GUEST SERIES | Dr. Paul Conti: How to Improve Your Mental Health
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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 Andrew huberman and am a professor newbie logy and opened ology at stanford school of medicine. Today's episode march, the second episode in our four episode series with doctor paul county about mental health. The first episode in the series dealt with how to understand and assess your level of mental health. Today's episode is about how to improve your mental health.

I do want to emphasize that you do not need to have heard or seen the first episode in order to understand or Green important information from today's episode about how to improve your mental health, but I do encourage you to go and listen to the first episode at some point, if you have not already. Today's episode deals with several topics important to all of us, as well as protocols to improve one's mental health. For instance, you will learn how to guide yourself through a process of self inquiry in which you address certain key questions about your drives, your level of aggressive drive, pleasure drive and this so called generative drive.

These are essential things to understand about oneself if you want to guide yourself toward your aspirations, and if you want to understand how your subconscious processing is influencing your thoughts and your behaviors in your feelings, in ways that sometimes serve your aspirations and in other ways that can hinder your aspirations. Dr, or county shares with us a way of a session, our internal narratives, as well as a way of creating a constructive self awareness and an understanding of where those narratives and that self wearing a stemp from in our childhood so that we can navigate forward with the greatest sense of agency. We also talk about how to move past common hindrances to improving one's mental health, such as overcoming intrusive thoughts.

And perhaps most importantly, today's episode provides information in protocols that anyone can use to cultivate their general drive, which is a hallmark of mental health. Just a reminder that doctor paul county has generously provided a few diagrams that we include as P, D, F. In the showing te captions.

They are completely zero cost to access, and they can help you understand some of the material that was discussed in the first episode of the series as well as the current episode about how to improve your mental health. And while though simple PDF diagrams are certainly not necessary in order to understand the material in today's discussion or in the other discussions of this series, many people find them useful, so I encourage you to check out those links in the shown out captions. Before we begin, i'd like emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford.

IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and 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 the license therapies Carried out online. I personally have been doing weekly therapy for more than thirty years, and while that weekly therapy was initiated not by my own request, IT was in fact a requirement for me to remain in high school over time. I really came to appreciate just how valuable doing quality therapy is.

In fact, I look at doing quality therapy much in the same way that I look at going to the gym or doing cardio accused training, such as running as ways to enhance my physical health. I see therapy as a vital way to enhance one's mental health. The beauty of Better help is that they make IT very easy to find.

An excEllent, an excEllent therapies can be defined as somebody who is going to be very supportive of you in an objective way, with whom you have excEllent report with, and who can help you arrive at key insights that you won't have otherwise been able to find. And because Better help is conducted entirely online, it's extremely convenient and easy to incorporate into the rest of your life. So if you're interested in Better help, go to Better help dot com slash huberman man to get ten percent off your first month that Better help spell H E 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 nature 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 IT 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 edr pe, which placed the brain body into a sort of pu du sleep that allows you to emerge feeling incredibly mentally refreshin. Fact, the science around yoga ea is really 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 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 view 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 the organizer sessions for you as well. If you'd like to try the waking up 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. In the first episode of the series you laid out for us in a very structured way, you know what true mental health looks like, essentially what we should all be inspiring to.

And he touched on these themes of agency and gratitude as verb states, really, ways of being in the world, yes, that allow everybody to have some sense of well being, to have some sense of themselves in a way that is kind to themselves, into others, and really to feel good and do good in their life. And, and without question, this is what people want, right? You also spelled out for us these two pillars, the structure of self and the function of self, that consists of a number of different things that from which guys are up or kind of IT.

You don't give rise to these feelings of empowerment, humility, agency and gratitude. And reminded us several times that when we are chAllenged, when we're not doing as well as we would like that we need to look back to the structure of self and the function of self and ask specific questions in order to arrive. Or we arrive at the sense of agency and gratitude.

Yes.

I think he would be wonderful for us if you could just recap the overall model um because IT has the components that I just mentioned, but some subtle ty and some really key aspects of these pillars, structure of self and function of self.

And I think if people keep in mind for today's episode, which is about chAllenges that people commonly face, even if you will, finally, types that we see commonly out there for people that haven't heard of a typo types are um the typical appearance of something. So there is the final type of the anxious person, the fine, a type of the person who just can't seem to get out of a rot. There's the finite pe of the traumatized person.

And and these things play out differently in in different individuals and in women, boys and girls. But we're going to visit many of the most common finot pes out there and think about how to do Better, be Better, feel Better through the lens of the model that we spelled out in episode one. And of course, if people have not seen or heard episode one, today's discussion will still be entirely accessible to them. So in keeping with that, if you could just um give us a an overview of of what this a structure of the healthy self looks like as a road map for where we're all headed today.

Thank you. Thanks very much. Revisiting the pillars as I think the best place to start, because there really are routes to understanding.

And if we understand, then we can strategize. We can make change, right? We can make things Better. So the first pillar of the structure of self starts with the unconscious mind, right? This incredibly complicated biological supercomputer that's firing a mile a minute right underneath the surface in us and is throwing up to the surface all sorts of thoughts and ideas and states that then the conscious mind apprehends and our awareness comes into play.

And then we have defense mechanisms that sort of rise up from the unconscious mind, and they they circle inside of guard themselves around the conscious mind, which they can do in an unhealthy way, or in a healthy way, or any anything in between. And then the character structure is sort of the nest around all of that. And it's from the character structure that we that we are engaging in the world in the ways that we engaging where it's our active engagement with the world around us.

And the idea is that the self grows out of that IT grows out of that. Next, sitting on top of the unconscious mind to the conscious mind, rising above the defense mechanisms in the character structure. And and if we go back to that, when we're trying to understand ourselves, trying to understand states of health as well as states of unhappiness or or states that aren't healthy, by by going back and looking at the structure, we can learn a tremendous amount.

And the other side that the other pillar is the the function of self. And I really starts with a self awareness, right? The warehouse today there is an I, right? I am in the world, right? This is twenty four hours in the day are gna pass today and i'm going be doing one thing or another.

So i'm to some very significant extent deciding how we're gonna a engage in the world around me doing that time, right? So on top of that are the defense mechanisms in action. So defense mechanism member unconscious.

So there's a lot than going on inside of us that's determining sort of the field set of options, right? There may be a lot of automatically that narrowed down the set of options of what we may entertain, what we may be aware of, what we may decide. And that could happen for a Better or for worse, depending upon the health of the defensive mechanisms.

But on top of that lies sAiling. So the idea that we would next visit, okay, what are we paying attention to? right? What's coming from inside, what's coming from outside. And we have to not pay attention to many, many, many, many things in order to pay attention to whatever our attention is delighted on at the moment. So it's a complex process, and it's worth looking at very closely if we want to understand ourselves.

So after thinking about the the defense mechanisms and action with the unconscious aspects of how we're engaging with the world, the next to consider is silence, which is sort of where is the mind arrive at at rest? Where is the mind trend tours? Is that something internal? Is that something external? What are all the things were not paying attention to in order to pay attention to something? And is that thing healthy? Is not healthy? Is is serving as well.

So there's so much to understand about sAiling. And then the next step beyond that is understanding behavior, right? How are we engaging with the world around us? What are our behavioral choices? What are automatic behaviors? And then sitting on top of all of that or our strivings. So we we have a sense of wanting something in the world around us.

And what is that and how we trying to get to IT, and how does that make us feel? So if we look at that, the ten elements, right, the five under the structure of self and the five under the function of self, then what we're really looking at is, is sort of like looking at ten cabinets, right? And we're trying to understand ourselves, whether we're trying to just generally understand ourselves or we're trying to get to the problem, right? Then looking in all, ten of those cabinets make sense, right?

Some of them will be Better, meaning that they may seem to have very little to do with the problem we're bringing. And we can maintain an open mind, right? We maybe LED back to that cabinet there maybe something there. But what usually happens is if we in all ten places, we find a couple where there's there's some rich material to explore, sort of the x Marks the spot and then we go and we we dig there. So that makes the metaphors we we dig in the cabinet where we're going to find something right and then IT leads forward the process of understanding.

And if we're bringing those things into line, where we have a healthy structure of self and a healthy function of self, and we're ware of all this and we're working on IT, we're self aware and we're paying attention to everything built on top of that, then what we end up with is a sense of humility, because one cannot be anything but respectful. Compassion and understanding the complexity of of all of this, and understanding how does IT manifest itself inner and and just a very fact that we can wake our ways in the world is so, so impressive. And in a way, I think IT brings to us a respect, just a respect for being here, navigating the world.

And I think of that respect is born, humility, the complexity of us, the fact that millions of things are going on underneath the surface, millions of of, uh, neurotransmitters, independent logical function, all of this is going on under the service. I'm not even aware of IT. And then IT kicks up to the surface, generates a tremendous amount of respect for the complexity and also the diligence and perseverance IT takes us to navigate through the world.

And I think built upon that understanding is a sense of humility and a sense of empowerment, and the humility and empowerment in action, right? So so express. right.

Become agency and gratitude, and agency and gratitude, as you set of the beginning, we're seeing as verbs, right? That's like how we're living life. It's through the lens, so to speak, of agency and gratitude that we're actively living. And again, I would put forth that when we look at measures of human happiness right across disciplines and across time, this is always what we see is is some way of describing how agency and gratitude, together as verbs, manifest and then create happiness, is the state that we're seeking to be in, right? Because from that state of active agency and active gratitude, we achieve what IT is that I think we're really searching for.

And you know, there are by infinite words throughout human history to describe what that is we might choose to use words like peacefulness, a sense of peace, a sense of contentment, are being delighted by things, are just being amazed and impressed by things in the world around us. Like this is a state that we are striving for. And I think when people talk about happiness and what we're really trying to get to, it's this right, but it's not that these things are passive, right?

These things are coming from the active agency, the active gratitude, and they're than interacting with a general drive within us. We have an aggressive drive. We have a pleasure drive.

But this has been thought about now for a long, long time within mental health and validated in a lot of ways. But what hasn't been validated is that there are the only things right, we see human beings striving. We see human beings wanting Better for themselves and for the world around them.

We see acts of kindness that that seem to be rooted to nothing other than the act of kindness. We have within us a drive to know, to understand, to learn, to make Better. And that has been described as many, many things across human history.

But I think the words we might choose our general drive, a drive to create and to make Better. And it's the the general drive as something active within us, right, that is then aligning with agency and gratitude, right, the active ways in which we express ourselves. And then that all together brings us the peace, the contentment, the sense of delight sometimes that may exist in us in a state of rest, right? But very often it's existing in us in a state of activity.

And that's why people find, you know, they could and what happiness is like, what people are seeking, not just in meditation, sometimes we can find IT there, but people also find IT in in action, right? They find IT in doing that thing that they love to do, or taking care of someone in learning something. So when we look at all of this, we can then we can then have a round of understanding what is going on inside of us and how we can make the changes that let us be in this state, which is really the state that we are seeking.

I really appreciate that you highlight the agency and gratitude, our verb states from which peace, contentment and delight emerge and also the way that you explain the general drive that um is distinct from aggressive drives and pleasure drives that exists in all of us. Um you know I smiling because a number of examples of peace, contentment and delight while in action come to mind for me for me pocatello particular preparing for a podcast and remind the literature and figure out you where the James reside and where the confusion could could emerge in all of that brings about such peace, contentment and delight for me but is is anything but passive. It's likewise yesterday had the experience of running into a puppy.

I has been well since I own a dog in dogs are delighted puppy surge, particularly the experience of seeing you like that when you into the puppy, you know, I and you did and and i'm still buzzing from that short interaction with the puppy downstairs, a waver and our puppy. It's just that I don't know why, but I just delight in in animals of of most all kinds, is not a fan of repetitive sari, repetitive fans so much. But I just drive so much energy from IT, if that like life, energy in the way the animal is, are attention's scattered as amusing to me as compared to the dog that he will eventually be, which is going to be more lenient.

And his thinking, like IT, capture so much of the other things I love like brain development and set IT. Anyway, I highlight those examples because um there's nothing passive about IT. It's pure delight and joy for me any intersects with other delights enjoys and I think that um as you described, agency and gratitude, peace, contempt and delight in these generated forces um as well as other forces that exists in us.

I think it's really critical that uh people understand that these are not states that you sit down and and place yourself into, although perhaps one could, through reflection or meditation or waking up from a really great nights, left things so that sort, but that these are things that we can find ourselves a wash in if we are doing the right things and those things can often times to be very chAllenging um so a summing I understand the way the model is spelled out correctly. Um i'm more and more delighted at the fact that this is not just successive in one domain but is accessible in many, many different domains for everybody. This is not something unique to my experience even though I give example for my own life. But um that we really all do have access to this. If we're looking in those covered those ten coverts and asking the right questions.

yes. And enter maybe coming even a little further on the experience of you and the dog, right? So so IT was experience of delight, right? And and you enjoyed in and brought a sense of peace and contentment like all that happens, right? To think about what that's link to like that I believe there's a strong sense of agency in you that you are enacting.

There's a strong gratitude in you that you're enacting you. You're pending your life in a way. And and also for all of us, good things always come with good fortune.

But but IT comes with our strivings in our achievements that you're in a place to delight in that, right? If you are unhappy, I guy, I don't like what i'm doing. I'm i'm angry. I'm frustrated right then there's no room in you to to find the delight.

And the delight that you find is also very much linked to the generative drive, right? He makes me think of how you you love and nurtured cassella, right? So you have IT in you to love and nurture a dog, and you have done that in a really wonderful way.

And that generate drive is part and parcel of the delight you feel when you see a dog. Because you love dogs and you think about nurturing and IT all comes together. The of the agency and the gratitude expressed as vers put you in a position to have that sense of delight, which is so intertwined with your general drive, with a sense of caretaking, a sense of creating the the beyond self.

Because although you enjoyed and loved caso, you enjoy and loved his happiness, right? So IT all comes together. And I think it's interesting because in some ways it's a simple example.

But like that life life has its its big moments. But but so much of our lives are the smaller moments that link together. And I think that smaller moment IT becomes a big example.

I appreciate that you mention costolo for listeners of this podcast that if i'm tuned into early episodes, a costolo was the source of the the background scoring. For those of you that happen, you can go. Jack was the nine pound english bodog who had many skills, the best of which was store. So in addition to the general drive, which is something that we certainly want to talk more about today, you mention these other drives, aggressive drives and pleasure drives and much of what we're talking about today is going to be where people can go wrong or where people struggle. We are also, of course, going to go deeply into where people succeed, and in particular, where people can ask questions of themselves, particular what is working for them and why as a route to understanding how to sift through those covers and understand what's not working and why and come up with real actionable answers and in the ability move forward. Um so if if you would could you tell a little bit more about drives generally like like you when I hear drives, I I can't help as a nea scientists but default a okay, the dope in circuit or the the original obo ID circuit e or the certain egil circuit but you know how do you conceptualize drives within us and and then perhaps you could tell us what the nature of aggressive drives and pleasure drives and general drives so that the .

concept of a drive, the definition of a drive, is, is something that in intrinsic to humans. So we could look at IT as a motivation, right? I mean, we don't just lie on the ground and do nothing into we passively die, right? So something is going on inside of us that is driving us to do something other than that.

And historically, the thinking in the field, the rising from early seo dynamic principles, the the theory in the field that has really dominated the field, that they're directly or indirectly in so many ways, has been that there are two drives within us, that there there's aggression and pleasure. And again, these are just words, right? We so we could apply many, many words, which is life.

Of course, we want to define what that means, right? So aggression, even though we're using that word for IT, because the word ford is commonly used, right? But IT means, IT means sort of forward active engagement, right? So so A A good, healthy amount of aggression using that word for the drive would be a strong set of agency right? So so too little aggression can be a problem more than the person is that bringing themselves to bear, right? So there's too little in the way of self determination um forward movement to empowerment agent right and and in the same way too much of this drive becomes actual aggression so the idea that I want more and if I can't get IT in in certain ways i'll just take IT right so so then so IT starts to become know what we more map to the word aggression which which should be something negative in most .

cases like like a desire or a tendency to harm.

sure. We as as aggressive drives get higher, which you see why they're in us because IT will say we're defending ourselves or or or you're defending a family member right or like a entire family right. Then IT makes sense to have high levels of aggression if like your families threat and right. So so those drives are in us with with a potentially those high levels for a reason, but we we certainly access to very high levels of aggression with out the indication of preservation of life for preservation of safety.

So so the thought is that a drive in us, and that gets us up and off the ground, so to speak, right? And that the other drive then is pleasure, which again doesn't just mean that we all want to be hiatus, right? So so pleasure could even the pleasure of relief and safety, right? Like we're all back in the cave together and we rolled the stone in front the door.

Ah we're safe without human development. No pleasure IT comes in a lot of ways that can come to the pleasure of food or other people, you know, friendship, roman sex, there, there. A lot of ways we can achieve pleasure can be relief of things that are unpleasant, you know, relief of pain, but that there's a drive towards this in humans, which you can really does make sense, and and too little love IT IT can can be problematic because the person then isn't motivated to sort of seek things, because they are not anticipating, I don't receive gratification.

And too much of a drive for pleasure can also create problems. So so we can kind of see how these two drives, okay, they get us up and off the ground, so to speak. But the question is, do they explain everything? And it's a very important question because if they explain everything, then.

There's not really there's not room for behaviours and choices that are beyond the self, right? There's not an explanation for the person who will give you an an example of a person i've taken care of who's this is a very strong swimmer, you know, knows how to swimming, swim throughout his life, who was in a place I saw video of IT, where they're been a hurricane in the ways were so frightening. You know, there are just too, this huge surf.

And there were people who who had gotten drag out, and you just see him, he runs into the water, right? He runs in and he goes. And he was really at risk to be saved himself, but he saved them.

And I do not believe you can explain that through these drives. I don't think you can say, well, that was he was aggressive. He wanted to go and do something that was imposing himself on the world, or he got pleasure in thinking, I am strong enough to go do this.

I mean, I think we're really dry rating you. We're contorting ourselves right in order I to explain IT that way. If we think there's a goodness in that man's heart, I know there's a goodness in that man's hard, I know him, right? And that goodness sees in the moment and he knows that maybe he can save them.

Maybe he can. He's not sure, but maybe he can so makes, you know, he's in the water. And I think things like that, love and nurturing of of other people, you know, of children, love and nursing of animals, of plants, right?

Like the things inside of us that we can explain with those two drives and and I think they have LED to a very to the darker way of just conceiving of humans. You know, I think it's a reason why now know, you look at this in the modern day and age, we commit humans through the lens of pathology, right? Mean is there's a very, very thick book that if if a person is assessing another person who is thinking about the okay, what numbers that book apply, right, which is like that's not the way to go about understanding humans.

And I think if we just think there are those two drives, we're not doing justice to humans, right? When I think it's not true, I think it's evident that is not true. And then if we're framing IT in a way that's not true, we are not appropriately respectful of humans. And if we come from what I believe to be the truth, that there is a general driving is a drive for the beyond self, a drive to make things Better, whether IT has anything really directly to do with me or not.

And as with the other drives, there can be more or less in people, the accommodation of nature and nurture, you know, what what genetically is in as a predisposition, you know, based upon the genetic linkage that comes down to us in the recombination and our unique person with the unique set of drive. But they are impacted by the genetics and then they're impacted by life experience. So more strongly formative life experience, right?

So the Younger the person that the deeper the impact of events they have nurturing versus abuse rate on the the array, on the relative waiting of drives within people. But ultimately, we get to these three drives and how they're functioning in a person, being a way of understanding and assessing, like how healthy or not healthy the person is. And then we look back to those ten covers, right?

For the answers, if for finding things that we don't like these, those drives at a baLance. And here the problems are causing so very, very concrete issues, right, of problems in people's lives. We can look and see where is that out of baLance.

And if it's not a baLance, there's something in those pillars that are not in the right place. We can then go back and look in all those covers for I go, where do we dig to find the answer, right? We learn things.

We, we bring things more into baLance, right? So the pillars are in a healthier place. And then what sits on top of IT, as you use word guys, right? The guys rather then comes up and float everything on top of IT can do that in in a healthy way.

He had during episode one, we touched on some of the similarities, ties between understanding the self in building towards a health or healthiest version of self, where agency and gratitude are these states that are being expressed. And one of the themes there was this idea, you know, people perhaps want to be healthy so that they live a long time, but reasonably, they also want to be healthy so that they can walk up flights of stairs, pick up the kids and move objects, not get injured, perhaps even do sport or and of course, some people want to be healthy for aesthetic reasons as well.

And if we were having a discussion about physical health, we could dress the major pillars there, which were were items within the cover like um you know most people want a some ability to have endurance or staminate to walk some distance or maybe even run some distance mention before walk up a flight of series, have some strength, some degree of flexibility, certainly some mobility, maybe even dynamic mobility at sea. And in order to address those are improve upon those. They could look in those covers and say, well, how much you running swimming, long form cardy vascular exercises am I doing per week? How many steps of I taking per day? How many times week do I lift objects that are most slightly heavier than is comfortable for me to lift? It's atari.

It's very tangible, very concrete here. You're making the the psyche and and the self and mental health, uh, very much concrete in some of the same way saying there are ten covers that one can look in and these drives, as you referred to them as uh general drive, aggressive drive and pleasure drive. Um you'll probably us in a few minutes can be expressed to varying degrees in different people and how that shows up and what that looks like.

And I just want to frame this in people's minds as very similar to addressing whether on, okay, if somebody can run very long distances, but they're always you know are having x in pains or they feel weak or they are week, no, there are good reasons for that. They're over emphasizing one form of h exercise. The expression is more long lines of enduring and state, and not strange or vice vera, the power lifter who can know, lift, you know, seven hundred fifty pounds from the floor in a dead lift, but walks up two flies of stairs, and as you know, belly breathing and has to stop at the top of the stairs.

No, it's obvious in the physical rm. It's slightly more cryptic or more cryptic in the psychological realm. But here is becoming concrete for us.

So I think IT is very interesting and very ironic, right? So the field that, I mean, the field of psychiatry has historically wanted to be sort of part of the rest of medicine, or like the rest of medicine.

And and what I believe is ended up doing is glorifying a taxonomy right, glorifying a category mechanism of understanding human beings so in the way that that if okay, if i'm a uh, practicing general medicine and you come in, you're congested and and I determine like, oh, you have you have bacterial sensitize, right? So so now i've made a diagnosis and now I know what i'm going to do about that, right? So okay, i'm going to describe an antibiotics.

Now the thought comes in of like what antibiotic? great. But the identify, you say is no need an antibiotic is like kind of how medicine works, right? So the thought was psychiatry is going to categorize everything, right?

So we'd say, OK, i've listen to you like, uh, I know your number or your number is right. And then once i've given you the numbers, now I know what to do. And I prescribed this medicine, that medicine, and these many sessions of a certain kind of psychotherapy and like that doesn't work, right? IT doesn't work in mental health IT.

May I know it's not that IT never works, but if you're going to try and understand people like, it's different. The problem of self, like if I have a lack of confidence in one area of life and not in others, right? That's a significant issue.

IT is not like bacteria. Sunny side is where then, you know, okay, arrow goes to prescribe antibiotic. And I think what is ironic is that this world of approach de actually does bring psychic mental health interline with the rest of medicine, right, which is why you you can make that parallel.

And you know, it's well, right when you're making the parallel to physical health and to, I want to be healthy, okay, what are the components of that? What am I doing to achieve that? If something not the way I want, let me go back and look at those components.

Mean, IT may be because it's more tangible, is sort of IT essentially easier to comprehend, drive is more concrete. But but I don't in a sense see this cryptic, just less obvious, right? But if we go and we look at IT and we say, oh, like that really makes sense, right? And and in a sense that makes sense, that IT makes sense, right? If there's a mechanism of understanding that applies a lot, a lot of things that are more concrete, why would a similar kind of mechanism like understand what the components are, understand what's built on top of them? Like this, I believe, is how psychiatric actually fits with the rest of medicine, not by glorifying attacked omy, but by coming through the lens of understanding.

Yeah, I didn't degree more and I I think that um what so reassuring is that both in terms of creating physical health across the various domains of heart health, long health, enduring strength that said, a cognitive health as well as mental health is verbs comes back to action items that we each all should engaging in order to arrive at the states. And you know, ways of being that we all want to be in, right? We want to feel healthy.

Look out thy know is that a we want to be happy. Know very few people who don't want to be happy, and certainly there are people who give up but will talk about that today and and routes out of that. But at the end of the day, it's all about looking in those bins, asking specific questions and then moving forward in specific actions to get to the place of empowerment, humility, agency, gratitude, peace, contentment, delight at a as opposed to simply using words and understanding to arrive at insight and then stopping there and expecting everything to change.

And I think that's where a lot of people are confused about psychology therapy and psychiatry. And and as you mentioned, psychiatry has a zone shadows, if you will, within IT, where the the use of of drugs certainly can be very useful, even lifesaving, and often times is seen as A A fix all that um somehow could reorder everything within the covers and and make the recipe just right when in fact. So we talk about today that, that is generally not the best route. But again, with the understanding that drugs .

can be very powerful tools yeah import, we understand what roles appropriate for them, and that's where we often go straight.

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They'll give you five free travel packs, and they'll give you a year supply a vitamin d 3k two。 Again, that's drink A G one dot com slash huberman to claim the special offer. So as we move forward here and defining and and helping people gain, uh for lack of a Better word, agency over their own mental health and and self understanding and defining for them what what action items to take, think i'd like to ask you about some of the things that I observe in the world and hear a lot about in particularly from the audience of this podcast.

No, it's obvious to me that people vary in terms of their level of aggressive drive, pleasure drive and presumably general drive as well. Um one common question is how do I become more motivated, right? Um and of course, that opens up a bunch of other questions like our people afraid of failure and that's why they're not motivated or people afraid of success that why they're not motivated. Is there some underlying childhood trauma unconscious process ah that's driving that fear um and so on.

But if we were to take the psychic st perspective, your perspective, if someone comes soon as you know, I you know I just don't really feel like trying you know schools hard school loans are you are excessive, which is true, by the way, know it's not unclear that with A A degree I can do much you or had a series of failures in the work domain or in the relationship domain and and they're just feeling way down as if it's not worth trying. You know what does that tell you in terms of where to lock and and what does that tell you in terms of their drives? I mean, do we conclude something about their nate level of aggressive drive um where their pleasure driver or there are generated drive? I think I think there are many such people out there and they will consider some other kind of phanatic c examples.

So it's a great example because so any good clinical right could could hear that story and then and have thought about IT that couldn't would hopefully be helpful, right? Without necessarily referring to drives, right? So so I think you can anger any set of assessments, any evaluation, any attempted understanding. Two drives, right? But but IT doesn't have to be that way.

So for example, you might ask a person more questions about what they're doing, how they spend their time, because you're telling me that someone who is not getting enjoyment or gratification out of anything, right? And and that then becomes of interest to me, right, is, is there is something this person does enjoy, where something theyd rather be doing like they do. They go to college and take on a bunch of rules because they thought that was Better, because they felt they were gone to do something that now they actually don't want to do right? Or that opportunity.

Isn't there another frustrated like what is inside this person that might seem different than that? And and again, the answers could be complicated. IT could be maybe that person enjoys what they're doing, but the cost of living where they are is so high that they still feel miserable.

There is a sense of privation. And then that gets back map to, I do not get any pleasure out of anything. So the answer could be as simple as you strategized with the person of, for example, does a person like that move, you know, a move to a different area?

So, so there's so many ways of looking at this and so many ways of understanding this, but you're describing someone to me who who is really complaining that nothing is feeling good, right? Nothing is providing a sense of of enjoyment, of of pleasure, right? So I would probably be interested in that first and think maybe the pleasure drive is higher than what's being fulfilled, right?

Maybe the pleasure drive is is low, and that's an issue in enough itself, what we should to learn those things, right? Maybe the aggressive drive is low. And know if that person please put a little more energy into IT, right, like they could be in a different place, right? So you're trying to help the person understand themselves so that you can make change. And again, that understanding doesn't have to be angered to to the drives. But I do believe the drives are at the root of all understanding because if you sit with that person and you talk to that person, then you're going to be able to understand what is out of baLance, right, either in the the actual array of the drives or in how there being being experiences. Because again, if you have a high pleasure drive to, for example, and it's not gratified, right, like that represents a problem right now.

what about people who can experience some pleasure or can keep busy? So for instance, on social media playing video games. And I should also say perhaps it's bringing them to a place of peace, contentment and delight, but in some sense it's not really generate right.

You know, i'm not going to cast judgment and say that video games and social media are all a waste of time. I mean, i'm on social media trying to provide value to people and learning and and I derive value and learnings from other accounts as well. But you there are these milestones, if you will, in life.

I mean, not that everyone has to know, go to college in and get married, have a family when there are a lot different path through life that I would consider successful. But in some sense, there are milestones that we want to move forward. There's this phenomenon nowadays, a lot of Young people, so called failure to launch like that.

They're not leaving home or they're not finding a location. They're are not feeling if they're good, anything where they have the sense that unless you're going to be a of you know like top one percent in something, it's not worth trying. But they can still find uh you know what most people describe as pleasures like they might they enjoy food um maybe a little too much.

They enjoy alcoa, maybe a little too much. They social media video games, maybe a little too much. I say little too much because IT it's providing more less up A A sink or or a reservoir for their aggressive and pleasure drives that not moving them forward in the the standard milestones of life.

I hear about that a lot. I see that a lot. know. So it's a slightly more complex uh finot pe than describe as just simply the a motivated or non motivated person. But you know what does one what do you think of of that of the fan type I just described?

Because were unique, right? Each person is unique, although we are categories, right? So their categories, a person there could fit there could be different for what i'm saying, right? But I think most people, they say on baLance, right, what is most prominent, right? I think what is most prominent in that situation is there's something out of baLance in in the general drive, right? And what you see a lot of times is the person is a general drive in them that's higher than their ability to to realize that, drive the general driving and is frustrated.

So i'll give an examples. A real true story of a person who had worked very, very hard going to school for a long time, and IT achieved a very hyping job. And like that was the goal, right, is a prestigious job as a hyping job.

And the person for a while was doing quite well at IT. And you know things what more relatively rapidly and a gave directions maybe for a little while, the person is doing okay. Then the person becomes very negligent of themselves and their environment when they're not at the job.

So know the houses a mess, things are dirty. The person is wasting time with things. So this is a person who enjoys IT wasn't exactly video games, I would say, let's say you could have been right. Well, enjoys them to a certain degree and can really gain pleasure and feel good about the time spent, right? But start spending too much time.

Right now, what was pleasurable? I was becoming a distraction mechanism, right? And then what that transition to was over use of alcohol, right? So now you have either something that is actually destructive and was negative to job performance right towards the person.

This wasn't a person who is drinking a lot before, and this is a person who is miserable when they were drinking or they were of wasting your time, right? And we're aware of all of this. Well, there is a very clear problem, which is that person had no interest in what they were doing, none what so ever. IT felt like the majority of waking hours were spent in an automatic on like way. But being awake and aware of the tedium of a the frustration of IT the .

professional site so had very little intrinsic curiosity or desire to do the job that they were success IT, right.

which comes out only after exploration because IT seems like what's going on with this as a good job and their life is going really, really well and and they're doing well financially. And you know, is this person trying to now you overly indulge themselves, right, because that why they are drinking, what's going on, right? And you feels that this percent of a strong general drive.

And IT was IT met one little bit by what he was doing, which was creating such frustration inside that the person was either taking himself ell online or doing something that was pune tive in self lindora. And like this is a real story that the person exchanged that job for a job that paid a tenth of what the job they had paid. And the change in the person's life was amazing.

I guy didn't know this guy could smile, right? He became happy. He loved what he was doing.

He sold the larger house boat, a smaller house that beautifully like he was happy, right? That's what he needed to be happy because then the generative driving him, he loved what he was doing. That gets enacted, IT gets expressed and then other other things can come them into line, right?

He's not being over aggressive words himself and drinking too much, you know, because he's saying going to help with you to the world around them and to himself, right? He's not taking something that says a purpose in his life. Like again, if the example had been video games, that would be like a great you enjoy doing that x amount of time and I go do that and get gratification from IT as opposed to then over relying on IT.

And then it's not providing gratification that becomes a distraction. So those things came back into baLance in his life, but they're had to be the understanding. And I think there's a lot of that in people who have a general drive in them that they feel is frustrated by a world around them that isn't collaborating.

Now do I think we can understand that and change that in the vast majority of people who are in that place? Yes, but IT has to be looked at first, right? Because when it's not always, that is just that a lot of the time, right? So IT has to be understood.

What is that in that person? And then how do you go back to those pillars and look at what's going on that the person is in that place? Because the world can bring us a lot of difficulties right in that person who now is settled with a lot more loans than they expect.

Like I have tremendous compassion for that and sympathy for that. That's real, right? So people can be up against a lot of things and that's just one of them, right? But IT doesn't mean that life can be OK, right? IT doesn't mean that.

But the person has to feel that there's some way they have to understand enough about themselves. Okay, this is what this is. And I kind of see what this is and why and how i'm here.

And from there, I can start to plot around something that is Better because, yes, we have our difficulties and we can have a lot of them, right? But for the vast majority of us is not like they're not surmount. We have to just understand them. And let's say, if that person goes and so i'm going to get some help and they go and someone is a, okay, well, you get ten sessions of cognitive havidol erp and you trying to like cognitive person, think differently theyll feel differently.

Look, cardinal behavioral therapy has its place, right? But is not going to solve that right? Like that person is understand something about themselves, not redirected thoughts to Better places, right? So if the person get to, because that reflects works well for the system, right? IT reflects works well for the system, is treating that person for the medical system, the insurance system that person is in helped one bit, right? And maybe a medicine can help, right? Maybe a medicine helps you just take down the anxiety and attention in the person, and the person can do to think more about IT.

And and truly, medicine did help this person, because the idea of leaving the job and leaving the prestige, leaving the money is I D OK. To do that could generate a lot of anxiety and IT helped to kind of bring the temperature down a little bit of that so that he could think about and engaging therapy, ultimately navigate where we wanted to be, then we get back away from the medicine. So like medicine has a role, but if if he just got medicine, I mean, what are the possibility what are the odds of that helping? Like zero, right? Because it's it's not going to make the answers unless somehow the person feels a little bit Better and figures IT out on their own, because not how IT works. Rights of medicine has its place, but A A kind of therapy that recognize the limitations of medicine in most situations and is designed to really help the person understand. Like that's what we need.

The example you gave us a spectacular one because, as you mention, medication had its place. A perhaps you a redirection of thought, in some sense, had its place because, as I recall, IT under the the pillar of function himself, in one of the the key of items is sAiling. What we pay attention to internally or exactly what our internal narratives are but um in staying with the example of this individual, again as as a pandemic uh example for everybody to to learn something from the asking of Better questions about oneself is really what leads to the understanding so that like Better forms of inquiry right to me these are these Better forms of inquiry, Better questions or really the cardiff asked lar exercise, the strength training, the flexibility training, the mobility training, coordination training of physical health just translate to to mental health .

is is so interesting right? Because if you think about IT in the example I gave, both the the therapy part from through the system, right, the C, B, T has a place, right? And the medicine part also had to play.

So both of those things have the role. But if we build the whole story of, like this is what this is and this is how you're going to be helped around those things, we don't help that person at all. In fact, we ultimately, if you take on baLance, you take all commerce, we end up doing harm.

Well, in some ways about we stay with the the analogy of physical alth. They would be like the person who wants to get in shape and then they get a i'm not picking on palatine um as a brand but is a stationary bike and they they pedal every morning and they lose weight, their blood pressure goes down. They're doing Better. But then at some point, if we we know for with certainty that if you just do the same form of exercise over and over again, sooner later you are going to get over you injuries. So then it's like the lower back piece and another piece and and you become out of baLance. So there's just but you know I guess this is stealing from the lander m strong book, but it's not about the bike, right that you know it's not about the bike, it's about the elevation of heart rate is about the um whatever other healthy activities go along with exercising for singing the morning and the all the things that you're not doing as a consequence of exercising in the morning. So IT seems to me that these Better lines of inquiry is the path to Better mental health, a Better life um that sit under these pillars of structure herself, function herself, are really the key.

So in this example, right, the parallel that you made is even more dramatic, right? IT wouldn't be the the stationary bike, right, because the stationary bike is achieving a lot of things, right IT would be more like telling the person, you know, you should walk more briskly when you're going upstairs.

I like that's a good idea, but that's not going to make the change, right? So the idea that some cbt, some medicine makes sense, it's more like that, right, is not that walking more briskly up the stairs isn't a good thing, is that we can build a story around your whole health is going to change based upon that. And then that's that's a problem.

Then if the person thinks just walk more risky up the stairs and you'll be healthier because when IT doesn't work, now they've failed, right? And this gets used a lot in mental, that person failed this therapy, failed that medicine, and and you get so also ironic, because that's often with the person internalizes. Well, they failed because we set them up one hundred percent for failure, right? Because we took things that have their role, least potentially have their role.

And we built the whole story around them because that story is convenient for the systems that are providing the care. It's convenient for the health care system, is convenient for the insurers cbt packages very nicely. And you could see how if you start changing the thoughts and how they make you feel like, know you can get some movement on the surface, even if there is no movement underneath, right? And again, i'm not saying cb t is bad, but to see that as the whole answer guarantees failure in so many situations.

Same thing with the medicine. If you build the whole story, it's convenient and and buy in large medicines are cheaper than people, right? So so you can prescribe medicines very reflexively, psychiatry with fifteen minutes with a patient that they can then see back for a couple of months.

Like, how does that go? Well, the answer is, IT only goes well. The way of broken clock is right a couple of times, you know, twice, twice a day, right?

I mean, that looks sometimes that goes well or just somehow works out in the that person can do a little bit of therapy and fifteen minutes and choose the right medicines. But by and large, we do those things because they are convenient for the systems even though that's why like people don't get Better like like we think they would. That's why they stay in systems.

That's why they come in and out of emergency rooms. That's why they are not able to stop the drugs that end up, you know, only being stopped IT when the person dies like this happens all the time and we don't stop IT because we're coming from a perspective that is so limited. That's not let's take a step back and look, can we really like help someone?

Can we really hope that person understand? Can we help that person make change, which ultimately would be, of course, so much Better for the person and so much Better for society, but is also Better if we just look at bottom line dollars and sense, right? Because the short term view of IT is cheaper today to have a psychiatry, said, a fifteen minute appointment reflexible perscribed.

A medicine that is cheaper today is that cheaper across time when that person is utilizing more resources are there in the out of emergency. Wms is so short sited with which fits with many ways in how our society works, right? That we want gratification, and we want gratification rapidly. This what a person would accept that their problems could be changed by a medicine where we're kind of condition that way.

Well, of course, the the the cost we don't see, which is. That person doesn't get the opportunity to express their general drive. And so the the the consequence of that is in calculate.

yes. And if we take a step back and we look at that, I think that what we will see is that we have it's not quite like painted ourselves into a corner, but it's like, you know, the idea that if is a beautiful tapestry that the size of the wall, right, that you can see that only standing back from IT, right, I think this goes back, you know, I think a couple thousand years like this, this sort of thought idea. But if you come up to close to IT, then you you can't see what that means anymore.

And we're up so close to IT that we're thinking, well, okay, how could one parameter change? And you know, can can this person get a fifty minute of visit sooner rather than later or have at this medicine instead of that? And then so like our noses are right up against the tapestry, and we don't see that we're not doing right by individual people are a lot of the time, and we're not doing right by society, which then if you stop and think about IT, we're not doing right by us is any one of us could be in that position.

And many of us have been in that position being on the other side of things and win, needing help and needing to understand. So any of can be there. So if we're fAiling a lot of individual people and we're fAiling the society, that is a matter who we are listening to this like ultimately, we're fAiling ourselves.

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In australia. Again, that's eight sleep dot com slash huberman. Let's therefore talk about what does work. And again, placing on the shelf the fact that medications can help in C B T. cognition. Havidol ery can help, but if they are just but to components of a much larger picture.

The map that we describe a fully at the beginning of today's episode that, by the way, available as a downloadable PDF in the shown out captions of people want to look at IT visually. And that was described a lot of detail in, I hope people will take the time to listen to because it's so rich with depth of understanding, and i'm certain everyone will learn a tone about themselves and others simply by listening to your words. Absolutely certain of that.

That map provides sensually description of the bins, the covers to look in to arrive at Better answers and and even the sorts of questions that one might ask. If we could just talk about that in the context of the example that you gave of this person who made this really incredible choice to move away from the hie job. Um you know they were over indulging in in certain maladaptive behaviors and again, we will use this example but this examples is but one of an infinite number of examples that we could use a person whose know in a struggle, right they're doing something that's not working for them.

They're also not doing things that they know they ought to be doing. Okay, this is important for people to done or shand because um they're going be people out there. There are think he oh like this poor guy, like he's making tons of money, poor him but know he was experienced ep, this lack of sausage. So I have been the reverse example like a person isn't in a job that that brings about enough wealth for them to thrive, right, because their financial realities to life um so it's .

just one example, right but it's a good one I think because the person left the money, right, so would make you leave that right? And what would make you leave that if you're miserable in the situation with that and you're happy in the situation without IT.

right? So it's about leaving misery and finding happiness that's so if you would be willing to share with us a little bit of your mindset during those sessions, meaning the sorts of questions you ask him about the structure of itself or to reveal the structure of itself and the function of itself that allowed the both of you to eventually set him down this um far Better course you know what's Better than moving away from frustration and over indulgence and after behavior to deep satisfaction, peace, contentment and delighted to become a generative human being?

right? So we can look in each of those ten cabinet, right, so that we look in the unconscious mind cabinet. There's not much there, right, when the person was growing up. But I was very clear that having more money and having a job and impressed people was an important thing. He internalizes some of IT, so some of its unconscious but by and long she's aware of IT.

And then that was real to you how you know you would ask him a question about, you know, like tell me about you're upbringing and he would say, yeah, like, you know, money was important, my family but I always fall like we had you know enough where he wasn't super wealthy would had enough so when you say there wasn't a lot there, do you mean that there was no kind of like x march the spot or like like blinking red light like, wow. There's something really in his unconscious mind that in his way.

as do I have that right? Well, more because IT was conscious, right? So he was aware that he was very much like beat into him, right? Like this is the only way to be OK is have a procedure job that makes a lot of money, right? But he's aware of that.

If we weren't aware of IT, that we have to bring that to light, right? But he is a way so good, has a big impact on me. IT makes IT hard to step away. Like I know I don't really care that much about the money.

but I also can do money. I say money can't buy happiness, but IT certainly can buffer certain stressors in life. I mean, nobody sometimes you hear people who have a lot of money saying, like, money can buy happiness because, you know, a lot of miserable rich people but it's like, you know, it's very different to have uh, two nights nurses to take care of a baby than to be the person who has to stay up all night taking care of kid especial a single mother versus a mother that has a partner who is who is willing to pitch in. Just can compare .

and why that that's absolutely true in this case. We're just looking at money as money as an empty right. The idea that no matter no matter what, right? How how secure and safe like is more money Better, right? And he had an intrinsic over value of that, right? So, so he made IT harder to step away from IT, because he, he was overvaluing IT.

He knew he was overvaluing IT. Just in enough itself, even for what IT gets you, right? But for the psychological meaning of IT, right then, we look at his defensive structures. If we look at that covered, you see that they're they've really shifted. They shifted IT from healthy places.

Now they're sort of twisted and distorted, and he's doing a lot of denial, a lot of avoiding, a lot of rationalization, right? He's an acting, a lot of aggression towards himself and he's progress. He's he's doing a lot of projecting, right? He's harming himself with the alcohol, is punishing himself.

So his defensive structure IT can be healthy. We know that because IT was healthier, right? But then we see that IT is so twisted.

So we learn a lot from that, right? A lot is conscious in this person. The defensive structure can be healthy because IT was healthy, but is eventually IT was healthy. What was healthy before? I think IT was healthy before. So you know that I can be healthy again, right? As IT in him to have healthy pences, they just started getting away from him as he felt less and less satisfied with his job and more more angry with himself and more, more miserable.

This is a really key point for me and everyone else understand yeah throughout the years of high school and college and friends and things that sort, I would hear this like I used to be really good at fitness or I used to know if I had a dollar for every time someone said, you know, you should have see me in high school you know like like the person who lets themselves go and and arguably is very busy with with professional duties and family duties and can understand why their time is more compressed.

Then IT was when they were in high school. But on the less you hear these sorts of things all the time, like I used to have this sense of, like I could do things or that, like things could work out or that. And then it's as if there was a previous version of themselves that is completely atrophy and the new version of themselves for the later version of themselves. Rather you just simply like doesn't have access to the .

impact of trauma yeah right OK. Whether it's big trauma or is a big event or its multiple things like, oh, that the world, this isn't rewarding me. I'm trying the world not rewarding.

I'm trying the world is not rewarding me. Then people become dispirited, I demoralized. So so it's the trauma of that that takes away the the sense of self, the sense of agency.

Like I thought I could do things before. Now I don't think I can do things right, but but nothing is really changed in me. I mean, that's that's a problem, right? And it's a problem. The vast majority of times .

is born of trauma IT. Does that necessarily mean early child hod trauma, or this was a gobby later life trauma? I mean, one of the things that I like about what you're saying so much is that, know you, the psychiatrist is here. I used to be able to do something well or feel well and and that's like that sounds like is a signal.

It's really a beacon of health that still exists in the person, but that they are out of to with, I think for for most people, when they think about themselves, are people who talk about how they used to be functional in some domain and there are no longer functional and that domain any longer IT sounds as if like things are fundamentally broken is as of a piece of them that was that was functioning like drifted out of their body and left, right. But I love the optimism, alright, because I think so much of what we're interested covering today is not just what's not working and why, but also what's working and why and what used to work and why and the idea that you know within these covers there can be the discovery of of problems. Clearly, that's why one goes to the covers, right, as we're defining IT but that um there are a lot of answers there there arrest the ingredients for success already exist within us.

right right? Especially if we know we've had that ability before, right, because we know that we had that before. So I think about in this man, he he felt that he couldn't make change.

Like now he's stuck, right? I got a lot of things done. I was able to to get myself into the school and achieve this and now and then get this job like you could do all those things.

But now he feels like he can't do anything to make himself happy, like we know he could do that he had a strong set of agency. He doesn't know right. And and like people often do, they feel a sense of loss.

Like, naturally, I ve had this happen in myself. If IT feels like something thing is cut out of you and there's something hollow, I had that thing and now I don't, right. Hence the unbroken.

I'm hopeless. The things that we hear over and over and over again. So think about the shift in this person, what's actually going on, which isn't that hard to design.

We just pay attention to IT. So then if we run up the structure of self, we say, okay, not a lot of IT is rooted in the unconscious mind, right there. There are are problems of overvaluing certain things.

but they're in the conscious mind he knows like in his household over dinner IT was, you know dad or mom you know being proud of of some dollar amount that achieves so so that narrative exists in his like, yeah, money was a big deal in my family kind of thing by the way, i'm not seeing about my family. Rarely were their discussions about money. There were discussions about other things, of course. But in this hypothetical, and he knows real patient, sorry.

he knows he overvalues IT, right? He he knows that independent of what money buys on what he needs and all the he just puts too much importance in money and he knows that, right? So okay, they're conscious the issues, he's pretty aware of them and they're pretty kind of set in him like those are the issues and they're there.

Okay, we learned that. Then we go look at his defensive structure. Boy, that's very, very helpful to talk about. Well, like you had a very healthy defensive structure.

What are you doing before a lot of sublimation, right? Did you exchange? You take anxiety, attention or something something negative in the self, or there could be negative, and you channel towards positive, ready, channeled that energy towards learning, ready, channel some of the aggressive drive right into a centive agency that that got achieved.

So you looking and said, right, those, you know, that network, right, of of defense, metis, and that comes up out of the unconscious mind, was like looking pretty good, right? IT was pretty clear that was coming through IT in a in a way that wasn't distorted. And now we could look at, wow, that things are pretty different. Now right is, as he's saying, no, it's okay.

Like what what you mean I spent ten hours of my weekend uteri wasting time and what what's wrong with that, right? Or you know he's rationalizing even that he likes to drink when he doesn't because he so mattered himself like the defensive structure now is twisted, right? So we can say OK we that's a big observation, right? And then the character structure, will we look at that? We find a person who's pretty good at figuring out and understanding things and coming right up to the precipice of change, but is a long history of that difficulty making the change right? I know IT and along the verge of IT, but no, I can bring myself to do IT like that in his .

character structure, by the way, such a common, 对。 I mean, people that know Better know they know Better. Sometimes you almost have to wonder if whether not it's like um it's like a medication in the pocket like they could take IT. If they want to do that, they might even give them some comfort, but they just don't do IT. They just don't engage in the proper actions to move their life from one place .

to the next right. And if we looked at at the level of strivings, he does know what he wants. Like he wants a feeling of contempt, really what he wanted. IT was a feeling of contempt, a feeling of like i'm taking good care of myself. I'm doing something that's a value i'm enjoying doing IT like he wanted those things.

And even when we talked more, he had ideas of what jobs would do that in the beginning, he said he had no idea what he really meant, lady said to me, but was also saying to himself, as I have no ideas of jobs, that with me, these requirements for me, that pay as much as the one I have, right? So, but, but within him, which we got to, where he knew that there were job would make him happy, he had to get over that they were lower paying to think of what we learned about that there's nothing lost in this man. There's nothing cut out of him, but he's not damage.

He's not hopeless. And now he can understand that that he understands i've actually pretty well right and and his conscious mind is is apprehending pretty well what's going on and where he wants to go. But boy, as he hasn't taken good care of himself, the defensive structure gets sort award and then IT makes IT a lot harder to take care of yourself.

It's just making other problems in life. And he starts like feeling louse about themselves, like maybe I can do much of anything, right? why? Because work isn't going as well, because he's drinking too much and the role performance goes down, right? So we can see that. And then, you know what's the most interest there is that there's a character structure that can come right up to the precipice, but not but not pull the trigger, so to speak, on what the thing the thing the person wants to do.

Because now we start getting okay, an understanding of what's actually going on right then if we look at function itself was look in those cabinet too, right? To help him be more aware of there's an eye here like which he was pretty well aware but not enough. There's a person here.

I'm shepard three, twenty four hours in the day, right? Like I am and I and i'm aware of what's going on inside of me and you can make me happy or you can make me miserable. Like, let's let's be more aware of that.

How did he go about doing that? Because I find this this first step within a addressing the function of self, self awareness and really understand that there's a, there's an, there's an eye, there's an me, and i'm moving myself through life. I find this to be so interesting. And on the one hand, kind of obvious, like OK me like tangible thing. You look in the mira, you see yourself.

But at the same time, it's a bit abstract, I think, to me, to many people out there, like how does one go about building up a sense of self in a way that provides positive agency in the world? Is IT to tell you know we gear all the time of these like affirmations and i'm sure there are people look at themselves in the mira and say you are enough and these and making fun of these people right? I actually have my own internal um list that I tell myself on waking every morning, which has nothing to do with positive affirmation, is just actually defining the different roles that I play.

I don't know why this is useful to me, but I find IT incredibly useful to me. Um IT reminds me who I am IT also reminds or precious me that I don't have any dementia yet. So um you know we will see going forward but um hopefully not but yeah let's talk about this this line of inquiry within the the category of self awareness that people can do regardless of whatever chAllenges they might be having or not having. What does that look like and what do you think that accomplishes at the level of self understanding and an agency in the world?

So one way of looking at that is in this up the words I would use, but like what's prevent a person and sort in the stage, right, which you can deserve by inquiry? So for example, in in this case, the person.

So there's a person, right, who would really not think this is okay, right? This person taking a job at ten percent of the previous pay and the job has less prestige, right? Whois, a person who would be very unhappy about that and very faulting of that, and and talk to this person, my patient, through the lens of that, he should feel shame for that. That person is not alive. The person is not alive.

So one way of looking at what master are you serving, right? And a lot of like the givens, right, the automatically in him was as if like that person was have alive inside of him really telling him my colors wasn't okay that was fighting that he wasn't aware that, hey, that some other person's voice there was like, I going, i'm very, very conflicted about this. Actually, he wasn't very conflicted about this way.

When he starts focusing on the eye, what do I actually think? Little actually think I don't. I don't know if I make ninety percent less like, I don't care my new jer man, I put some money away.

I want to be happy. I'm not conflicted. Like, so so. But in order to get there, we have to look at at the ye. How much is the I at center stage, right in all that?

I don't mean in the in some way like paying too much attention to the cell like we're all acting for the the ends of the eye no matter what we're choosing, right? So to be aware of that and do I want to be impacted by the opinions of this other person, because I can let someone else's opinions very much? I mean, we we all do right, very much impact my thoughts. But I wanna to decide that, do I really value that person's opinions? I don't want them automatically inside my head telling me how I feel about myself.

I can't tell you how many people I know come to me in a place of struggle, even not a clinician. And as I listen to what they're struggling with is so clear that they know the best answer and right forward, but that they're dealing with some internal oppressive voice about whether not they are a good person or a bad person, whether or not the choice they want to make is really a good choice at all. Sometimes those voices are the voices of parents, because, you know, in these particular examples are the voices of peers. And so I think I understand correctly what you're talking about getting really firmly rooted in who a person is for themselves and what they really value and what they what they really know to be true for themselves and really trying to not necessarily quiet those voices, but see those voices truly as other, even though they come from with within their head yeah that right?

Yes, yes. This step and think, what voice is you I want inside so, so, so maybe I want the voice of a kind mentor who still held me to account, you know, for a very high standard, right? Good voice to .

have inside of me.

But what might not be a good voice is, like, say, not so kind mentor for whom you could never do anything good enough. That's also good. Maybe you take part of that new leaf, part of that, but the earlier and more formative the voices are, the moist in our head automatically.

I think about that man thought that he was deeply conflicted, absolutely hundred percent. You don't. And and he was right, like his experience was to be deeply ly conflicted.

But when you go in and dig, is that if you just dig and you and you get to like, okay, the eye is going to assess this these he's not conflicted at all, which is why then if you're coming up the function of self later, you look at defense mechanisms in action, right? And what's on top of that sAiling right now is when you create an immediate acy, right? So defense mechanisms in action sort of informed the process and say, hey, the defenses are shifting to denial, acting out, right? And that's what today gives us a time, her eyes, and like this thing, this is not going to be OK, right, that if he kept down this path, what was very clearly gonna en you after roll to tape for that much to see that he's going to do this job, right? He's going to feel very ashamed of that like a bunch of negative things you're going to happen.

So that helps the person every hand that like there's something going on here like i'm changing, right, because I can somewhere. I'm thinking now that it's OK that i'm wasting ten hours on something that I could really enjoy if I spent ninety minutes on IT like I like well, i'm kind of losing a little bit. Perspective there, right? So IT adds a sense like a frames of situation right in the sailors other.

Could you elaborate a little bit on this defense mechanism in action of acting out? I think we covered an episode one, and i'm sure we'll come up several times more during today's discussion about things like denial, projection, displacement and said a that there was defense mechanisms see at their own intrinsic definition. But acting out is something that we hear more and more about these days, like they're acting out. Um what is acting out um is is IT acting out of some conflict um is IT trying to you know demolish uh, a struggle by by going and doing something else.

We can think of IT as by and large and unhealthy manifestation of a lot of aggression, which could be a very high aggressive drive or an aggressive drive, it's not too high, but is then furthered its powers, furthered by a negative situation, say, like this one, right? Because they are acting out.

What was going on here inside of this person is he was very, very mad, right? And this isn't a person who to express a lot of anger, right? So already outlets for, right? He wasn't going in running ten miles, alright, this was all inside of him.

He wasn't getting IT out in one way or another. So what he starts doing is he starts to acting out and angry. Now he's angry at the world around him because he's unhappy in IT and it's not giving him more choices.

Now of course, this is about him and not the world around him, right? But but he's feeling and angry towards the world that won't co Operate, right. And he's angry towards himself, right? Because, like, he can't make himself happy. Like, look at all this, look at all that he did and look come miserable. He is right.

So a way of acting out then was, is the drinking right? Because drinking is the hell with the world, right? You think I shouldn't be drinking at night and come in the work on over? I'll do IT anyway right here.

How was the world the way of snub in his nose of the world? right? He's also smiling because knows him right to held with me, right? The guy who now doesn't come across the way he did before because i'm showing up at work, not in the responsible way I showed up before and wait a little to travel function is lower to help with me.

It's a form self integration like glad people think worse of me, right? Because why? Because i'm so mad at myself that I think it's justified, right? And then there's also the inviting of if if I really have an additional problem here, I lose my job is like, fine, I deserve that too, right?

Like you, there's an acting out against the self that if the person doesn't stop and look at that, that can become true, right? Because that person didn't really wasn't built to say to hold the world and with me, or do not even understand that what's to hold with the world, me and IT also means to hold with me, and it's not for the world or me, right? But he was able to understand that because we look at like what what shifted in you.

This represented a lot of sublimation before who now all that's going into acting out. So they're not taking negative energy in doing something good with IT. They are taking negative energy and doing things that are bad with IT.

why? Because there's too much as a lot of negative energy. It's overwhelming everything else. And then it's going down these pathways that where the the unhealthy defenses are always beaconing us, send the energy down here.

It's easier to avoid then that is to face something and figure IT out, right? It's easier to just act out, then IT is to hold what inside of us and then think about why it's there. So the unhealthy defensives are becoming us. And for him to see here you you have had a healthy defensive structure like you can be healthy again.

You're not broken, right? But to also see the way these defenses are going, this bringing real risk, you know, to your to your ability to even be happy, you get further down the shame and loss path that can be hard, sometimes impossible, for the person to get back. So IT sets the stage like this is very, very important to what these defenses are, how they're being enacted, and for him to be able to see you like, oh, this could be healthy, but it's .

not now yet. These slow, you know, degrading forms of acting out in self sabotage and sabotage of others, I think, are the particularly dangerous ones because because they're slow and that sometimes the change is imperceptibly slow.

And then one day somebody arrives at a place where, as you said, you know I can't get back or that IT requires um you are going into residential treatment or things that really you know big departures, big departures in order to get back into life. And I would never wish for somebody to choose to act out by driving off a Cliff instead. But but there are other forms of acting out that immediately wake people up.

Um but IT seems like people don't often select the who they select these more subtle forms of acting out where they don't get caught. They they no one's calling them out on on IT because you know you know plenty of people have fivers extreams at happy hour right as a post fifty yes so so it's slow. Self sabotage as opposed to immediate self destruction.

And the again, we're talking about alcohol, but we talking about food, video game, social media, um arguing with spouse, some of all of these kinds of things that build up over time to eventually deliver people to a place of real, real problems. Um i'm curious for this particular individual you worked with. Sounds like that's not what happened.

They started this process of of self inquiry around self awareness. And um did you see that the um silences that is what they paid attention to internally and externally immediately shifted in the defense mechanism um of acting out, immediately dissolved. I mean, what was the kind of counter and .

time course was less. So if we're looking in the cabinet, there's a lot in the defense mechanisms and action cabinet. There is not as much in the sales cabinet because this is the major thing on his mind, right above all else, like he was having a truth of thoughts about IT and self talk was about IT.

But we kind of knew that, you know, just like we knew I was in the conscious mind. So if you think where is the money at, right? Is not as much in that room because he's aware of IT.

If he thought i'm not, this is in bothering me very much and he said, well, all his internal dialogue is about IT right then. Okay, there's a lot to achieve their but just as he brought a lot that was unconscious into the conscious mind was aware of IT um IT was sAiling. And there's less to do there, right? Because the things to understand and change are not residing so much there for people that .

are no doubt everyone to think about their own internal processes and and where they could ask Better questions and arrive at Better answers to help themselves along. Um if you could elaborate a little bit more on this silence covered under function of self. You to me, silence is what's most apparent um and and h as you talk about yesterday and again today, there's this internal narrow like what's on my mind often what kind of jumps to mind.

I've started doing this recently based on our discussions here um and i've noticed that under different states of arrow and here i'm talking specifically about sleepiness versus alertness type rosal like when I wake up in the morning or when i'm tired in the evening. You know where my mind is at, where IT defaults to um and what i'm paying attention to throughout the day is that you just asking myself to notice and i've certainly notice some, some patterns. For instance, i've noticed that at any time my overall state is elevated, more alertness or in middle vector, my mind goes to some not so pleasant thoughts.

And it's interesting to me. It's like, well, this is strongly correct, was of internal arousal that are healthy exercise within a limited frame is, or exercise in general, i've done in a healthy way is healthy. And when i'm sleepy, those thoughts never come about. When I wake up in the morning, certain thoughts tend to lead to mind other thoughts, sort of categorization of different types of thoughts, depending on my internal state. Is that the sort of line of inquiry that you that you suggesting are describing here?

Yes, this is where half the picture, right a half the picture would be what's going on in your mind when your mind is sort of a rest right what what is then starts playing its alright in your mind, right? The other side of IT is what comes to the four when there's a lot of competition for attention, right? So i'm not making this up.

But but the idea that like if he stubs is too really badly, he's still be thinking about this right, because it's so much power. Now again, maybe if got for ability is a badly broken bone, is a lot of pain that he's didn't think of that first, everybody takes a lot of other stimulus to be more silent than this, right? So so you can look at what's coming in your mind when your mind is sort of free and open. That's very, very important and relevant. And then what's winning out when there's maybe a higher sal state in a lot of competition for attention.

That's very helpful. Again, I think along with this self awareness piece, the asking of oneself, you know what what is happening in my mind when i'm in different states or throughout the day and as you're describing now also including when um there are other things available to think about, like does that include how often i'm distracted by a particular thought I coming to throughout the day, my mind goes from the conversation I might .

be in to something else? Yes, yes, yeah. This is a hy jackie attention. You know, this one way putting putting .

that a lot of people mention me chAllenges with intrusive thoughts. What can be done about those intrusive thoughts? Or is IT simply a matter, paying attention to the fact that they are there and and then thinking about the origins of those thoughts? right?

absolutely. I mean, one example, we could have a choose of thoughts because there is trauma in your background, may be very clear trauma that you're not facing and addressing and then they even choose ve thought to say i'm not safe. Okay, go look for what's still in the unconscious mind.

Or when IT comes out a little bit and you push back into the unconscious mind, that would be a it's a very different scenario than, like in this case, this man was having intrusive thoughts about his job situation is overall situation. And IT made sense that he was having those, in truth, that they were markers of the acuity of IT, right? Like you have to do something about this, or something very bad is going to have.

And so the intrusive thoughts there, and has made sense, right, like this is not going well and in your minus, forcing you to pay attention to this, because time, really like, is of the essence of your real risk. Now, so intrusive thoughts can be anything from, as they often are. They mean markers of something.

This traumatic something is something need the surface, something that is really bothering us, that we shut down. It's making guilt, shame, distress of vulnerability. That's that's very often in the case but sometimes in choose ve thoughts are are marker of like all right, that's the thing to pay attention .

to and once we identify the interest of thought, mean how do we era dict IT? I mean how do we um work with that? I mean talking about trauma now you of course you might map back to a childhood experience some internal narrative, but is there is some road map for moving, in truth of thoughts from a place of intrusive and disturbing to simply there and kind of mah um I mean, to be wonderful to have a delete switch, but obviously we don't work like that.

Take look if we this example, which is a little bit different, if we run through this example of the person in the job, because then we should talk about trauma driven intrusive thoughts, which is any in many ways the biggest topic about intrusive thoughts. But think this person here, if we go up from sAilings, we look at behaviors, right? And behavior actually now is very, very important, right? This person is drinking.

They're still going to that job they don't want. They haven't gone to interviewed for the jobs they want. And the right. So we start looking at the behaviors that are making problems, the changes in behaviors that could make things Better, right? And then on top of that, we arrive at drivers.

And I think when I was talking about structure of self, I think at least one time I miss poke and said, said striving instead of self. At the top of these pyramids, cell and striving have a lot of overlap, right? Because if you're growing a healthy self right out of, you know the sort of top of the structure of self pyramid, then that self is going to be aware of strivings and and it's going be Better able to endure them.

So his his sense self was shaken here, but he was aware of the strivings for a Better life, right? So now let's the road map is interesting way, because the road map is his road map, right? If we look in those ten cubs, we come up with a road map, and and road map doesn't never spending very much time, and like unconscious land, right? Because the kids really need that, right?

If we look at what makes the difference for him, what did we do, right? We really cultivated the self awareness, the ee, that is making decisions for him. We looked at how his defensive structure had changed in the things he didn't want to be there now and the good things that were there before.

And how could he get back some of that? How could he trend back towards what was working before as we start to really look at that and then we go from there really to changing behaviors like IT requires a behavioral change, which is not to walk up to the precipice of doing this each day, but to actually do IT right? Because he was very clear, all the vector, or so to speak, inside even we're pointing towards doing IT and that that was consistent with this self being healthier, that garden growing on top of the structure and the strivings that being realized.

So for him, that was the road map and the silence. IT wasn't really part of IT because the intrusiveness, the silence bias inside of them made sense. Then they like, of course, IT went away once he made the decisions, right? Because the intrusive thought, like you have to figure this out, you have to figure this out, right?

Weren't there anymore, along with the intrusive thoughts of you never figure this out and likely goes away because he made the change when he made the change, because we looked itself awareness. We strengthen and self awareness. We look at defense mechanisms, how they could be versus how they are.

We looked at the behavioral change, which was really necessary, and then also referencing character structure that had has difficulty, right, coming, coming across the precipice, right? So we, we OK as a baseline characteristic of him. We can understand that.

But how do we hope and change their behaviors anyway when he does that? The self is in a Better, happier, healthier place? The strivings are realized.

This person that stops drinking in the way they were, they start doing the enjoyment aspects of their life. They start doing them within reasonable bounds. Again, they're taking care of themselves.

Person smiling that, and now think the generative drive is much more fulfilled. So so what comes on top of those pillars, right, is that person is a sense of humility, right? Enough humility to say, i'm going to walk away from this job.

I is OK that the people in the job, I think i'm crazy. How could you leave that and and they could trigger something in me in some way, but it's okay. Well, like I I don't have to you know, i'm not out there for that.

I'm not out there for the big thing that everybody is, is guiding. I can the humility to go to the job that I know makes a difference and feels good to me, right? He's empower to make change. He's worth moving away from the disempowerment to the alcohol and the avoidance, right? So there's empowerment ment in humility and an apps.

If we talked to that person on the other side of IT, like shortly as he was enacting IT, right, getting just to the other side of IT, there was so much empowerment and so much humility which were then brought to bear through a sense of agency that made the changes right, that change the jobs that stopped drinking, the dealt with the people who thought negatively of IT right, through a sense of gratitude of, it's not awful that I am going to go make less money. A lot of people said that to him, like, how could you do and it's so terrible so it's not terrible, right? I'm grateful like, you know, I am going to do and going to go making a man of money that that's all that I need, right?

So I was like, that's what helps a person do that thing, and that's actually true, right? That's what what matter to him. So an activated, an active, a verb, sense of agency and gratitude, then leading to the place where there was in peace, contentment, light.

He was delighting in the job that he chose, and his generative drive was in accord with that. You know, then if we stopped at some point working together, he did need anymore. You always come back, but would you need me anymore?

Then you look at, how are those last sessions? A lot of the last sessions were him like in an excited way, turning me what he was doing. right?

I go. And then we did this, and I, K, I did this. I figured this out, like he was so happy about.

And you see that man's general drive, which naturally, naturally is quite high in him, but was being squelched, right? That brings him out of baLance. Now, the generative dry was in quite a good place.

And he had enough aggression or assertion, right, to go and do that job and to do that well, and and even enough to counter anybody who would still kind of rise up and say that was an a good idea. He could counter all that he was getting pleasure from IT he did in need to seek pleasure by what? Not even pleasure, because alcohol was pleasurable.

No pleasure because harming himself and saying to help with you to the world and to him was pleasurable, right? This is getting pleasure that way. He's getting pleasure in healthier ways, taking care themselves, doing the job he loves, doing his leisure activities, like the man comes into baLance and then like, life is good and we say, okay, come back in a couple month, comes back in a couple of months and maybe in six months comes back one more time.

I don't see him again. That's great. He told he doesn't need me again, and I atrophy right from his life. great. That's that's the success .

of that eventually arrived at being truly wealthy. Yes, with with all the components of a mental health, peace, contents, delight that, as you describe his story, which is a remarkable one, IT occurs to me that the narratives that we hear as children end up being so powerful. Yes, and i'm sure there are people out there that receive such direct messages from their mother and our father like you have to do this, you cannot do that.

But often we get messages through observing and overhearing right um the way that our mother talks about our father when he's out of the room, the way that our father talks about her mother when she's out the room and some of this could be non verbal, like a rolling of the eyes or um somebody saying yes, yes, agreeing and then they walk out on these you know and can blowing them off right and kids are we are all so aware and integrating all of that all the time. And I I do think those messages get woven into a set of very deep level. And then of course, they're the consciously artists that we build up as we go through.

In particular, I think elementary and middle school and high school I mean, I can still remember a negative comment somebody made about a jacket that I was wearing and like the third of the fourth grade, I forget everything else that happened that year. Remember that. And yeah and i'm not you know i'm not insecure about the clothing that I pick.

You know I mean obviously it's it's a black button known shirt had similar shirts since the first grade just kidding um but you know that but we the fact that that embedded in my memory systems is like jesus speaks to the the sAiling of negative of insult basically was an insult and i'm sure i've insulted plenty of kids coming up as a teenager and back and forth and um and so but these narratives gets so deeply embedded and the idea that one could pick a different path of location or like you miss the opportunity, be truly happy at a deep level based on these narratives I mean alone and it's obvious on the other hand, you just go like, wow. This is an not good this is this is a flaw in the in the design, right? And yet you're giving us a road map to understanding and to overcoming IT.

Let's we take your your examples and we we look the great examples and we we look at that, right? The the person making fun of the code in third grade and IT doesn't harm you IT doesn't change course of your life, right? What does that tell? IT shows that negative.

I are very silent, right? I'm sure you got to want a compliment in third grade too, right? But it's a negative that stands that we just shows that there's a sile's bias in us towards the negative.

And it's probably about survival and threat sense, like in some ways, IT makes sense in around human survival, but IT doesn't make sense around human trauma, right? So then so you given the example of what gets communicate to the child and say, mothers say something negative about father when father's out of the room. Father said something in negative about mother when mother's out of the room, just to give an example, right?

So children, because the the complex cognitive mechanisms haven't been formed yet, right? The natural way that the brain functions is in a self referential way, right? So so the child generally doesn't have the capacity to say like so mom and dad aren't really getting along well in in this certain way.

So when dad night here, mom went a little bit about something about him and I said, child doesn't thinking about that right? And what the child often internalize, okay, there's me and there's mom and dad, and mom is dad is bad and dad says, mom is bad and I must be bad too, right? Because in general, if your parents are bad, then then the child takes out on themselves.

Now again, i'm giving a simple example. I'm very much extra ating IT mean, imagine that we're very, very aggressive where the mother, when this happens, right, just tells the child how awful the father is and the father does the same. You someone not going to come out the other side of that being like, you know what maybe they're both awful, but i'm not that's not how that goes, right? So the lessons, the the traumatic lessons of childhood get internalized, right? And they don't even always have a solution state.

So do you think about the man who knew, like OK, you have to go get this job? And like all those things he internalize, you might say, well, I mean, he got to a good place for him, right? So, so for Better or for worse, at least there was a place to go, right? To like to go, go work card, go succeed, go check this box you've been told you're supposed to check.

But often times there is no solution today. So how many I mean, it's terrible that this is such a high percentage of the work adult practice is do is is helping people who has children were told one way or another that they were worthless, incapable, bad, right? That gets, that gets put into the child. Unfortunately, far, far, I mean, one time on the planet is too frequently, little, how long often this happens.

That example makes really good sense. Could we? And this is a question. Could we add to that the example whereby the child over here um in examples of what say men should be like or women should be like like you says it's not so much um like you did wrong, Andrew or you know you did wrong paul. Like or telling dare like you screwed up.

But but it's more um again narratives that we over here or even a parent, i'm showing a delight or excitement about a certain finot pe in the world. Like, oh, well, look at that person, look at them. Like isn't SHE beautiful, right?

That the Young child thinks like, okay, well then that's the epidemic beauty through the ends of the parent or gosh like this persons, you know. Like then that that child internalizes that this is the epidemic discussed with another human being. And I think children are so savy without realizing IT is IT like, okay, well then I guess you you move towards and and you inspired to that and you deflect from that.

And you can see how these trajectories can be set very early on. I mean, these the four lane highways that we are talking about IT, in episode one， we are just routes of neural processing that to bring us to choices in life and places in life that often times you like. I don't want to go down this path anymore.

And and so the exploration of of early narratives, both direct and interact, you first person and third person seem so critical of how does one go about that. I'm clearly with a train clinic like you, you would guide somebody through the process. But if somebody who were to try to do this in some sort of structured way for themselves, what are those lines of inquiry look like? Because we have vast number of experiences from childhood, but some messages are going to be .

more sAiling than not sure that reflective self scrutiny can help us. I think this is a great idea, is a great concept, and and we we do a lot of different things that inside, we're guided to do a lot of things inside. But this, I think, should overshadow many, if not most of all, those other things of like what's really going on inside of me.

Because if you think about IT, a lot of people will come through that and you'll learn, right? So the person is told like, this is what beautiful is, this is what successful is, this is what good enough looks like, right? And and that person makes through all sorts of experiences.

Now, maybe other people in their lives were more baLance, be able to arrive on the other side, and that even still sometimes going through the midst of IT, depending on age and situation. You know, like, okay, like, that's what you know, my father, mother thinks like this. What beauty is? This is what success is, but it's one set of opinions and is not a set of opinions that are gonna fine.

Me like sometimes people get to that place, but a lot of time they don't and they Carry that lesson forward and they're not aware of IT, right? So they think that they're very unattractive even though other people are giving them different signals. They think that they're very dumb even though other people are giving them different signals in their own grades and their own success.

Maybe giving them different signals, right, but they're not putting the two things together and that's going to generate tension, right? That might be why that person doesn't follow up on potential relationships, right? They just don't think they are good enough in the person eventually going to reject them because what they look like, they taking that with them in this in example from childhood, right? Or there they're not satisfied with the job that in other ways is like really great, right? They they enjoy the worth thing thing but doesn't pay enough, right, right? Because they have some false idea inside of what is supposed to pay, right, because of what the parent said.

So so myself, screwing like, what are the given? I always think that goes back to the math minor, right? If you can't solve the problem, go back and look at the given, right? What are you taking for granted? I go.

I know that every time I see an exact x equals for right, really maybe you know maybe you rote down for somehow because you are thinking the time and x actually is a free, right? Just go back and look at what you're taking for granted, right? And the last time, this is what we're doing in the therapy process and then that's when the person can realize.

So i'm simplifying. But for the person to realize like, oh, there's a voice in my head, so to speak, is a natural voice that is the voice of this person, right, who may not even be around anymore, whose opinion doesn't mean is to me what I did before. But that voice is saying, you are unattractive.

If you're not making enough money, you're not good enough, right? And you know what? I don't believe that, right? I don't. They can identify that. And then you can think IT doesn't happen all once, but you can get IT out of you be gently you don't get IT out of unless you realize that is there.

What is the process of getting IT out? Um because I think that we all have the capacity to remember certain things and and to arrive at a place where we can understand. Okay, i'm taking for granted the fact that there's a voice in my head that says blank actually I have a brief and until to say about this and this is that the court I have a friend thing, literally have a female friend who the other day called me laughing and crying because she's being evicted from her her apartment.

And SHE told her mother about this over the phone and her mother's response was, well, at least you're thin, wow, like and and he was laughing and crying about IT because IT reflected so much of her childhood, right, right, that like no other accomplishment of having a job, having an apartment that said, a like, you know, mattered IT IT. IT was about one thing. He was about A A certain form of a thematic ty that i'm not even sure he said subscribes to.

You mean that he happens to be thin, right? So so the fact mother would lift that from the conversation, there's such a deprivation, so many things in in that interaction. But but I really wasn't about that interaction. He was, you know, that he was calling me because he was really about her entire childhood, right? And obviously i'm not equipped to solve the problem.

And IT wasn't a request for money or anything that sorry he was, was almost like the hoarse and the and the the sadness of the whole picture, right? But again, it's speaks to that these narratives that we internalized and that sometimes show up in in very glaring ways in the real world, like to hear that, I think was shocking to her. I think you needed to tell me to like, like, is this real? But then IT was clear that that message had existed her head for a long time. Anyway, that could be very pivotal .

if you realized, is that right? And even the power of the humor of this is absurd, right? That could be very powerful in in creating change because if there's some vestiges of that inside of her, right, we're like SHE still believe I got i'm not good enough because I achieved A B and c, but I don't look like x. So whatever that I can very much up because is a lot of power behind realizing that absurd if I go like that's bizarre, but weight is any of that inside of me? Am I Carrying some of that with me is an incentive for your self scrutiny, you know, through what you are describing because what what's the ideal amount of that to still be in her zero?

So as as one comes to realize the messages theyve heard, or perhaps like in this case that they're still hearing, is the process of overcoming those messages and really arriving at the self IT IT sounds seem me like a day. Two part process, at least two part process is to look in the band of what are the givers, what what am I taking for granted about the internal narratives and and thinking about their origins in childhood elsewhere, but then also cultivating the self awareness piece that's under the function of self, like what's really true for me at the level of me, that that isn't the, and this is really, I think about separating out the voices in one's had these internalized narratives from the person that we really, truly are.

Because the idea is that those two pillars and encompass everything we need to look at, right? Those ten cubs encompass everything. So it's all that right.

The person who's going and looking at the givers, they're trying to understand what might be in my unconscious mind that i'm not aware of, right? And oh well, of the you know the last time I got this like big award at work guy, this reflects of thought of like but you're not thin enough. Wow, wow. right. Like there could be a process like that's going on inside of me.

I don't want that going on inside of me, right? So the Price of china, what is unconscious in us that maybe causing us hard and which is often where that's where the trauma goes, right? It's where is where the childhood traumas at itself, which brings us back around to the intrusive thoughts, right? Intrusive, negative thoughts and negative self dialogue usually does not mean what I meant to the man who need to change jobs, right? Because, because there, they were there for good reason, right? Then he needed to make change more often.

There the the vestiges, the hangover, the lingering badness of some prior trauma. So often times when you think, if we talk a little bit yesterday about the person who was driving in the orange, toying themselves over and over, that they were, that they're a loser, right? And then they can achieve the things that they achieved when they stop to doing.

I'm simplifying a little, but that's the basics of IT, right? Because the the intrusive thoughts, the self narrow of all the negativity, and this is often coming from places that are in the unconscious mind, right? Not always.

But this idea that I don't think i'm good enough, i'm saying to myself over and over again, like, well, let's go back and look at why. Because the answer to that again lies in a different place is just a different road map, right? The men who needed to change jobs had a road map that, like, spend a little bit of time in the I self awareness, and then I kind of IT went through self defense mechanisms in action.

And then I spent a lot of time with behavior, and then IT got up to the striving that is that this road map where, as for someone who's laboring under the intrusive thoughts, the negative self talk, the automatically ity the givers of childhood trauma that needs to go to a different place, when I was spending time with in the unconscious mind, thinking about what's there, figuring out what's they are, bringing things to consciousness, right? That person say, realizing, maybe, you know, your friend, you had this realization of, like, oh, my goodness, we say, what did that bring something to the conscious mind in her? If so, great, let's look at that.

And let's look a lot at IT, and let's look other, other things there too, right? Other other givers, right? Let's bring them the conscious to consciousness so that we can talk about them, we can identify them and then look at how does how does that relate to defense mechanism and character structure.

And like, now what are we doing? A A process of of interested inquiry like this is really interesting to me, should be interesting to the person doing IT. It's them right? And IT should be interesting to the person doing IT with them right. Because if you're a therapist, IT is not interesting to you. You need another job, right? So are you talking to a friend that if if a friend is going to be interested, so there's an interested, honest, open inquiry with the idea of holic, we're going to let's learn things so that we can make change for the Better.

And even though we talked about yesterday the intrusive thoughts and the self dialogue that's gone on over and over and over again, IT doesn't go away easily, but that doesn't mean IT doesn't atrophy over time and go away or that the person can have that reflects of thought like, oh, here's a thought against i'm a loser or that I should cut myself or I should drink or whatever isn't like, I know that thought appears in me automatically at times because I was in my head for so long. But he does not telling me anything is just an automatic thoughts that tell me I should drink that to me anything, right, other than the fact they are like, oh, that's what happens in human beings. Like that's how the self understanding brings change in us and get us over the barriers of.

I've been trying this for what modern mental health word often ever think. I took the selection and I didn't sessions of C. V, T. Like, like, you know, i'm a failure. Nothing will ever get Better.

You know, different framing that is, hey, like this can get Better over time in my understanding, in my efforts and my thought redirection in my behavioral changes all makes IT Better than those things. I don't want my head. They're going away taking time, but they're going away.

I'm relieved to hear you say that one can have intrusive thoughts and that one approach to dealing with those is to acknowledge them and look at them, not trying push them back deeper and you know, not trying to eradicate them. Um i'm familiar with having intrusive thoughts not all the time, but IT vars proved throughout my life in the idea that one can, just like stinging wish them is is a great idea but it's simply not the way it's work, at least not for me.

But I have found that if I you just say, okay, this is spontaneous ly coming up through the newer circuits of my subconscious and in their intrusive and I don't like them, but I eventually arrive at exactly the place that you describe, which is that, like there's nothing actionable here like it's just they go from being intrusive and troubling, too intrusive and just kind of mild 的 irritating to intrusive and like， okay, you know I I just, you know and yes, I go through some redirect like trying to redirect my attention from time to time when they're happening but I eventually just get to a place where like, okay, it's just a boring story or boring. Imagine there's nothing there. There's nothing there and and then they eventually break up like like clouds. And then the process can take a while.

But if you took the energy out of them, you them go away, which happened over time. And the energy that was power of less less than dissipate the atrophy, right? That's how they go away because there's no more power.

There's no more power in them. And and that really is the way that we make change. And I think know your emphasis upon the fact that IT takes time, the fact that IT takes effort, the fact that IT only goes away slowly over twenty years of of, at times being a therapies. But what i've seen be the most daunting, the thing that makes people just give up and go away and go back to the things that bad give up on themselves. And that IT takes time.

And you know if you think it's supposed to take two weeks and the world around is kind of leading you to think that and then you go for a help and they hope kind of need do to think that whether it's two weeks or it's ten weeks, if it's gonna take two years, you're gonna go away this hearted, right? Or maybe more angry yourself, or maybe demoralize. So we have to look at the truth of all of this, like a parallel to your story.

In my own life, for years and years and years, I Carried a negative voice inside. There's always waiting for me to do something wrong. So if I say something that's a little bit off or not exactly what I want to say now, IT would say like that wasn't good to say something negative inside to me, but or it's waiting for me to drop p something and say i'm stupid and clumsy right with me all the time.

But over time you self reflection through therapy like a lot of hard work, but a desire for things to be Better and a desire red to understand IT. It's not very more. I mean, every now, then it'll raise IT, right? I'll do something really.

I dropped a cup of coffee, have been done in ten years, and I made a mass. Now people are coming to clean IT up and mean the voice came back, right? But I could recognize that really like I really feel bad about this and now that gives that voice a chance to come out.

But IT doesn't come out much anymore. Where I lived with IT for years, IT doesn't come out much anymore. And when I came out not that longer o like I could recognize that i'm not happy I did this. Let me help clean IT up but IT doesn't mean i'm an idiot, right so so the voice in my head can just go away as as as i've been helping you to do for one two years now yeah .

I think also important for people to understand that IT takes time, but that we can all potentially engage in right actions, you know, moving towards strivings and hopefulness as we cope with those and trying to finish those internal narratives. Those, in truth of thoughts, is not as if during the entire process you know you can't function.

I mean I think that the is uh cognitive ly and sometimes even physically demanding to do。 But we can still engage in healthy ways and in the world and we can i'm still trying uh avoid acting out and and avoided forms of denial and and as I say this, i'm realizing that you know that the wish for or the impulse to really just suppress intrusive thought born of trauma or whatever else is, is really futile. Like that's not gonna work, is not gna work. We have to embrace these narratives and and not expect them to disappear in a finger's snap, but but embrace them and like see them and look at them and and and be unafraid to look at them and discount where they are. Absolutely not true.

I would say, unafraid to understand, right? Because we must understand means we must look at what's going on inside of us. When I didn't like that voice but was afraid of IT, like what is going on inside me is to say about me and i'm and i'm directing away from IT. Well, that's why I was with me for like several decades, right? But when I start to go look at IT, I can find an answer to IT and you have to look at what's going on in that person.

Because one might presume, and maybe people missing are presuming this or maybe not but but but a reasonable presumption that might just reflexively happen in a person would be to think that, oh, when I was Younger, the messaging I was getting was that you're not good enough, right? You're not good enough, right? That's why I Carry with me.

You're not good enough, right? But not that sometimes it's the opposite, that I was rewarded a lot when I was Younger for doing things in a way everyone thought was great, right? Like getting great grades and being well behaved knew doing all. So the things that brought a lot of positive reinforcement to me, but I never handled well, things that felt even a little bit short of that, and then I would have vote. A lot of shame.

So so the oppression inside is not coming from the migration, is coming from something different, right? Which is, which is also why this is not a search to blame someone, right? Because sometimes the people who are giving the message, like they're doing the best they can.

I mean, someone who's saying to a child you are loser, like that's not OK right no matter what, that's not okay. But but that's often not how IT happens. Like you know, the parents use is communicating.

They don't realize that, that every time they're admiring a certain level of wealth, they're certain kind of beauty. They're giving that message that the child that that doesn't meet that or is that ends up not meaning that isn't good enough, but they don't know that. Or you know, I had like my parents tried to nurture me and they did a good job of IT in many ways, and teachers did IT a good job.

But so they realizing he, this person is going to end up, you know, a bunch of years now not thinking anything, you know, good enough. I think they don't know that. So it's not a search for blame.

And I think that's very, very important, very important because often people don't want to look inside because they think either i'm gonna find something dramatically wrong with me. And the answer I would give is there's almost surely not something dramatically wrong with you if you're having that thought. And if somehow there is, you're Better off looking at IT now than later, right? And so that's part of that.

The other part is that, that people become worry that they're going to ruin something. You know, i'm going to I like my parents and if I go look at this, i'm going, i'm going, i'm going to hate them like people say, say things you think things like that. And the idea that we may get down to something that really involve someone being responsible for something bad.

Now, if that's the truth, the personality knows that anxiety, the vast majority of times, they know that they're just not facing that. But most of the time also, it's not that is just like, okay, that's how life of all and what's the previous position like I was sort enough to get good grades and I have a low threshold for shame and people reinforce me and and like, oh, I can kind of understand that so then I can get control over IT. It's not a search for anger, frustration, blame of self .

or others. Yeah often times I I hear that people are afraid of um dealing with these deepa issues, are addressing these deeper issues for fear that they're lose, say they'll drive right that the thing that makes them successful in the first place and that allows them perhaps even to afford therapy or afford the time to think about these sorts of questions.

So IT seems to me that the drives that you referred to earlier, the general drive, the aggressive drive and the pleasure drive, are such critical nodes were areas to look for all of us in terms of figuring out whether not we're doing well or less well according to some features that are pretty universal in people. So what i'm saying is um at least by my understanding, we all have drives to some extent to another and to extend that, our aggressive drive is very high and pleasure drive is very high. But if not, it's pointed in the right direction.

IT can be generated. If it's not, perhaps I can undermine our generation drive. And very curious to know how you have observed the different ranges of these drives and people and how that predicts whether not people do more, less well in different areas of life, essentially how the different .

drive is play out. I think that the first thing to say is where the drives are at, so to speak, in in any of us, is a combination of nature and nurture. So the nature part tells us the range sort that the drive is going to be.

But because nurtures means so much to humans as as we understand you from eppy genetics, from from the advances of science, we see more and more and more how much nurture matters. So the range that denoted by nature is probably pretty brought when we see the manifestation of the and the nurture lets us then move that drive. Now sometimes nurture that's not gone in the right place can move the drive in the wrong direction, right? But as as adult, as people who can take care of ourselves, who can learn about ourselves, we can change where the drives are seated.

It's not an easy thing to do because IT requires a lot of changes of self, a self knowledge and hard work. And but we can do IT, right? We can change the the sort of array of how those drives are manifesting themselves within us, and we see that.

And that's part of the hopefulness of mental health treatment, right, that we see not just surface changes, but we can see changes on a deeper level. So I think it's important that these things are not fix, although there are some natural elements. You know, someone who may have a natural sort of low aggressive or low self assertion OK.

It's gonna in the lower range. But IT doesn't mean that it's locked in at any one particular point and that the place that we want to be, what is the place, is consistent with the things that we want the the agency and gratitude as verbs and the uh the sense of well being in all of that. So the idea is the state of health has the general drive as as prominent, that is the dominant drive, and then aggression and pleasure, which are still active in us, but they're observing the general drive and that's the state that we wish to be.

And so when we're assessing, okay, why why is there something that doesn't feel OK or something that's not going OK? Then one way to start, where is to look at, okay, what's going on in the person, what may be off in the drives. That gives us a very strong idea of, okay, what's going on, a way of understanding what's going on as we then go and look in the ten cub ards to figure out the specific s, okay, what is actually going on here, that we can then change. But the framing of what's going on can come through the lens of looking at the drives and how they are manifest in us.

What does that look like when the aggressive drive is very high and the pleasure drive is also very high?

So if these drives are running too high, where we end up at is in a place of envy, right? An envy. I am always serve on the so box about envy, because I think envy is just so wildly destructive.

And if the aggressive drive is very high, so the person say in in one way of one way, this can manifest itself just wants more and more and more, but they are not getting satisfaction from anything. But they want more that maybe because of a strong vulnerability inside of them. So something that might map to nurses ism, for example, there's there could be a strong aggressive drive to get more.

And that leads to something that's very unhealthy. So the idea that I want more, I need more, I don't have enough, I can't get enough, then Fosters envy, right, which is the not the desire to like be Better or to have more, but it's just the desire to feel Better about the self, whether that involves raising the self up or bringing someone else down. That's why envy is destructive.

So very high levels of aggressive that are not tempered red, for example, by a generative drive that that would also be high, then create a circumstances of envy. And the envy is destructive. And the same happens if the pleasure drive is very, very strong.

So so if one continues to want more pleasures, so I can't find any satisfaction, I don't feel good about myself, I feel bereft inside, right? And I see that a pleasure can make me feel Better. But just for a little bit right, then IT fades away.

And I want more of IT, and I want more of IT that also can lead to the place of envy like that, the outcome. So if the aggressive drive is running very high or the pleasure drive is running very high, or if both are running very high, but IT only takes one IT in order to end up in a place of envy. So if the generative drive is not high enough to overcome how high the aggressive drive is, which would mean then the aggressive drive will be sublimated towards good, productive things.

So take the energy and put IT towards something that is goodness. But if the aggressive drive is his way out, their head of the general drive that ends up in a place of envy, as does the pleasure drive, if I want more and more and more, but I never get satisfaction from from anything IT never brings me any sense of goodness that where IT ends is in a place of of vulnerability and resentment, right? Cause envy involves wanting more, right? And an envy, if we look at what really going on, envy under the surface involves wanting everything, right? If if a person is at the other limit of envy, right, which is why envy is so destructive, because if I can't get enough pleasure and there's so much aggression in me, then i'm not going to make myself feel Better. But what I can do is make other people feel worse.

I want to ask you more about envy, but first I want to ask is one way to curiose the general drive into distinguished from the other drives is to say that generated drives are prosocial, meaning they tend to bring about but never lend interactions .

between people yeah in the sense that so social as constructive right as as IT isn't building goodness then, yes, because it's the driving us that makes us want to love in nurture things, right? That makes us want to learn and and sometimes learn to make Better in the world, or learn for learning sake that that the drive is a drive of goodness.

So if the drive is then going to going to enact itself in the world around us, it's gonna pro social because we exist as social. Units, right? I mean, if we decide I want to be an island off somewhere that's not healthy, right? We exist in social units from small like a nuclear family, right, to a neighborhood, right, other way up to nations, into to the planet. So if we if we perceive the truth of that, that hey, there's an injured dependence, but between me and others and and I see that then the driver will leave to choices and behaviors that are socially constructive.

Earlier, you talked about aggression, and you were clear to make sure that we all understood that aggression does not necessarily mean violent. There are different forms of aggression. I'm curiously you could give us some examples of how you've observed um people with high levels of aggression and high levels of pleasure drive as well, both male and female. And you know here, without defaulting the stereotypes, I think a lot of people, just despite the fact that you've clarified what aggression is and isn't in this, in the context of this conversion, we hear the word aggression and we think verbal attack, physical attack. However, the way you're describing aggressive in the aggressive drive, I have a feeling that you're referred to other expressions of aggression as well.

So if the aggressive drive is running too high and that could have factors of nature, factors of nurture, right, factors of the situation, the person is in factors of their whole life, but IT ends up at the moment in a place that is too high, then what that person is doing in one way or another is to try and exert an unhealthy level of control. And that can be done in so many different ways.

That can be done in that other way of of just intimidating people, right? Of of using harsh language towards people. That can be done by manipulating people, that can be done through passive aggression, that there are all sorts of ways that the person can try and exert unhealthy control. But that's where we end up. If there's too much expression of the aggressive driving .

us that makes sense. And IT reminds me of an example for my own life where for, I should say, ipad, almost exclusively positive collaborations among my colleagues at stanford and elsewhere, like every one of these collaborations as ended in a paper that we were all happy with but more importantly, the relationships grew and we're not diminished right um but I had one collaboration with someone not to be named where um IT was going very well.

But I had the need to we schedule an appointment so I sent to had a note about the fact that my Carry ney dealing with I had some other things I explain why I need to reschedule the appointment um and didn't receive a reply which was a little unusual but then eventually received a reply that said, well, it's clear that you don't want to pursue this collaboration which is like the further thing from the truth right and so x and so I expressed that and then the collaboration was reinstated but IT brought to mind some concern for me um because we ve served an extreme reaction to you know something that happens on academic um or anyone we get busy with things come up IT was important to tend to the car that is and then at some point later um they were late to a number of meetings. Okay, no big deal were academics. We tend to run late.

That's typical of many academics. But then I was late once to a meeting and they essentially left and wrote an email that said something of the sort, like, i've got my own great ideas, so i'm no longer interested in pursuing the collaborate. And I was like, pretty shocked, right? Because there was nothing really outside the ordinary in terms of happiness and professorial schedules and and the rather people involved post ox and things like that.

There was a great project to be to be worked out. So I remember being disappointed, but also really can surprised. But then when I mapped IT back to the earlier example of the car incident, I thought, well, like there's a real or of lack of ability this person to handle disappointment. And yet they are exact, are demonstrating rather some of the same behavior of the occasionally running tardy in these kinds of things. And I remember feeling like this is pretty aggressive, like a pretty aggressive reaction to something that could have been a handled with a conversation.

Now I must say, i'm very grateful that the collaboration didn't proceed, and I went elsewhere and worked great and they're doing great and we're doing great and so no hard feelings but um IT stands out to me as as a pretty silent example of aggression but not played out at the level of yelling or anything. There's a passivity in there. But then there's also of a kind of entitlement. And here, of course, i'm already looking at the other person's behavior, and I should acknowledge, I realize canceling not good being late, not good, but human being. And cancel .

ones were late. One is invitation. This is human stuff, right?

right? And and a lot of a lot of good work had gone into the project and there was a cost where most importantly, the postdoc offered because they weren't involved in these interactions at all and yet that the project halted at that point. So to me, that seems like an example of um somebody who has well strong, aggressive drive and that's clear from the they're incredibly successful in the academic domain.

Um and when disappointed, you know lashes is back or is past of one one or the other. Is that is that what we're getting out here? Not surprisingly, perhaps, that the person rarely publishes with other people, and that doesn't make a very good collaboration partner.

right? And IT totally makes sense. Me think about what you describing here, right, which is some vulnerability in the person. There is some way in which the person doesn't feel good enough and no matter what this person has achieved. So then there is a sense of of the need and the right to over control.

So when you agree to work together and you didn't agree that i'll never have to cancel anything, right? But thought was different of framing is different on the on the other end that now we've we're going to work together, right? So i'm exerting significant control over you, right? Again, you're not aware of IT, right? And maybe that he's .

not aware in this case that was a SHE OK.

okay. So there will think of someone different, but chief has to have some deficit of self that that results in the reflection of need to over control and and think about the first response is a non response, right, which is that aggression is just passive aggression, right? The thought would be where you you worry something doesn't feel good in you because I didn't respond, which was true, right? You're expecting a response maybe.

Don't know did you get the email? You know what's happening as you mad. So it's sort of effective to create some conservation and some discounts in you. Then on top of that, the person is willing to potentially, at that point, sacrifice the relationship, right?

So you think about aggressions now is not good, right? This access aggression is not good for you IT IT also is clearly eclipsing the generative drive, right? This is not good for this person, and the research is not good for this person and the post dogs in the lab, right? But but the person is willing to accept that in the service of gratifying the access in aggression now.

So then you said something that then would have made IT OK right for the short term. okay? Then the person feels gratified like whether you apologized or not, they took IT as you've to some degree below down before me.

Now like it'll be OK at least for the short term, right? But then the next thing that happens that actually does end the collaboration, right? So that's not good, right? And you say, even from a self serving perspective, that person was collaborating with you for a reason, right? SHE saw a benefit to the science that she's very, very interested in through the collaboration with you.

But then let that all go right in the service of what? In the service of of the ego? Right of I don't feel good enough about myself, right? The response to that then is is a response of envy that I don't that you have the freedom to behave differently.

Then I want you to I don't like anything. I don't like that. I don't control you as much as I would like to.

And ultimately, it's that envy that becomes destructive. So it's a setback for that person. It's destructive of the science that person was doing.

It's destructive of the science that you were doing. So envy is destructive. And here the high level of aggression, the aggressive drives at a very high place, is exceeding the general drive. The pleasure drive is in high enough.

Here is not enough pleasure coming from the great science that's being done, right? So then the person is approaching the world through the lens of envy, right? They don't feel good enough. They want to exert that aggression through over control.

And what they end up doing is destructive, right? And it's very clearly district, a great example, because it's destructive of the science, which is a sensibly the reason that you're there, right? It's the reason you were there.

But someone who needs to exert over control is they are not just for that reason and then the other reasons can trump the general that they're there. And that's how envy, when when IT is the product of aggression or pleasure seeking being too high always unfAilingly creates destruction. And how different is that from agency and gratitude as active verbs, right there is there is a sense of agency, but the agency isn't being exactly enacted.

Because if the agency is being enacted in the service of science or career or whatever IT may be, this not there's not going so well, right? And the gratitude part isn't active. Like, my goodness, I am here like this great career.

I'm discovering things. I get to spend my life in science. I get to collaborate with you. There's so many things to feel good about. I have post dogs in my lab. I get to nurture them because I know more and I can guide like that's not leading.

The envy is not those things, which is why people who are doing that, at least in this room of life, although this often know this bleeds into other problems of life, what you, the vast majority of times you see, is someone who does not have happiness, right in the way that the of happiness, with the quote, right, that happiness is, do you know the sense of peace, right? The sense of, well being great, not being able to delight in things, contentment, right? The person doesn't have that right.

And here is interesting, right? This person gets to the highest levels of academia and and they're very successful. And they have a lab of their own and they are collaborating.

You think that's all great, right? But not inside of them. It's not bring them those things as evidence by how this person is behaving. And and I would bet almost one hundred percent if you said, was that person like in other aspects of life, at least in the professional world, probably in others, two no one's gone to describe a happy person.

So much of what you just said captures this individual extremely well. And IT also reminds me that so much of the way that you're describing this aggressive drive can also be observe, perhaps in the way that people show up to social interactions, necessarily big interactions, maybe interest interactions, between two people.

What I am thinking of here is the person, male or female, who shows up and and just kind of takes over, like the talks the whole time and tell stories. I want to a meal A I graduate university and someone showed up for the first time um this meal meaning we had never met them before and just like set down and just started telling stories like an hour and IT was the interesting portions of IT. We're captivating.

And then at some point I realized that this this is either total pathology like this person is is crazy, but they weren't crazy or um they have no recognition that they're absorbing all the oxygen in the room as IT sometimes described um but IT seemed like they had this need to just control the whole environment by way of speech like firehose stories um and i've seen this definitely the academic room, i've seen this in the nonacademic rome social settings. And and what's interesting is perhaps why this person does this, are these people do this? But what's also interesting as how people react to IT. On the one hand, I think most people find that kind of noxious, but there also seems to be people who see this as like, oh, that person has a lot of agency like they're a leader like that. They they actually grab a lot of the attention that they're seeking, and we tend to view those people as kind of empowered.

I don't actually think that they're necessarily in power, but that perhaps systems from the feeling that the rest of us I like to think of, which is some sense of social adequate where there's some given take you know you walk into a room, you kind of assess, you know what's the context here, there's some listening as well as some speaking um and so on and and so when someone shows up and kind of violate all those rules, on the one hand IT IT can be obnoxious and and overtake everything but I said before, know there's also this a sense like oh like that must be nice to just be able to like b as one one feels and so I think um i'm describing this not because I I think people should mix this type of behavior either way you be really meat and not say anything that's on their mind or or just overtake. But because I feel like I might be an exploration of the aggressive drive and if someone is doing that, are they trying to mask something else? And why do people react to, uh, these seemingly powerful people in this way?

These things happen in the world around us. They are independent of the spectrum of gender, the spectrum of intelligence achievement, right? There are human problems.

So a person you're describing, whether that person has character structure problems that that are present with them across time or whether they're in a certain place, you know whether it's in life or today, like we don't know for sure what the underpinnings, but but what you're describing is it's a presentation of narcissi, right? And narcissi is rooted not in confidence, not in arrogance, right? It's rooted in vulnerability, is rooted in I don't feel good enough and narrow.

M then then engages with the world through the lens of envy. So no one else gets to have any time. No one else gets to say anything funny.

No one else maybe gets to say anything at all, right? There's there's a dominance of the room. right?

There's a dominance of the room that comes through an inability to tolerate the back and forth of human interactions, right? Human and engagement, right? So then that person becomes very dominant.

And why is that? Because when they tell a story and they get a laugh, or even if it's not that funny, it's a fifteen story, but somebody smiles a little bit or nobody smiles, they can perceive inside that like I just did that, I said that and maybe somebody responded posible. Ly, I feel good about that for a split second.

Now that's gone. And they then, you know, then the next thing comes. And the next thing comes because people who are coming at the world through the lens of narcissi, whether it's just in that particular event, right, or it's across life, are never satisfied.

Nothing ever brings enough goodness. Nothing ever brings enough feeling of pleasure. So the person then wants more, and that's how the person dominates the room.

Now that can be very seductive, right? narcy. People, not always, but are often very seductive because of that appearance of mastery, right, of control.

So that person did have, we could look at IT in the short term and say that person had mastery over the room, right? No one seen anything for an hour about them, right? So they had mastery over the room, they had control over the room.

But what they're doing is exerting over control right in the shot. It's like, you know, penny wise and pounds fulish, right? The borrowed dollar today to pay like a hundred tomorrow, right? Because they got to control that room.

But a lot of people, not everyone, right? Some people used to do spy IT, right? But a lot of people will take away from that something.

It's not a good feeling, something that was at mutual that doesn't make the person want to collaborate with that person even being the same spaces. Is that person right? So it's it's counterproductive, right?

Because the people who might come under the spell, so to speak, right? There are the people who were brought under the spell, right? There are less observing, dynamic, intuitive, introspective there. There not the people that you want, in a sense, on your side, the people that would be most valuable to collaborate with, even thought partners have conversations with.

But those people are gonna put off because even if they don't know exactly what's wrong, they know like that didn't feel good, and they map, do I want to have feeling more in my life? no. right.

So that's the counter productive aspects. Well, that's why ncs m is destructive because you make all there's nothing destructive in the, you know, in that interaction. But here you have to be standing so up close to you that you don't see the bigger picture. He's when you stand back from that.

That's not a person who's by in large, you know, you see that such a person is interconnected in the world around them, has a group of good supportive friends, has a bunch of colleagues where they can have exchange information and and because all that social dynamic has to happen in the rest of life. So you seeing a situation that is that is counterproductive, that is destructive. You always see that when people are enacting narcisa, whether it's okay, but much of about things i've happened for whatever reason, like i'm in a unhealthy place and i'm enacting IT right now or i'm in acting IT every day of my life because it's in my character structure. I have recognizing and changed IT. It's always destructive.

The narrow sis that i've known and observed almost always seem to have a partner who um clearly supports their narcisso release doesn't speak up very much against IT least not publicly and not much else except a professional role. In fact, there's one sciences who I did not work with who comes to mind and the joke about him was always that this person would talk about themselves endlessly for the first half hour that you run into them and say, okay, well enough about me. Why don't you tell me about me?

Um this person moved to a different country with their partner, comes back everyone's in a while as IT essentially done nothing over the last um decade or so kind of left the field and um it's kind of the secretly the laughing stock of the field. There was one other antique about this person. I'm just i'm not picking on them. I'm just trying to explore these dimensions of aggression and low pleasure drive an envy at lab meets that was well known that they would host a basketball game, but IT was well known that you did not want to score like know on this person because you would right, be asked to leave lab, and indeed, several people who asked to leave the laboratory for having me embarrassment that the lab head at one of these lab .

events by participating in exactly the event that was described in the way IT was described and doing something right.

So so that the game was essentially way of for the person to build themselves up. And they were a medio create best basketball player. So like, here's this game where everyone's expected to pretend, right? And I have to image, pretend that the person is actually Better at what they do than they are and and in some ways this IT feels like a like a republic of of how our system shows up in so many other areas of lively you said these people are rarely surrounded by people who um are actually very bright self you know a self for facing a set a you know who um they tend to gather people that just support them or no one at all because because no reason healthy person would we chose .

to be around that because that that game is a metaphor for all of life for that person is sending that message. I see this message and extrapolated out to everything else. And what is so what's the metaphor? What's the communicating? Is communicating that you don't do anything Better than I do, but you don't rise above me.

interesting. Ly, right? You don't rise above me in any well, you don't get to know things I don't know, you don't could do anything Better than than then I, then I do right? Or I will be destructive towards you, right? It's fascinating.

It's not about the game, right? The game is a way of of of communicating that message, right? Interesting, the president, that even that good at the game.

But why not choose something you're really good at, right? Because the message is not communicated is clearly right. A lot of this coming is unconscious.

Let's choose something i'm kind of fair to middling that, right? And they make a very clear that no one gets to be Better or I do something destructive to them. That's exactly what that is. And image someone is thrown out of of the lab, right? Mean that this is in many ways like the biggest thing in their life for one of the biggest thing that's antigenic tive.

I mean the cost of that in the larger world is one less potentially fantastic scientists and that's .

the broader that's always the broader er picture because the nurses is standing very, very close to the tapestry. right. And as so so the interaction there is um you have scored a basket when I have not, right? So you don't understand the message that you're not supposed to exceed me and now I will get rid of you because you're dangerous to have around, right? Because you don't get the message and and you may exceed me in other ways.

And also i'm going to feel Better because I have the power to be punitive, right, even though it's wanted ly pune tive, right, completely unjustified. But I have the power to do that and it'll make me feel good then to push you away. And I know this.

I can be good for you and i'll feel good about that, right? But that doesn't last, of course, that's why the person continues to do IT and IT also doesn't understand at all that like that's not good for science, right? Or most importantly, that's not good for me, right? There's a graduate student in that lab because you didn't say fire the graduate regular graduate student leave if the person wasn't good.

No, it's make the graduate to leave no matter what. So the person is doing things that are injurious to the society around us, obviously, to the specific person they are targeting and also to themselves. And that's where if you follow if you follow envy and you you see high levels of IT in situations that are unbounded. So like this situation is unbounded in the sense of the person can do that.

There's no higher authority, not this is changing. And by the way, I should back up a second and say that I do believe, and it's been my experience, that most scientists and lab heads are arises, are quite kind, are benevent everything a little quirky? Or scientists, after all, but, but not narcisa at the same time.

IT is true that for a long time, less so now, laboratories were sort of like little few tims. There was very little oversight from the universities. And so the lab you joined became your entire world in landscape, right? And there were some exploitation by narcissist lab heads, for sure.

Yeah, as you said, he was unbounded, right? Like there was no oversight. Where as this would be much harder to recreate today if someone we wanted to.

you know, I think that's why by almost everyone listening to this will resonate with them. They'll find some familiar because you see this or you can see this in situations where there's a bounded group of people, right? This is just a certain group of people in a certain situation, and that's who they are. But the authority of the person leading the group is unbounded. So there's a situation where if that person has narcisa tendencies, aggressive drive is too high, pleasure drive is high, but not being mad.

If all those things are happening, that's when you see this come to light, which is why the destruction varies based upon the destruction that's permissible with in the framework, right? So here that this person wasn't going to, like, fire everyone in their lab, right? So in a sense, they can only damage their labs so much, although maybe you damage your lab so much, you don't get funding, you inadvertently sink yourself, right? So, so even there, that person could bring about their own destruction.

But when you see the other end where it's truly unbounded, like in the sense of war, right, someone who had, who can control a machine of war, who who then has everything, right? Like you, what do they need, right? Well, they need something they don't have and never will get.

So so now they started acting more and more is destructive, right? You think all that person wants something mean, how many times this is someone start a war, right? This is clearly an unjustified world. It's a war because they want something, then they get something and they are satisfied that that's not how IT goes, right? Then they get something and they are not satisfied and they want more so in in discussions at times about nurses ism and envy and and how they can play out on the the world stage.

So sometimes you huge events in human history what will come up, but and people, for example, will bring up a off hitler and and they did that hilter wanted things, wanted things, know the unbound narrow ism, the unbound envy, wanted destruction, right? This is a person who, if things are continued to go as this person intended, right, there would have been no one left on earth but him, because the process is nothing but destructive, which is why, after the fact is in calcuations human carnage, and he himself was among the invaluable human carnage, because that the end point of narcisse m, that's the of narcisse on a broad stage, right? That's the end point of n at its highest magnitude de. And we see that as examples, whether we see on the smaller stage of the lab head that you're describing or on the larger stage of of unbounded war, we end up with destruction like one hundred present time. That's the final common pathway for all of that.

Are there are some consistent themes of childhood that lead somebody to become a arcis st? And in addition to that, i'm curious whether not narsisi ever have insight where are not if offered the opportunity to explore the ten covers under the structure of self and function of self, whether they are not, they eventually see inside those covers and go, oh my goodness, i've got this self that's clearly over inflated, and i've got these defense mechanisms, and i'm so envious and and modify their behavior. Or whether not the nurses are immune from a constructive self reflections.

With that, there is that the first part is, is the vast majority of nurses is IT. Maybe all of IT, we don't know for sure, is is rooted in the childhood trauma of not feeling good enough, right, which is not an excuse right for people doing doing awful things. It's not what we're saying. We trying to an explanatory uy mechanism, right, which which which goes back to form of life experiences are not feeling good enough, whether IT was because that person was directly denigrated, or that person wasn't denigrated, but could never work hard enough, never could could be enough to get approval right again. It's not one hundred percent of human beings are complicated.

But if you go and look, you you see that that there was never a state like, or I feel good enough about myself, right? And there was never a state of, I feel good enough about myself because someone has told me that and giving me the pat on the head or giving me the positive comment. You can see how, in a certain, certain natural way, the land, genetically and in concert with with other experiences that person can get to adult ode with with a lot of aggression in them and never having experiences, i'm good enough.

It's still running along inside of them and then they're enacting that aggression in the world around them. That's most commonly what we see. And because there's such deep vulnerability and such deep insecurity, then people say people who suffer from full blown narses ism, narcissist personality disorder.

So an action of envy on on the highest levels, that is, they're so defended, they're so strongly defended in an unhealthy manner from seeing their own vulnerability that IT is extremely difficult to get that person to come around and say, okay, lets look in those ten covers within the field. People often talk about treating narco stic people. They talk about IT in a nihilistic way.

And and some just see very experiences. People say, oh, that's impossible, right? That never gets Better. Now I am not a believer in fairy nihilism.

I think that yes, IT is IT is the norm that that person just can't get IT together to go look at that thing. There are so defended against that they're so afraid of IT, right? They won't look anywhere near IT.

So they're looking in the other direction. They're furthering all that on health. It's not the case that, that is always that way. And on a couple of occasions I have worked with seen in a witness nicest c people who can make changes. Now it's usually in the context of something very extreme that causes them to do that.

So someone who no longer have access to family members they want to see or two financial resources that they need to keep themselves of flow, is things that often are that dramatic is not always that, but we can see that in those kind of extansion, ating situations where the problem is so big, the envy is so high, but the motivation for change is very, very high. Because sense on the carrot and stick model, the stick here is very, very strong, that if a person then goes and does that, you you can see change inside of them. So we're never in a place of of therapeutic alm, but the barriers to that are very, very high because the self is so wounded that the person is protecting that sells so strongly. That's why the nicest and env so full blown and it's hard to get that person to go back and luck but not impossible .

based on what you're telling me. IT seems that it's a very low probability that a non clinical could change in artisans like in other words, if one is engaging in the world with an artist um because they have to presume the er they just find themselves in that place. Would you say to that person there is very little, if anything that you can do to change the narco behavior or psychological framework if they because of course, if the artists can often do IT for themselves with the help of a skill, clinton, why would a, why would anyone else be able to achieve that?

So we're coming at what we're doing here from a perspective of truth about human beings, right? And that truth brings with IT hopefulness, right? IT brings with IT hopefulness that people can change in how people can change.

And and, and I am a hundred percent all for that is the way to look at ourselves, right? But IT is also true that there are aspects of pathology that that require clinical treatment in order to improve. So now we're looking from the other side and saying there's a problem here and there's a deep problem here and that we have to come out from a different perspective of how can you help that problem.

And there's a science behind these two of what level of clinical care, for example, IT, is most likely to be helpful to someone like this. And it's not an individual clinician even, right. It's a team of people who work through different modalities who can have a rap around that person.

So it's not just A A level of clinical care is needed, but it's a relatively high level of clinical care. And that in general is is the only way that we get IT in narsisi. And there are one hundred percent, but that's the vast majority of time.

So what can then the person do? right? A person cannot be a team of clinicians ans right? What that person can do? One choices to disengage.

right? But this engagement can come with the promise of reengagement, right? Many, many times i've worked with people and practice, and we're hearsed with them like cocky.

What might you say to someone along the lines of, you know, i've known you for a long time where I care about you, I love you, right? Whatever they may say to lead in, but I can't be with you. I can't be around you.

There's something going on that that makes IT okay for me. He doesn't feel OK in person, may be saying things like, you know, very aggressive or demeaning or whatever this or maybe they just say, just doesn't feel like I can't have IT and and then the the need to step away from the person. But look, if you if you got some help, right, if you took Better care of yourself in ways that would be Better for you and for the people around you.

And of course i'd want to be in your life something like that a this engagement can come you know with that um encouragement right to the person. But but one way or another you have to set downs darties, which is okay, and I have to deal with this person, so i'll deal with them a little bit, or I don't have to deal with this person so I won't right, or I can get away from this person. So I have to take with a grain of salt what they're saying to me, but ultimately some form of strong boundaries or this engagement. Is that the response that that that's the self care response, right? For the person who who with an assist.

what are some other ways that the aggressive drive and pleasure drive and general drive, for that matter, play out for insinuation? Talk about the former patient of viewers who eventually switch jobs clearly had a general drive within him, but he was being blocked by a number of choices rooted in narratives that originated in childhood, said a, we talked about individuals with high aggressive drive, high degree of pleasure drive, but a very diminished capacity to experience pleasure, and therefore a lot of envy, and the destruction that comes with envy. yes. What are some of the other variations on these drives as you observe them in your clinical practice?

Overall framing is we want the general drive to be the one that's deterministic, right? It's the one with the strongest influence. So we want to we want to nurture the general drive and us and and others and and IT makes us trusted to talk about that.

But we've looked at how do things get out of baLance, right? And from the perspective of what what if the aggressive drive or the pleasure drive, what if they're too high, right? And then IT makes sense that often, not always, what can be driving them to be so high or things that aren't healthy in us.

And the higher they get, the harder IT is to gratify them. So we end up with that problem of envy. But we can be out of baLance in the other direction too, right? Where where the person does not does not experience ability to engage with the world around them, right? They they don't think they can do anything to change anything for the Better or inside or outside of themselves.

And if they're not doing much, I don't feel that they can do much and and also not receiving pleasure from things, there's no gratification from the things that person is doing. Like we see situations like this too, with the aggressive drive, the pleasure drive or both. And then we end up not at envy because env is the side of access, but we end up at demoralization on the lower sign.

Demoralization is is not a specific psychiatric diagnoses that can predispose to psychiatric problems like the biochemical abNormality of depression, right? But what we're talking about here is not a psychiatric diagnosis, right? Like nb is not a psychiatric diagnosis like it's it's a thing that they can be experiences that can lead to diagnosis.

The same thing with demoralization. If you don't feel that you can make a difference to anything bright and you're not enjoying anything of feeling gratification from anything, then that pull is gonna win out. That's going to be a demoralized person in the same way. Of course, we know in experiments when you have iraq going for food, if like, if you do IT enough, when the that goes through the food, you take the food away, the rat stops trying .

and learned helps, right?

That exists in us to and IT comes along with all sorts of other things because being not rat, right, we have a whole match of thoughts about that. Oh, oh my god, not good enough and nothing will ever be OK.

And no, so demoralization then is is can be very, very strong in taking a person away from the other things were trying to seek, right, either because that person has the essential to learn helpless in this right and all the things, the complicated things inside of us that can come along with that or the person isn't gaining pleasure from anything. So when when we're considering the ways in which we can be out of baLance, right, we think, okay, aggression and pleasure drive, if if one or the other or both is too high, we end up at envy. And if one or the other or both are too low, we end up with demoralization.

And you can take almost any scenario. IT could be a scenario of something. This is not really not going well for a person, not a clinical scenario. It's a thing in a person's life. Or we can take clinical scenario.

And the vast majority, you know, outside of outliers, I got a head injury, for example, we can take those scenario and we can look at IT in that way and we can understand what's going on. At least we understand enough that when we go back and look in the ten cus of the two pillars, we can then have some understanding of, okay, what is going on. We know the basic picture and how things are not in in the baLance.

We want them in. Now we can understand that enough to go back and then look in those ten cubs. And and I believe that just about everything except those biological outliers, like a head injure, fits into that heroic, which is why we can use IT to understand, we can use IT to help, we can use IT .

to make change. What a powerful lends to think about and explore the self, and where things are working for us and where things are possibly not working for us.

If I or anyone else out there wanted to get some read on, assessed their level of aggressive drive and their level of pleasure drive in their ability to experience pleasure, what sorts of questions would want ask, you know, for in since is IT a question of how driven am I um how how much you get up and go do I how much pleasure do I experience from an interaction with a puppy and interaction with food? Is IT too much? I'd like to draw me off course. Are those the sorts of very simple but improves also very informative questions that we could start to use to probe our yeah.

I think yes, but I would come top down, right? So if if the goal of health is that aggression and pleasure, those drives are subserving, the generative driving start to look there, right?

If a person can takes that an honest inventory of self, like, what kind of force am I being in the world around me? And and that could mean, for example, what kind of force are being in my family, right? Am I denigrating to the people around me? Are the other people in the home afraid of me? And what what kind of force by being a force for good? My bolstering, like IT people can always see that in themselves and take stock of of themselves.

But what we're talking about, the situation where we think a person can like they can bring to bear, who am I being in the world in other ways? You think of the example of the person who you need to leave the job, who who could look at that and say, say, no, i'm not, you know, i'm not being generated in the world in the way I want to. I'm something I doing my job as well as I would want to are making my own life worse, right?

So so that person could then see that at a baLance, or in another way, a person might see, know a lot of what i'm doing is self serving or maybe destructive, like me. People can realize that, right? So you can realize by taking an inventory of self is is the generative drive.

What's deterministic in me and I can not always, but we're talking about process of exploration. If the answer to that is yes, if you say and i'm trying to be the best person that I can, and I think about the people over who I have any authority, right? And I tried to be reasonable and I try to be fair and I try to be circumspect.

And you know, I try and thinking someone else's shoes and you know, you sometimes I have to set boundaries of expectations, even punishment, right? But but i'm not careful about how i'm doing that, and i'm certainly not perfect and I get things wrong at times. But you know, I am doing thing.

I'm contributing to the world. I'm doing whatever I take on, you know, as well as I can do IT. I'm productive at work. I know my kids are doing OK or my friends are are are doing all right, whatever IT is that if we can come up with that, then then we can say, okay, x have a little bit like are in a good place, right? IT doesn't an everything is optimal, of course.

So then go look at the level of the aggressive drive, which might mean, you know, how assertive am I right? By the kind of person who comes up to the precipice, but does that make the decision? And by the kind of person needs a little too assertive? And sometimes i'm sort of walking on people a little bit like a person can go look at the aggressive drive within them or pleasure seeking.

And I doing things that bring me gratification, right? Am I engaging with the people around me in a way that brings the gratification that one might, one might wish for, right? So if it's in a romantic relationship, is the roman.

And so, like, are we being nice one another, right? So so you can go and look at that and say, am I getting gratification from the things doing? I? Am I in my taking this, whether this drive is within me and trying to satisfy in reasonable healthy ways that are also good for others. And we're back to the generative drive.

So that's one way of coming at IT and is the way that we would like to because now what we trying to do next and what can we make things Better, right? Can we optimize things? Okay, things are okay, right? But can we make them Better? But let's say, we see that the the generative drive is not winning the day, right? And people can see that good time seeking.

Pleasure, right, is why I got, for example, here over over. That's what, that's why I got addicted to this substance and now is not providing any pleasure to me, is now making me miserable, right? But I wanted what I was giving me again. This does that mean that the person that just wants of the worldbest time, right IT, may mean that they're really suffering a lot, right? And the pleasure that that drug IT gave them was some relief from pain.

And this is how many many people tragically ended up becoming addicted to and dying from opiate, right? Because they say the opiate after the surgery or the opiate after the injury then is soothing something, right? And it's soothing something because the person feels less bad about something inside of them.

Here is all the time that that then Foster addiction. So so that person looking for pleasure, that this isn't something where we would see some light hearted manner at. That person took chances with their life. I mean, sometimes we will see that.

But but more and more, what people are looking for that is relief from suffering, right? But we can get to that point where where we can ascertain, for whatever reason, that the pleasure seeking is is too much. And if pleasure seeking an aggressions are too much, we, we become aware of the satisfaction, right?

If you, if you relying too much on aggressive, I always want my way. It's not always going to happen, right? Or I always want that pleasurable thing. I always want to feel Better. That also doesn't happen, right? So so then that can guide us towards being aware of where those drives and if the drives are high, but how much uh distant is created by the what's actually coming of the drive, right versus level?

The drive is that so so I guess is a long way of saying yes to your question, but I would want to come top down because the general drive is so important and IT does get gate forward. I kind where are we at you know, in the spectrum of like how healthy mi or are there elements of unhealth I want to can go after? Or you know my seeing things in myself that really say things that are unhealthy are really dominating my life, are deterministic, like addiction.

You know, just just one example. You know, addiction, things that are self destructive, right? Because then that's a place to then look at IT more through the clinical. And so maybe I won't just talk to a trusted other, you know or angle will get a book but maybe I should and maybe I should have .

a clinical care yeah the example of addiction is very poor um and IT also brings to mind the perhaps less apparently dangerous situation but one that I think is really common where people have a certain amount of aggressive drive, they have a certain count of pleasure drive.

But there's a kind of passivity and draining out of the general drive were competing out of the general drive because of social media a and the reason I I bring this up is again now, because I dislike social media, I rely on and use social media for teaching and learning extensively, really. But in going back to the pillars that that underlie whether or not we achieve an experience agency, gratitude, peace, contentment and delight within the pillar of function of self, there's this thing, silence, you know. And what we're paying attention to, internal and external and social media does seem to me a unique circumstance never before observed in human evolution, where you have a near infinite number of environments available to you.

And we know that, you know, pictures is worth a thousand words, and a movie is worth a billion pictures. When IT comes to drawing our attention, you just, look, you give a Young child, even an infant, and ipad. I mean, that kid is in the tunnel. I don't necessary think that's a bad thing. And the computers and computer screen are going to be a part of their lives now and forever, presumably but IT is the case that there are a lot of people who um perhaps have the propensity for a strong general drive but because they also have a propensity for a uh pleasure drive, they wake up, they pick up the phone, they look at the phone, you know something captivates the attention that they are thinking about that that might be something that brings them delight, but more often than the not at something that brings them either mild rita or or mild entertainment, maybe even intense entertainment for a short while, but very quickly minutes and hours go by in which we are not engaging in the world unless we are posting valuable content. Um and so social media is a bit of a of a drain on these drives. So I mean tapped into these drives in very strong ways and all one has to do is observe the behavior of people in public spaces now ah in airports uh on trains um even in their cars I mean people essentially watching T V all day long and and IT does IT does concern me and and I I raise IT because um I feel like IT IT can distract from more general drive in a way that um doesn't necessary speak to any kind of like deep character flaw or any kind of subconscious and narrative but just that that silence um covered um is is like clearly something within that silence cupboard is is happening that um unprecedented um and very very powerful and potentially quite destructive .

yeah I think to understand this you know I would cite this believe I believe this to be true that human beings have a long history of another, appreciating the power of the discoveries that are then in their own hands. So we discover gunpowder, how long into we're shooting each other, right? We discover nuclear effusion right now, are we going to destroy the planet, right?

So social media, and it's a discovery to think that comes from what we've figured out as humans that now is there in in front of us. And big, powerful discoveries deserve to be treated with respect, right? Gun powder is very powerful, and if people need to hunt in order to survive, the gun powder can help them hunt without getting hurt, then we be more successful, right?

Nuclear revision can has provided is some good things to humanity, but I can also destroy humanity. So I think the same is true here, that what what you're talking about is something of immense power, and you can see how if he gets out of baLance. So so let's use the sAiling.

So let's say the social media is too sAiling, right? That's gonna a make a problem, right? If it's too silent in the sense that the person is always looking at things that don't make them feel good enough, right?

Well, that's not going to go well and that's going to affect what's in those other atten covers, right, and what is built on top of IT. So then IT gets into the unconscious mind like, oh, I thought I was good enough until, like, now looking at all the social media. And I realize i'm not. I mean, this is people who who treat teens, you know, often talk about this, that you see something that didn't often see before, where a person who might have gotten through a lot of form of years thinking like, like h how I look is okay, for example, then is bombarding themselves with social media that tells them how they look is not OK.

And then that changes absolutely. Or perhaps social media is just simply absorbing a ton of time and energy, but mostly time that could be devoted to a general force.

right? That's the other side that so I think about the example of the person who I know wasn't social media, but we are saying, what if IT we're social media that instead of ninety minute today, it's eight hours because there's an analogue there, right? And we see a lot of this and it's taking something that that can be good, right? And can and since you could should be good, like there's enough out there, right, in terms of learning and bolstering that, like why should IT not be good, right? But it's not good because the defenses then shift, like if you, if you relying on IT ten hours a day, there has to be some denial, right? Because there are other things to do in the world.

There has to be some avoidance. There has to be some rationalization like something is going on, there is not healthy. So if you tell me this person is utilizing social media ten hours a day, they're not looking at things that make them feel bad about themselves, are just doing IT.

Then then I think lucky something is, is at a baLance now may be that that that person's defenses are at a baLance. To think about the example of the person with the job they didn't like that their defensive structure changes. Then the thing that was good for them, they rely on too much and now become something that's not good for them, right? So then you go and look at what else is out of baLance here, right? What else is, is, is driving.

So maybe it's being driven by the change in defense mechanism is that maybe it's the other way around that, that this person just kind of habituated, doing more and more and more and more of IT and then you would come out and in a different way of, okay, can you can you, Sally, but truly do less. You know, you replace the the time with things that we're good before because you could then back that person out toward they were before, but you're not going to back the person out to where they were before if it's being driven by something else. So we again come to the curiosity.

He told me that person is on social media of fourteen hours a day. I'm curious, right? I want to understand what what is what is the baLance of those drives, right? You've just told me a very powerful point about silence that doesn't sound like a good ones.

Or already you're giving me clues about where the drives are, really means where is that person, what's going on and all those cabinet. Then you give more information. I sit and talk with the person now you know you're gone to understand like what is the lay the land here and how do we go about?

Make me a Better. I love the concept of the general drive. First, while because it's social, IT brings about great things for us and for the world, then mean, what is Better than peace, contentment and delight is pressure when we remind yourselves that those are active phrases or those can be achieved in an experience inside of action.

It's not just sitting levitating, naval gazing. That sort of thing is not enlightenment, right? It's peace, contented and very big different, very big difference. Yes, one of the other reasons I love this concept of the general drive so much is also because IT is a verb state. IT has to do with creating things in us and in the world in cultivating our experience of things and and what we do and what we say, and how we respond to what others do and say.

And I also like IT because it's distinct from the way that we're Normally taught to think about psychological well being or being a healthy individual, which is usually centers around a discussion of goals and values like what am I trying to focus on and and what sorts of people do I want engage with in the world? And certain ly, all of that is really important goals and who you engage with. But I think for many people out there, much of their time is spent thinking about other people, like how healthier or unhealthy are the people they are dating or their friends or what's going on between two family members you know of course is find to think about but a lot of emphasis is placed on like our assessments of others and how those are impacting us.

Um in some cases, people default are just think about others and their problems and seeing their problems. And what we're really talking about here is a process of introspection and inquiry that's very structured. And as it's been laid out by you, you know these two pillars structure of self function ourself with these ten covers that might sound like a lot of covers, but so we talked about the first episode.

All of that flows up to these very simple right ideals and concepts and action states and ways of being. And to me, there's nothing more powerful then the statement that what we are all seeking, our states of agency and gratitude because, again, to go back to the analogy of physical fitness, there are not an infinite number of different physical states or states of fitness that one can seek. There is endurance, their strengths, flexibility.

There's dynamic movement, there's explosive nessa speed, there are bunch of the anodes to IT. But here IT really seems that the psyche, ourselves and our mental health is really tractable. If we turn the lens and we look in word.

yes, yes, I think that hits upon a very, very important points. We talk about understanding oneself in the process of change, right? And I would describe that as rational aspiration, right? So let's use the physical health example, right? If if I think, okay, I want to be healthier.

You know, I want to have more strength, I want to have more endurance, and I might even have ideas of what that would be. I want to be able to run a certain distance in a certain time, live a certain amount of wait, have an idea of what that is. But rational aspiration is rooted in our present.

Or like, i'm aware that there's a me now that that like isn't in the state, and i'm aware that there's the things that i'm going to do to get to that state, right? And i'm not that dreading them. I OK theyll be difficult, right? But that's okay.

I can do difficult things. I can pride and doing difficult things, and that's how we all achieve things. So I see myself in the present because, of course, goals are good and it's true as long as we're still living our lives in the present because otherwise, goals just become fantasies or things we want to want to possessed.

So if i'm aware of the state of physical health i'm in right now and i'm aware of the state of physical health I want to be in, and I know there's a bunch of pathways I could take to get there, but I have to think about IT that I figure IT out, do those things and then i'm going to navigate myself. That's how the whole process is good. I don't feel bad about myself now.

I recognize something I would like to change. I'm not saying or you're a loser because you don't have those things right. I feel I feel good about myself now I recognized something I want.

And there's gonna a process, a process across time, across effort that's gna navigate me there. Then when I get there, I feel good about being there, right? It's very, very different. If I think I want that I want to possess in a sense, right, I want to position the ability to run a certain distance in a certain time.

I just want the thing uncovered is of the thing, right? That is not good, right? Because a person then often is denigrating to the self, not always, but this a motivation to go out and get that thing that's Better and and the really um lamenting the process of getting that they just want something as an end point and that does that make for happiness? That does that make for even that the humility and humility and action, the gratitude, right of the humility.

I can't just do that overnight. I'm gonna to work card. People have to work hard.

I'm no different than anybody else. I'm not special. I got to get in there and work. Use the elbow greece and healthy like all of that is good that I just want to possess. Something is not good.

And that's why people in in scenarios like this, they might like go through maybe in an unthinking way or they're getting IT out where they go and they get that thing right. But then that thing is not enough right and they want more. And now there's not.

Is something wrong with wanting more if it's if it's the healthy and action of self, right? I'm going to now map my way. This feels Better.

I want to map myself from here to the next level of Better physical fitness that's different than I just want that thing because then if I get IT, IT won't be good enough, right? IT doesn't make me happy. IT doesn't satisfy me and that's the that's the unhealthy state of just wanting things to possess them.

And then we don't feel good about them. We know the thought of if you give people, if you give a person, something will resent you for IT, right again, that we're IT is IT a certain way? The context of that statement, which I used to hear you know, a lot, even when I was Younger, that people would say that right.

And what were they trying to get that right? What they were getting at is IT doesn't feel good if you didn't work for something, really, if you know you didn't work very hard and you've got to see, but I give you an a, somebody gives me an a right. I know that that's not good.

I know that I got the thing. I got the a, and I might feel happy in the moment because I wanted that thing, but there's no real pleasure in IT. There's no satisfactory, there's no contentment, there's no sense of self.

There's nothing generate divide and work hard enough to go from A C to N A. So it's that that and that really brings respect to the self that we're growing on top of of the structure, right? And how that how itself is functioning right? How is striving because now we're really talking about strivings. And if i'm going to strive for something and work hard to get IT, will I get the good feeling on the other side of IT? And now where we're living in the generative space.

well, I love this structure. What you've laid out again, thank you. The pillars of structure of self and function of self, ten covers between the two of them that, when explored, can see a little bit complex, but there really some very straight ward types of inquiry that anyone can go about, about self awareness and address potential defense mechanisms. What we're conscious of, maybe what we're not consciously look at, our behaviors and our strivings, and how that flows up to these simple ideals, again, of empowerment, humility, agency and gratitude as verbs. And then from that peace, contentment and delight and the general drive, which gossip, if there ever was A A more powerful concept in something to dive for, I don't think that exists, because the genre of drive is is extraordinary in the number of different ways that plays out and IT seems always positively right.

And of course, the aggressive drive, the pleasure drive, exists of wearing this stance in all of us but cannot be allowed to overcome the gender of drive if we're going to to really thrive so um so thank you again so much for this framework and again to remind people listening and watching that this framework is is mapped out in a downloadable PDF if people want to see IT visually. Even though we've touch on IT several times before, I really appreciate how logical, clear and actionable this framework is and and also that in providing a framework for us, IT gives us something to hold our mind to. I think I am so many people out there familiar with like being in a struggle and not being able to orient like, like wear.

Am I in the struggle knowing what to do? And you you've provided some incredible points of reference arsa really like focus on started asking questions about I and how I see myself, what am I paying attention to and so on and so forth, to really first anchor in orient and then be able to move forward in this process as many times as required to um get where we each and I want to go. So thank you so much for this.

I know in our next discussion we're going to touch on the relational aspects of human existence. You not just selves by interactions between selves, including some of the um it's called darker and unfortunate aspects of human existence like narcisa and some of the chAllenges of different global and personality disorder ters but also just in terms of building healthy relationships to between friends, romantic partners, parents and children and siblings and co workers and all the rest. So thank you again for this incredibly rich knowledge that you provided us and a map forward. You're very welcome.

and thank you. I appreciate the opportunities we talk about IT with you .

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