#770 - David Brooks - Why Is Everyone So Emotionally Detached?
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My yesterday is David Brooks is economist for the new york times and an author. We're often told to control our emotions, but is that actually what we want? Or do we want to be confident enough to fill them fully?

Instead of becoming too detached, how can we reconnect with our feelings and actually embrace our experience and connections? Expect to learn why men have been conditioned to be so emotionally cut off, why being stoic or aloof is perceived to be attractive, why so many people repressed, how to accurately see others and make them feel comfortable, how to open up without triggering your fear, how to improve the energy you went to a room with, and much more. This book is like it's perfectly written for me at the stage of life that, I mean, right now where i'm trying to integrate emotions, were trying to actually feel feelings.

We are trying to embrace bits of me that I was worried about before, that I was fearful before, that was ashamed about before. And David arc and his insights here are really good. If you're someone that's trying to become more emotionally integrated, to understand yourself Better, to be able to relate to other people, this is phenomenal, and I really hope that you enjoyed this episode.

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There's a lot of people in the world who find something I think attractive about being still or roof or rational law. Cynical emotions don't really get much room or honor.

Yeah, I used to be that guy. So i'm going to tell you a quick story. I love baseball, and i've been to a thousand baseball games, and i've never caught a falls.

So about ten years ago, I met canton yards, are with my son, and the battle losses control the bed IT flies in the air, lands in my lap, in the dance. So i've got a bad and are getting a bat is a thousand times Better than getting a ball. And so any Normal human being is holding with his trophy up in the air high five ving.

Everybody hugging, getting on the jumbo tron. I put the bed at my feet and stair, straight head like I, the emotional reaction of the turtle. And I look back on that guy and I think show a little joy. And I I was a through the early part of my life, even when I was for my nursery school teacher, apparently told my parents David doesn't really play with the other kids. He just watches them, which I guess is good for accurate journalism, but it's just an emotionally detached way of living. And I found IT um that I was I had emotions but were I was those they were strangers to me and they were certainly no highway between my heart in my mouth so I couldn't express them uh and I just founded a cold, uh lonely uh and detached way of living uh and so uh i've set on on a journey for ten years to become a little more emotionally y vulnerable, little emotionally available and little less of a complete emotional idio.

What do you think compels people to not feel feelings?

I think a group in a certain culture where feelings are not acceptability for stuff, there guys to fear feelings are sort of hard to control. Fear, vulnerability, a desire for mastery. If you can reduce the world to systems and logical systems, then it's a world you can control.

And people are just afraid of intimacy. I mean, the thing we want most in the world is to be seen or fulness the thing we fear most in the world is to be seen in our fullness. And so it's terrifying to open yourself up to people.

And I found moments of real, you know, scaring, because, you know, who knows how much to reveal? Who knows? It's scary to face yourself. But you know, over the years, i've become Better and added, I think and i've come to just totally appreciate this way of life.

I was at a conference about two years ago and then tucket and i'm we're at some venue and the speaker passes out this shit of paper on each, each to paper, is a lyrics to a love song. And the speaker tells us, find a stranger, stare into their eyes and singing the love swing into their eyes. And if you'd ask me do that ten years ago, I would have spontaneously conversant. But but I did IT and I wouldn't want that every day but um i'm glad to be a little more loose than I used .

to be yeah describing the desire of mastery control, a fear, a lack of safety round expressing emotions if I managed to get you in the first statement, then you've managed to get me in that one because it's just i'm in therapy at the moment, properly for the first time and do that is so hard like it's fucked in rough and because you're no longer able to hide all of the things that you have lost over with competence and uh achievement and reputation and uh willful ignorance or or or negligent coping strategies or whatever IT might be.

And you know I like i'm not alcohol, like i'm not dependent on IT, like it's i'm not coping in any extravagant way other than all of my mental faculties trying to come together to not have me be in a situation where I not in control must be in control always. Me, i'm the guy. I'm the one that got the competent.

I know the plan, the iteration, this what's going to happen and so and so for and then you you step into a relationship like a thai dic relationship or one way you see somebody else deeply or they see you and it's not as predictable. You don't you know where it's gonna. You don't really know what you're going to say, the sentences that you say.

I always tied up with some nice boat. They don't come into land gently. Sometimes they know Steve and crash.

Sometimes they bail out and you just lose them. Why did that plane go? You don't know.

yeah. Well, every relationship rider involves the loss of control. If you want to get married, have a good friend, you're putting your heart in the hands of another, and that person has the power to to really hurt you.

So I think it's it's important to be skilled at this process. I tell my students my color, students, you know one of the most important decisions you're going to make is is who to marry and the study showed of the quality your marriage is four times. We're important than the quality of your career to make to how happy you are ah and so you should spend a lot of time having boyfriends and girlfriends so you get in practice. Now I had a therapies tell me um that therapy is story editing that people come to her because their story the story they tell themselves about their life isn't working and her about to go back over and over life and get help people find a more accurate story. And of of that resonates with your experience.

Yes, certainly part and not also a problem, right, that you think or you thought that you knew how the the art of you worked. I know where I began, I know where I was, I know where I am now. And oh, isn't that nicer, smooth? It's like this sort of wonderful idea.

And then you go, well, if if that's the story, that's true, why does this thing exist? And why does that thing exist? And why does that here? And why do I have that thought? And why do I cope with people in that particular? why? Why have I got this particular pathology, your dependency, or the pattern, looper, whatever? And that very much kind of starts to punish this lovely, smooth, round, bold that you've created, which is a narrative.

And then you try and roll IT and IT sort of jangles along a little bit and you go, yeah, fuck. I don't think this. And the other reason, the main reason for me is that I just kept I I kept on seeing the same patterns come up in my personal relationships in the way that I deal with my business and how I feel when I recall the podcast.

Sitting in discomfort, especially emotionally uh displeasing people um a lot of these things and always like. If the same problems continue to show up in your life, the problems aren't the problem. You know you on the problem and and IT was the same thing.

And I just don't like this is really phenomenal quote I took from um Robert White why buddies is true, he says is a all from campy parham you says are ultimately happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of our mental reflections and the discomfort of becoming ruled by them and for me, I want to to be aware of every single one of them. I wanna know all the dark corners is like this morbid curiosity about the dark corners of yourself. And that's good.

IT makes you grow. But on the other side, IT push you into sort of difficult places. And yeah, this sort of bowing at the the feet of cerebral horsepower and cognitive effort and rationality. And we're going to optimize not at which i'm a massive fun. I do not see reseal fix on this podcast, but IT IT can pull you away from, okay. And what are we hear for like you here to just complete to do listen, die, or the the option that you have of the the experience of being an experiencing machine, like you can feel a thing, the phenomenon of being alive and being sad or happy or related or in read or whatever. But you get to feel that, and that's kind of .

color one of my heroes is getting frederic peaker, novelist. And when he was nine, his dad committed suicide and his mom didn't even stick around for the funeral. He just took her kids and they split her. And so he never had a chance to more, never a chance have any kind of closure.

He just walked themselves off, and he walk themselves off for the first thirty five years of his life, until he realized that if you close yourself off from the hazards of the world, you're closing yourself off from what he said was the holy sources of life itself. And you know, our greatest joys are relationships and that involves that level of, uh, emotional openness and vulnerability. I'm we're recording this.

I'm sitting here on my dining room table at home and I was sitting here about two years ago at this very table and my wife walks in the front door which is over to my right uh and she's standing there. The doors open at summer time and the light is coming in behind her and SHE just pauses in the doorway ah and SHE doesn't notice them there because that's the kinds horsy I have. And so SHE her eyes rest on an rocket, which we keep by the table.

And I look at her and I said to myself at the store comes to my conscious ness, I really know her. I never threw and through, and if you d ask me to describe what I knew about at that moment, I wasn't like the traits or personality or career, anything SHE achieved. IT was sort of the whole eban flow for being just the harmonies of our music, the the inconvenience of our personality, the occasional flashes of fierce um just the way he sees the world that I wasn't as if I I was like I wasn't only seeing her.

I was almost as if I was seeing out from her and when I think of that how I was observers her at that moment, I wasn't like inspecting her. I was just the only word thing, the thing which I got a thick of, as I was beholding her, I was just, I get a warm, appreciative gaze. And IT was a great feeling because that someone you you really know and love, and you you've built this relationship through the trials and tribulations of any relationship, and you have these moments of just joyous encounter.

And a couple of weeks cept that happened. I told that the two older friends of mine, and they said, ah, that's how we look at our grandkids. We just behold them and so I would I found the highest and the lowest point in my life have involved um relationships.

And so, you know, I mentioned i've tried to lose myself up. I've become a lot more joyous. I've also become a lot seater. So I used to be like mr ec um and so i'm not i'm when you touch this piece of yourself, you're almost making yourself a dependent on honey your own heart which you don't really control and you don't really understand that all sorts of crazy shit uh and um but it's living it's living.

I often think about you know the over ten window, the concept of lovin window. So I guess an into quarter range that sits within all speech of acceptable speech. And I kind of think about the way that we experience emotions and comfort and discomfort, especially in the modern world, as kind of like that.

We have personal window within which we and some people have IT up here and you go, oh my god, that's so fairy and that so depressed and that so happy and that so sad you and the absolutely extreme that's manic um well actually know that the they just have not to twenty five and seventy five to one hundred they don't have middle section and I I know is precisely what you mean and this is i'm going to talk to run holiday about this the next time he comes on this sort of stores and movement a massive of IT resilience by usage ryans book, ego's enemy obstacles away. But being really formative for me, I think that appeals to a lot of people because IT protects them. Some parts of that philosopher, if you don't go the whole way, appeal because IT sounds like I can ARM my myself against the world.

But I think you also mm yourself against the beauty of the world as well. And I I think what you're talking about there is like if you're going to crack yourself open, you will feel highs, but you're also going to feel lows. there's.

Therapies have a phrase um some people need tightening and some people need listening uh and some people who are manic, they need tightening. I needed listening, uh and so that was my process. But the problem one of my problem with services, but I too have great admiration for h in general, but one of the great myths of western civilization is that reason is separate from emotion.

And that if you're more, it's like a teter totter, the more rational you are, the less emotional you are. That is a complete myth. There's a neuroscientist that at U.

U, S, A name interior to museum, and he studied people, uh, who couldn't feel emotion. Theyd had bleached in their brains, and so they literally could not process emotion. You could show them the most terrific image as they had no reaction.

And so were these people super spot t mister spots know their life fell apart. Because what emotions do is they assign value to things. And they tell you, are you moving toward your goals, or are you moving away from your goals? And if you can assign values to things, then you can't rationally calculate because you have no criteria upon which to make a decision.

And so demos a, one of demos s patients, uh, couldn't process emotion. And so demos o said to him, you do you want to come back next two year, once day? What would be Better? And the guy spent thirty minutes on the advantages of tuesday and the advantages of wednesday and demos o calls this team over and they just watch the guy think IT through.

He can't render a decision because he has no emotional valuation process. And so finally, the miles you said about wednesay and the guys said, fine ah and so you're not think you're not turning. mr.

Spock is a myth. Humans need emotions and intelligent emotions on which to think rationally. And there's a saro sign this named lisa fell in barret and northeastern who is a concept of emotional granularity.

Some, like kids, they can't distinguish one emotion from another. So if you take up toy away from the kid, the toy will scream, I hate you, mom, because the kid doesn't understand this being hate and anger. I'm angry with you now.

And some of barret patients are, they can tell the different dream anxiety and depression, even though anxiety is an upstate and depressions and downside, they just don't have the the ground he calls the granularity to distinguish. But some people are emotional genius, and they can tell the distinction of in all sorts of emotions that are jacon to another stress, anxiety and patients frustration. And they can clearly understand they just have a final two understanding of what they are feeling.

And that's just a very helpful thing to have in life to know that you're feeling stress but not frustration or or whatever IT is. And so it's it's I urge people to educate their emotions through reading literature and things like that. The going to a place is a fantastic way to educate your emotions and experiencing other cultures like gloss of cultures have named for emotions. We don't have um the french have a name for I was I walk on I was taking a hike in your Cliff and I don't trust myself not to throw myself off like that's an emotion. Somebody told me i've never cheat this out that the gains have an emotion for I feel badly for you because you just show too much emotion in public like that.

One of them, I mean, that should be a british word that should second order a like proxy crich for someone else. There's a there's a word in german that describes the sensation that migratory book birds feel when they are prevented from migrating.

Wow, that's a good word. I should say, the culture of my family. I gripped in this jew's home in new york.

And I would say, if you saw that, we would be filtering on the roof. You know how emotional, warm and huggy jewish families can be in. I grew up in the other kind of jewish to the cult phrase, and our culture was thinking at british. And so we were very stiff.

up IT preserved. Yes, yes. Just rounding out what we spoke about, the this uh blending of rationality. And you know a lot of people, myself included and a lot of the audience will love the capacity for executive function.

You know they like the mastery in the competence that they feel about being able to make stuff happen in the world. They're not an emotional math. They're not going through each day just at the mercy of whatever comes inside.

Swipe them. But they also want to feel life more. Richard, how have you or other people learned to bring this baLance in? Yeah, I found IT .

just by getting closer to people every step of the way. Uh, and so I know one of things have a friend of nick elie teaches the chicago and he was commuting to his office. And because he is the psychologist, he understands the things people enjoy most to talk another people.

And so he's on the computer train and he look around, he says, nobody talked to each other. They are all on the screens. And so he pays them on for a Better month, find a stranger in the training and talk to them, and then the interviews them later.

And everybody, introverts and introverts, say, this is been a great ride, much Better than look at my screen, and people just take pleasure from each other. And so I found a the skill of seeing others deeply in being deeply seen is a skill that is a natural emotional education. And so, for example, one thing so I try to do is make every conversation, not every conversation, but a lot of conversations, a memorable conversations.

And the quality of conversations determines the quis determined in part by the quality of your listing skills and how good you are, the scale of conversation. And so I ask conversation experts, tell me, give me some pointers on how to get Better. And there these are things like treat attention is an on off, which not a dimmer.

Like if you're gna pay, if you're going to be with someone given one hundred percent attention, person not don't be a topper if you say I would just had this terrible flight out. We were on the target for two hours. My instinct to to say I know exactly where you going through.

I the terrible flight we're on the time back for six hours. And IT sounds like i'm trying to relate but what I am really trying to do is let's turn attention away from your inferior experiences and onto my superior experiences so don't be a topper um be aloud listener. I have a body who when you talk to me is like talking to a panico stile church.

Uh, he's like, yeah, uhh, uhh, amen, amen. preach. And I love talking that guy.

And you have to use all those sounds. You can just not you can like show. You're really into the the conversation. And so you have deeper conversations and the most important conversation, conversation scale is the ability to ask good questions. I sometimes leave a party and I think, you know, that time nobody ask me question.

And so I i've come to think that like thirty or forty percent of humanity are question asks and the rest are nice people, but they just not curious about you. And so like when I meet someone, I start them off. Sometimes I always asked about their childhood.

People love to talk about their childhood. And then when I get to know somebody, there is some trust has been established. I ask such a bigger questions, like, I, A guy, wants, what's your favorite unsupportable thing about you? And IT? Turns out this guy was a scholar and the theology he beloved, watching reality TV trashy TV.

That's my favorite little thing. And I told me, and my favorite unsupportable thing about me is I like early taiLoring with Better later tailor. So like it's important but thing um and then if you really get to know somebody, you ask questions that they don't have the answers to about themselves. But if they think about that, they can come up with an answer.

So if the next five years is a chapter in your life, what's this chapter about? If we met a year from now, what would we be celebrating? What would you do if you weren't afraid? I, A friend who was being interviewed for a job in the interviewer, turned to the interviewer and said, what would you do if if you weren't afraid and he started crying because SHE wouldn't be doing H.

R. For that company, but he is afraid to leave. Uh, and so these are questions that are just big questions. So then there's a kind of Peter block cost, really deep questions. You really have to know somebody well, ask this question.

But it's like what commitment have you made you no longer believe in? What skills you currently hold an exile? What talent do you have that you're not using? And so mean, of these are questions that get you to explore.

I was at a dinner party and I ask the group, how do your ancestors shop in your life like we're all affected by our heritage, by our ancestors? And so there was a dutch family couple at the table. They talked about dutch Sherry.

There was a black, a couple. They took african american experience. I talked about five thousand years of jewish history, and he was fun. IT was just fun.

And we had to sort of figure IT out together how, how do we ancestor show up in life? And we learned each other, learn about each other. We learned about ourselves.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with british culture and I don't know how much this port across elsewhere IT can't be known, but it's very strong in in the U K. There is a um like a lack of earnestness, especially among Young people um and I always struggled I always .

used to I I like I like being .

honest that I have to work harder to be like mother like playful or silly or whatever. Maybe part of that because I want to be seen as, like, intellectually, are academically sophisticated. And the something about not like, oh, that's not what someone of a goose adem c standing would say.

That's not someone who's insightful would do things. So I like both learning to lose and up posting up. But yeah, I I remember a lot of the time there's A A term banter in the U.

K, which is not the same as just crack back and forth. It's usually the sort of jibing gibing, usually sad dons sort of cutting back. And fourth between often guys and girls probably have IT too.

And I found that that actually shut down my ability to open up because I think a lot of the time I wanted to have a deeper conversation about things. But if you try to do that in the wrong context, you get burned because it's that gay, like he says that and that. What does that teach you? And i'm not gna lay my like performative artist emotionally retardation at the feet of like my british coat. Yeah, exactly. The damn you but you know you've got your previous position.

You've got your fears that come about naturally for not wanting to be too open a vulnerable you A B, and then culture washes on top and um yeah again, so much you ve just said there is something i've land the show which you know your eyes ode in seven hundred and sixty or something like that in six years so that a lot of time talking to people and it's interesting what you said about the yeah keep going the power of a nod is so insane and people can go back and listen to the first ever episode did on the show and it's it's painful because I wasn't able to give a non verbal confirmation. I was paying attention because I hadn't learned the power of a nod. And then I watched a bunch of Opera and there's even a meme about Opera where he has like different categories of knots and there's like that yes, i'm still listening nod and that's the that's interesting nod.

And then there's the yes, that must have been difficult not like, you know, there's all of this different rapids, ia. And for a conversation like this where a lot of people just listen, you don't want to into jack, you want the person to just keep going there in their flow, but you want them to know that you're still paying attention. But when you do IT in person, IT really works as well.

You get people to be in the sentences of fifty percent longer because they know that you're just there nodding away. So I feel like I I might um get my editor to look at all of the non me angles of episodes and trying create this grocery of different notes that i've but yeah non verbal. Yep, continue tonight.

I am here with you. I see what you're saying the a and then the topping thing, I really wanted to bring this up. You have been excited to bring this up.

Sce, I know that you were coming on. Sean stricklin and theo von had a conversation. Sean the USA champion fields, a comedian. N as A A really difficile emotional moment where he's he's really, really, really grasping, is sort of crying, shaking is got this bottle of water in his hand, this bottled sort of shaking all over the place and theo says, it's OK, but we don't need to talk. I can just sit here for a while if you want and it's like the most insane, it's the most you.

It's like David Brooks synthesized into a sentence like this most recent bug of your synthesize into a sentence doesn't try one up and doesn't try rip amount of IT, doesn't try and say stop, doesn't minimize, doesn't try and I I once had this thing or whatever, and he just holds space for this guy and it's phenomenal. And charlie, who put one of my friends, did an amazing breakdown. And I watched IT. And I just yeah between your book therapy, that video and just like i'm all in i'm all in on feeling feelings yeah now that .

I used to think wisdom was like the ability to be like yoga of safe, smart maxims, now I think it's the ability to receive the stories that people are telling you in a way that holds space for them.

A A student named jillian sawyer had a great student when he was in college um her dad got pankratz cancer and so um he died after college and SHE was then invited to become bright made of friend first and so she's a bride mate at the wedding and SHE watches the father, the bride give this beautiful toast to his daughter and then IT comes time for the father daughter dance and Julian thinks, I just can't take this. I'm just gonna to the ladies. Women have a cry and so she's goes ladies room has a crime, comes out in a few minutes and every single person at her table and joining the Jason table was standing in only.

And he said, they didn't try to validate my grief. They didn't say a word, just all of them in succession game, a quick hug. Even the new boyfriends were knew as well. And IT was exactly what I needed. And that that's just the art of presence.

And I have another friend and old friend who lost a daughter in afghanistan, and I said, like, how do I talk to you about that? Like, what? What do I say? And SHE said, some people don't want to raise anna with me because they think they're bring up a bad subject, but they should know that anna is always on my mind, and so you should raise her, and if I feel like talking Better, I will.

If I don't, I won't. But you you are not introducing a bad subject to me. So that's just being present. And then he had another daughter who had a horrible bike accident, and SHE was a nursing or the health, and he said, you know, was the best thing that happened me that a friend did for us.

They came and they wrote cash, all whatever and then they went to the bathroom and while they were in the bathroom, they noticed um there was no shower man and so they went out to target. They bought a shower mat and they put IT in and they didn't tell me. And IT was just like a practical thing that I needed done. And so sometimes you can be a profound friend, not by having the depart conversation by the mire, active presence.

If this is so important, why are we not all doing IT already? Why are we not seeing other people deeply if the rewards are as great as you say? I.

some british culture, you you many british culture. I, I mean, I I think we built up defenses because IT is vulnerable and a little scary. And I know british cultural reasonable. I member, I used to watch the show.

I don't know, it's so long called have I got news for you uh and the people on that show were so quick and so funny with, uh and I think british culture doesn't enough credit for being a very comically gifted culture. The people are just genuinely funny. But IT does become a defense mechanism.

I've seen IT again and again again. IT becomes a way. So there's that cultural thing.

And then you know we we evolved to live in bands one hundred and fifty people when you and you really got to know people, i'm assuming, and you know hundred gather bans. Now we we live with lots of hundreds of hundreds people. It's much easier to slide by and do the surface a loof thing.

And just what like Cherry bonomy. Second, getting to know someone takes time. And I try to be a very efficient person. And I got a little clock in my head so that when um somebody when i'm I pull over the gas, I should pumps my tank. I'm thinking H I got ninety seconds so I can get two emails done.

And and if you you have that clock in your head, then the the patients of building a ref a relationship just doesn't seem worth IT. Like when I leave a party, I live in like thirty seconds. When my wife, who's very relation, leaves the party, IT takes a look and .

out you see there was an article that came out recently that said people who do irish, goodbye, the parties say themselves .

up to two days per year. I see every me be me. But on the other hand, people really like my way from me.

I'm okay with, uh, so, uh, I think that's the thing. And then it's there's always A A sensation that ah this personality i'm trying i'm i'm getting too personal, vulnerable too fast. And of course that is a danger like somebody he's really vulnerable right off to get go.

You crept out. On the other hand, I interview people for a living like you. And how many times in my life have I seriously asked somebody tell me some piece of their live story.

How many times have they said, none. Your dam business. The answer is zero. zero. People love to tell their story.

There's an academic northwestern university named dana cads, studies how people tell their life story. So you post some news lab for four hours. Tell me your high points, your low points, your turning points.

The end of the four hours, he gives him an envelope with some money to compensate them for their time. And a lot of the people say i'm not taken money for this has been one of the best afternoon of my life. No one has ever asked me these questions. And so people have a need to tell their story uh and and you're giving them a great gift by asking.

I think we assume that other people have got their life together more than we do at least I I Sunny did for a very long time. And I always presumed that anybody else is judgement of me was because of some perfect insight into my malignant ant broken programing. And they weren't perfectly rational when I was efficient in some sort of relative way.

And what that means is that you assume that they they talk about their life all the time, they've got friends, that you know someone, I don't know what IT is, maybe they have been on a netho x documentary, what whack IT done. They have conversations like the ones that i'm yearning to have all the time. And if I bring that up to them, that highlights to them the fact that I have a scarcity of that. And then being someone who has a surplus of that will see me in a deficient light somehow yeah well.

of course it's a tourism, but it's a true tourism like a lot of tourism that even when we know someone we only seen ten percent of uh and that everybody has demons. Everybody has something uh deep down that uh you don't know anything about and everyone's going through some struggle you know anything about but I have found um that I ve never met somebody who said, yeah I have too many people to tell to talk about important things with.

I've never met that person and and so there's there used to be a journalist and studs turtle who did these oral history and he said, if you listen, if you listen, they will talk if they will always listen because no one has ever ask in their live story uh and so I think there's a way more people who never have the chance because there's a bit of a social stigma. And again, I don't want people spilling the guys. I was at party and there was a journalist, and he was grilling me about my spiritual life, and he was given me nothing like, nothing about her.

IT was just like, I felt like I was on try interrogation. yeah. And so that was awful.

But you know, a conversation that moves halfway, halfway, halfway, uh, uh, is a beautiful conversation. The book, I draw this distinction between the ministers and illuminators and diminishes. Or people are not curious about you.

They stereotype you. They do a thing called stacking, which is, I learned one fact about you, and then I make a whole series assumptions about you. And so illuminative, on the other hand, are people who just make you feel seen, they really care about you, and they make you feel little up.

And one of the stories I tell us, A A jenee rome who would go on to become winston church's mom but when he was Young, lady SHE was at a dinner party in london in Victorian england and SHE seat next to William glaston, the prime minister and um SHE leaves that dinner of talking that gladstone is the clevers person in england and then sometimes later she's at a different dinner party and SHE happened to B, C. And next to gladstone, great political rival Benjamin israeli. And SHE leaves that in her thinking that she's the clevers person in england. And so if you can make other people feel entertaining and funny and clever, you've done of a little noble service for the world.

I wanna talk about the felt sense of you as an individual, not the art of seeing others deeply, but the art of being deeply seen. Talk to me about going from this protective autism ration, hyper rationality world. The step by step, there will be people listened.

They'll be a lot of people listening who think this sounds like me. The control, the order. I I like to be competent and to get things done. I don't like to be out of control.

What is the felt sense that you went through of beginning to open up? And how do you cope with the discomfort of that rising? And how can people also do that? How can people become more comfortable with feeling feelings?

Yeah, well, I I went through you, a reasonably ambitious person, til I went through a phase that a lot of us go through, called the career consolidation phase of life. You trying to build your career, build your identity, achieve things, make a difference in the world. And in my experience, uh, a couple of things happen.

One, you achieve success and it's not as greasy I thought I was gonna. Uh, you know, I remember the first time I got a call from my agent saying one of my box was on the best l list. Like I had sort of dream about reading a best cellular and I felt nothing.

I just felt nothing, and i've had way more career success than I thought I would. But and I I have found that IT spars from me, from the anxiety I might feel if I thought I was a failure. But as first, positive, good IT doesn't lead to that much.

So there's it's created this dissatisfaction of a deeper life or you don't achieve success, you fail, in which case you're in the valley. Or or something happens in life that wasn't part of the original plan. You get cancer, you lose a child.

And so there's a theologian in the one hundred and fifteen named patient c who says, moments of suffering interrupt your life and they remind you you're not the person you thought you were. And he says, they Carry through the floor of the basement of your soul, and they reveal a cavity below. And then they cloud through another floor, and they reveal a deeper cavity below.

So in those bad moments, you see deeper in yourself. Then you do in Normal life when you're happy, and you realize only spiritual and relational food to fill those capitals. And so in my case, I went through a bad period.

I had divorce. My kids were leaving home. I'd other invested in intim friendship and good friendship. So I i'd work friends, but I know weekend friends like the people. I really won to hang around whether I could call a two in the morning.

And so I I just realized this gap in my life um and I am a little incentive and the super university chicago intellectual so I want to learn that emotions so I wrote book emotions called the social animal years ago. So who like I did the chicago way I wrote a book, but more I was. And then I I found when you you're going to live families, you can't pull yourself out. You have to rely on somebody else to reach the value and pull you out.

And so round about twenty fourteen or so, i'm in dc, reasonable, lonely, and I get invited over the this couple's house uh their name of Kathy David and they have a kid in the dc public schools who's got a friend who's got his mom has some issues and he has some often as nothing to eat, in no place asleep so they said, James can come over our house and then James had a friend and I had a friend, kate a friend. And by the time I go over their house in twenty fourteen or so, uh, there were fourteen mattresses on the basement and there were forty kids around the dinner table. And so I visit, I hold on my hand, I meet a kid at the front door the first time, and he says, we're not really allowed to shake cancer.

We just hug here. And i'm like, not the hugest guy, but I joined this little extended family, this sort of chosen family and those Young people who are seventeen eighteen um they like beamed emotional opens at you and they demanded IT back. And I think that getting into that kind of culture was part of my education of knowing how to you really be open.

And so you join a different culture where where being emotionally available as the norm, and by process of his mosses. Um I think you you do you you even notice, I wouldn't say I notice the change. I ouldn't say, like I N sixty percent more I M available.

Like the spirit is opened and I read in the book I I can prove to, but I have a name drop. So i've been interviewed by Opera twice in my life, and the first time in twenty fourteen and the second time in twenty nineteen. And after the taping in twenty nineteen, SHE pulled my side and said, David, i've really, really seen somebody changed so much in midday.

You were so blocked before and SHE should know she's Opera uh and so it's there's just a fruit, a flowing of the spirit that happens to people. And I think that often happens as people get older. That career consolidation phase in and another phase uh, called generativity, the the desire to really be of service to the world, that sort of kicks in. I think when people hit especially to hit like fifty or sixty a remember when you were thirteen and fourteen and horny ss entered your life well around fifty or sixty generativity entertain your life this intense desire to give and i'm oversimplifying IT that you have to be fifty experiences you can experience IT when you are arent twenty five but um I do think that desire to be a service to the world in and just be more um to cry more easily.

Yeah that's something i'm quite ashamed about. I'm ashamed about how emotionally am I think i've cried on the show maybe twice, maybe two or three times usually what i'm telling something like quite a happy story doesn't tend to be something that sad. But if it's me on my own watching a Christmas movie, good example, I watched two quite sad Christmas movies.

One of them is class, uh, which is phenomenal. Animated children, kindly children's think. But it's really deeper, meaningful.

Uh, that's outstanding. And then there was another one which was an animated version of uh, night for Christmas. And at both of these i'm like in a weeping, fully weeping at the end of IT.

And I find I find that happens when I tell like when I think about stuff on a roman and so for but the discomfort that I feel and that desire, I clamp down on emotions. I totally I totally understand what you mean. There's something there's another point you were talking before about, however ing different size tribes and and now in there's more people.

So we kind of through the conversations a little bit more. I think another element of IT is that has decreased ed on left of security, especially since social media if you only have one hundred and fifty people to be open vulnerable with in ten of them you're kin, twenty of them if you're extended kin, half of them are older than are onna die within the next decades. So who cares another half of them a baby.

So they do not know. There's just not that many people that would use. And also it's not cemented on the internet for the rest of time. So I think that given that so much of our communication into personally and even you know people use uh, video journals, diary of blogs extra right, that is a very person approach that I think there is a fear that that will be used as some sort of cujo to batteries where at some point later in life, by a person who isn't as honest, by a person who is going to be more cutting or sad, ico doesn't feel things very deeply.

There are people out there that I think just don't feel that they don't don't feel them, don't necessarily have the capacity to fill them and don't have the desire to have the capacity to fill them. I'm not one of those people. And yeah, I genuinely feel like i'm on the same, similar train tracks to yourself just a little bit further behind uh, one of the other things, again, an Opera bit I couldn't learned like everything from Opera, but two things that I did learn first being uh, develop a nice rapid ora of nods h and the second one, something that I know that you're a big fan of, is the use of silence.

Yeah now I I for researching this spoke I would watch Opera uh turn the sound off. I just watch her uh and I I noticed like he did this uh haran kate famous interview and um when they're saying something happy she's verbalizing yes uh but when there are saying something said he goes quiet and it's like creating an emptiness for them to continue uh they are talk and so I think that's part of the problem.

But the other thing i'd mention is that doing this being good at social skills, social life IT, is an absolute skill. It's like it's it's a skill like learning carpentry or uh, planning by tens. And you can get Better by learning the skills.

I mention some conversation skills before and so you just have to know what to say. Like I tell the story in the book, one of my friends got very terrible depression, and I just literally did not know what to say to depress first. I thought I was recently well educated, but I didn't know what depression was, not really.

And I learned you can't understand depression by extrapolating from your own moments of sadness if you, if you're luck enough not to have experienced that. A friend of mine, another, another friend, said, a depression, depression is a malfunction in the instrument you use to perceive reality. And so depressing, you like my friend, the one who got depressed his head these lying voices in his head like um your worthless nobody would not miss you if you're gone and he he was literally seeing the world through.

Lying voices, and I just made mistakes which were just skilled mistakes, not nothing to do with my harder anything. I want to do the right thing, but I didn't know how. And so the too much classic mistakes that I made, which i'm told other people make, is I try to give ideas on how to get out the depression like you to go to these service strips of vietnam.

Amy, you found this reward. And when you do that again, and I learned, if you're giving people who are depressed ideas about how to get out depression, you're just showing you don't get IT because not ideas. They're lacking. It's a lot of things they're lacking but not ideas and the second mistake I made was called cognitive reframing uh which is um trying to remind people how good how many good things they have in their life great marriage, great career, great kids and if you too if you try to convince a person is depressed that their life is all these positives, you're making them feel worse.

Look at all the things i'm taking for granted oh how much shame that I don't have these problems and yet I still feel like .

that and i'm not enjoying the things. don't. why? Why am I not enjoying these things?

Anything really broken with me?

Yeah, right. And so these are just like knowing what to say, when not to say. And you can just learn, had to show up for people in these circumstances in ways to little more Graceful than that.

if that's what not to do with someone. I think this is probably quite specific to depression, but maybe we can broaden IT out into people who are assad or you going through a tough period. How can people be Better seeing others that are down the first .

um and I learned this the hard way over three years. Um first acknowledges the reality of the situation. This sucks.

This really sucks. And so just show that you're there with them. Second, just a burst of goodwill. I want more for you. I want more for you. That doesn't mean that you'll make A A difference because Frankly, i've learned the words of very limited utility in the circumstance. But you can at least say I want more for you and then constant touches.

A lot of people who are depressed or terrified their friends will leave them because they're not fun to be around and IT just like i'm thinking of you and I wish i'd sent my friend like more text here and there I read about a guy whose brother was depressed. He was said, world traveller. He sent postcards from everywhere, went in the world.

No response sera taking about. And that just a constant set of light touches. And then there's A, I read about this later from the classic book, which I hope everybody is read, called man search, remaining by Victor Frankl.

And he's in the death camps. A the not see death camps. And he's confident with lot of people kind of laying suicide. And so his advice, what he said to them was life has not stopped expecting things of you that you still have responsiblities to the world. There are still things you can contribute and one of them as credibility was suffering ah and you know I often think when someone tells me they're of laying suicide, first thing I think is you're so brave because you're going through some horrible stuff and you're still here and so I just admire the current with which you embrace life. Uh and so uh these are things i'm not really make any difference, but it's a way of being a Graceful friend to the person and never asking why I just i'm here, i'm here, i'm here.

What are some of the ways but we make ourselves less easy to see.

uh well, a by invulnerable ability, uh, b by egotism. Uh, we we want to the risk. A lot of people on question is that they they want to perform and the performance is a performance I mentioned earlier.

Fred bigger, the novelist, and he says it's important from time to time to tell some secrets about yourself because IT, it'll remind you you're not the person you pretend to be for the world and he says it'll make IT a little easier for others at from time to time to tell secrets to you. And so we we do that. We all, we all put on a show in immense in social media.

Might be you in social media, its judgment everywhere, understanding nowhere. And so of course, you put up walls. You know, there's books out now, the subtler of not giving a fuck in and girl, wash your face. And these are all books that say, don't mind what other people are saying, like, do not mind. And because so many people have that so consciously on their mind and being judged all the time um and of course the truth is that people don't think IT about you that much.

So be who you are um but I do think we have we put on that show uh and then finally the just you know i'm a practice escape artist and so if you came up to me with the problem twenty years ago, uh I would look at my shoes and then pretend have an important appointment with my dry like no, I was in the escape artist uh and this is the way the glide because I was uncomfortable with somebody, was getting too personal, just was uncomfortable and I guess so little fearful. And so that's one of the ways and and it's just a question of trust. And you'd mention trust earlier. And I have found that if you're open in the world with your friends and quinces, you will actually get betrayed because people will sometimes take advantage of your vulnerability and they'll use IT against you in the time in political journalism kind of a rough business uh and yeah I found it's Better to lead with trust and be betray occasionally than to not trust people and to wall yourself off.

I think that is one of the huge trade, ffs, that people feel uncomfortable about. I see this a lot um in comment sections know I talk a lot about the problems of men and there is a lot of advice uh four men especially around vulnerability. How much should you show?

How much should you not if you do this to your partner, it's immediately going to make her own attracted to you um the full game. And then people saying that you can do this, you just need to find a part you know in the right place to be able to hold space. So and so but there is this perennial um concern around if I show my vulnerabilities, especially to a female partner as a man um but also to the world generally, that's associated with the kind of weakness. A IT is a vector of attack that can be used in future IT is a inadvisable for a whole host of reasons and IT makes you. IT makes you diminished in status both yourself into other people and um I grappled LED with that for a long time because that is me the I my background is in uh running nightclubs not exactly the most emotionally mature um environment to grow up and and um I I am still playing with this idea but I you're still going to feel feelings ultimately you are still going to have these thoughts and I I really struggle to see how pretending that you don't feel them or not showing them is braver than actually doing IT like IT to me that the bravest thing that you can do is to you don't need to tell everyone about everything about you're fucked in athletes photo, chronic, flatulent so like whatever like the the door hinge that squeakin annoys you but IT that seems to me like the the the real heroes journey that that seems to be the thing where you think wow that person is not only sufficiently brave that they're able to verbalize this but they're doing IT because they think that they can overcome IT um and gender you know you want to be ruled by a mentally afflictions.

do you want to become aware of them? Yeah i've known a lot of women who dumped guys and i've never had one to tell me and I dumped him because he was just too vulnerable the naming reason women dump guys because they don't communicate uh and they don't feeling it's a mutual open, loving relationship.

And so I do think um you know that vulnerability is just like not only good strategy for life, but it's a good strategy for building relationship. But of course, you'd do a great pace. I and I was a dating the woman who is now my wife, who were like ealing.

And we were like emails in ways where we would slightly cross up a trust, this hold and IT would like my nude and like. And I remember I sent an email, which is a little more intimate than the emails we said before, was just like five percent more. And then so I get on a flight across country flight, and I think, okay, I can't wait to see how he reacts as he pushed me away or SHE like welcoming. And of course, the flight had no wifi. And so i'm like for five or six, eight i'm sitting .

what a terrible open lived .

out so but they turned out, well, we're married.

How can people end the conversation more effectively?

Yeah, I think the I sucked at this. So I remember I went to my fifth high score union, and my only trick for render a conversation was i've got to go to the bar. And so I was so hammer, after twenty minutes, that that reunion, that I to leave the reunion.

But I think the the way i've learned is like you have a conversation um and I say I say i've really enjoys talking to I particularly enjoying your analysis how how british culture might have made you more inhibited uh and that was great. So in other words, a positive first, I really enjoy talking to you and then mentioned a couple of things. The other person said that's particularly struck their interest and then say, IT was it's been great and then you can leave but it's that positive burst with specificity and then people leave thinking, wow.

was really listened there yeah, that's lovely. You also talk about improving the energy that walk into a room with. And since moving to amErica for all of the flaws that IT has, I find myself flourishing here because you're an enthusiastic bunch.

Everyone is good, kind of maybe not everyone, but many people are like excited. And you know they want to stick to hear what you've got that going on. Maybe IT doesn't go particularly deep, but especially you ve got something good.

Here's some good news that that's amazing in the U. K. That would be like all all right. You think you are a little bit special um again like banter um they talk me about how people can improve the energy that they come into a .

room with yeah well we are I notice like I should live in canal and when you pass somebody in a hiking trail in a forest, nobody says high in europe, but here in amErica we always say, and that was way this, a small thing. I had a friend who moved here from african SHE said, my first few years here, my cheeks hurt because I just smile so much.

You people smile. Ridiculous, resting.

smiling face and so when we first meet somebody, each of us is unconscious ly asking a question, which is, is this person to me nice to me? Am I personal this person and I priority this person and the answer lls questions will be answered by your eyes before any words come at your meal. And so the power of that first gaze, and the Simon vay was a french and electron in the world water era, said, attention is a moral act.

IT calls fourth people things into being. And so the way you open you, you treat each person as just this rever creature television k story that I put in the book. Um I mean wao taxes, which must be close to Austin.

How big texas? Wait, wait now from .

where I so i'm having breakfast at a dinner with a woman named lu orses like ninety three, and she's like a drilled surgeon type. SHE had been a teacher and he said, you actually loved my students enough to discipline them. And i'm a little intimidate by this.

This lady is like tough. And in the dinner walks, a mutual friend of us is pastor and Jimmy derail and Jimmy, my pasture to the homeless in wka, among others. And and he comes up to our tables, sees us there, notice both.

And he graves is dorsey by the shoulders, and he shakes her way harder than you should ever shake. And ninety three year old, and he says, for misstate C. M.

Store, cy, you're the best to the best. I love you. I love you. And in an instant that format will drill.

Sergeant lady, i've been talking to turn into a bright ice shining nine year old girl. And Jimmy, with the power of his attention, create called forth a different version of her. Uh and so if you see the world objectively, people will be objective.

If you see the world, uh, critically, people will feel judged. And you'll see, you'll see judgment, you'll see floor. But if you see the world, you mainly you'll see people do in the best they can, difficult circumstance. So the way you cast the attention determines what you see.

Yeah, I think I find myself very much being a mirror to the energy of the people, but not so much. The first mover i'm trying to be i'm trying to be more of a first mover with like really stepping in um my friend George, actually the guide that first told me about your book uh then resulted in this episode happening.

He often when I sit down with him, what I hope for him too, I think for him to, but just at our best, it's exactly what I want to be. It's open IT about ideas. It's hopeful.

It's funny. It's, it's all of those things I like. Why not like that with everyone? Because if still me, i'm the common dominated between these things.

And why do I need to wait for somebody else to determine, you know, are we doing fox tra south this evening? It's like, no, like you you get choose, you get to choose and maybe they are waiting for you to do that. Uh, not just being it's different to holding space.

IT is not like being a vessel for them. It's it's like folding around the weird conventions and its not breaking step with stuff. Um so just to recap, let's say again, someone listening big on the the repeal side of things love the rationality and thin. I like the idea of stepping into this more emotional realm. What's your starter kit for good questions to to break people out. It's the first maybe the first time with an existing friend that y've done this or maybe it's the first time with someone that they don't know quite so well, not like they want to pivot the conversation towards something they think is a bit more deeper or meaningful. What are your what's your your favorite run through?

Yeah, I would say the thing that comes immediately to mind is story telling questions. Uh, people are just Better when they are in story ah and so as a political journalist, I no longer ask people, h what do you have believe about this? Instead I ask them, how did you come to believe that? And that way they're telling me a story about there, the personal of the experience that influenced how they think. And so you want to get them to the story mode.

There's a classic example of this I read about in a book called you're not listened by women and kate Murphy and she's describing this focus group leader who's reading, uh uh who's leading a focus coup, is hired by supermarkets to figure out why people go to the girls store late at night and so he is he couldn't just said to the folks group, why do you go to girls y or late night? Instead he said, tell me about the last time you went to a grocery store after seven P. M.

And there were some lady in the store who in in focus group who hadn't said anything and SHE said, well, I smoke some weed and I need of an actual with me benezar ry and so he get little glimpse in her life and SHE gets some in the story mode I have a friend um named David radley who started three successful businesses and uh own for time the atlantic magazine where I work part time uh and he his genius is hiring people and he he hires on two basic criteria the first one is spirit of generosity and the second one is extreme talent. So he defines talent very narrowly. He doesn't know, are you a good writer? What kind of writer? You are synthesis writer.

You are narrative writer. So he defines talent, very narrow ily, but how does he find spirit? IT of generosity is a method calls to take me back method, he says.

When people are presenting themselves, especially in professional circumstances, in a job interview, they start in the middle, they start at the beginning of their career. He says, no, take me back to your childhood and tell me what your homework is like. And he is a theory which i'm not agree with.

But he says, everybody is who they were in high school somewhere deep down. So if you were unpopular in high school, you still Carrying around those insecurities. And so he wants to know, who were you in high school and how is that changed? Uh, and so that method, take me back.

So he is getting people into narrative mode. And the final thing i'd say is one of the tips I got from the conversation experts is make people authors, not witnesses. People don't go into enough detail when they are telling you about some event in their life.

So if you ask them, where was your boys sitting when you said that to you? Suddenly they're deep in the scene, and they're telling you a much richer narrative. So i've learned to try to make as many conversations possible, storytelling conversations and not argument making conversations.

David Brooks, ladies gentman. David honesty, I adore the book. I do this transformation that you ve been on.

I think it's very aspirational in a very non typical aspirational way. Uh, I love IT. I really, really love IT.

Um why should people go? They gonna to keep up today with everything you do. Where should they had?

They can head to the new york times where page and there once a weekend i'm at the atlantic, and they can go to amazon and buy .

my book hollyer. David, I really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much for today.