats itself, which brings us back around to the intrusive thoughts, right? Intrusive negative thoughts and negative self dialogue. Usually does not.
Not mean what it meant to the man who need to change jobs, right? Because there they were there for a good reason, right. Then he needed to make change more often. They're the, the vestiges, The Hangover, the lingering Badness of some prior trauma. So oftentimes, when you think, we talked a little bit yesterday, about the person who was driving in the car and just telling themselves over and over that, they were that their loser, right? And then they can't achieve the things that they achieved when they stop doing that. I'm simplifying a little but that's
it's the basics of it, right? Because the the intrusive thoughts, the self narrative, all the negativity and ice is often coming from places that are in the unconscious mind, right? Not always, but this idea that I don't think I'm good enough. I'm saying to myself over and over again like well, let's go back and look at why. Because the answer to that again, lies in a different place, was used to different road map, right there, man, who needed to change jobs. How to roadmap that? Like, spend a little bit of time in the eye self-awareness and then
And then it went through something defense mechanisms In Action, Land, and it spent a lot of time with behavior, and then it got up to the strivings. That's his that's his roadmap, whereas for someone who's laboring under the intrusive thoughts, the negative self-talk, the automaticity, the Givens of childhood trauma that needs to go to a different place. We now, we're spending time with the in the unconscious mind thinking about what's they're figuring out. What's they're bringing things to Consciousness, right? That person say realizing maybe, you know, your
And you had this realization of like, oh my goodness, we say, wow! Did that bring something to the conscious mind in her if so great. Let's look at that and let's look a lot at it and let's look are there other things there too? Right. Are there other Givens? Right, let's bring them the conscious to Consciousness with. We can talk about them, we can identify them. And then look at how does that? How does that relate to defense mechanism that character structure? And like now, what are we doing? A process of interested in query? Like this is really interesting. I mean, it should be interesting.
The person doing it, it's them, right? And it should be interesting to the person doing it with them, right? Because if you're a therapist, it is not interesting to you. You need another job, right? So it you're talking to a friend like if it's a friend is going to be interested. So there's an interested honest open inquiry with the idea of holy we're going to let's learn things so that we can make change for the better and even though as we talked about yesterday the intrusive thoughts and the self dialogue that's going on over and over and over again, it doesn't go away easily.
Lie. But that doesn't mean it doesn't atrophy over time and go away or that. The person can have that reflexive thought like oh there's the thought again that I'm a loser or that I should cut myself or I should drink or whatever it is. Like, I know that thought appears in me automatically at times because it was in my head for so long but it does not telling me anything but it's just an automatic thoughts. It's for me, I should drink something anything, right. Other than the fact that like, oh, that's what happens in human beings. Like, that's how the self understanding brings change in us and gets us over the
Our years of, I've been trying this for what modern mental health would often a think. I took the selection. I did attend sessions of CBT like, like, you know, I'm a failure, nothing will ever get better. You know, the different framing that says, hey, like this can get better over time in my understanding and my efforts of my thought. Redirection my behavioral changes all makes it better and then those things I don't want in my head. They're going away, it's taking time. But through going away
I'm relieved to hear you say that one can have intrusive thoughts and that one approach to dealing with those
Is to acknowledge them and look at them and not try and push them back deeper, you know, not trying to eradicate them. I'm familiar with having intrusive thoughts not all the time but it's very spread throughout my life and the idea that one can just like, extinguish them is a great idea but it is simply not the way. It's worked at least not for me. But I have found that if I just say, okay this is spontaneously coming up through the neural circuits of
My subconscious and in their intrusive, and I don't like them but eventually arrived at exactly the place that you described, which is that, it's like, there's nothing actionable here. Like it's just they go from being intrusive and troubling too intrusive. And just kind of mildly irritating too intrusive and like, okay, you know, I just, you know, and yes, I go through some redirect, like trying to redirect my attention from time to time.
Time when they're happening. But I eventually just get to a place where it's like, okay, it's just a boring story or boring imagery there. There's nothing. There there's nothing there and then they eventually break up like like clouds and then that process can take a while. But right now, you took the energy out of them,
right? You made them go away which happened over time and then the energy that was so powerful, becomes less, and less and less. And what happens? They dissipate they atrophy, right. That's how they go away, because there's no more power. There's no more power in them. And that really is,
the way that we make change and I think, you know, your emphasis upon
The fact that it takes time, the fact that it takes effort, the fact that it only goes away slowly over 20 years of at times, being a therapist. But what I've seen be the most daunting, the thing that makes people just give up and go away and go back to the things that are bad. Give up on themselves, are that it takes time. And, you know, if you think it's supposed to take two weeks and the world around, you is kind of leading you to think that and then you go for help and the help kind of lead you to think that whether it's two weeks or it's 10 weeks,
If it's going to take two years, you're going to go away disheartened, right? Or maybe more Angry yourself, or maybe demoralize. So we have to look at the truth of all of this. A parallel to your story in my own life, for years and years and years. I carried a negative voice inside, those always waiting for me to do something wrong. So, if I say something that's a little bit off for not exactly what I want to say, now, it would say like that wasn't good. Look, it says something negative inside. To me the words,
Waiting for me to drop something and say that I'm stupid and clumsy, right? With me all the time. But over time through self-reflection through therapy like through a lot of hard work but a desire for things to be better and a desire to understand it, right? Like it's not there anymore. I mean every now and then it'll raise its head, right? I'll do something really, I dropped a cup of coffee. I haven't done it in ten years and it made a mess and now people are coming to clean it up and man, The Voice came back, right? But I could recognize it right. Like, I really feel bad about this and now it gives that voice a chance to
Out. But it doesn't come out much anymore. Whereas way, I lived with it for years, it doesn't come out what much anymore and when it came out, not that long ago, I could recognize, like, I'm not happy. I did this and let me help clean it up, but it doesn't mean I'm an idiot, right? So so the voice in my head can just go away as it's as I've been helping it to do for a bunch of
years now. Yeah, I think also important for people to understand is that it takes time but that we can all potentially engage in right actions, you know?
Moving towards strivings and hopefulness as we cope with those and try and diminish those internal narratives those intrusive thoughts. It's not as if the during the entire process, you know, you can't function. I mean, I think that the it's cognitively and sometimes even physically demanding to do, but we can still engage in healthy ways in the world and we can still try and avoid acting out and, and avoid forms of denial. And, as I say this, I'm real
In that, you know, the, the wish for or the impulse to really just suppress intrusive thought born of trauma or whatever else is really futile. Like, that's not going to work. It's not going to work. We have to embrace these narratives and and not expect them to disappear in a finger snap, but but embrace them and like, see them and look at them and and, and be unafraid to look at them and discount where they are, absolutely not true.
I would say unafraid to
Durst and
right because we must understand means we must look at what's going on inside of us. When I didn't like that voice, but was afraid of it. Like, what is going on inside me? What is the say about me? And I'm and I'm directing away from it. Well, that's why it was with me for like several decades, right? But when I start to go look at it, I can find an answer to it and to get it. You have to look at what's going on in that person because one might presume and maybe people listening are presuming this
Maybe not. But, but but a reasonable presumption, that might just reflexively happen in a person, would be to think that. Oh, when I was younger, the messaging I was getting was that you're not good enough, right? You're not good enough, right? That's why I carry with me that you're not good enough, right? But it's not that. Sometimes it's the opposite that I was rewarded. A lot. When I was younger for doing things in a way, everyone thought was great, right? Like getting great grades and being well-behaved, new doing all sorts of things that brought a lot of
Positive reinforcement to me but I never handled. Well, things that fell even a little bit short of that and then it would have Oak a lot of Shame. So so the oppression inside is not coming from. Denigration, is coming from something different, right? Which is, which is also why this is not a search to blame someone, right? Because sometimes, the people who are giving the message like they're doing the best they can. I mean someone who sang to a child your loser? Like, that's not okay, right, no matter what? That's
Are okay.
But that's often not how it happens. Like, you know, the parent that uses communicating they don't realize that that every time they're admiring a certain level of wealth or certain kind of beauty. They're giving that message that the child that doesn't meet that or is it ends up? Not meeting? That isn't good enough like, but they don't know that or, you know, I had like my parents tried to nurture me and they did a good job of it in many ways and teachers did a good job with so they are realizing hey this person is going to end up you know a bunch of years from now. Not think any things you know good enough.
If and I mean, they don't know that so it's not a search for blame. And I think that's very, very important, very important because often people don't want to look inside because they think either I'm going to find something dramatically wrong with me. And the answer I would give is there's almost surely not something dramatically wrong with you if you're having that thought. And if somehow there is your better off looking at it now than later. Right? And so that's part of it. The other part is that people become worried that they're going to ruin something.
You know, I'm going to I like my parents and if I go look at this, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to hate them or like people say, say things or think things like that and the idea that we may get down to something that really involves someone being responsible for something bad. Now, if that's if that's the truth, the person already knows that inside the vast majority of times they know that they're just not facing that. But most of the time also it's not that it's just like okay that's how life evolved and what's the predisposition like, you know, I was smart enough to
Good grades. And I have a low threshold for shame and people reinforced me and like, oh, like I can kind of understand that. So then I can get control over it. It's not a search for anger, frustration, blame of self or
others. Yeah. And often times I hear that people are afraid of dealing with these deeper issues, or addressing these deeper issues for fear that they will lose their their drive. Right? That the thing that makes them successful in the first place and that allows them perhaps even to afford therapy or
Afford the time to think about these sorts of questions. So, it seems to me that the drives that you referred to earlier, the generative Drive, the aggressive drive, and the pleasure Drive are such, critical nodes, were areas to look for all of us in terms of figuring out whether or not we're doing well or less. Well, according to some features that are pretty much Universal in people. Essentially what I'm saying is at least by my understanding, we are
We'll have drives to some extent or another. And to extend that are aggressive Drive is very high. And pleasure Drive is very high and whether or not it's pointed in the right direction, it can be generative. If it's not, perhaps it can undermine our generative drive. I'm very curious to know how you've observed. The different ranges of these drives in people and how that predicts whether or not people will do more or less well in different areas of life, essentially how the different drives play
out.
I think the first thing to say is where the drives are at, so to speak in any of us is a combination of Nature and nurture. So either the nature part tells us the range is sort of that the drive is going to be but because nurture means so much to humans as we understand it from epigenetics, from, from the advancement of science. We see more and more and more, how much nurture matters. So, the range that's denoted by nature is probably pretty broad when we see the manifestation.
That and then the nurture lets us then move that drive. Now sometimes nurture that's not gone. In the right place, can move the drive in the wrong direction, right? But as adults is, people who can take care of ourselves, who can learn about ourselves, we can change where the drives are seated. It's not an easy thing to do, because it requires a lot of changes of self, a self knowledge and hard work and but we can do it, right. We can change the sort of array of how those drives our man.
Manifesting themselves within us. And we see that that's part of the hopefulness of mental health treatment, right, that we see, not just surface changes, but we can see changes on a deeper level. So I think it's important that these things are not fixed. Although, there are some natural elements, you know, someone who may have a natural sort of low aggression, or low self-assertion, okay, it's going to be in the lower range, but it doesn't mean that it's locked in at any one particular point and that the place that we want to be, what is the place that's consistent with
The things that we want the the agency and gratitude as verbs and the the sense of well-being and all of that. So the idea is the state of health has the generative drive as prominent, that's the dominant drive and then aggression and pleasure which are still active in us, but there's some serving the generative drive and that's the state that we wish to be. And so, when were assessing, okay, why? Why is there something that doesn't feel okay or something? That's not going. Okay, right. Then one way,
Way to start ready to look at, okay, what's going on in the person? What may be off in the drives that gives us a very strong idea of okay. What's going on a way of understanding what's going on as we then go and look in the 10 cupboards to figure out the specifics. Okay. What is actually going on here that we can then change? But the framing of what's going on, can come through the lens of looking at the drives and how their manifest in
us. What does it look like when the aggressive Drive?
Is very high. And the pleasure Drive is also very
high. So if these drives are running too high, where we end up at is in a place of envy and envy, I'm always sort of on the soapbox about Envy because I think Envy is just so wildly destructive, and if the aggressive Drive is very high. So, the person say, in one way of one way, this can manifest itself is once more and more and more, right? You're not getting satisfactory.
Action from anything but they want more that may be because of a strong vulnerability inside of them, so something that might map to narcissism. For example, there's a there could be a strong aggressive drive to get more and that leads to something, that's very unhealthy. So the idea that I want more, I need more, I don't have enough. I can't get enough then Foster's Envy, right? Which is the not the desire to like be better or to have more, but it's just a desire to feel.
Better about the self, whether that involves raising the self up or bringing someone else down. That's why Envy is destructive. So very high levels of aggression that are not tempered. For example, by a generative drive. That would also be high, then create a circumstance of envy and the Envy is destructive and the same happens if the pleasure Drive is very, very strong. So if one continues to want more pleasure so I can't find any satisfaction, I don't feel good about myself. I feel
Alba Rift inside, right? And, and I see that, oh, pleasure can make me feel better, but just for a little bit, right? Then it fades away and I want more of it and I want more of it that also can lead to the place of Envy, like that's the outcome. So if the aggressive Drive is running very high or the pleasure Drive is running very high or if both are running very high but it only takes one in order to end up in a place of Envy. So, if the generative drive is not high enough to overcome how high the aggressive driver,
Which would mean, then the aggressive driver would be sublimated towards good productive. Things do take the energy and put it towards something that is goodness, but if the aggressive Drive is way out there, head of the generative drive that ends up in a place of Envy as does the pleasure drive, if I want more and more and more, but I never get satisfaction from from anything. It never brings me. Any sense of goodness that where it ends is in a place of vulnerability and resentment, right? Because
is Envy involves wanting more, right? And an Envy if we look at what's really going on Envy under the surface, involves wanting everything, right? If a person is at the outer limits of Envy, right? Which is why I envy is so destructive, because if I can't get enough pleasure, and there's so much aggression in me then I'm not going to make myself feel better. But what I can do is make other people feel
worse. I want to ask you more about Envy but first I want to ask
Is one way to characterize the generative drive and to distinguish it from the other drives is to say that generative drives are pro-social. Meaning they tend to bring about benevolent interactions between people
and the sense that so pro-social as constructive right as its building goodness, then. Yes, because it's the drive in us that makes us want to love and nurture things, right? That makes us want to learn. And and sometimes
Learn to make better in the world or learn for learnings sake. That there, that the drive is a drive of goodness. So if the drive is, then going to going to enact itself in the world around us is going to be pro-social because it we exist as social units, right? I mean if we decide, I want to be an island off somewhere, like that's not healthy, right? We exist in Social units from small. Like a nuclear family right to a neighborhood, right all the way up to Nations and to the, through the planet. So if we, if we perceive the truth of that, that hey, there's an
Dependence between me and others and I see that, then the drive will leave two choices and behaviors that are socially
constructive.
Earlier, you talked about aggression and you were clear to make sure that we all understood that aggression does not necessarily mean violent aggression that there are different forms of aggression. I'm curious, if you could give us some examples of how you've observed people with high levels of aggression and high levels of pleasure drive as well, both male and female. And, you know, here, without defaulting to stereotypes, I think a lot of people just
Despite the fact that you've clarified, what aggression is, an isn't in this, in the context of this conversation, we hear the word aggression and we think verbal attack physical attack. However, the way you're describing aggression and the aggressive drive, I have a feeling that you're referring to other expressions of aggression as
well. Sophie aggressive Drive is running too high and that could have factors of nature factors of nurture. Right factors of the situation. The person is in factors of their whole life, but it ends up at the moment in a
Is that is too high. Then what that person is doing in one way or another, is to try and exert an unhealthy level of control, and that can be done in so many different ways. It can be done in that, over way of of just intimidating people right of using harsh language for its people. It can be done by manipulating people, it can be done through passive aggression. There, there are all sorts of ways that the person can try and exert on healthy control. But that's where we end up. If there's too much expression,
One of the aggressive Drive in us,
that makes sense. And it reminds me of an example from my own life, where first off, I should say, I've had almost exclusively positive collaborations. Among my colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere, like every one of those collaborations has ended in a paper that we were all happy with. But more importantly, the relationships grew and we're not diminished, right? But I had one collaboration with someone not to be named where it was going very well.
But I had the need to reschedule an appointment. So I sent ahead a note about the fact that my carnea dealing with. I had some other things. I explain why I need to reschedule the appointment and didn't receive a reply, which was a little unusual. But then eventually received a reply that said, well it's clear that you don't want to pursue this collaboration, which is like the farthest thing from the truth, right? And so X and so I expressed that, and then the collaboration was reinstated.
It. And, but it brought to mind some concern for me because there's sort of an extreme reaction. To, you know, something that happens among academics or anyone. We get busy with things, come up. It was important to tend to the car that is. And then at some point later, they were late to a number of meetings. Okay? No, big deal. We're academics. We tend to run late. That's typical of many academics, but then I was late once to a meeting and they essentially left and wrote an email.
All that said something of the sort like I've got my own great ideas so I'm no longer interested in pursuing the collaborate and I was pretty shocked right? Because there was nothing really outside the ordinary in terms of busyness and professorial schedules. And there were other people involved, postdocs and things like that and there was a great project to be, you know, to be worked out. So I remember being disappointed but also really kind of surprised, but then when I mapped it back to the earlier example, of the
Right car. And I thought, well, like there's a real sort of, lack of ability of this person to handle disappointment. And yet, they're exerting or demonstrating rather, some of the same behavior of occasionally, running tardy and these kinds of things. And I remember feeling like those pretty aggressive like they're pretty aggressive reaction to something that could have been handled with a conversation. Now, I must say, I'm very grateful that the collaboration didn't proceed, and they went elsewhere and worked out great, and they're doing great and we're
Great, and so no hard feelings, but it stands out to me as a pretty, Salient example of aggression, but not played out at the level of yelling or anything. There's a passivity in there, but then there's also kind of a, kind of entitlement. And here, of course, I'm only looking at the other person's behavior and I should acknowledge. I realize, cancelling, not good being late, not good. But listen, I'm a human being, and I be
cancelled. Once you were late, was this, this isn't added, this isn't habitual. This is human stuff.
Right. Right. And a lot of a lot of good work, had gone into the project and there was a cost where you know, most most importantly the postdoc suffered because they weren't involved in these interactions at all and yet that the project halted at that point. So to me that seems like an example of somebody who has a well, strong aggressive drive and that's clear from the they're incredibly successful in the academic domain and
When disappointed, you know, lashes back or is passive one or one? Or the other is, that is, is that what we're getting at here, right? Not surprisingly, perhaps the person rarely publishes with other people,
right? Probably that
doesn't make a very good collaborative
partner, right? And it totally makes sense mean, it's think about what you're describing here which is some vulnerability in the person. There's some way in which the person doesn't feel good enough, no matter what this person is achieved. So then there's a sense of
Of the need and the right to Over Control. So when you agree to work together, you know, you didn't agree that I'll never have to cancel anything right. But but but the thought was different. The framing is different, on the, on the other end. That now we've we're going to work together, right? So I'm exerting significant control over you right now again, you're not aware of it, right? And maybe that he's not aware of it. And this case, it was a, she okay, okay? So, that was thinking of someone different but she has to have some
Opposite of self that results in, in the reflexive need to over control and think about the first response is a non-response right. Which is that's aggression, but it's just it's just passive aggression, right? The thought would be well, you're worried something. Doesn't feel good in you because I didn't respond, which was true, right? You're expecting a response. Maybe, you don't know, did you get the email? You know what's happening, is she mad? So, it's sort of effective, it creates some consternation and some dissonance in you. But then, on top of that, the person,
Is willing to potentially at that point, sacrifice the relationship, right? So you think about aggression now is not good, right? This excess aggression is not good for you. It also is clearly eclipsing the generative drive, right? Because it's not good for this person and their research. It's not good for this person and the postdocs in their lab, right? But, but the person is willing to accept that in the service of gratifying the access in aggression. Now, so then you said something,
That then sort of made it, okay? Right for the short-term, okay? Then the person feels gratified like whether you apologize or not, they took it as, you know, you've to some degree bow down before me now, like, it'll be okay to for at least for the short term, right? But then the next thing that happens actually does end the collaboration, right? So that's not good, right? And you say, even from a self-serving perspective that person was collaborating with you for a reason, right? She saw a benefit to the science that she's very very
And in through the collaboration with you, but then let that all go right in the service of what in the service of the ego, right? Of my I don't feel good enough about myself, right the response to that. Then it is a response of envy that I don't like that. You have the freedom to behave differently. Then I want you to write. I don't like anything. I don't like that. I don't control you as much as I would like to and ultimately it's that envy that becomes destructive so it's a setback for that.
Its destructive of the science that person was doing its destructive of the science that you were doing. So Envy is destructive. And here, the the high level of aggression, the aggressive drives at a very high place, it's exceeding. The generative Drive, the pleasure Drive isn't high enough either because it's not enough pleasure coming from the great science that's being done, right? So then the person is approaching the world through the lens of Envy, right? They don't feel good enough. They want to exert that.
That aggression through over control and what they end up doing is destructive, right? And it's very clearly, distressed a great example because it's destructive of the science which is ostensibly the reason that you're there, right? It's the reason you were there but someone who needs to exert Over Control is there not just for that reason. And then the other reasons, can Trump the generative reason that they're there? And that's how I envy when when it is the product of
Aggression or pleasure-seeking being too high, always unfailingly creates destruction, and how different is that from agency? And gratitude? As active verbs, there's, there's a sense of agency but the agency isn't being exactly an active, because if the agencies being enacted in the service of science or career or whatever it may be, that's not that's not going so. Well, right and the Gratitude part isn't actively.
Oh my goodness. I'm here like I have this great career, I'm discovering things. I get to spend my life in science. I get to collaborate with you, like there's so many things to feel good about our postdocs in my lab, right? I get to nurture them because I know more and I can guide, but that's not leading, right? Envy is not those things, which is why people who are doing that at least in this realm of Life. Although this often know this bleeds into other Realms of Life, what you the vast majority of times, you see is someone who does not have
Penis right there in the way that where the happiness with the quotes, right? That happiness is the, you know, this sense of peace, right? The sense of well-being, right? This, this isn't being able to Delight in things, contentment, right? The person doesn't have that, right? And here it's interesting, right? This person gets to the highest levels of Academia and they're very successful, and they have a lab of their own, and they're collaborating. You think that's all great, right? But not inside of them, it's not bringing them. Those things is
Evidenced by how this person is behaving and I would bet almost 100%. If you said what's that person like in other aspects of Life, at least in the professional World, probably in others. To no one's going to describe a happy person.
So much of what you just said captures this individual extremely well. And it also reminds me that so much of the way that you're describing this aggressive Drive can also be observed perhaps in the way that people show up to social interactions, not necessarily
Interactions may be of interest interactions between two people. What I'm thinking of here is that the person male or female who shows up and, and just kind of takes over, like the talks the whole time. And tells stories I went to a meal at the when I graduated University and someone showed up for the first time this meal meaning we had never met them before and just like sat down and just started telling stories for
like an hour and it
was interesting portions of it were captivating. And then at some point I realized like this is, this is either
Total pathology like this person is crazy, but they weren't crazy or they have no recognition that they're absorbing all the oxygen in the room as it sometimes describe. But it seemed like they had this need to just control the whole environment by way of speech, just like, you know, fire hose stories. And I've seen this definitely in the academic realm. I've seen this in the non academic realm and social settings, and, and
Interesting is perhaps why this person does this, or these people do this. But what's also interesting is how people react to it, that on the one hand. It, I think most people find that kind of obnoxious, but there also seem to be people who see this as like, oh, that person has a lot of agency, like they're a leader. Like they, they actually grab a lot of the attention that they're seeking and we tend to view those people as kind of empowered. I don't actually think that they're necessarily empowered but but
Perhaps the stems from the feeling that the rest of us. I like to think have, which is some sense of social etiquette where there's some give and take, you know, you walk into a room, you kind of assess, you know, what's the context here? There's some listening, as well as some speaking and so on and and so, when someone shows up and kind of violates all those rules, on the one hand, it can be obnoxious and overtake everything. But as it said before, you know there's also this sense of like oh like that must be nice to just be able to like be a
One one feels and so I'm describing this not because I think people should mimic this type of behavior. Either way, you know, be really me can not say anything that's on their mind or just overtake, but because I feel like it might be an exploration of this aggressive drive. And if someone is doing that, are they trying to mask something else? And why do people react to these seemingly powerful people in this
way. These things happen in the world around us, why? They're
End of the spectrum of gender, the spectrum of intelligence achievement by their human problems. So a person you're describing whether that person has character structure problems that are present with them across time or whether they're in a certain place, you know whether it's in Life or today, like we don't know for sure what the underpinnings but but what you're describing is it's a presentation of narcissism right and their narcissism is rooted, not
But in confidence, not in arrogance, right? It's rooted in vulnerability, it's rooted in. I don't feel good enough and narcissism then then engages with the world through the lens of Envy. So no one else gets to have any time. No one else gets to say anything funny, no one else. Maybe gets to say anything at all, right? There's a, there's a dominance of the room, right? There's a dominance of the room that comes through and
Inability to tolerate the back-and-forth of human interactions, right? Human engagement. So then that person becomes very dominant and why is that? Because when they tell a story and they get a laugh or even if it's not that funny and it's a 15-story but somebody Smiles a little bit or nobody Smiles, they can perceive inside that like, I just did that I said that and maybe somebody responded positively, I feel good about that for a split second. Now, that's gone and they then, you know, then the next thing comes and the next thing comes because
People who are coming at the world, through the lens of narcissism, whether it's just in that particular event, right? Or it's across life, I are never satisfied and nothing ever brings enough goodness, nothing ever brings enough feeling of pleasure so the person then wants more and that's how the person dominates the room. Now that can be very seductive right narcissistic people not always but are often very seductive because of that appearance of
Mastery right of control. So that person did have we could look at it in the short term and say that person had Mastery over the room, right? No one said anything for an hour but them right. So they had Mastery over the room data control over the room but what they're doing is exerting over control right in the sure. It's like you know Pennywise and pound-foolish right? That borrow a dollar today to pay back a hundred tomorrow, right? Because they got to control that room but a lot of people not everyone, right? Some people are seduced by it.
But a lot of people will take away from this. Something that's not a good feeling. Something that wasn't Mutual, that doesn't make a person want to collaborate with that person. Even be in the same space as that person, right? So it's counterproductive right? Because the people who might come under the spell so to speak. Right there, the people who are brought under the spell right there, less observing Dynamic intuitive introspective there. They're not the people that you want in a sense on your side, right? The people that would be most valuable
able to collaborate with even thought Partners have conversations with. Those people are going to be put off because even if they don't know exactly what's wrong, they know like, that didn't feel good and they mapped do. I want that feeling more in my life? No, right. So that's the counterproductive aspects. Well, that's why narcissism is destructive. Because you might say, well, there's nothing destructive in that, you know, in that interaction, but again, you have to be standing. So up close to it that you don't see the bigger picture because when you stand back from that, that's not a person.
Who's buying large? You know? You see that's not a person is interconnected in the world around them has a group of good supportive. Friends has a bunch of colleagues where they can to exchange information and and because all that social Dynamic has to happen in the rest of life. So you're seeing a situation that is that is counterproductive, that is destructive. And you always see that when people are enacting narcissism, whether it's okay, bunch of bad things have happened. And for whatever reason, like, I'm in an unhealthy place and I'm an acting it right now, or if I'm an acting it every day of my life.
Life, because it's in my character structure and I haven't recognized, and, and change it. It's always destructive
the narcissist that I've known. And observed almost always seem to have a partner who clearly supports their narcissism, or at least doesn't speak up very much against it, least not publicly and not much else, except a professional role. In fact, there's one scientist who I did not work with who comes to mind and the joke about him was always that this person
Talk about themselves endlessly for the first half hour that you run into them and say, okay, well enough about me why don't you tell me about me this person moved to a different country with their partner comes back. Every once in awhile has essentially done nothing over the last decade or so kind of left the field and its kind of that secretly the laughingstock of the field. There was a one another anecdote about this person. I'm just, I'm not picking on them. I'm just trying to explore the these two.
Mentions of aggression, and, and low pleasure drive, and envy at lab meetings. It was well known that they would host a basketball game, but it was well known that you did not want a score like, you know, on this person, right? Because you would write be asked to leave the lab. And indeed several people were asked to leave the laboratory for having met embarrassed, that the lab had at one of these lab events
By participating in exactly the event. That was described in the way it was described and doing something
competent, right? So, that the game was essentially a way of for the person to build themselves up and they were a mediocre at best basketball player. So, like, here's this game where everyone is expected to pretend, right? And I have to imagine pretend that the person is actually better at what they do than they are. And, and in some ways, the it feels like a like a replica of how narcissism shows up in so many other areas.
Of life, like you said, you know, these people are rarely surrounded by people who are actually very bright self, you know, self-effacing, Etc, you know who they tend to gather people, that just support them, or no one at all? Because because no reasonably healthy person would choose to be around that,
right? Because that game is a metaphor for all of life. For that person. It's sending that message, like, see this message and extrapolated out to everything else. We
And what is, so what's the matter for? What's it communicating is communicating that you don't do anything better than I do. But you don't rise above me, interestingly, right? You don't arise above me in any way. You don't get to know things, I don't know. You don't do anything better than then, then I then I do, right? Or I will be destructive towards you, right? It's fascinating because it's not about the game, right? The, the game is away.
Of communicating that message, right? Interesting, the person not even that good at the game. Like why not choose something? You're really good at, right? Because in the message is not communicated, is clearly, right? In a lot of his coming, is unconscious. Let's choose something. I'm kind of fair to middling at right and they make it very clear that no one gets to be better, or I do something destructive to them. I mean, that's exactly what that is and and imagining someone is throwing out of the lab, right? I mean like, this is in many ways. It's like the biggest thing in their life or one of the biggest things, Auntie Joan.
If I mean they really the cost of that, in the larger world is one less potentially fantastic
scientist and that's the broader that's always the broader picture because the narcissist is standing very very close to the tapestry. Right? And and so the interaction there is you have scored a basket when I have not, right? So you don't understand the message that you're not supposed to exceed me and now I will get rid of you because you're dangerous to have around, right? Because you don't get the message and you may exceed
me in other ways. And also I'm going to feel better because I have the power to be punitive, right? Even though it's wantonly punitive, right? And I'm completely unjustified, but I have the power to do that and it'll make me feel good, then to push you away. And I know that's not going to be good for you and I'll feel good about that, right? But that doesn't last, of course, that's why the person continues to do it. And it also doesn't understand at all that like, that's not good for science, right? Or most
That's not good for me, right? Is a graduate student in that lab because you didn't say fire the graduates to make the graduate student leave. If the person wasn't good, no, it's make the graduate student leave no matter what. So, the person is doing things that are injuries to the society around us. Obviously, to the specific person they're targeting and also to themselves. And that's where if you follow, if you follow envy and you know, you see high levels of it in situations that are unbounded. So like this situation is
unbounded in the sense of the person can do that. There's no higher authority,
right Labs not, this is changing. And by the way, I should back up a second and say that I do believe in. It's been my experience that most scientists and lab heads are not narcissists, are quite kind are benevolent. I mean, maybe a little quirky, we're scientists after all but but not narcissists. At the same time. It is true that for a long time less. So now, Laboratories were sort of like little fiefdoms. There was very little oversight from the
These and so the lab you joined became your entire world and Landscape. Right? And there was some exploitation by narcissistic lab heads. For sure. As you said it was unbounded, right? Like there was no oversight. Whereas this would be much harder to recreate today if someone we wanted
to and I think that's why almost everyone listening to this will resonate with them. They'll find some familiarity because you see this, you can see this in situations where
There's a bounded group of people, right? Is this just a certain group of people in a certain situation and that's who they are. But the authority of the person leading the group is unbounded. So there's a situation where if that person has narcissistic Tendencies aggressive Drive is too high, pleasure Drive is high but not being met. If all of those things are happening, that's when you see this come to light which is why the destruction varies based upon the destruction that's permissible.
In the framework. Right? So here that this person wasn't going to like fire everyone in their lab, right? So in a sense they could only damage their Labs so much although maybe if you damage your lab so much, you don't get funding, you inadvertently sink yourself, right? So, so even there that person could bring about their own destruction, but when you see the other end where it's truly unbounded, like in the sense of War, right? As someone who has, who can control a machine of War who then has everything, right?
Like what do they need? Right? Well, they need something. They don't have a never will get. So, so now, they started acting more and more is destructive, right? And you think, oh, that person wants something mean, how many times does this someone start a war? Right? That's this clearly, an unjustified worry, it's a war because they want something, then they get something in there satisfied, right? That that's not how it goes, right? Then they get something and they're not satisfied and they want more. So in discussions at times about narcissism and envy and, and
That can play out on the world stage so sometimes you'll huge events in human history. What will come up and people for example will bring up Adolf Hitler and and they did it. Hitler wanted things. Wanted things know the, the Unbound narcissism the Unbound. Envy wanted destruction, right? This is a person who if things continue to go as this person intended right there. Would have been no one left on Earth, but him
And because the process is nothing but destructive, which is why after the fact that it is, incalculable human Carnage, right? And he himself was among the incalculable human Carnage because that's the endpoint of narcissism. That's the of narcissism on a broad stage, right? That's the endpoint of Envy at its highest magnitude and we see that as examples, whether we see on the smaller stage of the lab right ahead.
Describing or on the larger stage of unbounded War. We end up with destruction, like, 100% time. That's the final common pathway for all of
that. Are there some consistent themes of childhood that lead somebody to become a narcissist and in addition to that I'm curious whether or not narcissist ever have Insight, whether or not, if offered the opportunity to explore the 10 cupboards under the structure of self and function of self whether or not
They eventually see inside those cupboards and go. Oh, my goodness. I've got this self, that's clearly overinflated. And I've got these defense mechanisms and I'm so envious in the end and modify their behavior or whether or not the narcissists are immune from constructive
self-reflection with it dancer. The first part is is the vast majority of narcissism it. Maybe all of it. We don't know for sure is rooted in the childhood. Trauma of not feeling good enough.
Right? Which is not an excuse for people, doing doing awful things. It's not what we're saying. We're trying to an explanatory mechanism, right? Which, which goes back to formative. Life experiences and not feeling good enough. Whether it was because that person was directly denigrated or that person wasn't denigrated, but could never work hard enough, never could be enough to get approval. Right again, it's not 100% in human beings are complicated. But if you go and look you
See that that there was never a state like, oh, I feel good enough about myself, right? And if there's never a state of, I feel good enough about myself because someone has told me that and give me the pat on the head or giving me the positive comment. You can see how in a certain sort of natural lay of the land genetically and in concert with with other experiences that person can get to adulthood with with a lot of aggression in them and never having experienced. I'm good enough, it's still running along inside of them, and then they're enacting that aggression in the world around them. That's
Most commonly what we see? And because there's such deep vulnerability and such deep insecurities, then people is a people who suffer from full-blown narcissism narcissistic personality disorder. So an action of Envy on the on the highest levels that is there so defended their so strongly defended in an unhealthy manner from seeing their own vulnerability, that it is extremely difficult.
To get that person to come around and say, okay, let's look in those 10 cupboards within the field. People often talk about treating narcissistic people. They talk about it as in an idealistic way and some just be very experienced. People say, oh, that's impossible, right? That never gets better. Now, I'm not a believer in therapeutic nihilism II think that. Yes, it is. It is the norm that that person just can't get it together to
Look at that thing there. So defended against it. They're so afraid of it, right? They won't look anywhere near it. So they're looking in the other direction and they're furthering all that on health. It's not the case that it's always that way and on a couple of occasions, I have worked with seen in a witness narcissistic people who can make changes. Now it's usually in the context of something, very extreme that causes them to do that. So someone who will no longer have access to family members, they want to see or to
R2 financial resources that they need to keep themselves afloat. It's things that often are that dramatic. It's not always that but we can see though in those kind of extenuating situations where the problem is. So big, the Envy is so high. But the motivation for change is very, very high because Sense on the card and stick model. The stick here is very very strong that if a person then goes and does that you can see change inside of them. So we're never in a place of
Of therapeutic nihilism. But the but the the barriers to that are very very high because the the self is so wounded that the person is protecting that self so strongly. That's why their narcissism and envy or so full-blown and it's hard to get that person to go back and look but not impossible
based on what you're telling me. It seems that it's a very low probability that a non-clinician could change a narcissus like
In other words, if one is engaging in the world with a narcissist because they have to presumably or they just find themselves in that place. Would you say to that person? There's very little if anything that you can do to change the narcissist Behavior or psychological framework. If they for because of course if the narcissist can't often do it for themselves with the help of a skilled clinician, why would why would anyone else be able to achieve that?
So we're coming at
We're doing here from a perspective of truth about human beings, right? And that truth brings with it hopefulness. It brings with it hopefulness that people can change and how people can change. And, and and I am 100% all for that. It's the way to look at ourselves, right? But it is also true that there are aspects of pathology that require clinical treatment in order to improve. So now, we're looking from the other side and saying,
hey, there's a problem here and there's a deep problem here and that we have to come at it from a different perspective of how can you help that problem? And there's a science behind this two of what level of clinical care. For example, is most likely to be helpful to someone like this. And it's not an individual clinician, even right? It's a team of people who work through different modalities, who can sort of wrap around that person. So it's not just a level of clinical care is needed, but it's a relatively high level of clinical care.
And that in general is the is the only way that we get it narcissism. That's not 100% but that's the vast majority of time. So what can then the person do, right? A person cannot be a team of clinicians. Right. What that person can do? One choice is to disengage, right, but disengagement can come with the promise of re-engagement, right? Many, many times I've worked with people and practiced and rehearsed with them. Like, okay, what might you say to someone along the lines of, you know, I've known you for a long.
A long time or I care about you or I love you but whatever, they may say two leading but I can't be with you, I can't be around you. I there's there's, there's something going on. That makes it not. Okay, for me doesn't feel okay. You're in prison. Maybe says things like, you know, aggressive or demeaning or whatever it is, or maybe they just say, just doesn't feel okay. I can't have it. And, and then the, the need to step away from the person. But look, if you, if you got some help right, if you took better care of yourself in ways, that would be better for you.
And for the people around you, then, of course, I'd want to be in your life, you know, something like that. So disengagement can come, you know, with that encouragement right to the person, but, but one way or another, you have to set boundaries which is okay, have to deal with this person. So I'll deal with them a little bit or I don't have to deal with this person so I won't write or I can't get away from this person. So I have to take with a grain of salt, what they're saying to me, but ultimately some form of strong boundaries or
Engagement is like, that's the response that that's the self-care response, right? For the person who's with the narcissist,
what are some other ways that the aggressive drive and pleasure drive and generative drive for that matter? Play out, for instance, we talked about the former patient of viewers, who eventually switched jobs, clearly had a generative Drive within him, but it was being blocked by a number of choices. Rooted in narratives, that originated in childhood at cetera, we
About individuals with high aggressive Drive, High degree of pleasure drive. But a very diminished capacity to experience pleasure and therefore, a lot of envy and the destruction that comes with Envy. Yes, what are some of the other variations on these drives As You observe them in your clinical practice?
Well, our overall framing is, we want the generative drive to be the one that's deterministic, right? It's the one with the strongest influence, so we want to, we want to nurture the generative Drive in us and
others and and it makes sense for us to talk about that. But we've looked at how to things get out of balance, right? And from the perspective of well, what if the aggressive drive or the pleasure Drive? What if they're too high, right? And then it makes sense that often not always what can be driving them to be. So high are things that aren't healthy in us. Then the higher, they get the harder, it is to gratify them. So we end up with that problem of Envy, but
You can be out of balance in the other direction to, right where the person does not does not experience a ability to engage with the world around them, right. They don't think they can do anything to change anything for the better inside or outside of themselves and they're not doing much. They don't feel that they can do much. And, and and also not receiving pleasure from things. There's no gratification from the things that person is doing like we see situations like this, to with
The aggressive Drive, the pleasure drive or both and then we end up not at Envy because Envy is the side of excess but we end up at demoralization on the lower side. Now, demoralization is not a specific psychiatric diagnosis, it can predispose to psychiatric problems like the biochemical abnormality of depression, right? But what we're talking about here is not a psychiatric diagnosis, right? Like, Envy is not a psychiatric diagnosis, like it.
It's a thing. They can be experience that can lead to diagnosis the same thing with demoralization. If you don't feel that you can make a difference to anything, right? And you're not enjoying anything or feeling gratification from anything then that pool is going to win out that's going to be a demoralized person the same way. Of course we know and experiments. When you know the the you have a rat going for food. If like, if you do it enough, when the rat goes through the food and you take the food away the rats top straw,
Crying and I learned helplessness
right that exists in us to and it comes along with all sorts of other things. Because we're being not rat, right? We have a whole bunch of thoughts about that of. Oh my God, I'm not good enough and nothing will ever be. Okay. And so demoralization than is, can be very, very strong in taking a person away from the other things. We're trying to seek, right, either? Because that person has the, the essentially, the Learned helplessness, right? And all the things.
The complicated things inside of us that can come along with that or the person isn't gaining pleasure from anything. So, when we are considering the ways in which we can be out of balance, right, we think, okay, aggression and pleasure drive, if one or the other or both is too high, we end up at envy and if one or the other or both are too low, we end up with demoralization and you can take almost any scenario.
Rio, it could be a scenario of something that's just not really not going well for a person, not a clinical scenario, it's a thing in a person's life or we can take clinical scenarios and the vast majority, you know, outside of outliers like a head injury, for example, we can take those scenarios and we can look at it in that way and we can understand what's going on. At least we can understand enough that, when we go back and look in the 10 cupboards of the two pillars, we can, then have
Understanding of okay, what is going on? We know the basic picture and how things are not in in the balance we want them in. Now, we can understand that enough to go back and then look in those 10 cupboards. And, and I believe that just about everything except those biological outliers like a head injury fits into that heuristic, which is why we can use it to understand, we can use it to help. We can use it to make change
what a powerful lens to think about. Annex.
Explore the self and where things are working for us and where things are possibly not working for us. If I or anyone else out there, wanted to get some read on assess their level of aggressive drive, and their level of pleasure drive and their ability to experience pleasure what sorts of questions would want to ask, you know. For instance, is it a question of how driven am I how, how much get up and go? Do I have
Much pleasure. Do I experience from an interaction with a puppy in interaction with food? Is it too much? I'd like, does it draw me off course or those? The sorts of very simple. But I'm perhaps also very informative questions that we could start to use to probe our psyche. Yeah, I think yes,
but I would come top down. All right, so if the goal of health is that aggression and pleasure those drives are sub serving the generative drive and start to
Look, they're right. If a person can take so that an honest, inventory of self. Like, what kind of force am I being in the world around me? And and that could mean, for example, what kind of force am I being in my family, right? Am I denigrating to the people around me? Are the other people in the home? Afraid of me. Like, what, what, kind of force, my being a Force for good? My bolstering. Like it, people can't always see that in themselves and take stock of themselves, but what we're talking about
Situation where we think a person can like, they can bring to bear. Who am I being in the world in other ways? The think of the example of the person who needed to leave the job who who could look at that and say, say no, I'm not, you know, I'm not being generated in the world in the way I want to. I'm so I'm not doing my job as well as I would want to, I'm making my own life worse, right. So, so that person could then see that's out of balance or in another way. A person might see know, a lot of what I'm doing is self-serving or
Or maybe destructive like people can realize that, right? So you can realize by taking an inventory of self, is the generative Drive, what's deterministic in me? And again, not always, but we're talking about a process of exploration, if the answer to that is, yes. If you say look, I'm trying to be the best person that I can. And I think about the people over whom I have any Authority, right? And like, I try to be reasonable and I try to be fair and I try and be circumspect and, you know, I try and think in someone else's shoes. I mean, I, you know, I sometimes I have to
Set boundaries or expectations are even punishment, right? But but I'm like, careful about how I'm doing that and I'm certainly not perfect and I get things wrong at times, but, you know, I do think I'm contributing to the world. I'm doing whatever I take on, you know, as well as I can do it. I'm productive at work. I, you know, my kids are doing okay or my friends are doing. All right, whatever it is that, if we can come up with that, then then we can say, OK, exhale, a little bit. Like, we're in a good place, right? It doesn't mean everything is optimal of course, so then go.
Look at the level of the aggressive Drive which might mean, you know how assertive am I right, am I the kind of person who comes up to the precipice? But does it make the decision? Am I the kind of person who's a little too assertive? And sometimes I'm sort of walking on people a little bit like a person can go look at the aggressive Drive within them or pleasure-seeking. Am I doing things that bring me gratification, right? Am I engaging with the people around me in a way that brings the gratification that one might might wish for, right? So if it's in a romantic relationship,
Is there romance like are we being nice to one another? Right, so you can go and look at that and say, am I getting gratification from the things I'm doing? Right. Am I in my taking this? The wherever this drive is within me and trying to satisfy it in reasonable healthy ways that are also good for others, and we're back to the generative drive. So, that's one way of coming at it. And it's the way that we would like to because. Now, what are we trying to do next? And what can we make things better, right? Can we optimize things? Okay, things are. Okay, right, but can we make them better?
But let's say we see that the the generative drive is not winning the day, right? And people can see that. They look I'm seeking pleasure, right? It's why I got, for example, here, over and over. That's what that's why I got addicted to this substance and now is not providing any pleasure to meet is now, making me miserable, right? But there, but I wanted what it was giving me. Again, this doesn't mean that the person just wants to have the world's best time, right? It may mean that they're really suffering a lot, right? And the pleasure, that that drug
Ugh. Gave them was some relief from pain and this is how many many people to tragically and it up becoming addicted to and dying from opiates, right? Because say the opiate after the surgery or the opiate after the injury then, is soothing something, right? And it's soothing something because that person feels less bad about something. Inside of them, hear this all the time that that then Foster's addiction. So, so that person looking for pleasure, this isn't something where we
Saying some light-hearted manner that person took Chances with their life. I mean sometimes we'll see that but more and more what people are looking for than is relief from suffering. But we can get to that point where we can ascertain for whatever reason, that the pleasure-seeking is too much. And if pleasure seeking an aggression or too much, we become aware of dissatisfaction, right? If you're relying too much on aggression, I always want my way. It's not always going to happen, right? Or I always want that pleasurable thing, I always want to feel better.
That also doesn't happen, right? So then that can guide us towards being aware of where those drives and if the drives are high by, how much dissonance is created by the, what's actually coming of the drive, right? Versus a level to drive is that. So so I guess it's a long way of saying, yes to your question but I would have come top down because the generative Drive is so important and it does gate gate forward. A kind of, where are we at?
So in the spectrum of like, how healthy am I or are there elements of unhealth? I want to kind of go after or, you know, my seeing things in myself that really say things that are unhealthy are really dominating, my life are deterministic like addiction, you know, just just one example, you know, diction things that are self-destructive, right? Because then that's a place to then. Look at it more through the clinical lens and maybe I won't just talk to a trusted other, you know, or and go get a book but maybe I should and maybe I should
Have clinical
care. Yeah, the example of addiction is very potent and it also brings to mind the perhaps less apparently, dangerous situation, but one that I think is really common where people have a certain amount of aggressive Drive, they have a certain amount of pleasure drive but there's a kind of passivity and draining out of the generative Drive. We're competing out of the generative drive because of social media.
And the reason I bring this up is again, not because I dislike social media, I rely on and use social media for teaching and learning extensively really. But in going back to the pillars that underlie whether or not we achieve an experience agency, gratitude peace, contentment, and Delight within the pillar of function of self. There's this thing salience, you know and what we're paying attention to internal and external and social media does seem to me
A unique circumstance never before observed in human evolution, where you have a near infinite number of environments available to you. And we know that, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words in a movie is worth a billion pictures when it comes to drawing our attention. I mean, you just look at you give a young child, even an infant and iPad. I mean, that kid is in the tunnel. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing and their computers and computer screens are going to be a part of their lives now and forever. Presumably
But it is the case that there are a lot of people who perhaps have the propensity for a strong generative drive, but because they also have a fancy for a pleasure Drive, they wake up. They pick up the phone, they look at the phone, you know, something captivates their attention, then they're thinking about that. It might be something that brings them Delight, but more often than not, it's something that brings him either mild irritation, or, or mild entertainment
Even intense entertainment for a short while, but very quickly minutes and hours, go by in, which we are not engaging in the world unless we are posting valuable content. And so, social media is a bit of a drain on these drives. I mean, it Taps into these drives and very strong ways and all one has to do is observe the behavior of people in public spaces. Now, in airports on trains, even in their cars and I mean, people are essentially watching TV, all day long.
Long. And, and it does, it does concern me. And I raised it because I feel like it can distract from our generative Drive in a way that doesn't necessarily speak to any kind of like deep character flaw or any kind of subconscious narrative. But just, that, that salience cupboard is, is clearly something within that salience cupboard is, is happening, that's unprecedented, and very, very powerful and potentially
Really quite destructive.
Yeah, I think to understand this, you know, I would cite this belief. I I believe this to be true that human beings have a long history of under appreciating the power of the discoveries that are then in their own hands. So we discover gunpowder how long had you were shooting each other, right? We discover nuclear fission right now, are we going to destroy the planet? Right? So, social media. And since it's a discovery to think that comes from what
We figured out as humans that now is there in front of us and big powerful discoveries deserve to be treated with respect, right? Gunpowder is very powerful and if people need to hunt in order to survive the gunpowder can help them hunt without getting hurt and be more successful, right? Nuclear fission can has provided some good things to humanity, but it can also destroy Humanity. So I think the same is true here. That what you're talking about is something of immense power. And you can see how if
Get out of balance, so to let use the sailing. So let's say the social media is to Salient, right? That's going to make a problem, right? If it's two, Salient in the sense that the person is always looking at things that don't make them feel good enough, right? Well that's not going to go well and that's going to affect what's in those other attend cupboards right? And what is built on top of it. So then it gets into the unconscious mind like Oh I thought I was good enough until like now I'm looking at all the social media and I realize I'm not I mean this is
People who treat teens, you know, often talk about this that you see something that you didn't often see before where a person who might have gotten through a lot of formative years thinking like like oh how I look is okay. For example, then is bombarding themselves with social media. That tells them how they look is not, okay? And then that changes
absolutely or perhaps social media is just simply absorbing a ton of time and energy but mostly time that could be devoted to, to a generative Force,
right? That's it.
That's the other side of it. So think about the example of the person who I know it wasn't social media but we're saying, what if it were social media that instead of 90 minutes a day? You know, it's eight hours because there's an analog there, right? And we see a lot of this and it's taking something that that can be good, right? And can any sense is that you could even should be good? Like there's enough out there right in terms of learning and bolstering that like why should it not be good right? But it's not good because the defense is then shift like if you if you were
Lying on it. 10 hours a day. There has to be some denial, right? Because there are other things to do in the world, there has to be some avoidance. There has to be some rationalization, like something is going on there, that's not healthy. So if you tell me, this person is utilizing social media, 10 hours a day, they're not looking at things that make them feel bad about themselves. They're just doing it, then I think. Okay, something is, is out of balance. Now, maybe that, that, that person's defenses are out of balance. So think about the example of the person with a job. They didn't like their defensive
Changes. Then the thing that was good for them. They rely on too much and now become something that's not good for them. Right? So then you go and look at what else is out of balance here, right? What else is is driving. So maybe it's being driven by the change in defense mechanisms Etc, maybe it's the other way around that this person just kind of habituated to doing more and more, and more and more of it and then you would come out in a different way of. Okay, can youcan you slowly? But surely do less, you know, replace
the time with things that were good before because you get, then back that person out to where they were before, but you're not going to back the person out to where they were before, if it's being driven by something else, so we again, come to the Curiosity, you tell me that person is on social media, 14 hours a day, I'm curious, right? I want to understand what what is, what is the balance of those drives, right? You've just told me a very powerful point about salience that doesn't sound like a good one. So already, you're giving me clues about where the drives are.
Which means where's that person at what's going on in all those cabinets. Then you give more information. I sit and talk with the person. Now, you know, you're going to understand like, what is the lay of the land here and how do we go about making it better?
I love the concept of the generative Drive. First of all, because it's pro-social, it brings about great things for us and for for the world. And I mean what is better than peace, contentment and Delight especially when we remind ourselves that those are active.
Phrases or those those can be achieved in experience inside of action. It's not just sitting levitating navel-gazing that sort of thing so it's not Enlightenment, right? It's peace, contentment and Delight.
Very big difference, very big
difference. Yes, one of the other reasons. I love this concept of the generative drive. So much is also because it is a verb state. It has to do with creating things in us and in the world, in cultivating, our experience of things, and what we do, and what we say. And how we
Respond to what others do and say. And I also like it because it's distinct from the way that we're normally taught to think about psychological well-being or being a healthy individual, which it usually centers around a discussion of goals and values. And, you know, like, what am I trying to focus on? And you know what sorts of people do I want to engage with, in the world. And certainly all of that is really important goals and who you engage with, but I think for many people out there much of their time,
Time is spent thinking about other people like, how healthier or unhealthy are the people they're dating or their friends, or what's going on between two family members, you know, which of course is fine to think about, but a lot of emphasis is placed on like our assessments of others and how those are impacting us. And in some cases, people default to just thinking about others and their problems and seeing their problems. And what we're really talking about here is a process of introspection.
Inquiry. That's very structured. And as it's been laid out by you, you know, these two pillars structure of cell function of self with these 10 cupboards, that might sound like a lot of cupboards. But we talked about in the first episode, all of that flow is up to these very simple, right ideals and Concepts and action States and ways of being. And to me, there's nothing more powerful than the statement that what we are all seeking our state's of age.
Agency and gratitude because again to go back to the analogy of physical fitness. There are not an infinite number of different physical States or states of Fitness, that one can seek their endurance, their strength, there's flexibility, there's Dynamic movement, there's, you know, explosiveness their speed of their bunch of, you know, subtleties to it. But here, it really seems that the psyche ourselves and our mental health is really tractable. If we
In the
lens and we look inward.
Yes, yes. I think that hits upon a very, very important Point. As we talk about understanding oneself in the process of change and I would describe that as rational aspiration, right? So let's use that the physical health example, right? If I think, okay, I want to be healthier, you know, I want to have more strength, I want to have more endurance and I might even have ideas of what that would be. I want to be able to run a certain distance in a certain time.
I'm lift a certain amount of wait. I have an idea of what that is, but rational aspiration is rooted in our present. We're like, I'm aware that there's a me now that that that like isn't in that state and I'm aware that there's a the things that I'm going to do to get to that state, right? And I'm not that dreading them like, okay, they will be difficult right? But that's okay. I can do difficult things. I can take pride in doing difficult things. And that's how we all achieve things. So, I see myself in the present because of course, goals are
Wooden. That's true. As long as we're still living our lives in the present because otherwise goals, just become fantasies or things. We want to want to possess. So if I'm aware of the state of physical health, I'm in right now and I'm aware of the state of physical health. I want to be in and I know there's a bunch of Pathways. I could take to get there, but I have to think about it, that it figure it out, do those things? And then I'm going to navigate myself there. That's how the whole process is good, right? I don't feel bad about myself. Now, I recognize
Is something I would like to change. I'm not saying oh, you're a loser because you don't have those things, right? I feel good. I feel good about myself now, I recognize there's something I want and there's going to be a process, a process across time across effort, that's going to navigate me there. Then, when I get there, I feel good about being there, right? It's very, very different if I think I want that, I want to possess the sense, right? I want to possess the ability to run a certain distance in a certain time. I just want the thing I'm Covetous of the thing, right? That is not good.
Because the person then often is denigrating to the self. Not always by the sobota vation to go out and get that thing that's better and and they're really lamenting the process of getting the other. They just want something as an endpoint and that doesn't make for happiness. It doesn't make for even the humility and humility and action the Gratitude, right of like the humility is, I can't just do that overnight. I'm going to have to work hard. People have to work hard. I'm no different than anybody else. I'm not special, I got to get in there and work and use the elbow grease.
Then I'll get healthier. Like all of that is good. That I just want to possess something is not good and that's why people in scenarios like this. They might like go through maybe in an unthinking way or they're gutting it out where they go and they get that thing right. But then that thing is not enough, right? And they want more and others, not, there's nothing wrong with wanting more. If it's if it's the healthy and action of self, right? I'm going to Now, map my way, this feels better. I want to map myself from here, to the next level of better physical fitness. That's different.
Just want that thing because then if I get it, it won't be good enough, right? It doesn't make me happy. It doesn't satisfy me. And that's the that's the unhealthy state of just wanting things to possess them and then we don't feel good about them, which is, you know, the thought of if you give people, if you give a person, something they'll resent you for it, right? Again that were painting in a sort of certain way, the context of that statement, which I used to hear, you know, a lot. Even when I was younger, people would say that, right? And what were they trying?
To get at, right? What they were getting at is the doesn't feel good if you didn't work for something, right? Like if you know, you didn't work very hard and you got to see. But I give you an A, or somebody gives me an a right. I know that that's not good. I know that I got the thing. I got the A and I might feel happy in the moment because I wanted that thing, but there's no real pleasure in it. There's no satisfaction, there's no contentment. There's no sense of self. There's nothing generative. I didn't work hard enough to go from a c to an a, right? So,
That that are and that really brings us back to the self that we're growing on top of, you know, of the structure, right? And how that how that self is functioning right, how it's striving. Because now we're really talking about strivings, and if I'm going to strive for something and work hard to get it, well, I get the good feeling on the other side of it and now we're living in the generative space.
Well, I love the structure of what you've laid out again. Thank you, the pillars of structure of self and function of cell with 10 cupboards.
Between the two of them that when explored can seem a little bit complex. But there are really some very straightforward types of inquiry that anyone can go about about self-awareness and address potential defense mechanisms, what we're conscious of. Maybe what we're not conscious of look at our behaviors and our strivings and how that flows up to these simple ideals again of empowerment, humility agency, and gratitude as verbs. And then from that peace contentment and delight and the
Generative Drive which gosh they've if there ever was a more powerful concept and something to strive for, I don't think it exists because the gender of Drive is is extraordinary in the number of different ways that plays out and it seems always positively right. And of course, the aggressive Drive, the pleasure Drive exist to varying, extents and all of us. But cannot be allowed to overcome the generative drive if we're going to really Thrive. So
So so thank you again, so much for this framework. And again, to remind people listening and watching that this framework is mapped out in a downloadable PDF if people want to see it visually, even though we've touched on it several times before I really appreciate how logical, clear and actionable. This framework is and, and also that in providing a framework for us. It gives us something to hold our mind to, you know I think I and so many people out there are familiar with like being in a struggle and not
Being able to orient like where am I in the struggle? Not knowing what to do and you've provided some incredible points of reference for us to the really like focus on start asking questions about I and how I see myself, what am I paying attention to and so on and so forth, to really first anchor in Orient and then be able to move forward. In this process as many times, as is required to get where we each and all want to go. So thank you so much for this. I know in our next discussion we're going to touch on the relational.
Aspects of human existence, you know, and not just selves by interactions between selves including some of the let's call it. A darker and unfortunate aspects of human existence like narcissists, and some of the challenges of different, you know, full-blown personality disorders, but also just in terms of building healthy relationships between friends, romantic Partners, parents and children, and siblings, and, and co-workers, and all the rest. So thank you again for this incredibly Rich knowledge that you
I did us an and a map
forward. You're very welcome, and thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it with
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