GUEST SERIES | Dr. Paul Conti: How to Build and Maintain Healthy Relationships
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Welcome to the huberman lab guest series where I and an expert guest discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm ander huberman and am a professor neurobiology and opened ology at stanford school of medicine today, march. The third episode in our four episode series about mental health with doctor paul county.

Today's episode deals with the topic of healthy relationships, how to define what a healthy relationships is, and how to achieve healthy relationships of all kinds, including romantic relationships, interpersonal relationships at work, friendships with family, and, of course, with oneself. This episode builds on the framework of the psychology of self and mental health that was established in the first and second episodes of this series. However, even if you didn't listen to the first or second epsom this series, today's epo de will still contain a lot of information and protocols that you will find valuable for improving your relationships.

That said, if you have the opportunity to listen to the first and second episodes in this series, I think you'll find those to be tremendously beneficial at any point. During today's episode, doctor county discusses what makes for a successful relationship of any kind, as well as tools to improve those relationships. He discusses various types of bonds, including healthy bonds and trauma bonds, not just in the context of romantic relationship, but in the context of all types of relationships. We also discuss different chAllenges that people face in relationships, including abusive relationships, and we discussed the role of power dynamics, anxiety and boundaries in relationships, both from the perspective of unhealthy relationships, but more importantly, from the understanding and protocols to cultivate healthy relationships.

While there is an abundance of opinions and information out there on the internet these days about relationships both healthy and unhealthy, today's discussion approaches the topic of relationships through an entirely different lens, which is the lens of the self in terms of one's conscious and subconscious mind, and how multiple conscious and subconscious minds, through different individuals, interact with one another in ways that we can see, in ways that we can see, and all of that framed within the actionable steps that any of us can take to improve our relationship to ourself, into others. Before we begin, i'd like emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science in science 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 licence therapies Carried out all online. I've been doing therapy for more than thirty years, and when I confessed that initially I was forced to do that therapy as a condition for being let back into high school over time, I learned that therapy is a tremendously valuable practice. In fact, I consider doing regular weekly therapy as just as important as doing regular physical exercise in order to improve one's health.

The beauty of Better help is that IT makes IT extremely easy to find a therapy that's excEllent for you, and we can define an excEllent therapies as somebody who's going to give you a lot of support, but in an objective way, as well as somebody with whom you can have excEllent report. And that can help you arrive at positively transformative insights that you wouldn't have otherwise had. And with Better help, they make IT convenience so that it's matched to your schedule and the other aspects of your life.

If you like to try Better help, go to Better helped that calm slash huberman to get ten percent off your first month again. That Better help H L P dot com slash huberman. 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 ea sessions and more.

By now, there's 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 that difficult to find and stick to a meditation practice in a way that is most beneficial for them. The waking up that 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.

That includes a variety of different types of meditations of different duration as well as things like yoga edroy, which placed the brain and body into a sort of photos sleep that allows you to emerge feeling incredibly mentally refreshed and track the science around organizing. Impressive showing that after a yoga eja session, levels of dopamine in certain areas of the brain are enhanced by up to sixty percent, which places the brain and body into a state of enhanced readiness for mental work and for physical work. Another thing I really like about the waking up APP is that IT provides a thirty day introduction course.

So for those 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 in regular meditator, waking up has more advanced meditations in organiser sessions for you as well. If you'd like to try the waking up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a three thirty day trial again, that waking up dot com slash huberman. And now for my discussion about mental health with doctor paul county. Doctor county.

welcome back. Thank you.

Happy to be here today. We're going to discuss relationships, and that will often focus on romantic relationships, but also relationships between friends, between family members and inevitably, the relationship to self, which is what we really focused on in episode one and two of the series. Episode one, all the things that go into a healthy self and how to understand what is unhealthy and healthy.

And all of us, and make adjustments to the unhealthy aspects of our unconscious, unconscious through really specific proactive behaviors and patterns of thought. So really a road map to these ideals that we call mental health and understanding of the self. Today, we want to talk about relationships from the perspective of, of course, how people relate.

But I have a feeling it's going to have something to do with or perhaps almost everything to do with a relation to understanding ourselves with first. yes. So just to make sure that we're all on the same page regardless of whether or not people have seen episodes one in two, and certainly, people do not need to have seen or listen to epo des one two of the series. In order to understand today's discussion, could you please tell us what is a healthy person and how can we ask ourselves the sorts of questions that allow us to determine whether we are healthy and where to look in terms of making adjustments if we want to be healthier than we already are, which I have to believe almost everybody, if not everybody, certainly wants to be the healthier and best expression of themselves, so that they can do the most for themselves, for others .

in the world. So the linchpin of IT all IT is the agency and gratitude as verbs. right? That's the top of the mountain, right? There's a lot of climbing we do to get to the top of the mountain.

Once were over the top of the mountain, then things are in a Better place. And even though there are two words, right, agency is, of course, a word. Gratitude is a word.

But IT doesn't mean that there are separate concepts approaching the world through the lengths of agency and gratitude thought of as one thing, because they come together and they come together as verbs say that's what we're aiming for, right? Because that's the thing that we can work towards, right? If you think about what comes underneath of that, right? IT takes us back to the the two pillar and the the ten cubs.

And if we're looking in there enough where we're mining what is in my unconscious mind, I might not be aware of. Let me generate some curiosity about my defense mechanisms and my character structure, and think about what's sAiling and inside of milk. If we're doing all of that, then what we're doing, we're building empowerment, rebuilding humility.

And then ultimately, the expression of all of that is the agency and gratitude, and is something that we can't have enough of. I K, what's the best amount of that the most that's possible, right? Because we're going to engage in the world in the healthiest way because agency and gratitude doesn't mean or happy about everything, right?

If there's something negative and we can change that, then we don't feel happy about that. We the center of gratitude in me makes me more likely to feel that I can change that, right, or to take the chance of trying to change that. And then the agency part of that concept can come more to the four, and I can make the change.

So it's not about bliss, right? It's not about forgiving self and others for all sorts of things and not working to make Better. It's about being in the world and being as aware as I can possibly be, including being aware that there are things i'm not aware of, right? So are having a healthy respect and an orientation to the world that values truth and values understanding and exploration.

If we do all of that, then we reached the top of the mountain through the agency and gratitude. And then what builds upon that, what comes from that is the the peace, the contentment, the delight, the generative drive being strengthened like that, all comes together. And then the aggressive world, we say aggressive because that's the traditional term with the aggressive or the assertive, right? The assertiveness research drive.

However, what whatever war do you want to put to that? That drive exists in us in a way that subserves the generative drive. The same thing with the pleasure drive in us. It's exists in us, but it's observing the generative driver.

And all those good things come together and they come together to help us be as healthy as we can and to stay healthy, right, including when tribulation or difficulties come away, so that we say as best we can in the agency and gratitude as verbs. And again, there's nothing theoretical about this like it's a way to live and and there are a lot of people who live some of their lives. You're parts of their lives through that, right? And we can inspire to IT and we can work towards IT.

And if we're the best that we can be, then we're gonna in our relationships. The best we can be. I think about IT, like you and I have a relationship. We know each other. We're working together.

If I can bring my best self to you, to thinking about you, to understanding you, if I can bring the agency and the gratitude, then i'm gna do right by you. I'm going to mentalities, this idea of thinking about what's going on inside of you, like i'm going to bring the best of all of that. And then because we have a relationship, there's also in us like there's a me, there's A U, there's something that happens between us that the relationship that's the us. And I will also bring my best self to that thing that is no longer just me or just you, but that isn't us and that applies to all relationships. But you can apply that to seeking health in every single relationship in our lives.

What you're saying really speaks to the importance of people taking a real look at themselves, which is not necessarily an inventory of self in the typical sense that we're used to hearing IT, but rather through this lens or a map of the self that was spelled out in episodes one, two and again for the those that are just joining the series. Now um the map, as we're referring to IT is available les at downloadable PDF in the shown of captions.

People want to get that it's completely zero cost and just go there an access or just viewed on a screen printed out whatever whatever you like. You certainly don't need to do that because here again, we're talking about the core elements of that map which understand correctly, arrive eventually at a set of verb states that we're calling agency and gratitude. Those are not separate, as you pointed out. They work together.

You you describe as IT on top of the guiza, right? And I I really like that. There's a lot of things going on, but then IT all uplifts to something right.

And if we're doing IT in the right way, in the diligent way, then IT is like a guier. And what is lifting up on top of IT is the agency in gratitude. I I love you. You put those words to IT. And I think IT captures IT really profoundly well.

The stuff that guides us up perhaps deserves a bit of our attention just for a few moments. Um you describe these two pillars that I described as guides ing up to agency, gratitude and in the best circumstances. But the best circumstances we want to remind ourselves and everybody are attainable by looking at what's in those pillars. Um those two pills are the structure of self, are really understanding something about the structure of self.

So that includes some understanding of the unconscious mind, some understanding of the conscious mind, defense mechanisms, character structure and self that was all reviewed and described in episodes one, two as well as the functions of self, which more of the verb states the expressions of the structure of self, self awareness in the first of those mechanisms in action. And here um i'd be remiss if I didn't tell myself and everybody else again that defense mechanisms are not always bad. There can be healthy defence. They can protect us in very valuable ways.

And then this notion of silence and what we pay attention to, you know what sorts of scripts are going on in our head about ourselves and others? What do we paying attention to? How are we interpreting those in our head into others and and most importantly, perhaps to ourselves and then our actual behavior? So what are we doing from the time we wake up until the time we go to sleep at night? And then our strivings, our sense of hopefulness, or perhaps lack of strivings.

And there are reminded also that nobody does all of these things perfectly all the time. We all have elements within us that perhaps are not serving. The guys are up into agency and gratitude as well as they could, but that all of us have the capacity to look at at these two pillars and these ten things that we're gis listed off, as you describe them as coverage that we look into an examine and think about and that if we can do that with a skilled clinton like yourself or another psychology or psychologist, terrific. But even if we don't have access to that, that we can examine within us what is and is not serving to guys are up into agency and gratitude.

We can bring any issue of self to those two pillars and the ten covers within them. Any issue yourself. why? Because that's what IT is, right? In the sense that like IT is, is the us.

What's inside of me? I have an unconscious mind. I have a consciousness and I have a defensive structure. I have a character structure. I have self like, like, that's what IT is, right? And all the functions that you would mention, they're all going on with within that structure of selves, they're manifesting themselves like that's what IT is when we are being right in the active way of the verb being.

That's what IT is, which is why we can bring to IT any shoe of self even though, of course, there's tremendous complexity there. You know the million things that go on in a second you don't underneath the surface in the unconscious mind and our defensive structures and how to see them. But like we're human beings, but we're complicated, right? Like that, okay? Because we have methods of understanding, we have methods of inquiry, and we can use those methods to make things Better.

And that's how we make the guys are as strong as I can be. Well, like maybe some maybe some some of the waters running counter court in in the okay, well, let's try and have things go all in the same direction. But we don't need things to be perfect for. For the guides are to spring up and the agency and gratitude to then be uplifted upon IT. So everybody .

has one of these maps, as I understand, IT. And therefore, any time we're talking about relationships, romantic relationships or otherwise, we're talking about the intersection are overlap of those maps in some way. Maybe even the synergy in the outgrowth of those maps becomes its own map.

I think we'll get to this a little bit later. Yes, when I and most people hear the word relationships, in particular romantic relationships, I make a couple of automatic assumptions. First of all, have to assume that people are either in a relationship or out of a relationship.

There is probably a third category out there of plurals and other things, but I will keep IT relatively simple. And most people, I assume when they search for or enter or entered the relationship, they thought about whether or not they had resonance with the person, whether not, you know, there was a intellectual or mutual interest resonance or a physical resonance. You maybe something about family history, common goals.

That said, uh, that's typically what people think about. And then a perhaps sive people have a bit more of a psychological understanding or their reading some, you know, pop system gy books these days, you know some of which are are pretty good. Um they might understand something about themselves or the other person being a bit more anxious or a bit more relax. So you will hear things like anxious attached to care, attach things that of that work if we could just step back from all of that for a moment and examining through the lens of the map, as you're describing them, which exist in all of us. And that really are the map to being the best version .

of ourselves.

If we look at relationships in terms of lists of where people went to school, if they went to school, you know, other parents married to us, you know, do they have trauma that they're wear over? Not aware of these kinds of things, I guess we could call those. And here I am, borrowing language that you used earlier off camera. So I want to acknowledge that points of compatibility.

Like, like, I think that seems like a reasonable place to start, right? Do people want the same thing? So if you, if you could, could you talk a little bit about points of pad ability and relationship and how those show up um for Better for worse, when you encounter people in the clinical setting, when you see a somebody who's in a relationship that's really working for them and is healthy versus if they are in a relationship, words really unhealthy presumable. There's some knowledge about points of compatibility, but I guessing that's not always intuitive.

right? I think the place we start there is, is acknowledging what we can know and what we can know, right? So this idea that there are levels of emergence where where things at a lower level come together and create something that's new, we see this throughout science, from subatomic particles all the way through to culture, right?

So someone could know theoretically, like a lots and lot of lots about you and lot and lot and lots about me, but they don't know about us, right? Like they don't know how we interact, they don't know if we have shared interests, what we talk about, they don't know that. No one know that. Like we don't know that about the combination of people. We can't know IT in advance, but we we ought to believe that we can, which then leads to a lot of loss metrics of trying to figure things out.

So when we're looking for a compatibility, the thought is very basic, tangible things like in romance, for example, if there's someone who absolutely wants have a family and there's someone who absolutely does not want to have a family, okay, that would be a reason for those two people to not choose one another, right? Um so there are there are these factors, but but the factors are honestly very evident and and very concrete, right? If we go if we go beyond that, we okay, we can see the obvious, right? Then what we're looking for is really a compatibility of general drives, right? And then that he tells you, can these people then get along? You maybe one of them is from one side of the world and the others from the other side of the world or once in accounting and the others in musician.

And you know IT doesn't mean that like they're built not to get along or that if they're doing the same thing, they're built to get along or if there they went to college in the same place, so they went to college, there is not going to college. But there's so much there that we we try to build a story on. And then what we do is we miss the forest for the trees, right? And the trees, I think, are the factors that don't matter.

So get, let's think about the factors that do matter, because once of a family of the person doesn't that's relevant. But the trees that mislead us might be, do they have the same level of education? A, did they have the same family structure growing up? Our parents still together, what do they enjoy the creative or scientific or whatever, or creatively scientific? We could look at all of that.

But I think that we're making a bunch of trees that miss lead us. If you say, look to these people come at the world through how much agency and gratitude is there guiding them, you know, how high is the top that guys there? How high is IT up lifting that? How strong is the general drive? If we matched people upon that, then we see, og, those people got along in, those people didn't.

And then the other are all the other factors, like thermos, right, and things that we can understand, or like we flex the first impressions, so so we can let things develop, honoring the truth of what we can know, that when you put two people together. You get something that's different than the sum of both people, right? It's not an overlap of map, right? It's a new map, right? And the map is informed by things that are on each individuals map.

But what we're looking for, our maps that don't have very significant differences around just clear concrete things, right? But once we get beyond that, the maps can syngas in all sorts of beautiful and unpredictable ways. If and if both are are coming from the perspective of a general that is at the forefront.

great. You put those maps together and see what happens. Maybe nothing happens, okay, those people don't go later on the second day. Maybe something happens, but IT doesn't develop in certain ways.

okay? There's people dated than stop dating like this happens all the time, right? But we said the odds in our favor that the general drive in each that is at the forefront means that their maps can syngas in ways that can then be beautiful and ways that can maybe bring to both people that which which they want. And I think there's a simplicity to that, that I think if we honor IT can be very, very helpful, whether it's roman is friendships of looking at what the truth of IT is instead of the factors that we try and in a false sense of security. If we're using them to select upon .

you mention several times the general drive, I definitely would like to learn more about that and spend some time there in the context of relationships. But just to drill a little bit further into what we've all heard so often and you touch your point of view, this seems around points of compatibility, but also where sometimes we can respond to the wrong things when thinking about compatibility.

Again, reframing this mainly in the context of hypothetical romantic relationships, but certainly IT pertains to other sorts of relationships. Things like, um you know is one person educated with advanced agreement and is the other person also? We tend to assume that people who are are somehow a Better match than people who aren't. It's sort of a implicit assumption that often made, not always or that um you know if two people really love music, that they will enjoy music together and therefore some of the whole l is greater than you either of its parts you know and then and I .

think those things are .

utterly relevant, interesting. And I wanna hear more about this because I think that if you think about um which i'm sure you don't but like dating apps, for instance, what's listed out there or um first your second dates, which you know consist ve like learning a little bit about somebody and what they're doing and maybe even a little bit about their history and and um maybe an activity um and certainly an attention awareness to how the other person is behaving in the context of different things like a waiter or waitress and how they are treating people and and you and and then you hear about things like um what are the this is not as something i'm promoted oh right the the love languages people like go what's the love languages you it's like gifts or like x of physical um uh touch or you know or acts of service or something.

I met someone recently and he told me my love language is all of them which I think is the most honest answer, right? There's sure there's probably some waiting around what people value more or less. And in the absence of the things they value the most, IT would probably feel a bit like deprivation in any relationship.

But as i'm describing all this, i'm realizing more and more, yes, all of that matters. Anxious attached, secure attached love languages is Better. But IT really doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

IT really doesn't get to this. As you described, this general drive in individuals and whether not those match up well along the points of compatibility with the other person's general drive. And you know, I haven't run A A controlled study for this, but the best evidence I have is that there fortunately, are many people out there who are in happy, healthy relationships.

But there are many, many, many people who are not other because I can't find them or they're in them and they're not healthy or they're not happy at sea. So you could um elaborate a bit more on the general drive again, reminding us what the nature of that is. We cover this a bit episodes in two, but what what the nature of that is in some different ways that that's expressed and how that um shows up in healthy relationship.

Yeah yeah I think we really disprove the idea that that some of these these factors, I think, are superficial in the context of whether people are going to be compatible. They are not superficial things, but they're not german, right? So let's say you think about music, right? And say two people are contemplating romance, right? And they both really like music.

Well, that could go very, very well. Let's say they both have A A strong general drive. Those pillars are pretty healthy and the guise of the agency and gratitude is riding upon IT and they can find peace in them, in themselves.

Um they're strongly generated. Then they could become interested in the music the other person likes. Is they going to be a complete overlap, right? Even if people generally like the same thing, but they say they like different things, I just liking music or even liking the same music, they're still difference, right?

So the person has to go beyond themselves, right, and say, okay, i'm interested in like what you think even about the music we both like, right? What factors do you like? There are places of of learning and of growth for both.

And you could see how both liking music, whether it's the same or different music. That sounds great, right? We could also see how that could not be great, right?

If if the general drive is too low and the aggression drive is too high, right, then i'm going to think I like music, my music Better than yours, right? Or people then start the fragment en to IT, even though they have the same interest or of the pleasure drive is too high and they think I want to listen to my music, not yours. I familiar with IT instead of, hey, i'm interested in that music because because you're interested in IT and i'm interested in you, right?

Which leads us to the second policy of someone who really has no interest in music and someone who does well. There can be an openness of saying, I am interested in this person, and this person is really interested in music. Like, well, that I have some interest in IT, right? I want to learn something about, I want to experience some of IT with the other person.

And let's say, that person and I say, that's not my thing, is not the thing we connect on. And why would that be the end of the world? Like we need people.

One person goes to concerts, the other dozen, right? So you know, we we we try to find these points of commonality because I think we get over reduction ist. And then we think, oh, here's ones of factors that we will identify. And what they do is they obscured us from the primary factor, which is the general drive, which, of course, will then induce open, mindless mentalizing. If I don't like music and you do, instead of saying, was you like music for, you know, I need a friendship with somebody likes music, you know, you think, hey, like that's interesting.

Like if i'm interested in you as a friend and then i've respect for you and what you think, then why would I not have some interesting what you're interested in you? So so this idea of compatibility revolves around the health in each person. IT doesn't revolve around factors that are anything but that the concrete logistical factors that would just keep two people apart.

I love the idea that healthy relationships center around the factors that really matter within the self, right, in particularly the general drive. And I and I love the example of someone being able to be curious about somebody e's interest about their partner's interest rests even though they might not share those um from the same point of agency and gratitude because the agency component there is really key.

I think that a lot of people feel as if they aren't really good at something, or really knowledge able about something, then it's not for them, right? Which is the opposite of having agency in gratitude, because gratitude is closely tied to humility. How could we know everything? And I can be good, certain things and not others. So the way you describe IT includes aspects of openness, of humility but also the agency size, the empowerment like i'm going to learn more than perhaps you know we could enjoy more of that together um perhaps not right.

I think um this is what i'm sensing and i'm also sensing that um the words like minded you know like minded people um has so much more to do with their general drives and how those match up as opposed to the activities that they prefer engaging in and the sort of foods they like or the movies they like and which makes sense at some level but I think IT is still counter intuitive for a lot of us who just kind of reflexively thing you like. They like the same things. You know maybe maybe when they met at work because they like the same type of work.

Um they like to live in a certain ary the country and therefore by proximity they met. And this raise is all sorts of interesting ideas perhaps about um the statistics of what we see, right like two musicians together. Um we therefore assume that musicians belong together or two scientists together. I know loads of scientists, scientist couples are to physician couples and um but of course the numbers are rescued because they were working in environments where increase the probability they would interact. So this is actually a vote for online dating in some sense because IT breaks through all those um sometimes even geographical barriers but certainly that the traditional barriers of culture.

right right if you think about who we're talking about relationships so I would like my relationships to last as long as possible, right? That means now we're talking about my lifespan and my health span, right? Like that then becomes part of that discussion.

And of course, we're very interested in lifespan and health span. And we see people do much, much Better when they're interconnected in the world around them, when they're still learning new things like we know that's true that people often will tale. This would have trail off of of what they're learning, whether it's it's music, it's literature, it's the world around us relatively early in our lifespan.

But the person whose interconnected learning new things by high a much greater probability of living longer and living healthier, right? So think what's that about is about a generative drive. It's about, you know what i've learned a lot of things over the course of my life and i'm eighty years old now and like great that there's more to learn.

right. And like that's what you see IT makes me think of a woman is around ninety years old and my practice, she's always learning new things like she's super interested in things and i'm always struck about how like SHE seems so much Younger, right? And there that's not just a selection bias.

I O I just happened to see that in that person like SHE has the factors that predispose to aging in the way that's healthier and happiest. So IT really comes down the root of all of IT in ourselves, in our relationships, in the quality of them over time and how long we get to have them. We arises from a general drive.

And that's the thing that makes us then undefended, right, and lets us find interest in things about other people that are different from the things in us, which also comes about naturally. Like, I think it's interesting that we have this sort of bias so that musicians belong together. Why are they're familiar with the same things, right? I guess they have the same interesting thing with scientist, but then a lot of people like like different foods, right?

Like I love different ethnic foods. Like why? Because it's different, right? It's it's an appreciation of difference.

I don't want to eat just like I did growing up. And many, many, many people are like that. That's an appreciation of difference, of diversity.

So sometimes what kind of harness that you will look at IT and we'll say, oh, like that present in us. But for whatever reason, we become very reduction ist about relationships. And now we're trying to match based upon saving less, right? And like same mess is is not the point of that.

I mean, they even thoughts right about people then in some way seeking difference, right, or maybe very much, or telling us I like I actually know very little about that, but I certainly know that striving for same's doesn't make good things happen in relationships. Now i've been doing this for over twenty years and and like, I don't see that the alleged factors of sadness matter again unless they're so concrete. Like if this person is absolutely going to live in north amErica and that person is absolutely gone to live in south america, listen, potentially put them together.

But once we get away from almost that level of concrete ness, let's look for something different. Then, like everything else, it's simplifies, right? The higher we go up, the latter, the more simple things get.

If you're looking at the pillars structure of self function itself, you are creating the agency and gratitude. Then what are you looking for when you're looking for a partner, a match and general drive? I want to, I want mind to be strong.

And I see that is strong in this person. They create in a way, you know, I do science, they grow garden, we're generative together, right? Like that could be super compatible because we're looking at the one factor that really matters.

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Realizing that most of what I and everyone else has heard about relationships is complete nonsense, I really mean that, I mean, IT has occurred to be before because i've experienced both that the phrases absence makes the heart growth founder and out of sight, out of mind, are in direct contradiction with one another. So there both true depends on the circumstances. And you know who the hell know why you could, right? You also hear opposite attract, but they don't stay together, right? You hear similar. You know the important thing is to find someone to you that or that there's like one person, right that rive you I mean, these are, if we really think about IT crazy notion, but they drive a lot of what people .

drink about anx, right? They drive and they drive bad choices. They drive situations of them create a sense of guilt and shame and inadequacy. We mislead ourselves by not going to the basics of what is actually true.

And we look at myself, make myself as healthy as I can be, right? Because if i'm healthy, all recognize a lack of health in the other, right. That also protects us again, against bad relationships. And then i'm going to make myself healthy, which we're describing how that looks when I want someone who also wants to make themselves healthier, at least if we're going to a lie, right, let's let's a lie around making both of of ourselves healthier.

absolutely. And we're going to go deeper into how to look into the map of self and how that relates to relationship are certainly more as we go along this discussion. You've mentioned several times, however, about general drive, and that IT really is the definition of like minded in some sense. And you also mention aggressive drives and pleasure drives, themes that we touched on again and epo des one in two. But listening to those episodes is certainly not necessary to digest what we're talking about today.

Could you go a little bit deeper into the general drive flesh out for us what that is? Um I think generated, I think generator, I think energy, um I hear aggression or aggressive drive, I think as I think most people do, um friction, maybe even conflict, maybe physical conflict, may be verbal conflict, but I know it's some of that perhaps, but a whole lot more. And then pleasure, drive and pleasure, some people think bliss, some people think delight. Um some people probably have all sorts of specific things they think of with respective pleasure. So he just flushed those out for us a little bit more because I think those are going to serve as cornerstones of today's discussion.

sure. The drives, in this case, the general drive, sort of exist with in us. And and what they do is they're defining potential, right?

So so right now, one could argue we just paused for a couple seconds. We're not doing anything generated in those seconds, right? But then we resume doing something that we believe is generated, right?

So at the time we're pausing, that's when we can set a look at that as as a drive within us to to to make new learning right, to understand things we didn't understand before, to spread a sense of goodness, right? So IT resides in us in a way that is determined by a whole bunch of different factors, like like everything else that determined within us. There's a nature and a nurture component.

So some aspect of IT are what of the genetics that came down to us, water, formative experiences. But we can go in and alter that. So if we see the drive as a set of potential, like in that moment we pause, there's a set of potentials within us like potential of where we can take our thoughts, our actions are reflections, our decisions, that's the drive within us. And IT exists within us in a way that we could localize.

Now like if we think enough about, okay, how much of a general drivers are in a person, how much is that person looking to the to to make a Better life for themselves or a Better world around them? And how do they feel about themselves and ability to do that? How general are they or how shut down or demoralized their? So we can innocence localize that.

And again, the localization has these genetic and nurture components to IT, but we can then go and influence that. And that's the that's the importance. If the drive is a set of potential, a set of possibilities, than that drive is one the same pervaded with. However, we wanted to describe that with the agency and gratitude because the agency and gratitude is sort of the Operative form of that.

That's the verb, right? It's the drive actually driving something, right? So if you have a strong general drive and agency and gratitude leading the decisions, the reflections are coming through that the aggression within us, or again, that's the the, the, the historical word, but we can say aggression, assertion, proactive, veness, right? All of this inside of us.

And I drive for pleasure, for gratification, right? That always then is in us. But it's observing the general drive, meaning the general drive that set of potentials and possibilities is dominant, which of course, make sense with agency and gratitude, those active verse being what is most active, right? And then we're also gonna at times, and hopefully at a lot of times, right? That set of peacefulness.

Ss, that said, of contentment, the sense of delight, right? What you're describing when you you doing the podcast and you're in and all these good things are happening to you, right? There's a strong general drive in you that set up potentials are being actualized through the verbs of agency and gratitude.

You're doing IT all right then. And as you're doing IT, you have a sense of peace and contentment as you're enacting all of IT. And then that makes you healthier, reinforces the general drive that protects you against the next sink or arrow of outrageous fortune will come you away, right? You become more self knowledgeable more.

You become stronger, right? And and ultimately, that what we were looking for like that the state of goodness, and I believe that if you look historically, what is that, that we're seeing, we can put so many words to IT, and we're choosing to put these words to IT. I mean, I think that this is the structure because I think the science, the history, the clinical experience, the phenomenology, I think IT all tells us this.

We can put different words to IT. But what we're looking at, what we're looking at truth and how to get to the happiness, quote, quote that. That people have sought through the ages. I think we know enough now we've learned enough that we can say, oh, this is what IT looks like and IT fits the orbit of of all truth, which is as you get further up, the higher arche IT gets simpler. That's true about humans.

What's going on in my own conscious ness is very, very complicated, right? But if if that summer to as we get higher up to, like i'm approaching the world with a lot of agency and gratitude, right, that's a lot simpler. And that's what can be common among us, which is why if my pillars are very different from your pillars and what we've struggled against each is very different, and what we may still have to work against is very different.

We can be extremely compatible as friends because are we are working on ourselves, are we Fostering the general drive? So we're coming at the world in that way, an agency and gratitude that the similarity right between us that matters. And ultimately, we're looking at the potential that every moment we're building the potential in us for what comes at the next moment, which is why we're describing the overlap, the point of common that really matters that that matters.

We're putting a label to the right. I was think it's the generative drive, but IT is also there. okay? We both come of the world through agency and gratitude if if two people are assessing compatibility.

But if we're looking at something to nest that under IT. And what seems most logical is the set of potentials within us that were building an altering each moment. And then as I altered in this moment, but it's altered, and that affects my next moment, right?

If I do something that's just kind of thought less to somebody, you know, because i'm in a i'm in a bad mood, right, then what am I doing? I'm projecting out my aggression. I'm doing something that basically makes me then right.

And then i'm going to feel less than the next moment. Whether that moment is about me is about someone else. The drives are the potentials in us, but we are actively working on them, determining them, changing them each moment.

I'm well on board the idea that the the typical pairings, let's call them the idiocy ncr tic pairings of musician with musician in many cases, but sometimes very verbal person with quieter person, you know, introvert, extrovert, introvert, introvert, you that all of that takes back seat or IT perhaps even back back seat, perhaps IT even is out of the vehicle. Compared to the critical importance of general drive.

right?

When we think about general drives and individuals, you beautifully described what a general drive is and how IT shows up in individuals when thinking about generative drives in romantic relationships.

However, because general drive can be expressed to varying degrees, 嗯， does one often see that? Or do you think that a matching of sort of levels of general drives is what Fosters the best relationships? In other words, let's say, somebody has a pretty high pleasure drive, but not a very strong, aggressive, also also called pro active veness drive. And so maybe like there um they watch a lot of netflix like a lot of netflix.

They're not even the sort of person is like really excited about the shows and telling you about them because there's a version of watching a lot and netflix where the person really interesting learning and knowing maybe they are thinking about right writing something, you know poetry, your book or or they're bringing some of that to their life, right? I'd mentioned that way because watching netflix is in bad per sai, right? It's not anti generative right? Escape or is IT generated?

Is a person thinking about what they're going to do is going to write that book? Or are they just trying to num out? And at the end of five hours in front of the television, they don't know what those five hours were, right? There's no intrinsic value judgment based upon a lot of things that we make intrinsic way we make value judgements about, right? You have to look at who is the person, what is the context, are they being generated or not?

Yeah, some of the movies and shows that are washing relationships became the the pots of connection around least to me, traumatic ously interesting discussions on hikes that we took the next day um and reflections on our own relationship and work in life.

And so so glad you point out that there's nothing intrinsically valuable or valuable about something like netflix or even interesting ly passive about doing right, something like sitting around or or even reading books for that matter. There's a passive version of reading great books. also.

People forget that it's hard to read a great book and not learn something. I guess that's why are they called great books. But but there is a version of that. I know many people as the book.

I read the book and i'm going to check IT off. I don't know what was in IT like people do that.

that is not generated. So should we consider matching of level or expression of general drives as um perhaps that what we are all seeking in seeking relationship like that? And do you think that people tend to pair up naturally, pair up with people that have a similar level of generative drive? Or if they don't, do you think IT leads to problems?

right? Yeah, I think that by in large people don't. That is not the thing that we're thinking about and looking for in ourselves or others. And I absolutely believe that IT makes problems. And let's take a .

look to not look. IT makes problems to not look right.

IT makes sense way. The fact that we're not basing IT upon generation drive dos, indeed, I think make many, many, many, many, many and in fact, countless problems. And I would take, as an example, think about the idea of a trauma bond.

right? A trauma bond is not a bad thing. That sounds like a strong statement because the way that I hear a used is is a bad thing, right? But IT doesn't have to be so. So let's take a look at IT. Imagine that you have what people call the trump bond.

You know you have two people who was just will make up a situation, right? They're functioning in the world around them, but they each have had some very significant drama that is creating issues in them. So let's say their avoided issues person doesn't feel safe or comfortable in the world around them.

They get invited to places that they like to go, but they don't go. They want to go to the museum and see something really new and call them about there might be a crowd, right? I mean, this happens, right? And let's say you have two people who both have this in them IT could be because the trauma is similar.

The trauma could be night and day, right? But they each have this in them. They could bond around that ramma in a way that worsens the trauma. That's why people think negatively of a trauma bond, right?

So if if the case is that the trauma on is not a good thing for these two people, you say, why is that? It's not because both of them have had trauma and both of them were impacted by trauma and both of them were impacted by trauma in similar ways. It's not that.

It's that the drives are not in a healthy place and the gratification of the generative drive and the pleasure drives are not high enough. So let's imagine the generative drive is could be a relatively low in in each of these people in one or the other or they could have a naturally high drive that's being thwarted, right? So so there's something that's out of baLance where the drive is, the the ability to express the drive, right? Is there enough agency, right?

If there is not like going to say one person is really, really shut down, that person can't stand their job, right? Okay, something is shutting that person down. The generative drive wishes greater expression, and they go back and look at themselves.

You can bring that into line, right? But something is at a baLance at the time that the pleasure drive may be low or may be high, but IT may not be gratified IT. Maybe that that person loves museums and wants to go to the museum, but can't find that gratification, right?

That's a possibility. The aggression or assertion drive would be on the low end, right? But IT could be higher. Maybe that person felt safer, right?

That drive within them has a lot of attitude, and maybe I could move higher, right? But something is at a baLance in the drives and in their expression, right? That's the problem because let's look at the other side where a trauma bond is a great thing.

So each other people in the example has, and they recognized IT in themselves, and they understand how IT makes things harder for them, and then that they are communicating about how IT makes IT hard in the other, right? So maybe there's a lot of overlap, right? In social avoidance and sense of vulnerability.

Maybe there are things that are different in one person versus the other. So then they can come together and say, look, what's the goal of life? Like I would like to be as healthy as I can be on working on myself.

You wanted be as healthy as you can be. We want to be as healthy as we can be. And if we are healthy, we also help each of us be healthy. So maybe those two people, neither of which they would ever go to the museum on their own, because the trauma inside of them is at a point that hasn't been work through, or is at a place where they just simplified to vulnerable, right? But together they can go to the museum and then the bond around trauma helps them be healthy.

The drives are in a Better place because they are able to recognize hair, things going on, and me, that i'd like to be different in Better. And you recognize that tune. We can talk about IT with one another, right? So they're in a healthier place. And then from that healthier place, they build greater health.

So much of what we hear about in terms of friction points in relationship centers around IT seems communication or lack of communication. And as you're describing the role of the general drive and healthy relationship, IT seems to me that IT is back in every way to agency and gratitude and agency being such a critical element of communication because wherever you've identified that, okay, there's a potential problem here.

Um people with high general drive in these examples seem to be capable of like self inquiry, asking the other person questions that bring bring them closer together and to a deep understanding of the self. I raise this because one thing that's often overheard or that i've overheard, I of course have siblings. And france are in all places in the way that i've most typically heard IT, but i'm sure that to exist other ways too which is um um in that the conversation my head is one where a woman is saying you like there was somebody.

Or dating somebody and like he's he's so clueless, like I wish that he would just do this thing. Sometimes these are act of shivery, like may be its flowers or vacations, but more often than not, a request or a complaint about a lack of proactiv ess. You know, this is also what ratched up to these repent statements that you hear.

Like, oh, there is no real men these days are like, there is no real men laughter, you know, this kind of thing you also heard in the reverse, you hear men making pen statements about women. And here we're doing this in the context of heterosexual pairings. But of course, IT could all work just as well, and it's exactly could all work in the context of homosexual parents, too.

So you hear those sorts of things, and that sounds like a lack of communication. You, okay. Maybe one person needs to be Better at asking for, there needs to be met.

Maybe the other person needs to develop more an awareness of what the other person needs. Of course, we all seem to have intrinsically wish that things would just happen for us without that the need to request them or ask them. But i'm realizing again that all of that is is distracting commotion because that's not really what's going on.

What what's really going on, IT seems, is that the engine behind communication, the engine behind curiosity, a desire to learn and know and create something from that learning and knowing in the relationship. The general drive is really what's the issue where the lack of general drive in any of those conversations IT seems one could circle back to that. And okay, well, someone's not asking the right questions and therefore not doing the right things because they don't they have a sense of agency or they don't have gratitude for the situation they're in, including their own ability to do that, right? So when you hear you know, people aren't showing up for the relationship.

They're not showing up or know she's not showing up. Or again, let's make the pan stand going in the other direction that you know that somebody just wants a lot of attention, I think just need an excess amount of attention, won't let me do my own thing, but also wants me to work and be successful. You again, these are stereotypes, but all of that seems very distracting. However, all of IT seems far simpler if we push IT through this filter of generated drives and whether not it's being expressed.

Yes, yes, I I think maybe the best example of this, because it's so highly charged, is imagine that the pleasure drive through the lens of sex and sexuality, right? So imagine that people are in a pairing. They're in a relationship because of how they got there.

We're taking people in a relationship and one has A A sex drive with which means an interest in sex and maybe, uh, proclivities for a diversity of sexual experience that say if we just for sake of this example, we put on the one to ten that that person is too okay. Now I was said the other person in the tending the greatest, yeah, tell me, right, that person is a two. Now let's say the partner is an eight.

Okay, so so there's a big mismatch there. You think how does that Normally go? The two days are two, the eight days in eight, and things don't go well, right?

Equate friction in the relationship at a minimum. IT blows the relationship apart at a maximum. The person whose that too feels inadequate often IT means that always right. But, but this is how the soft goes. Person who is too feels inadequate because a person who's in eight once either more or different, right, and the person is is, is too doesn't now that person feels bad and naming feel bad about themselves, a resenting of the person with a higher sex drive, the person on the higher level feels now presented with the person.

The lower level, maybe they feel like there's something wrong with them because they're sex rives to hire or they have an interest that, that the other person doesn't have and they start labeling themselves like this happens all the and IT doesn't change most of the time and the problems are enormous. okay. So so let's see, how could that look? How would that look with really high generation drives and and therefore the ability to think about self, to think about others and to think about the us.

Of the situation, right? The two people together, right? So they will be able to talk about IT in ways that wouldn't be faulting of the other.

And we acknowledge what's inside of them like the person with the lower drive. You say no things doesn't strike me as more interesting. Don't think about IT more.

They could talk about all of that. The person who wishes more or wishes different could talk about that too. Writing could talk about what they feel inside.

There's a frustration of that, just like the person with a lower sex drive. Ve could talk about that how frustrating IT feels to feel pressured, right? So what are they developing? They are mentalizing.

They're thinking about each other is emotional states and and they're coming at each other through agency and gratitude like i'm so grateful for you. We were the examples of these people are partners and they're happy with their partnership. Like all my god, i'm so grateful I found you, but they would each feel that way.

I'm so grateful you in my life. Like this happens to right. And then from that lends, you know, the two isn't onna become in eight.

The eight isn't onna become a two, right? But in general, in situations like this, there can be somewhere in the middle, right? Let's say the two, you know, babies, okay, you know what? I can get out of my comfort zone a little bit.

Why don't most people try that? Because they feel embarrassed, they feel self conscious. They don't want to try new things or try more. People get closed down because they're such shame around sexuality. You you think people in any spectrum of sexuality and you will find shame, you know not in every person but across whatever population we're looking at because it's so emotionally charged, or let's say, in a loving, caring relationship like that person feels the freedom inside said, you know, that maybe I could enjoy sex a little more, a little more often, a little more invite that person thinks about like somebody who's IT too can then move that to a different place, you know, a little bit more or maybe even a lot more depending. And then the person who's at the higher level, you know, at the eight, doesn't need another eight right order to say in a relationship.

But but something may be more than a two, right and they're say they come into the middle and then the person whose in eight realizes like, look, I love you and you love me and and you you add your comfort home, right in order to do this and like and low and it's like more fun for both of us so like, you know it's okay, my higher sex all deal with that that maybe just making IT up like I would like to do IT three times a week were doing you taught to, okay, you know, that's fine. Both sides can live with IT, but IT is not freed bear so like, well, they can live with its like no number one, they can live with IT number two, it's Better. It's Better, right? The two at one point was thinking, hey, anything more than a two is I can do that right? Shut down on the eight.

Is one anything less than the eight? Now there in the middle, in the relationship is closer. That's a real that happens. What is IT relying upon its relying upon the general drive as they open a sibling to communicate. Maybe the person who's an eight, say, has the sexual procurement very embarrassed about that happens all the time too.

But in the sense of acceptance of self and and the belief in the strength of the relationship, in the acceptance of the other, you know, people can breach things most people who feel like, or I could never breach that it's not something bizarre or dangerous like. It's not something that in a relationship that's that's defined by the general drive, the other person is likely to reject. So let's define our relationships through the generative drive, and let's cultivate itself and others the most generative drive.

If somehow less a personal a in person b here, because is a matter who's the and who's the two has cultivated more of a generation drive, then maybe that person could give more to the other before that person can give back to them. We have these, I think, is completely non central ideas about mutuality, right? The idea that even in a situation that's supposed to be defined by love, right, and friendship is a form of love, right? So friendship um a collaborative uh, endeavor, right? They like these.

They have they have some affection in them, right? Friendship can have love and often does. And let's say the love of of romance that there's supposed to be some equality, right? Know the idea that, well, i'm going to give something, I want you to give something to IT is not good if one person is always doing the giving, things are at a baLance, but IT is very healthy to be able to say, you know, if I can give something and you're not in a place to give something, let me just give something to you.

Hey, people don't always or maybe don't often depend on how we want to look at IT give to others with a sense of free, like, and you don't own me anything either, right? why? Because IT comes from love.

IT comes from the abundance, the, the, the access of goodness in me coming through the, the, the agency that I feel, the graduate that I feel. Then what's more likely, you're much more likely the other person, right, to sort of feel like I can go. Even when you feel stronger, you feel empowered making someone feel worse or saying, you know, I can give you something, but you tell me something back, right?

Even if that tasted right, you know, I can give you this now, but you know that the other person can end up doing the laundry for two months or so, like, it's not okay when I just give something right, you're giving goodness, and then the other person actually gets the goodness, and they're more likely to find IT within themselves, right? To then come a little, a lot of their comfort zone developed. You move their generation drive a little bit forward.

So so gifts given to others with no expectation of return, or gifts abundant. So a gifts that arrive from the general rive, and they make us more general. Think about the opposite.

What often happens. Each person makes other feel guilty, right? right? Oh, this person wants you want so much.

And look, you are, again, like people feel terrible about that or there you don't want any sex. So this is that the other person feels terrible. Like that's why the two states, the two in the eight says the eight.

right. But IT doesn't ough to be that way. And it's also not that if both end up in the dd, both are of five that that some compromise position that implies less. No, that's the compromise physician that makes more.

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If you'd like to try eight sleep, you can go to eight sleep dotcom slash huberman to save up to one hundred and fifty dollars off their pod. Three cover. Eight sleep currently ships in the USA, canada, U. K. Select countries in the eu. And australia. Again, that eight sleep dot com slash huberman, based on my understanding of the general drive, the aggressive also, we're calling the proactive this drive and the pleasure drive and the importance of the general drive being greater than the aggressive or pleasure drives. I can also see the potential problem of having like two eight along the casual desire scale or two nine um or two tens and actually have observed a lot of examples of this um for instance, if they are, let's take two lines.

There are both people nine, nine, ten on on the joy and sort quality for sex adventure sex at that on very high on the pleasure scale, perhaps even so much so that they don't pay attention to where one person doesn't pay attention to the critical need for points of compatibility to be met, like the desire to somebody have a family. I've known couples like this. They're together for a long time.

They seem to really enjoy one another. I know nothing of their sex lives, but there just seems to be a very strong attachment around certain forms of pleasure that they both enjoy engaging in. So this could be activities or travel. I mean, here we're saying your nine I ve ten on on the sex scale, but in many of those cases, there's one person saying you but I want have a family someday and they're just not into that or perhaps even like but he won't leave his wife. They are involved in something that feels really good.

They're matching along some set pleasured drive, but completely overlooking the larger goals of one or both people, right? And you know, here I pointed to an instance of infidelity that's its own, you know, issues with morals and set a, but you see this a lot like people really oriented towards what feels good and who feels good to be with. And that, of course, is healthy. But that's not the entire picture.

So would you say that what i'm describing is an example of where the pleasure drive has overcome the general drive? Because in the case of somebody wanting a family and the other person already having one and being unwilling to leave that one other person not wanting a family, that the the general drive of the the person who who wants a family is is not being respected. It's or it's being undermined by this access desire for pleasure like they're just drawn into the moment and the the amazing weekends and there.

But this person's is incredible and they're charismatic. And I can't tell you how many times that friends say that if they are, they admire the person they're with, but they know the relationship can work because of all these other underlying issues. right?

right? It's it's interesting. We we both over estimate and underestimate what say love can do, right? Because all love can do anything.

Now, if I spill that glass, love not going to put the water back in IT, right? If I must live in north amErica and my partner must live in south america, like we're not going to be OK right? So we say these things in a very wishful way lovel overcome.

Everything like this doesn't overcome that, right? Or maybe IT does in the right circumstances. So think about is the generative drive is very, very high, right in both people.

So both people have say, a strong need took living a certain place. They can find a compromise position. Maybe they live half the year in north amErica and half in south america.

But why? Because in that situation, the love between them, the which, which is the general drive in the relationship, right? So what does that mean? The first person has have a strong general drive, be healthy understanding that even though, like, I need to live in north america.

Doit, does that actually mean that I really need to live in north america, right? I have to be able to see beyon myself. And what does that mean to the person I love who needs to live on the other side of the world, if the other person can do that too, then in the relationship, right, which is a new entity, right, IT emerges from one person and the other.

You can know everything about one person, everything about the other. You don't know about the two of them together, right? So the two of them together are us. And if that us has a strong general drive, which I can if if each person has a strong general drive, they can bring to the state of emergence of the us, the generative drive, and that the working Better relationships as they, the love between them, and they can find a way through. So the idea that I love cures all things that we just find.

What does that actually mean, right? IT doesn't mean we've a lot of pleasure together, right? Or we like a lot of the same things like that, not what that means.

And people can very, very much love one another, but not be aware of the limitations inside of them, right? Because maybe there are other things going on in them, like a childhood trauma. They love one another, but they can't get out of.

They are comfort zone enough, right? So the point is, if we make ourselves as healthy as we can be, and then two cells come together that are making themselves as healthy as they can be, then the us, between them really can fit that definition of of love and do anything. But we have to define that in the right way, in a way that honors the truth, which again, is not a higher degree of complexity. It's actually more simple.

So you gave an example of a romantic relationship where one person has a strong sex drive in the other a weaker drive. And then we talked about an example where both people have a essentially high sex drive and where that could potentially be beneficial, assuming that the generation of drive is also high in both of them. And we also explore a little bit of how IT can be bad for relationship if IT exceeds the general drive.

What about the aggressive, proactive veness drive? How does that show up in romantic parents know if one person has a high proactive veness A K aggressive drive and the other person does not, what does that look like? And do you see that often in your .

clinical practice? Sure, sure. If this makes sense, maybe we look at that example of the person who are two and the person who's a aid on the on the sex dry scale, right? You would say, okay, the person who's a two who's trying to to raise that right has a strong general drive.

What does that mean? The person thinks, you know what? I think I can do this.

I can set myself about this. I see I will make my relationship Better. I am going to give you a try. That's a general driving action. The pleasure drive. The person may look at that and say, look, maybe this can be more fun for me, right? Like, has not been that fun for me.

If I have a low pleasure drive, could I start enjoying this more? And then maybe that moves up, right? Or maybe have a higher pleasure drive, but it's not been I could have that, that would be open and honest, like let me see if I can make that Better.

Then what's active, what the person is doing, is then going to the aggressive or assertive proactive right to that drive and going to the potential in that drive and mining some of what's in IT. Like yeah how i'm going to do that, i'm going to bring myself to bear, right? And like that's not an easy thing is not like that person, then all the sudden decides to be more sexual, right?

There has to be a lot of communication between the two people, a lot of discussion of what what's setting might be best for that, what helps the person feel understood to feel more comfortable. There's a lot than to do there. And the person may even need to go back to the pillars, right? Because the person may feel, wow, I don't think I can do that, right? And that is, that's not good.

I want to do that, right? What is IT that I can do? There's a realization there. And then maybe the person who's an aid because they're so well connected gets IT. Okay, you can do that like let me support you right in whatever way while you're figuring that out because they're both general. If they want to figure that out now.

that would start to interpret when you say you go back to the pillars, you can go back to expLoring the structure of themselves and the function of themselves so that they can, for instance, get some insight into what sorts of defensive mechanisms might be in place, what they're paying attention to or their behaviors like maybe even health related behaviors that could be impacting their sex drive, but but maybe even things that um resided at a deeper level. The unconscious mind know talking to somebody till they make A A connection around shame or or or some story that they've integrated into their thinking at a subconscious level.

right? Just an example. I see a lot is avoidance where get not always, but let's say the person with.

Who's the two on the sex drive scale? Who finds, like, I can't do IT right? Well, I can.

I just can't bring myself to do IT right. And then they go back and they explore, this happens. This happens a lot where there's avoidance.

And then we get curious about the avoidance, like because the person is like I just do something, just I don't want to do that, right? okay. So there's avoidance. We identify avoidance.

We also identify that is not healthy because the person does actually want to do that because it's good for the relationship and IT could be good for them too. And then maybe we start looking at unconscious mind right, or conscious mind right. And maybe we don't find because it's it's easy. Now if I said, oh, there is a major trauma that the person doesn't process, sometimes it's that but a lot of times it's not that, you know maybe that person just never learn to feel comfortable with sexuality or maybe the way that they experience or or are attracted to sexuality was disparaged.

They are denigrated, right? Or they they had some bad feeling about because the society and the culture told them that or maybe they had a couple bad experiences where they were treated in a certain way and then say, okay, that person comes by that honestly, there's not a major trauma there. In fact, unfortunately, there's a trauma.

It's almost predictable from the where society has been structured so person can go look at I like, right, like I never, I never learned how to do this, how to be comfortable with this, or you know what, I learned that i'm not good at IT or I I learned that no one will enjoy IT with me. But but that's not true. Like these are situation not only decide of a loving relationship right now, that person is able to bring that knowledge to bear, whether IT came from the unconscious mind or the conscious mind.

And then that's how you work to start shifting things like that was then this is now right. IT is not then when, say, the person said in high school had a sexuality that others didn't approve of and made them feel bad, well, guess what? It's not then and like, that's unfortunate.

It's wrong. It's unjust working to honor and validate all that that is. But we're also going to look at that.

That was then, this is now. And you get to behave differently now. You're an adult now.

And I also get to choose the relationship and you choose a good relationship, right? So so this is the kind of thing that can they can get that person to the point where they can go back up through. Now what happens at the end of IT, the guys are is stronger.

There is more agency, there's more of a sense of gratitude, right? why? Because the person can attach themselves more to, i'm so lucky to have this person as opposed to, but I wish that person didn't have a higher sex drive, right? So the person and they feel Better about themselves instead of what's wrong with me that I don't have a higher sex drive, wish you other person at a lower sex drive and we should they had a higher sex drive that's not grateful, like i'm grateful I am who I am and that I have any sex drive at all.

And i'm grateful for this other person now through through that like that change, right? They can go back and Better access the assertion, the the the proactive drive, the aggressive drive, whatever we want to call because they've taken away, they've gones and work through the barrier to IT, then they're able to be a little more out of the comfort zone and the the other person meets them there, right? And and they start having this, this, this healthy thing between them, where the us, that is them, the love between them gets Better, right? And then where do they find themselves? That's how they get to the five, which is not a compromise between eight and two that satisfies neither IT is a compromise between eight and two that is way Better for both and for the relationship.

I'm curious about common pairings that you observe in the clinical setting um and not to focus on the bad, but if there are common parents that rarely lead to a good outcome, I think it's worth us learning about those simply because they're common and they lead to a bad outcome. And a discussion of this sort could potentially help people avoid such parents, or at least recognized that they are in such parents.

And I realize, of course, because of the way that we're framing things during the series, that any time we talk about a pairing, we're really talking about two maps coming together, forming a new and someone independent map that represents the relationship. I have to assume that many people in the world have maps that are very, very healthy, and their believe in those rare individuals that don't need to go into those covers that reside within structure or self and function itself and do any work. But I was sad for those who there just listening and not watching. I'm sort smiling as i'm saying that because I don't actually believe any such person exists. I think all of us, even the healthiest among us, could be even healthier and express more general drive and more positivity for ourselves and for the world.

Will we to do that work? So it's it's a life point to that's beautiful. We can do that forever as long as .

we're here and should yeah I do believe right, which is one of the reasons for having this discussion none's. I I have to imagine that there are also a lot of people out there, perhaps most people who still have a lot of work to do. And those words a lot perhaps, are in bold face capital, underline, highlighted letters, right? And as a consequence, we see relationships in the world that are not healthy. What are some of those common unhealthy parents? I think it's worth spending at least a little .

bit of time on this. Yeah yeah. As we talk about this, I think that we should make a sort of somewhat simplify, but hopefully helpful distinction, right? So there are people who are coming at coupling from primarily health, right? And again, this isn't to criticize people who aren't coming at IT from primarily health.

We we all want to get to where we're coming at anything and everything from primarily health. And there a lot of the problems are those simple things like why I can't believe I didn't work out um I play the trumpet and he plays the clinic no, that wasn't a real set of factors. That's why I didn't work, alec.

It's more in that realm. It's not always just like like that kind of stuff is a big factor, right? When we look in the other room where where there's a significantly problematic mental health issues, right, which which people come by honestly, but need to face if life is going to get Better.

There are two common paradigms there. There way more than two ways this can happen. But i'm gna highlight too that we see a lot and maybe more than anything else in the in the clinical setting.

So the first gets called repetition compulsion, right? But don't be very, very clear. I do not believe that there is any such thing as a repetition compulsion.

A compulsion is something that one cannot control. What's going on inside the person is very, very complicated when they're making decisions that lead to repeating the cycle. And those are things that can change right and do not have to be compulsive.

So people are often struck by why a person is in the same bad relationship, seemingly that they have always been named, but with A A different name on the other person, right? I I mean, people will say this like it's that persons forth abusive relationship in a row. And IT seems to be just the same person with a different name like that.

People say that a lot. They say that about themselves. They say that about others. And it's very, very bad falling. I mean, you, when people often bit in my office, is very upset about that, like a realizing the repeating and they don't know and it's frightening. And you know you can get a lot of of fear and vulnerability from that.

But there is a way of understanding is that because are are the olympic system right? The emotional part of our minds don't care about the clock in the calendar, right? So drammen impacts, we impacts the whole brain, but trauma impacts olympic system IT create strong negative emotion that then stays with us regardless of time.

IT doesn't care about time. So imagine our person getting a relationship and the relationship started to become abusive, right? Mean, it's easy to say that and then move on to something else.

What's that like for that person? What does that feel like when in that person who they may have seen as a protector of friend, right IT, is now cursy of them, denigrating them, pushing them, hitting them, mean it's terrifying, horrible, right? So there's a deep impact, the traumatic impact on the person.

And a lot of the time, most of the time, like all trauma, IT triggers shame. I said, trauma triggers shame in us. If the trauma is strong enough, IT changes us as we move forward in the world, and then we are different in a way that makes the past very immediate in the present.

So what the person that is trying to do, and there's been a lots of thought about this over the years, the fields to trying to understand this, and I think in many ways, doing a good job of understanding this, that the court and quote, repetition compulsion, is that the drive, and I don't mean drive like we're saying, there's a push inside the person to try and make that right with the idea that if that person can be in that situation again, right and I don't mean the exact situation when someone raises a hand to them, but they can navigate a relationship because like they thought this was a good idea of the first time. So don't want to feel like that was a very bad idea. So i'm going to make IT right and then i'm going to be OK and i'm going to be whole right, because the person is driven by fear and vulnerability and the shame of the trauma, right?

So then they're trying to make IT, right, because because olympic system doesn't care about the clock of the calendar. If you can make IT right now, you make IT right in the past, right? Because that system doesn't care about the past driven by trauma till in the persons trying to figure out something that is different, trying to choose that person, behave in the relationship, they're trying to make things different.

But they've selected for a dramatically high protest probability of the same thing happening again, which is why, you know, if I could count the number of times that someone has said to me, oh, you're not going to help me, especially at the beginnings of there, but there's no way you can help me, right? My last. But five relationships were totally terrible, like there's no way, there's no hope, right? People have said that to me.

Someone has last three, the last five, the last nine. And I will say back, if you tell me seven different stories of relationships with seven pretty different people, several different relationships as they evolved in the same really bad outcome, all agree with you, but you're not going to tell me that. And that's why there is hope.

And no one has ever told me seven different stories. I feel like, wow, you you just can't do IT right now. And again, even if there were seven, i'm saying saying for exaggeration but there but there aren't right is what is IT the same thing seven times? That's what IT is because the person is repeating.

And if they can understand the what in the why, why are they selecting? How are they selecting someone, what's going on inside of them? We go back to the structure of self, the function yourself.

We address what is there then that absolutely can change. And then what will we talk about? Is that person then goes out to find another relationship, even if they said they never, never, never went again.

Like making the decision to go is to say what relationship if you're looking for your second is the first one seven times, no harm, no fail. But you can navigate the second because they are in a different place. They are coming through agency and gratitude instead of generating themselves.

If you're what's wrong with me, what's wrong with everybody else, i'm here, right? Even though like some bad things have happened to me, look at what I can bring myself to bear. I can go out there and try and find someone I can see with clear vision. Now there's agency, there's gratitude, and then that person can go out and find relationship. Number two, that's a really good one.

In the example you gave, its very powerful and also very extreme, you know, an abusive relationship where someone is sadly getting hit or know screamed out. You often times this seems people end up in repeated unsuccessful pais, meaning unhappy pairings of maybe someone who is like very strongly assertive. Maybe we would say have a strong, aggressive drive.

Some people might even call them a narrow ist that phrases thrown around a lot these days. I mean, narses gas lighting like projection. These phrases were thrown around all the time, I think with Frankly, very little understanding of what they actually mean unless they're coming from qualified. Is IT the case that, you know, somewhat passive or submissive people are drawn to narsisi are narcissa drawn to submit ve people. I think these questions ring a lot of people's mind.

If I could clarify something that I think I maybe could set in a clear way.

You point IT out at the example, I was a very strong, an extreme one, right? So as a physician, I think I naturally gravity to the extreme circumstances, because they're the ones that bring the greatest risk, right? But we are talking to people in those settings, right? But but most people are not in those extreme settings, right? But that extreme serves as a model for how things that are less extreme can happen.

So when I think, right, we're sitting here talking to everyone across the spectrum and most relationships that are not going well, thank goodness, are not going to be that extreme with the repeated patterns are going na be that extreme. But it's just as important to pay attention to a pattern where one person really is to have more differently tie than they would like to be to the other than is comfortable to them and they're seeking someone ultimately who's just a little bit more assertive. And that's not some disaster.

But I can not go well over time where that person slowly gives up, say more and more of themselves and and there can be that repeated pattern where people say, yeah, that was a pretty good to pretty equal at the beginning but then you, I just said, like lesson less of a say or every or so then more and more like I became the whole relationship, right? So it's no less important when it's less dramatic, right? Because the relationships so goes in the wrong way. When it's more dramatic, there's more risk, of course, but most people are going to be in the less dramatic but but super important category. And I think it's important to did to point out to point that out too.

how much of what we're talking about is nested on people's deep, perhaps understandable desire to just make sure that the other person doesn't leave. Mean, I can't tell you how many times i've heard about or observed relationships that from the outside that seemed really unhealthy. But IT also occurred to me that people are doing things on both sides of the relationship that ensure that the other person doesn't leave.

So i'm not talking about a physical trapping of someone in the environment. I matching talking about the opposite. I'm talking about somebody going against their Better judgment, right, and doing things for the other person or against themselves or both, perhaps even in the context of what looks like healthy family, like doing excessive amount of of of raising our children or excessive amount of of work to support the family simply to ensure that the other person doesn't leave.

Right, right here again, we can look across the spectrum, right? So before this, you have talked about relationships that can be very unhealthy, like a narcissist person. And how can those relationships developed? It's important that we we touch on that in the context of this because that sort of extreme example.

So people who are a narcissist, meaning a narcissist character structure. Now we're getting into the realm of significant psychiatric problems, and people who are in arctic stic are exploitive, right? There are bottom less pit of need arising from vulnerability.

And yes, they can be helped. And someone out there thinks i'm cystic and not trying to be negative mean, like you can get help and you can be Better. That's the whole point of what you and I talking about here.

So people can change, but but someone who's coming at the world through a narcissa character structure is exploitive of the other, and then can say, survey a room and find that person whose that trauma such as that person is, can be desperate not to leave a relationship and then they can explain that person and often behave in awful ways in the other person won't leave. Now i'm giving an examples, is not the case that case that way every, no, every single time. But that's the dominant, that's the dominant picture.

If you have an artist stic person, and who is that person more likely to pair with? And then you sense the vulnerability, the the desire for the other person not to leave. So and that person would have to have been significant problems in themselves, like a potential instead of a pathological level of nursing ism, a pathological level of dependence, for example.

So we're in the realm then of of real problems. And again, real problems can be treated and real problems can be improved. That's why we have clinical care.

But IT can also serve as a model for seeing the ways that are that are less dramatic, right? So so there are many people who, through the desire for the other person not to leave, and we could call that attachment and security right? And and maybe if we leave away the stereotype version of IT, right, the person doesn't feel securely attached to the other person, right?

And and somewhere inside of them, they've learned that if they're more pleasing, right, if they give up little part of themselves, that person won't leave, right? IT might be because that's why their mother didn't leave their father when they think about IT. IT might be that's why their father left their mother because their mother wouldn't do that.

But whatever IT may be or may be their own prior life experience, or who knows something they read but forgot, I mean, usually it's something more sAiling IT. Not always, but they've internalize something that leads to a compromise of the self. Now again, all that's not what attachment insecurity is, right? Attachment insecurity is just feeling some insecurity about the attachment.

So for example, I feel attachment insecurity about just about everything, right? I've had the experience of of sudden, very painful losses happening, right? So I have attachment insecurity in the sense that i'm worried, I anxious about people going away.

I, you know, want to over control like I, but I recognize this inside myself. I try and do my best to say, I don't want that to make me unhealthy. I want to recognize that.

I want to find some happy medium where I honor that in me, but don't get Carried away with IT to the point where I try and over control. And then I pushed my relationships, all right. So I say that because there's such a contrast between that kind of attachment insecurity, which can involve over control, right, and the kind of attachment and security that can involve compromise at the self.

So and we want to be very, very careful, like we want be careful like what does a thumbs and what does that mean? We want to be careful what is attachment and security and what does that mean? A certain kind of attachment insecurity can lead a person to make progressive compromises of self that are not good and healthy for them. I'm curious .

about some of these unhealthy relationships from the other side, meaning from the side of the person who is, let's hope not, but in some cases is exploited or who's being taken advantage of, or in the scenario of an arctic stic person or abusive person, is the one whose taking the abuse often IT seems the victim in that scenario will be truly stuck in that situation. They can't leave for financial reasons, or kids or their own internal workings.

Their psychological machinery has them locked into that in some way. And it's that locked in by psychological machinery that i'm interested in. And I think a lot of people are interested in because from the outside, we just look at that, say, you know, why doesn't the person leave? Why don't they just leave? But clearly, there's something about that situation that court and quote works for them and my works for them.

I don't mean that it's adaptive. Clearly it's more adaptive, but that works for them. The possibility I raised earlier perhaps is relevant here. Maybe IT works for them because they know that the get some sort of internal reward for engaging this kind of dynamic and therefore won't leave, and the other person not leaving is a more value to them than feeling safe.

Even I is training one former safety for another, or perhaps the victim, as were calling them in this scenario is somebody who feels a great sense of reward by serving somebody more powerful than them. A this raises all sorts of interesting questions, perhaps about power dynamics as well, which I certainly questions about. But what are some examples of the internal workings of such a person that reside within those bans of structure itself, function himself, that would put someone into that sort of situation and lead them to stay in that kind of situation?

yes. Well, any situation like that, if it's, as you say, working for a person, which at times you we see that from the outside because like things continue to go along and things continue to go forward. But if that only works for someone, if they don't have the understanding, the empowerment that we would wish for anyone and everyone to have.

So what is going on inside leads that person to feel A A sense of an inability to change, you know, whether they can see their way out of IT or they they kind of could but could never navigate to IT. And that is there is a problem there. If that's working for someone, right, because we're talking about something that's exploitive, right? That's abusive regardless of how it's abusive.

And I think I believe that can only happen in the context of being demoralized, right, or the circumstances of being so disempowered right. Know if someone just can go ten feet from home like their situations of outrageous amounts of oppression right, of a person where where the person just cannot choose differently. And the the situations where where we as stewards of all of us, will the government make intervened.

For example, I right that someone would come in and help that person, but boring that kind of outlier. A person would only be in that situation in the context of being demoralized. And that demoralization would come from too low, a drive for assertion being proactive aggression, right? That that drive its realization is too low.

And if we give people the understanding and we give them they hope, that means they don't have to stay in abusive situations like we see this in situations where our society will intervene, someone helpful intervene, some person or entity will intervene and help a person to help that person to understand what's going on inside of them. That leads them to feel that things can be Better, they can do Better or they're not worse, Better or whatever that may be, and help them to find the empowerment to then navigate themselves out of the situation. And and here again, I think it's not just agency, but its agency plus gratitude, including gratitude for having a self that could leave a situation when people are in situations like that.

No, we talk about people is beaten down. You know it's it's a way to kind of capture like what I think that feels like and how much suffering there is in those situations to be in that place and to not have the agency to get out of IT and the person is not feeling a sense of gratitude for self, right? They feel so bad about self that there's nothing to be grateful for, right? And there is so much to be grateful for, right? And we can go through any person in the situation like that, and we can list wonderful things about that person, adaptive things about that person, kind things about that person, diligent things.

There are things like that in every person. But if the person can see that, they can attach to that, they can have the agency and gratitude, then they stay in a situation that is really defined by the agency and gratitude. And therefore, without aggressive as a proactive drive being expressed at such a low level.

I can see how a healthy relationship could exist in relative isolation, not complete isolation. no. And here again, i'm referring your thinking about romantic relationship because a healthy romantic relationship could exist in relative isolation you know um a few friends, some contact with family members or in great connectivity with friends and family neighbors etta and still be a really great romantic relationship. I can also see how the sorts of relationships that we haven't be focusing on at this moment, which of these unhealthy dynamics, or made far a worse by lack of connectivity to outsiders. In fact, previous guest on this podcast with David boss was a professor. Evolutionary psychology down, you receive texas Austin and talked about some of these research into the dark triad these are narcissist macello an sometimes also sociopathic how that plays out in romantic relationships and it's a terrible thing but an important thing to understand um given the unfortunate frequency that that occurs but one of the things that I remembers so clearly from that discussion with uh David boss was that even when there isn't sociopathy or a strong desire to destroy the other that in the sorts of relationships there's often an attempt to isolated the person um you know first by isolating from their family um also from friends and co workers but all with the goal of convincing that person that no one else would want them as a way to make them quote on, quote voluntarily stay in other words, to undermine their their sense of safety, to ramp up their sense of anxiety except in the presence of that individual. Um and you I am remembering that now because we're talking about why wouldn't somebody just leave why wouldn't they just tap into that agency and gratitude it's clear that the the oppressor in this kind of relationship um has a real incentive to try to undermine agency and gratitude because of course, with those they would be revealed for what they are and the person would feel unable to leave taking us back once again to the critical need to cultivate agency and gratitude not just in unhealthy but certainly unhealthy relationships .

and I think the the principle here is that darkness always favors the oppressor. So the oppressor wishes for darkness. So you want to isolate that person or right? Because when people see that things are Better for someone else, they realize things can be Better, right?

When people are told by someone that they're worthwhile, they're funny or they're pretty or their smart to whatever the case, because they may take that inside right now, they may take inside, oh, maybe I am, you know, i'm handsome and smart. Maybe they start thinking about that. They are very basic concepts that that allow a person to entertain new ways to look at themselves.

So the person whose impressing wants that person to live in darkness, they don't want them to sea that there can be Better. They don't want them to be directly told that they're Better than how things are. And that same darkness on the outside, say, the lighter out around the relationship is the goal of the oppressor on the inside.

And again, the person may know this and be doing IT conscious ly, but often this gets played out an unconscious way, like the constant demigod of someone. A person isn't saying inside course, i'm trying to reduce the the agency, the aggressive drive really down to zero, right? But that's what they're doing somewhere inside.

There's a knowing of that even if it's an unconscious knowing. And then what the impact of that kind of abuse over time is a lower and lower and lower ability to bring oneself to bear less proactive, aggressive, assertive, lower center of agency and gratitude. That's really the definition of being demoralized, right? And that kind of abuse is always promoting demoralization, because demoralization is the darkness on the inside, right, just as nv is too right.

Demoralization is a form of darkness on the inside. Envy is no less dark. Envy may be a lot more active, right? But in in both cases, there's no knowledge, there's no growth, there's no wisdom, there's no learning, right? So there are the states of darkness, and and what can happen in a way it's who is so tragic to think about, as you often can have an an abuser, an oppressor, who is living in total darkness hinseth they living through the lens of envy.

And then you can have a person who is being oppressed, who is being exploited, who is living in darkness, but they are living in the darkness of demobilization ation. And now that's a very sad thing to say, to imagine. And it's been a very sad thing to see, right? If if you do clinical psychic, you are for long enough, you see a lot of this.

And IT doesn't have to be this way. Now even the people who are impressing have IT within them the majority of time to make things Better. And we do see that. I took care of a man a long time ago who had been terribly abusive to his family, and he was always unclear to me that happened years before that that, like, he just understood. And again, I never understood, like what happened that that he he got IT and and the man really made change.

Like, I don't know what the circumstances that made that motivation in him, but he went back and looked at himself, and he went back and looked at how his father oppressed and terrorized the family, and how he just did IT with automatically, right? Because what I was rooted in his own fear of vulnerability, and he's going to lose family and not be a man anymore unless he oppresses them, like he recognized all of IT in him. And he had changed IT so dramatically, he had removed himself and the family system.

And when I got to know, that was years later, and he was reintegrating back in to the system because they'd been such prolong change. And he had communicated to the family his understanding of self. So, so it's not impossible leaving someone who is abusing, oppressing, coming through a narcissist character structure there.

There's no therapist nihilism here, right? Things can change and things can change in the oppressor, which isn't excusing that, right? I mean, a person who is doing things is is morally culpable, right? They, after a criminally, legally culpable for so that is all true, just as the ability to change is true.

And then the person we think about more commonly in the situation, of course, is the person who's being oppressed. And there can be changed there too. But a problem is how hard IT can be that the impact of the isolation right, and also the death of resources to really help people.

An actual true story of a woman who I believe with all my heart could get out of the second abusive situation he was in. If SHE had a corporate or SHE a corporation or right, she's a car, the car in function, SHE had a place to go, right, that the were others wouldn't know that that he was there. And the problem was just a few hundred to change.

The carbon was like, there's no place to go. There's no resources as we as a society don't help people. Now maybe that someone helped that woman and got a corporators and he drove away, right? IT shows how we can bring ourselves to bear as a society to offer people help, which sometimes is like the lifetime the person needs.

And any, or maybe that person, you really needs a safe house, or something very dramatic when you need a corporators to get away from being terrorized. But a lot of times that your community support structures, right, good structures around people, in communities that can offer them support, and situations that may be less dramatic opportunities for interconnection, which sometimes people can find through social venues or through religiously affiliated venues. But the idea that community support systems on all levels make a huge difference, that's how there's another level right beyond the relationship, right, is the society. It's the culture, right? And that's how we, on the next level of emergence beyond the individual relationships, can Foster goodness and Foster health in each and every one of us.

How do some of these same dynamics play out in non romantic relationships? So for instance, in the workplace, I was wind in academic laboratories. So what's most familiar to me are gosh unfortunate numerous examples where people working in laboratories not the same as mine because i've been very fortunate of amazing benevolent mentors corky and uh outrageous at times, but benevent lent nonetheless.

But others around me have been in laboratories wherefor us since the the workload was just ridiculously high like the demand far exceeded what any person could do. And if somebody had got a bit of cold or um children like that, he was near impossible to impossible that they could meet the standard there. Or stress dynamics of pressure cooker ami s that um made IT IT, anyone would call a toxic environment.

You see this also in law firms, you see IT in companies. You IT in families, you IT in friendship circles, right? I mean, how many movies are about teens, uh, oppressing one another through bullying and ridicule and and practical jokes that are anything but funny, right, that are down, right, destruct, okay, and on and on. And so often the victims in these cases, if it's not a hollywood movie, feel as if that's their only choice because um to leave is to essentially have no other options, right it's not that that's the only option is to states that to leave is essentially to leave science um because these people in positions of power have the loud of voice they have the mega one, they write the letters recommendation, the law firms, people talk and in as I you know, kind of spur this out in a long form question and realizing I can think of a single exception, like as long as they are going to be people interacting and people talking about their interactions and people in positions of power, this sort of dynamic is going to take place.

right? If so, any time you have a closed system without accountability, you just rolling the dice for that kind of oppression, right? We need accountability.

Think about theoretically what should have happened there, right? There should be higher order accountability, right? Whether it's in a company or university or wherever IT may be, there should be higher order accountability that is reasonable and rational.

So it's not then acting in a top dow way that would be overcontrolling. Are you doing exactly what you can can say or what you can can't do? And so that is just there's too much radiation ity. They can be an active top down. But that the problem runs both ways.

If there's no accountability from the bottom up, then that person is just simply stuck, right? why? Because the system we've put into place has failed, right? And this is where we're talking now about, not just individual relationship with two people relationships, but now we start talking about systems of people.

And systems of people are another level of emergence with with a personality, so to speaking, an environment of their own. You can know everything there is to know about each person in the system. You don't know about the system, but what you do know is that accountability is necessary.

I mean, probably if we added up all the examples in history, no, we'd have to talk about them over a thousand years. But I mean, how many examples do we have? That close systems without accountability are just rolling the dice.

They breed oppression. This this is true. And i've been at several different places. I I am not try to implicate this any one place, first is another, but I was part of a medical treatment team. So this is a higher article.

Medical treatment team of seven people will give a take one heading upon the circumstances where there was physical abuse going on. The treatment team, this is true and and i'm not i'm not saying this in some exaggerated manner where somebody brushed up too close to someone and they slip no hurting someone on the treatment team, right? Two different people who are being hurt by someone senior.

So so this is using a major university in a clinical setting, right? It's not it's not to be on and do, but you think about the alleged sophistication of the people in the system, the alleged empowerment of the people in the situation, which did not put a stop to that. So we need to have accountability.

The accountability has to be reasonable. IT doesn't mean over control, but IT doesn't mean under control either. And that person is being overworked, as you described, with no way of winning or harmed on on a medical team.

And there's no way that that that person can change that the system has failed that person and fill them dramatically. And guess who suffers? Everyone does, right? That person suffers.

And the science that's being done or the medical care that's being provided is important to all of us. Anyone could be the patient who who is being taken care of by the team where one person is hurting a couple of the others. You think that medical care is going to be optimized, right?

Is the science going to be optimized that we're utilizing to try and make our our lives Better, to live longer, being less pain? What's happening there is envy. That person whose impressing other people is driven by envy, whether it's a narcissist character structure that acts almost exclusively through MV, or it's env that is in this person's life in this way or not.

Not another way is matter what's going on, there is envy. And envy is nothing but destructive, right? The generative drive is nothing but productive. Envy is nothing but destructive.

Could you remind for people that perhaps may not have heard episodes one into yet? The envy is perhaps not just a desire to be like somebody else. That envy in the context that we're discussing you here is, is something quite possibly different.

right? And there's a vying lexicon. Which way is important to define IT? Because I think people learn IT in different ways i've heard to talk about in different ways.

So so to define that, there's a difference between jealousy and envy. And again, we could choose different words. But this is the way I learned that that's been most impactful.

Where jealousy is, is benie, right? It's the idea that if I see that you have something that I don't and I think, oh, well, maybe I could work harder and get that thing right or if I can't have that thing, like maybe it's a person is Younger, right? Okay, can't make myself Younger, then I can think, okay.

You three lens of gratitude is, is that the only thing about me, right? I can't think of anything good about myself, right, other than maybe I could be Younger. And if if you come at that through the lens of health, it's like it's okay, right?

You can serve to motivate people to like, try harder, work harder, take a look at themselves and be more of accepting of who they are and what there's circumstances in life and and what kind of control they can, and acting what kind they can。 It's okay, right? Envy is different.

N, V, comes at that problem from the perspective that bringing down the other person right is just as effective as bringing up the self. That's why envy is destructive. So someone who might seen another person, and they envy them their youth, right? They envy.

They want that and they want to bring that person down. Alright, because I can't make myself Younger, because because I can't make that person older either. But they can do other things to them, right? They can sexually harass them.

Maybe they can make terrible jokes that are really insulting and humiliating. Maybe, right? There are all sorts of things a person can do to bring down someone else.

The an action of envy is destructive. And and I I truly believe this, said people who who come at the world very strong with your envy by a large and arcis stic character structure. This is a small percentage of the population, but that small percentage does most of the damage on earth, right? It's a strong thing to say.

But when I think about studying political science and thinking about history and learning medicine and learning about psychiatry and sociology, really trying to look at the world and thinking, what what drives a person on a medical team who's gotten to be a senior physician to physically hurt doctors lower on the hierarch envy, that person feels terrible about themselves and then is being destructive to those people. Same thing that the same thing is that work in the lab. The same thing is at work, when people start wars of destruction that just simply harm other people.

And we can see no whether sense of IT that from the individual setting all the way up to the world setting, we see the destruction of envy. And we also see IT inside of us. Because a person who's an acting envy in the world around them is never had, there's no chance of happiness that hence the the idea of a bottom was pit, right? Whatever you get, let let's say, an envious person who wants more money.

I want to have more money than anybody, right? I want everyone to have a less money than me, right? So then they come at the world through the lens of greed.

When they get more money, how long does that make them happy? right? This, does that mean money is bad? Or having money is bad? IT just means if you're coming at the world through the lens of envy, right in that lens is specifically focus on money, then you'll ll be a greedy person who has never satisfied, even if you have ten trillion dollars.

So it's never good. IT takes away from that person any possibility of happiness, and if you see people work with people with the narsisi character structure, there can be a sense of a very brief happiness in the moment. Like i'm happy because I realized I have something someone else doesn't.

I'm happy because i'm thinking of myself and even though I feel very insecure and vulnerable inside, I have a whole set of defense mechanisms that let me turn those tables around and and then feel good about myself in a way that places me above others. Whatever is going on in that person, IT may bring some very brief gratification in the moment, but that's not happy is hence the need for the gratification over and over and over again. Narcissist people are the least secure, most different people on earth.

They just have a phenomenally healthy defensive structure that comes about in order to try and protect them, that leads them to go to the opposite. Some of was quite a reaction formation going to the very opposite denial avoided in centralization projection, very unhealthy defenses. That then leads that person to check themselves from any help while they are frantically trying to gain some goodness that makes them feel good for split second and then disappears forever, hence the tremendous pread election for destruction.

How do you and how should we think about power dynamics in relationships? And perhaps starting with romantic relationships? I've heard IT said before that. There's always power dynamics in relationships of all kinds. I know if that's true or not, but i've heard that and i've also heard that, that's particularly silent in romantic relationships independent of whether or not it's a homosexual or head or sexual relationship that there's always to some extent another one leader and one follower. Ah this is a um interesting, perhaps controversial idea, but i've heard IT enough times that I want to .

know more about IT. sure. So power dynamics was very important, but also something we tend to be so over reductions about in this idea. Think that that there's always a leader and there's always a follower, every single relationship, right? That's true on baLance, like what we tend to be so reductionist.

And then what we do is we miss the real power dynamics that are going on, just like I said in a previous episode, I think my math minor has helped me the most for, like all of life, right? I think a power dynamic course that I took as an undergraduate in political science has helped me the most as a psychiatrist. Took a long before a medical school, because that class taught me so much about power dynamics.

I thought I was gonna about over power. Who has power over whom and tells whom to do what, right? But what I learned is so much of power dynamics are cover. They're under the surface. For example, there are the things that are not said, something that was called at the time, at least the issue of the non issue, right, where there's an issue between two people, like this person never takes out the garbage. That person always takes out the garbage.

That person is resented about IT, both of them know, but the person who always does IT can't say so, because if they say so, the first person will punish them in some other way, right? By not taking out the garbage and the place smells, that person goes to work and the person is at home as to take IT out, right? That's one example of the issue of the non issue.

Other examples are where someone is looking in, smiling and and being really nice to someone who they know is going to physically harm them if they bring to light that they're actually not happy and don't feel good about that person, right? So from the dramatic to the non dramatic, unstated power dynamics are going on all over the place. And there in every single relationship, I mean, less a person is in a relationship with someone else in their both comatose.

Now, I guess only one of them must to be coming to, right there, power dynamics going on. But IT does IT mean that they're unhealthy, right? There are always powered dynamics.

So then what are we looking for? And and there are lot of things we could look for, but we could talk about really two primary things. One is look for the non obvious and two is the given take. So the first even in our own relationships because it's it's interesting how many people will say talk about the power dynamics in the relationship.

You're not always saying here are the power that makes you my relationship, but they're telling me about them and they're telling me about the things that are over t right now somewhere inside of them, they know that, you know, they can't really raise issue A, B, R, C. There will be some retribution whether it's small or large or they might even know everything's okay and that person is happy. But they know i'm not giving them room to say if they are not happy and that could just mean, you know they say they're not happy, then i'll come home a couple hours late the next day and that personal feel some attachment insecurity because of that.

And there also a ways this can play out. But since so much of power dynamics are are unstated or cover, kind of like the iceberg of conscious and unconscious, there's an iceberg of power dynamics. So to think about including in one's zone relationships, whether it's a neighbor, is a friend, is a work relationship or most charge its romance.

What's really going on between us? right? What's really going on between us? I mean, not looking to tell myself lies, right?

I know that I may not be able to understand all of you, but let me stop and think about IT people. If you ask people to stop and do that, they can say, yeah, it's really not OK. Or you know because sometimes they don't know that it's there or they don't want to know that it's there.

And the therapy workers trying to guide them to this, the immense power, despite maybe in the relationship when their presenting no, everything is equal to a good supportive relationship. You a lot. And of course, it's not always if there's something bad into the surface, but a lot of times there is and even something mildly bad is not okay and can cause problems.

And sometimes there's something very bad. So look for the non obvious. And then the second is that given take is is a very good sign of health, is a very good sign of ell. So if a person can kind of that there is given take and IT might be about something as simple as I could choose where we go to dinner.

okay? Now sometimes one, sometimes the other depends who has a stronger feeling or IT may be that person always is where we go to dinner, but the other person, okay, with IT, right? And that person always decide what movie they want.

The other, the other person, right? So the idea that there is given take and and then in periods of time where where one person may be in a more difficult place, one person has a significant loss, right, or an injury or an illness, then you see that that shift a little bit, one person is giving more right. But then ultimately the idea is that's from the outside, right?

If one person is giving more to the other, there's a generosity of spirit in both the giving and the accepting right that leads them to then be stronger together. So even when people say, well, they're imbaLances in some way, if you just look at what's going on day to day. But in a healthy relationship with high general drive, the periods of imbaLance strengthened the relationship where you see this with friends, where two people are pretty equal friendship and and then like one person is something difficult happens and the other person is there for them.

What's true on the other side of that? They're Better friends, right? And it's also why we often want to be interconnected when we're healthy.

What is something bad happens to both of them? It's good to be interconnected and friends and family can be supportive to us. So so the idea that giving take is healthy, I think is is very central.

So just looking for evidence as often if I don't understand like what's going on in the relationship, maybe it's early in the therapy or just been kind of o peg. I can't figure IT out i'm looking for is there giving take because i'm going to think, okay, more likely than not things you're healthy. If I see an imbaLance, whether the person knows IT or not, i'm thinking more likely than not, it's unhealthy and then they're just clues along the pathway of of, of. My efforts to understand .

the non obvious piece is really intriguing, as is the given take. And I really appreciate that you brought up the given take because that's a very concrete place that we can all look and ask ourselves. You know, even if people learn in romantic relationships, like you know what is the given taken to given friendship and as you mention earlier, IT doesn't have to be scripted one for one, one for one um maybe baLances out over time or maybe IT doesn't.

I mean, i've had friendships that have lasted many decades, even where I can onest ly say i'm always the person to reach out the other person, but when they connect, they connect with such a depth of attention that I don't feel any deprivation whatsoever. In fact, I don't think i've ever considered that i'm the person that always reaches out until today. And so IT doesn't bother me whatsoever. I feel infinitely rewarded in the relationship like it's generated. IT feels generated, right?

IT doesn't enough to be equal, however one wants to define equal, but IT has to be mutual. You're getting in your filming goodness from the relationship. So is the other person okay? That's good.

That's coming from that high general place. And when we really litter, we push that concept forward to where we want to be living, not some pie in the sky, right? But agency and gratitude.

As vers the generative drive is very strongly expressed and the other drives are observing the general drive, then we get to the place where we really see IT is true that IT is Better to give than to receive. The happiest people I see are the people who are giving. Now, of course, IT feels great to receive, right? But he feels Better to give, because he was a goodness in the self, in the giving.

And I remember seeing this as a child and being too Young to understand IT. But I was a little kid. I like getting things right. And as a little kid, I like getting things more than I like giving. That's okay when you're a little kid.

But what I did observe is that my maternal grandmother, who is very sweet and loving and and caring, SHE loved giving, right? You give her presence and we did. And you like, you really like getting present. You had loved giving, right? There was an excess of goodness.

And then as I got older and I learned more like who he had been in the community and how he had been to people and and I could see, and now through the lens, that there was such goodness in her, I think she's, you know, for me, she's the shining model of goodness that I internalized as I aspire to be Better. So then I think I want to be like that. I I am more general ves.

I try and think more about giving than receiving. It's i'm not trying to say some noble person on being a tic. I think that's a good way for auto feel right? Or someone a very, very successful person that that I consulted this in my life is who had talked about how he always makes inside of himself the best understanding of what's going on between him and another person, whether it's a very big financial deal, is about power or its personal and then gives a little bit always where we ended up.

Let me give a little bit right. And and there's a press is very, very successful, very, very happy, right? But I would argue the goodness in him is why he's successful and happy is not that he's successful and therefore he's happy, right? It's what's inside of him, that forest, both of those good things and he could be just as happy without the the big success.

Maybe we maybe he went uh minded to do that and and he grows an ice garden like he could be equally happy. But the point is. The goodness in self to to be able to do that, right, to feel good about doing that.

I feel Better about giving that than I would receiving that. That's pretty stock, right? Something given to the other that I would have gotten right now and were in maybe a negotiation to give IT feels Better than to have IT.

I'm sure there are many people thinking about individuals who are highly successful, who are not givers, who are takers. I do think those examples of takers and someone calling them grab a lot of attention but I know at least within science and the other domains of life i've been in that there are far more successful people who are also givers um even to a great extent.

And of course, that doesn't mean that they're giving to the point of an inability to give further or to take care of themselves. The giving is part of taking care of themselves, but it's part of this general cycle. It's it's not one thing.

It's not a tip for that. It's part of something that makes them feel good, makes others feel good. Um sort of anti transactional.

And as we're talking about the self and into relations between cells in these different relationship contacts today, this word transaction, what keeps coming to mind and what i'm so ware of as you're describing what healthy selves and healthy relationships look like, is that IT runs counter to pretty much everything that i've heard and that we hear in the world about relationships and about the relationship to self meaning. It's not transactional. It's really about a cycle. And we're using this generated over and over um in its specific context today. So I don't want to rob that word for for a different purpose, but i'm imagine a sort of upward spiral um in my mind or perhaps something is that really like the a circle of life that just keeps growing bigger and bigger and bigger?

Maybe we could talk a little bit about this notion of relationships being transactional I mean such a loaded word but I have a close friend who is married with more than a few children you know told me the other day um you know I realized that it's all kind of transactional like they're extracting from me and i'm extracting from them and it's been event because it's all good and and I thought this is really this is really dreadful you know like that no one wants to think that the closest relationships in their lives a transactional and he was coming to that conclusion and I I disagreed with him. And I don't know where that all sets for him right now. But if we could talk about the the transaction vers non transactional aspects of relationship because um we all want things that's perfectly healthy, I believe um we all experiences disappointment and pleasure and relief and sometimes major disappointment, pleasure, relief at sea. But what is the role of transaction in relationships? And you know how to psychiatry, how do you and how should .

we think about that? Ah we often get confused because there are transactions in every relationship, but that does not mean that every relationship is transactional. So if we think about what transactions are, we can think of a kind of stereotypical way. So I can also be like use the transaction, i'll do the dishes and you wash .

the close right for instance, i'll make the money and the other person will raise the children.

right? So so there are transactions, right? But that does not mean that the be all in end of IT are sort of hard, hardly calculated transactions.

And transactions also occur in less obviously equally important ways, right? So another way that transactions occur is so right now, i'm putting something out there, right? I'm saying something right.

And then at a point, I stop and i'm waiting for you to put something out there and then I taking what you said and we're doing something that in that sense is transactional. I'm waiting for to give me something. I take IT in and I process that. I give something back out to you, but that's not the be all and end all of IT.

So there are transactions, whether it's the you know who's going to watch the dishes, who's going to do the clothes or it's what do I put out there that you take in and what do you put out there that I take in that there is something greater than something beyond the transaction and there is some controversy to this. I thought that that that there really are a historical thought in the field, that there are just aggressive and pleasure drives in us and that everything is transactional. And again, we don't really have a way of disproving that.

I mean, is not can be some equation that this proves that, but I think it's entirely disproving by human experience, and there are so many. Could we could talk about an infant number of resources to consider this, but just imagine the writings of victim Frankl and the and the writing and the theories around human interactions and and psychological theories that have come of IT to think that everything is just transactional is the denial of the humans in all of us that I think he just brought to the four so strongly. But again, there would be nearly infinite, infinite resources throughout human history that say they were not entirely transactional.

It's not just aggression and pleasure, but there's something more going on here. There's learning that feels good for the sake of learning. There's kindness that feels good for the sake of kindness.

There's giving that feels good because giving feels good. Like this is going on in us. It's going on when we're like loving children, for example, or loving animals.

There is something inside of us that's not just transactional. And that's why like I I think what we're talking about is, is if it's truth, they should all hang together, right? They must all hang together.

And and this is why there's in us right over top of each individual that in a relationship, right? This is why you can know everything about me, you can know everything about you and you can know nothing about our friendship, right? Absolutely nothing, right, because it's something different, right? And if IT, we're all just transactional, there would be nothing different, right? And I think our experienced human beings, right, I know that to be true because I just know that I don't always feel selfish about things that right, like maybe sometimes I do and I do something nice because I will make me look like, okay, we're all human, right? But I know that there's good feeling from others towards me at times.

It's just about the good feeling. I know that there's that from me towards others. So that tells us, yes, there is something other than just the I, there is the wee of diodes, right, of relationships and matter, whether work, family, friendship, relationship. And then there the levels beyond that, that are larger wees, right, the way of groups. So if inertion correctly.

IT can be the case that one person makes the majority or all of the income for family. The other person raised the children, takes care, the majority the home. And of course, there is a transaction there, a set of transactions, but that it's in service to something larger that really isn't transactional.

Just feeling your words here, but if I were to expand on that and just to make sure I understand that the non transactional thing that emerges from that is a generous because it's a family, right? It's a family that everyone can extract growth and pleasure and meaning from. And just because the rules are divided as such, IT doesn't necessarily mean that the relationship is defined as transactional.

In in the center. That less than I could be. Right.

right, right. If you if you think about what's really being transact. So say one person is out in the world and is making an income, the other person is they taking care the family and taking care the home.

What's being transacted? Well, the person whose making the money is sharing the money, right? Is that sense transacting some of the money to the other personal? You get to have some of IT too.

You get to have some of the from IT and the person who is at home, who's taking care of the family in the home saying you get to have some of that too, right? You need to come. The total onn are taking care of, right? The home is taking care.

So both are transacting something to the other, right? I mean, that's truth of IT, right? If you look at what's really going on there, one person getting benefit of money, they didn't learn.

The other people getting benefits, they have a child care they didn't do or pay for, right? It's up paying for childcare. They're sharing resources, right? So yes, that what is that IT?

I mean, are these two robots right? One is the money making robot, the other is the child care robot. Like that's not what's going on, right? The way we want to envision that, that we have two healthy people with general drives is they love one another.

They're creating something Better than they could create on their own. In fact, they've created children. They have created a home together, and they're nurturing that family together that is generated. And because it's generated, IT can also be flexible. So let's say the person who's at home, I need to do some things outside of the the house, right? Or let's say the person who's out working thinks I feel overwhelmed and I like to switch to a Better job at that jobs half time.

I I want to, I could be half in the house, right? Like this is where people can come together, right in the same way we talk about the two and N A on the sex driver, sexuality scale, where people then can find compromises, right? And if one really want to stay out of the home all the time, but the person in the home wants to leave the home, will they find a way that that works, right? Because they're care for one another.

The generative spirit that is in them individually and as a couple, let them nurture that and one isn't interested in oppressing the other. I'm not to leave my job. You stay at home or i'm saying at home you stay out there like go let's think about things that communicate, right?

That's how the generative drive not only like makes that awesome, right? Like the five isn't the compromise position between the eight and the two. The five is awesome right here.

The transaction aspects are awesome because of the general aspects of what comes of IT far more than either of those people could make on their own, I mean, woman, say, is not too obvious. Maybe if one makes x amount dollars, each could make half x that's somewhat we're talking about. Neither of them can create a family on their own.

IT seems that so much of what we're talking about relies on you the hallMarks that we always hear make up good relationships of all kids, romantic and otherwise, like things like communication, listening, generosity with all the stuff that we all know that we should bring to relationship and hopefully are getting from relationships. And that if we're not, that we should probably request from others and you know, polite ways.

right? Can I, can I? I ve one word for that kindergarten, right? Think about that. We learned that in kindergarten.

And what you're describing is so simple, right? That's why so high up on the this what the guys is pushing up is high up from the two pillars, right? Because what you're talking about is simple generosity of spirit giving rather than taking.

Are I being kind to others, letting things go, feeling good about yourself, even if you're fall down? We learned this in kindergarten. We must, somewhere inside of us, really value IT, right? But then we let you go, we make things overcomplex. And you know this, this idea that in many ways we should go back to kindergarten, right? Because there's a purity there, right?

Children in an age where they can learn, and then we bring a nice kind of learning to them and and nurturing to them, and we can bring IT to ourselves, too, so that we simplify that which has become overcomplex, right? We simplify because trauma makes complexity. Having you just make one's way in the world is is complicated, right?

So thinks that more and more complicated, and we lose the simple route of goodness or the goodness of simplicity, right? And we can come back to that. So I couldn't resist when he said these simple, these basic things, right? Like, right? That's the point of IT, because that's our agency and gratitude and the general drive. That's where they live in the simplicity.

Glad you mention kindergarten IT bw me back to um images of kindergarten where ah as far as I can remember now, there are all the critical components of a great general environment. Adult too really cared about us. Fortunately, there snacked time with oranges or nursing food.

There was a nap time in the afternoon. Like these things are all things that decide the pick home on the weekends is ginny pig. I think they actually, I think there were several gini pigs, but they kept trying to convince that was the same ginny pig, because they would allow one family to take home the ginni pig each weekend.

And sometimes I think he didn't work out quite so well. But anyway, the ini pig was a pervasive features. So you learn to take care of things. And in all series of us, now I step back from IT, there's nothing more general IT seems that a kindergarten classroom environment where we is a healthy kindergarten classroom environment, it's all about support of others and um if we go to the pillars of the structure of self and the function herself mean, surely there's a lot going on at home too.

But think about like what silence is learning messages of self, you know it's self confidence like instilling those it's behaviors that are based on strivings and hopefulness. It's all the good things, yes, all the good things. And so now as I was thinking about communication and all these good things that clearly kindergarten is a wonderful template for in all serious, and I think is an amazing template, i'm thinking about what gets in the way.

And of course, trauma can get in the way and we should talk about that more um but that seems to me that one of the things that gets in the way of asking for what we want of hearing request of us in the way that is going to bring about the most general goodness is anxiety. It's like, you know you're tired from a long day and someone mentions like, you know we have to take the trash out you know like like I was at work all day like, you know that kind of thing or um earlier talking about the issue of the non issue terms of power dynamics. You know that well, let's just say you've had the experience before in relationship of feeling like if I make a request or I have a code could complaint about something that the other person is going to be so upset about the fact that they didn't do something well that give me three days of just like diminished happiness for everybody so I just as soon like not deal with IT right?

So when we hear the word aniele, I think we often about the person like quaking about you know public speaking or like getting um the circuits in the brain hijacks that we're designed for sabor the tigers. But you know anxiety seems to serve both a very important functional role in modern life that has nothing to do with physical threat. But IT also seems to be the feature that if not kept in check, if we can't regulate our own anxiety and realizing there's no way that we're going to be in a position to ask for what we need and what we want to hear, what's needed of us and what others want. In other words, anxiety seems like a major barrier to the general drive.

I think the place to start is, if you show me a person who has no anxiety, i'll show you a manic, right? We all have anxiety in this member is just a word, right? what? What are we getting? We're getting at a sense of tension, right, a sense of this quiet inside of us that, that we would like to saw, we would like to ease if we could IT is not helpful or healthy if if we are very, very low levels of that, right? Because then our drivers are certainly going to software, right?

There's not a lot of motivation to to go make change in the world to changing our lives, right? So we have too little of that attention that doesn't go well. And and could that maps to allow a assertiveness, aggression and proactive drive? Is there are other ways I can show itself, but IT maps very clearly, I think, to that.

And that's not good for us on the other end of the spectrum where much more concerned with the other end of the spectrum because a lot of anxiety feels very, very bad and feels very bad right now, right? So are our high levels of anxiety. They narrow our codon spectrum. They narrow our ability to think about what's going on around us, to think about ourselves. So, so the idea with anxiety is to recognize we all have IT, and we can call IT anxiety.

We can call attention, call whatever we want to, but we want that to be in in a healthy place right which which comes of course, back to the self that if my levels of anxiety are very high and therefore it's causing problems in my relationship, like maybe um i'm always asking my partner for, okay, right, that happens a lot. Are you OK? Are you happy? right? right? Because there's a lot of anxiety in me like the first place that goes to look at myself so we could say, oh, I have attachment insecurity. That's a stating the obvious, right?

Or start rabba. Very common one nowadays, I think, is new in the course of human history. Is you the reaching, the tugging, the line phenomenon? You text somebody, you're thinking about them, you don't hear back and then attention starts amount.

And then i'm depending on the context, you either be concerned about the person or even suspicious about what the person is up to I in here. It's very contextual, right? And IT depends on the history of both individuals and that relationship.

But then the person will reach back eventually. And IT either will bring relief or relief with some present, like, where were you? What happened? This is very, very common. It's so much so, in fact, that i've come to learn and talking to others.

And this is the classic, you know, I have a friend who, but really others who are in the landscape of looking for relationship, and there are people I know well who go through a lot of effort to set an internet schedule of response, like to not give the other person the sense that they always respond with short lenses. Y because indeed, sometimes they will be able to do that and sometimes they want what they basically trying do is make sure that the person doesn't. They are actually trying to take care of the other person in addition to themselves because I think we come to expect a certain latency of response with certain individuals. And if we don't hear back with that particular latently of response, our own aniele starts to pick up and IT can be quite damaging to a relationship, in particular to the general drives within us because in that time that were stressed, we're not tending to other things, including things that we could do for the relationship that were so worried .

about famous scene and swingers right with the person, leaves a message and then, and leaves the whole relationship in his own mind and breaks up with the person. And they never actually spoke right there is the anxious run wild? Of course, I remember that was very, very popular when that came out.

why? Because IT resonated. We know with the insecurities we feel, and now with the ability to feel those insecurities in a much more immediate way, that and then text me back, right?

There's a lot more of that inside of us, which really points to if you are able to identify that your that you're anxious too anise for comfort, which you again, if one looks inside, even listens maybe to what others have said to reflect IT. Like there's a lot of data, especially introspection, to be able to identify that, right? The next question is always why, right? Let's go look at that.

Maybe that person's been anxious or whole life, right? Maybe they just have run tense all the time. You know that sometimes a little bit of medicine that connects, pulls that down prison and take that for fifty years, life is Better than in the side effects like, so sometimes like that might be the case, right? Sometimes the person's anxious kind of grew throughout childhood. And maybe that's because there were difficult things, are traumatic things that happened.

Maybe there was nothing like that, but maybe the person was very good at engaging in the world, and then felt more and more pressures upon themselves, and no one ever did anything wrong, and they only been rewarded, right? But regardless, look at the anxiety and yourself, go back to those pillars, right? And one might discover, for example, maybe the the anxiety i'm feeling is attributable to the other person.

And I feeling anxious because i'm intimidated, right? My feeling anxious because I know that if I don't behave in a certain way, know the next time there's a group meeting, they'll be some snarky joke made about me. So anxiety, sometimes it's the self, sometimes they still got a lot of biological components, sometimes got a lot of psychological component, sometimes both right, sometimes it's the environment, sometimes it's the other right, the other person.

So look at why, because that's how we learn, right? Like what what is going on inside of me? Where's that level of anxiety? How does IT not feel comfortable? Like what actually is IT? How is IT changing how i'm behaving? How might IT be changing? How am I responding to IT? So what are we doing? We're going back to to this look in those ten cabinets and figure out why, which we can do, right? The vast majority of times between ourselves and the use of others, either professionally or non professionally.

We can go understand the anxiety or the lack of anxiety, why might not so motivated right now? It's a case with a lot of people who feel demoralize, they don't feel they can get anywhere in the world, right? The worlds a bad place.

And how you going to make you away in the world. And they started feeling my holistic or they feel like that there's the balls against them even in a generation capacity. And now they feel demoralized and and and the tension inside is sooth by things.

So maybe that's the person who he's overusing the thing that suits, right? So they could go look at, hey, guy, I was kind of motivated and did well in sports. The well in this was interested in that, right? What's going on?

That's how person could identify, for example, being demoralized. So that process of inquiry gives us the information that we can use in the service of change, and the change will not achieve one hundred percent of the time. The change for the Better is predictable if it's rising from a place of understanding and .

very curious about frames of mind in relationship in particular how being in our own experience say anxious because someone hasn't responded to us and really paying attention to the anxiety and drilling into IT and asking ourselves, you know why my anxious and um do I deserve to be anxious is about me about them whether not that's a valid pursuit or whether not focusing on the other person and trying to imagine you like what's going on in their head that they might be doing this or that they seem to do something repeatedly.

This, of course, relates to much more than just the scenario, waiting for a text message and feeling anxious. I think so much of how we come into relationships of all kinds, the romantic, certainly, but family relationships are know in and around, the tendency to switch back and forth, sometimes seemingly IT. And between our own experience and what am I feeling, what am I experiencing? And then thinking about the other, like what is what are they thinking? What are they experiencing? And this is everything to do with human dynamics.

I would think that it's near impossible for the typical person to just live life through their own frame and lens and never pay attention at all to what others might be thinking. Even prince, the most exploitive of extractive, northesk, sociopathic subtly, is thinking about know who in the room is going to be the target because of how that person might be feeling. And of course, on the benevolent side, people who want to do um positive generating things in the world, they're probably thinking about, you know who do a line with who has a common goals that they might want to work with or be with romantically that could help them in and the other person generate so so what is this thing that we do? Uh, you know, what is IT called and and how does that work to place ourselves in the mind of others, and what role does IT serve and what goals does IT undercut when we do this?

So I think the first thing to say is that everything follows the same simple pattern, right? So I start with thinking about me, right? If i'm anxious, why my anise was going on the side of me, and I think about you, are you anise too? Well, maybe i'm not anise, but I notice that that you are right.

So there's the thought about the eye because I can't think in a clear headed way about you unless i've thought about me right. Because if i'm really, really, really anxious then how I was understand and trying get an idea of where you're at, right? So then where do we arrive? We arrive at the magic bridge of the us, right? That's what connect us.

Whether the us. Is a friendship, is a professional relationship, it's romance, right? There is the bridge of the us because it's not just how are one of my anxious?

How are when are you anxious? What are things like when we're together, right? Maybe that maybe i'm anxious when we're together and what what's attention about your own work together and maybe that's for reasons we can talk about and make less.

Maybe there's some insecurity in one of us or maybe the other person is behaving in a certain way. There's not making the the second person feel good, right? We we can then come together and see how does the us impact the level of anxiety and how do we then take away from the us.

Being stronger. So so think about, we talk about the trauma bond. Trauma bond can be a enacted in a negative way and can be enacted in a positive way.

And those two people who can go to the them together, who can go to the museum separately, right? They're living in the magic bridge of the us, right? They're both at the museum, but neither can go to the museum, right? Neither can go to the museum, but both can go to the museum.

And then they take away stronger ourselves from that, right? That's that's a reinforcing experience is positive, right? IT builds the generative drive.

IT builds confidence, right? The person went, they were assertive, and that was gratified in a good way, and they felt pleasure, right? So when we look at the us, IT is about the us.

In the moment, right? But IT is also about how two people are impacting one another in the rest of their lives. And this, of course, this is more important to close. Or the relationship like this is very important, for example, and close friendships or family relationships. And I think this is of extreme importance in relationships.

Are these the two people who presumably are that the closest to one another on earth? So I shared us that that promotes understanding and bolsters a ds of agency and gratitude and boosters the generative drive. That's great for both people when they're not in the us.

When one goes one way and one goes the other because that happens all the time. And relationships too, right? Go to work at different places or no, we boaster ourselves outside of relationships.

If we see with the magic bridge, other relationship can be. So we we can look there for problems like, why my anxious? Why are you anxious?

Why are we anxious? Why are you only anxious when, where we? And you know, we can look over all that, and we should, right? But we can also even more powerfully look for the good there, right?

How can our shared borne, whatever IT may be, be Better for both of us? And what stronger incentive could there be than to do that? In relationships, right? Romantic relationships with the ones they are closest as if they're not romantic, they could be frenches.

Whatever are closest relationships are, they're the most important vehicles, so to speak, to Better health and happiness, to getting to that place of peace and contentment and delight, right? The us. Is very, very powerful, in fact, even more more powerful than the I and you.

when thinking about the us. And trying to understand why somebody that we know and are in relationship with is behaving the way they are or might be feeling or claiming they feel the way that they are. How useful do you think IT is for us to put ourselves in their shoes? Um you know I can think of all sorts of ways in which this could be beneficial. I can also think of all sorts of ways in which IT would be focusing on the self in our own experience in ways that um might be defensive avoidance or you know denial right? I yeah all come clean. I mean, been plenty of times in relationship where I get fixated on why someone is the way they are, behaved the way they did and um more often than not by taking a step back and thinking about why my reaction to that is the way that is I don't solve the coding code problem, but I get a lot further along in terms of calling my own anxiety and finding a path forward right.

right, right, well mentalizing right. Which is the ability to design feeling states, intention states in self and others. But now what we're looking for others, right? So the ability to understand feeling states, what's going on inside of your intention? What are your intention, right? That should only be good, right?

Because because if we're seeing IT through a clear lens, meaning a lens is not biased by some problem, like like a defense mechanism of rationalization, for example, of projection, right? If we're seeing clearly, we're learning about the other right. And the learning is is never bad, right? Knowledge, truth is good. So if we learn about the other by and that sense, putting ourselves in their shoes, then we gain information. But it's the health in us that that is so crucial to what we do with that information, right? So one person can say, put put themselves in the other persons shoes and and things, okay, that because I can see the person responding and is say pretty calm, pretty calm about something and maybe that's just a good thing.

Maybe there's some intention going on and that person's maintaining their cool and that person is going to be really helpful in navigating an argument or disagreement IT to like some some like really positive end point, right? So if a person sees clearly, like I see, okay, I see that I can see that you're calm and I also see that you you're trying to figure things out and you the things that you're saying a sort of positive, you're disagree eed with me, but but you don't seem to mean ill, right then I can see, you know what, I think your calm is good, right? Because i'm getting a little bit upset and you're not so so and I see that there's a beneficence in you.

So maybe you're guide us to the place, said maybe I can't, right. But but think about if there's not a clear lens inside of me, right? If I have a defense system that leads me to externalize responsibility that that leads me to project or that leads me to also do things that are not healthy, now I might think all your calm because you just don't care about me, right? I mean, something with the same exact thing right now.

In the example we're giving. The person in your position is like being really benign and enemy. But IT happens all the time where that is misconstrued.

So is not that is not that the insight that person is calm. I see that they come is that there's a deficit in the mentalizing. The person is not fully understanding their intention, right?

What's coming through then gets distorted, right? So we think about defensive mechanisms. They can be, they can be clear. They can let light through in this beautiful way that has fidelity, or they can be very distorting.

So thought, if i'm designing that, you are being evolved and you you seem to be trying to solve the problem for us. But I take in and you don't care about me and you're trying to put one over on me if if I assessed accurately. But but IT comes on the other end in a way that's change, right? That's because there's a lack of clarity.

This is distortion inside of me. right. So so then if i'm really working on myself, i'm in the best place I can be. I'm going to be Better at mentalizing about you and me, right?

Even if I say, well, we're having a disagreement, I I know I tend to get a little defensive so I can be a little biased to see what's in you in a negative way, right? So what am I seeing? Like, okay, you're pretty calm.

Like, maybe you don't care. Like, I know I can think that right, but I come on, you're trying. I want to solve a problem. I matter when that goes on inside of a person, which sometimes goes on consciously, ly, yer goes on unconsciously, or you, some mixture.

It's so powerful, right? The persons, where are their own state, which helps them to be where the state of the others of the other and then and the information you're getting comes through with fidelity. And now all of the sudden and said IT, maybe Young to blow things up.

Now i'm aligning with you and solving a problem because I see clearly about you and me, and that's going on all the time and make, well, it's complicated. There's a lot of back and forth, right? They're millions of things going on.

Every slight second in our unconscious mind, that is, throwing all this up to the conscious mind is doing things rapidly. That's going on all the time in us, whether we want to acknowledge IT or not. And we we choose not to acknowledge IT at our own peril because they we're not going to those two pillars and there are ten cubs.

We're not going to the structure of self, the function of self and what comprises those two pillars to look for hate. What's going on, right? Let me understand Better.

And even if things are going well, we can always, as you said, not that longer go, we can understand ourselves Better. The stronger I am, the more general drive. There isn't me.

The less defensiveness, the more the agency in the gratitude, the more arms, arms, for whatever difficult thing comes my way. So if there's a conflict with someone, whether there shall be or there shouldn't, maybe someone's being really aggressive. And I got to kind of say some things and try and counter that, right? I'm going be able to discern one from another.

I'm going to be more effective in both, right? I just set myself up for success. And if i'm setting me up for success, then i'm also setting you up for success. If you're someone I have a relationship with no matter what IT is, and then ultimately I am setting the way right, the magical bridge of us i'm setting that up for success to and that's how you see on these levels of emergence, said, you know, if you understand everything about you and understand everything about me and and let's say, person understands we've a general drive, you don't really know what our relationship is going to be like you do you think I Better to be a good one, right? And then what would we then then contribute, say, to a broader culture. So a group of people, maybe there's ten people, a bunch of friends getting together, we will contribute goodness at that next level, which is then the culture of the larger group.

In hearing your description of mentalizing, the ability for all of us to get into the mind of another and to trying to imagine motivations and states that would explain .

their behavior.

yeah, that seems like a natural reflex that's healthy. And IT seems to surface most often in as the consequence of negative interactions. Something didn't go right. And so we can explore like, was IT them was that mean like was that something that happened before? Know what else is going on with this person as a way to try to arrive at some sort of hopefully general understanding. But IT seems to me there's also a great value in mentalizing about others under conditions in which things are going well so that one can potentially make things or encourage things to go even Better in the future.

Interaction with the first, first thing I was says, I think the reflex is most often not mentalizing that the reflex is most often not mentalizing, right? Because the reflex is often come from a position of not feeling safe, right? There's some conflict. I don't, I don't, I don't feel good, right? There's some conflict.

People know we all get very defensive very quickly, whether we showed on the outside or we start partitioning inside and that the problems come not from mentalizing, but they come from not mentalizing right and and not being aware the difference because then I conclude I know what's going on and you and I don't right, because I don't know what's going on in me, right? And I think you're being aggressive really i'm feeling kind of defensive. I'm feeling vulnerable and then i'm i'm getting aggressive, right? But I can handle that because I don't want to be aggressive, so you're aggressive, right? So there is such a difference between, say, coming at a self other conflict from the perspective of, say, not mentalizing, but thinking that you are versus mentalizing.

There's a difference between is IT me, I know I can be, is that you IT must be right. And that's how a lot of that goes. And then, of course, what's the data that's gather, the data that's gathered supports that.

I think this there's wars I think that happened based upon this little long conflicts and friendships and in relationships. The key about mentalizing is that's not what IT is. Mentalizing IT goes like, this is IT me, is that you is IT us.

I just figured that out, just figured that out together, right? It's it's not offensive, it's not aggressive, it's not projecting. It's it's really actually seeing and look, if it's to me, I want to be aware of IT and say, yeah like, well, I get up on the wrong side of the bed like give me just sam sorry, right?

Or if I might look, I know that you're being aggressive and you Normally wouldn't be them and said you can just get away from the person I care about, calm down, come back later, you know or if it's us is really something between us. And let's sort IT out the information that allows the healthy right. The agency and gratitude decisions is always there for mentalizing. The danger is when we're not mentalizing, but we think .

we are got IT in keeping with thinking about others and what's going on with them mentalizing, that is thinking about what's going on with ourselves. And the exploration of the covers under the pillars of structure of self function himself and our desire for all that to guides are up into agency and gratitude. One thing that we hear about so much these days, and generally, I think it's good that people are talking about them, our boundaries.

You know, you ve cross my boundary. I am setting a boundary. And i've certainly embedded the the message in my head that in order for certain relationships to be at their most loving in my life, sometimes the boundaries require very little frequency of communication.

But that doesn't mean the relationships aren't ongoing. So what are your thoughts on boundaries? And how should we think about boundaries for sake of healthy relationships?

Healthy boundaries always start inside, and then once we have them squared away inside, we can project them outward. The same as is, everything works, right? IT starts with the self, and then that includes the other.

So you took an example of a friend who's just a little too presumptive, right? Like the kind of person you you'd rather knock on your door, but who just opens the door and comes in like that kind of thing. And you like the personal lot and there's a lot of resonance and you want to lose the friendship.

And then so just imagine what could happen here is not the only thing that can happen, but a thought experiment, right? So the person made them question themselves, like, is there something wrong with me? Like, because I don't really like this person coming in my front door.

Is that just me and I being weird about that? Or the person kind of stop and think about that and they can take stock of self and they can arrive at an answer right for themselves like that person may conclude that you know what people on is close to as this person come in, my friend or you know, that's okay. No, I don't need to set bounds there, right? That's possible, right, more often.

And what the person concludes is, no, I don't really want that like I do actually want this person to knock and that's okay. There are something wrong with me. It's not that i'm being a jerk.

It's not i'm being a bad friend, right? Because what do they think you might also preparing for what the other person could say? But no, they're countering what they're testing out to themselves.

I am a bad friend. No, right? That that kind seeks so they know and they understand and then and they have right to set the boundary right like, okay, it's my house.

I try to be generous, but I want people coming in the door like you come to some conclusion that setting the boundary is okay and you're squared away with IT inside, then you communicate the boundary outwards, right? And he he's like, how do I want to communicate that? Like saying, hey and don't come in the front door anymore like that's not so good right now.

The friendship is really on the rocks, right? But to say to someone something like, yeah I I care about you and I trust you, and I know you feel the same way about me, but just makes me nervous. You know, people just come in the door.

Like, do you mind that? Because IT OK like, you just please, not now on the door. Now think about how that's been done.

Like IT is so accurate, right, to what's going on inside the person, to how the person wants to communicate with the other, then you have the highest likelihood of effectiveness, right? And the person also, in that sense, has of the clean conscience. It's so to speak that let them take in information back.

So let's say the other person hopefully has a high general drive and all the good things we're talking about could say, oh, no, i'm sorry, I did. I mean, I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I kind just automatically do that or you know, I always do that my brother's house is close to e or whatever the person is saying, no worries, okay, everything is fine, right? But let's say that person does get mad right now.

You know like, oh, it's going on in this person, right? Because that what you're doing is you're sing signs of unhealthy and the other person and IT may be that, wow, that's not so healthy with the person, but I like other aspects of the friendship and that seems like kind of a strange studio synergy. Y then you might decide, you know what, I wants to keep this friendship, so I start locking the door and the person has to knock.

Or you might think, okay, is this, is that my seeing something here? That's about lack of consideration, right? That's about selfish, that ultimately maybe about envy.

I'm going to walk into your house and ruin your privacy. You know, I can walk and you and make you feel anxious. I, I, I feel entitled to do that, I think, is the kind of thing this will coming through the lens of envy.

So when you start thinking about there and and maybe not always, of course, sometimes you find a friend who can do the right things. Sometimes you find a friend who can think you can still like the friendship work. Sometimes you find a person who is not a friend, right? And you see like, oh, that's how everything is with this person.

You like, there's no us. There's no us, right? And and that's that's how people can leave relationships that that only are exploitive in one way. Another weather is friendship.

But to romance though, if a person really understands there's the me that you, the magical bridge of us, and then wait, there is no magical bridge of us, I feel that is a magical bridge of us. But the other person does IT. There's immense power of understanding and then of appropriate of parents of .

protection over and over again, not just strain today's episode, but in the previous two episodes, IT seems that getting squared away with oneself, or at least ones own internal processes to some degree, right, gaining some insider where the negative or even positive emotion within us as arising when we're in relationship to anyone or anything just seem so key. Like the foundation of IT.

You know you know you you said, you know, like getting to the maximum amount of agency and gratitude is the goal, really. And that's done by cycling back through the covers that reside under structure self and function of self and asking questions about one self. And really, unless we are trained psychiatrists like you, none of us really should be doing that for the other person that teams. But this is really are each and all of our own responsibility to do for ourselves. But that IT serves others in so many positive ways.

right? right? So mentalizing greece, the progress of all things good, right? Because IT is about actual understanding, feeling, states, intentions. But I have to first mentalist about me before I mentalist about you. A way of putting this would be, if i'm thinking about you before i'm thinking about me, i'm on a fool iron, right? You have to start with the self and to try and attain clarity of self, or to realize that you can't right like that is a very important nuance.

If I know that say there's trauma in me about a certain thing and I know that I respond in ways where sometimes my motions get high and I can't quit yeah can't quite think through IT all right, which can happen to me with with references or or something that encompassing a certain kind of trauma. I wanted be aware of that, right? So this is idea none's.

Being aware of what you know about yourself, but being aware that the things you don't know about yourself. So if I know enough to know that A A certain kind of interaction about a certain kind of trauma really sets me to a place where i'm not, I would have mentalist. I like I Normally would be right.

I'm sort of flying blind right then. Good for me to know that because I don't know what that is doing to me. So the last time to make conclusion, so let's say i'm in that day, what I mean that day because of something that just happened, right?

And now we have some sort of conflict right then for me to realize that what's going on to me, i'm bringing to this a lack of clarity because I I am really activated if I have licensed. The anxiety detention in me has been raised to the negative emotion that would reflexive negative effect. Feeling emotion has been raised in me, and then I realized, like, I don't know how's gonna go if we interact about IT now, because I can't rely on me.

So can we talk about this later? The same way, if you recognized in the other that person who's usually rationals that was all worked up, recognize that in the other right and made that person does not realize that they still want to interact anything. Can we let's let's revisit this like we're both kind of come collected, right? So mentalizing greece, the wheels of our progress, but like anything else, has to be deployed in in a way that works. And the way that works is I start with me, then I go to you and then I go to us.

I'm fully on board to start with me, then to the other, and then to us. Model IT makes total sense, in fact, so much so that i'm starting to build an image of my mind where first is of a kind of a rule which is know IT starts with self understanding, thoughtful, ll, structured inquiry along the lines of the map that was laid out in episodes into of the series and that we've been alluding to numerous times today. yes. And then there's a second line or or all that i've got, you know, written on this imaginary piece of paper in my mind, where any time I default thinking about another without first going to my own map and expLoring what's going on with me, that my own map starts to become blurry, like i'm losing access to IT and IT potentially could disappear. I'm just creating this in my own mind is a way to create a little bit of, I think, healthy and I to go there first.

paints the picture, yes.

And you know, the purpose, having such a you, an image of my mind, that access to the self and understanding itself is potentially drafting ways. Because I think for me, there's a third line in this world rule set that i'm imagining, which is that the less understanding we have of our own map and internal process, the more likely I am where we all are. To just latch onto an unhealthy map, another unhealthy map, yes, I have to even follow .

the directions of our own unhealthy map, right? Which leads us to someone else is unhealthy map and then we latch onto IT like you said.

yeah absolutely. That's because it's still active even if it's blurrier. If it's obscured from my awareness and drifting away.

i'm trying to guide myself with my broken compass. I ran into someone else with a broken compass. Now we're both wandering, so will be aware of the compasses and working the way we wanted to.

Can we go look at that? Can we? Can we make the map healthy, make the map accurate, make the map guide us towards what we want? Because then we will find other people who have worked on their own maps that way.

Absolutely, you know. And so often I hear about and and Frankly, of experiences you know this feeling like, oh, it's just a matter of finding somebody who is healthy, right? And then things will be much easier and much Better. And surely that has to be the case. And surely there has to be instances where people have a interaction with somebody that leads to a relationship with somebody and the other person is much healthier.

And and whatever trauma we come to the relationship with this best supported or Better supported than IT would be if we were with somebody exploitive or who was truly damaged in some way, who basically had a map that was really, I really screwed up, but that they had not explored any. But I don't see that very often. I definitely see people who, at least from my outside read, seem to have healthy maps or are doing regular exploration of their maps, and therefore healthy.

Who knows? I don't know what they do with their, with their time in every domain of life. But once again, we come back to this importance of understanding what's in those covers, what's in those pillars as a not just important but critical step in understanding and building ourselves in positive ways.

And as I said once or twice before in the series, i'm going to again and i'm sure, again and again before we conclude this series, is that what's so attractive about this map is that IT sets IT very clear and simple set of ideals, nonetheless arly simple to attain. And as you said, that takes time. But agency count and gratitude, you know, empowerment, humility, leading up to peace, contentment and delight, all as action states, not as passive states, to just basin and disappear.

And the notion the the general drive and and by now in this episode, i'm sure people are well on board. The understanding that the general drive is not just about going out and doing things. It's about doing things in service to in a way that supports learning, knowing, creating not just of others and in the world, but in yes.

yes, I I love, I love the the map image, because you can almost see the map changing right as a person. Imagine person is busy away in the cubs, right? Oh, there's a lot to work on in this cup, and they're busy away.

They're doing the work. And we can see the map changing that path that look like a really good path that actually goes to a swamp. You can see the swamp on the man.

Now that appears on the map. That other path that look like is a little circuit. Is this a good path? right? May be a harder path, that is a little circuit is. But look where IT leads, right? The map becomes clear as we do the work on ourselves.

yes. And also the understanding that you've laid out for us here really helps avoid a lot of the common pitfalls that are associated sticky language and sticky for good reason. I mean, what's sticker and more interesting for people that are interested in themselves in relationship and things like you know boundaries or labels like anxious attached or secure attached.

And i'm not being disparaging of those labels, but i'm realizing those are just labels, right? They don't define action items and specific lines of inquiry to get us back into our self understanding over and over, not as a full time job, right? We all have to live our lives, but as a way actually, to be more lead into life in the outside world.

Those labels define, people know Better than the new miracle diagnoses in the psychiatric taxonomy book that we glorify, right? Labels are not understanding. Numbers are not understanding.

They can help. Taxonomy are good. Sometimes labels let us categorized things. But labels are not a substitute for understanding. Numbers are not a substitute for understanding.

If we look at ourselves, we get real understanding, and that's what makes the difference. That's what bolsters agency gratitude. All those good things clear mentalizing greece ly was a progress.

More the general drive getting stronger. We really can find goodness and often do. And and that's why I think everything we're talking about is very hopeful.

Acknowledge das, there's complexity. Their pit falls, right? They're all sorts of things to IT that we need to be aware of and to be ware of.

But that doesn't mean that ultimately IT isn't positive, that we're not speaking to. Hey, whatever IT is that Ailing you, that thing can be Better. Well.

i'm so grateful that you're sharing your knowledge and experience around all of this with us and that you've laid out such a clear and logical and deep, intractable, really actionable understanding of all this that we can engage in is tremendously powerful.

Thank you. I so appreciate you. Thank you.

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about how to improve your relationships with doctor paul county. I'd also like to take a moment to remind you that the fourth episode in the series on mental health with paul county will be out next week and that links to all the episodes can be found at huberman lab dot com. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe our youtube channel.

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