Oprah and Dr. Bruce D. Perry: What Happened to You?
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I'm very honored to have been asked to moderate this discussion with the iconic

Oprah Winfrey, and the brilliant Bruce D. Perry, who is an expert on trauma resilience. And they both have written a book called What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma and Resilience and Healing. This conversation is fascinating. And I learned so much from these two people. Actionable stuff.

that I can do in my life to make my life better, that I know you're going to love it. And I know you're going to learn more about it. And I devoured the book, devoured it with a highlighter. So I know you're going to enjoy this. And I'm looking forward to sharing this conversation. So here we go.

Hey, everybody. Thank you for joining me, Rob Lowe. I am so excited that you are taking time out of your busy day today. We're going to talk today about this amazing book called What Happened to You? written by Dr. Bruce Perry and the fabulous Oprah Winfrey. When I was asked to do this,

uh, obviously I had to read the book and I have to convince, I have to, I felt like maybe this was going to be like doing homework. It's incredible. And I have, um, already, uh, been banging the pot about this book to a lot of my friends. This, this book I think is really a game changer and, and, and I'm going to introduce the amazing authors in a minute, but I just want to tell you how much it's meant to me and some of the concepts I was aware of, but I've never heard it

it articulated in such a user-friendly sort of practical way. And I think this can make a difference in, in,

anyone's life. So let's also, I need to thank, by the way, our sponsors today, the independent bookstores for hosting this conversation. That's a politics and pros in Washington, DC. Good on you and books and books in Miami, Florida. Thank you for helping make this happen. And, um, hello, Dr. Bruce. It's great to meet you and Oprah. I thank you. This is, thank you for having me have you guys. This is going to be fun. Oh, great. Great to be with you neighbor. I've missed you during the pandemic.

I know. Before we came online, I was asking Oprah to come back to the neighborhood. It isn't the same without you. It just is not. You can feel it, right? You can feel it. You can feel there's something missing. When you're not here, there's something missing. When you can't come knock on my door and ask for sugar or that you're out of milk.

It's just not the same. Or an avocado. Or an avocado. Or whatever it is. Or an extra avocado. There's a lot to unpack here in this book, but it's really funny because I was highlighting things that meant a lot to me in it. What resonated with you? I'm curious as to what you highlighted and what actually struck you. I'm curious about that. Well, it's funny, and it's exactly what your team then suggested to me. So-

There's clearly something to this. And the first thing is just, Dr. Perry, when you pulled up the great quote from Gary Zukav, the spiritual teacher, and his quote is, when you find you have an addiction, don't be ashamed. Be joyful. You have found something that you have come to this earth to heal.

When you confront and heal an addiction, you are doing the deepest spiritual work that you can do on earth. And I could do an hour show just on that quote. That spoke to me. Well, I think...

That most people see that as the big hill that you're pushing up against and the big thing in your life that you have to overcome. But it really is a sacred time. Yeah, I had all those multiple conversations with Gary Zukav over the years. He's been a major influence in my life. He's the one that cured me of the disease to please through the principle of intention. And so, you know, we did multiple shows together.

during the course of the 25 years of the Oprah show, on addiction. And his approach to addiction and to addicts was something I'd never heard before. Like, it's a sacred time. And that the healing of whatever that wound that caused you to be addicted is the thing that

a part of the work that you were meant to do here on earth. So I like approaching it from that because it allows you not to have judgment about it for other people and allows you to see for your own self when you have an addiction that that is the great work of your life. The healing of that becomes the great work of your life. And you know what? It also becomes the great work that you pass down if you have children. Yes, absolutely. That's at the core of this book for me is really

What this is about is, is if un, in your phrase, excavated, which is such a great phrase, because it really is, you dig to it, you have to find it. Oh, there it is. Now I've got to dig to it. It's going to be painful. It's going to take a long time. It's digging. It's proper digging. It's excavating.

Getting down to that trauma, if it's not brought up into the air, into the sunlight, to be dealt with, not only are you going to pay the consequences, but it's transgenerational. Wouldn't you say, doctor? Yeah, absolutely. You know, as I'm listening to this, the thing that really strikes me is that the concepts in neuroscience that have to do with how you change the brain are

always require that you activate in a specific pattern systems in the brain, neural networks. And you literally have to push your neural networks out of their comfort zone, but you have to push them with the right dosing and give them spacing so they can kind of get back to their equilibrium, push them again. And it really is, just as you both have been saying, it's work. And frequently it's painful work. But...

When you do that, you end up changing these systems in ways that grow functionality. You get stronger, you get smarter, you get more flexible, you get more capable of being empathic. And I think that that's, you know, the wisdom of the words that you were talking about really is a keen observer seeing through many, many, many people's life journeys that

how they've been able to manage in these little doses of pain and tolerated a lot of distress to ultimately build the strength that becomes their, what Oprah and I refer to as their post-traumatic wisdom. I grew up, and I have a philosophy, and I think it's served me well to an extent, of never complain, never explain.

So it allows me to not be a victim. It allows me to dust myself off and keep on keeping on and doing all of those things. But on the other side of it is if you're not willing to go, no, actually, those times I was victimized. You know what? I actually did face some adversity. I did have post-traumatic stress. If you're not willing to admit that it's happened to you,

You kind of can't even begin this process, correct? Insight and sort of accurate reflection on your past is really important. It really helps you understand where you've been, and that sort of maps out the trajectory of where you can go.

So I think that it's so important not just to know your history, but it's really, really important to understand the history of the people who were your parents and your grandparents and the people in your culture. And so where did all of this stuff come from? There's an origin to tolerating certain behaviors. There's an origin to acting in a certain way and solving problems in a certain way. You just didn't invent it yourself. You absorbed it and inherited it in some way from the people behind

around you as you were growing up. And when you see those patterns, it's so much easier to recognize where you're falling into those same patterns yourself with your friends or your partners or your children, and then be intentional about taking different steps. And I think Oprah is, again, that's part of what Oprah has been really very good about is bringing intention into her healing process and

So that these little experiences of healing are tolerable. You know, it's not as if there's no pain involved, but they were dosed and they were scaffolded in relationship with Gail, for example. And but again, I think so much of that was related to insights about her past organization.

Or she could then go have a conversation and then say, hey, you know what I realized yesterday? And you may want to talk about that, Oprah, because I think it's such a great example. Well, here's the bottom line for me. The greatest piece of wisdom ever shared, I think, Shakespeare, to thine own self be true.

And we all know that there is nothing greater than being true to yourself. And one of the common denominators that I learned over the years with people on my show is that everybody—the reason why that show worked for so many years is because I recognized that I was no different than the viewer, except I was in charge of the microphone.

And so I always saw myself as a surrogate for the viewer. So I was empowered to ask questions and be who I was and say the things that I said because it wasn't just me, I'm representing the viewer. And so what I know is every single person is actually looking for the same thing. And that is to live out the truest expression of yourself as a human being. How do I become more of me?

You can't become more of you unless you know what happened to you to make you who you are in this particular moment. So the excavation, as I talk about in What Happened to You, is all about peeling back the layers of your life

So you can see who you are, where you've come from, why you behave the way you do, why you choose the mates that you do, why you're in relationships that you're in. All of that is based upon what happened to you as a child. Because as Dr. Perry says, you elicit from the world, you get from the world,

what you project into the world and what you project into the world is how you were raised, what happened to you. So your worldview starts, as you've seen with your beautiful sons, your worldview starts in the crib. You are deciding who

Is the world a safe place? Do my parents answer my call when I cry? Am I getting responded to? Am I being nurtured? Do I get what I need? And that makes a decision, you know, in your brain forms the way you think about not just the people around you, but the world. So I think what happened to you, the reason why I wanted to even write this book with Dr. Perry is because of that moment where

several years ago, maybe is it three or two now? Time is just in a warped space. Three. Okay. So 2018, he and I were doing a story for 60 Minutes. I have interviewed him for 30 years, Rob, about one thing or another. We've been talking about zero to six years. And in this particular interview, though,

Something happened that it actually clicked in a way that I got it that I'd never gotten it before, because we were talking about St. A's, an institution in Milwaukee that helps young people who are orphaned and behavioral disorders, and they take care of the kids that nobody else wants. And Dr. Perry said that.

Many times people ask the question, what's wrong with these kids? What's wrong with this child? When they should be saying, what happened to that child? And the services built around that. Something clicked for me in a way that it hadn't before because I thought, wow, that's a powerful question for these children, but it's also a powerful question for all of us in life. Wow. When you look at everybody, everything, anybody who's acting out, who's being a jerk, who's, you know, from politics on down,

you say, I wonder what happened to that person. It changes the way you see them, the way you approach them. It makes you immediately more empathetic and less judgmental. So that was a life-changing moment for me. And I think for people to ask themselves this question, what happened to that person instead of what is wrong with you, certainly allows you to be more open and

really begin a conversation. Look, I'm very well-versed in therapy. I'm in recovery. I've been sober for, it'll be 31 years this week.

Wow. And yeah, that's some years. I'm proud of it and it's changed my life. And then by the way, the disease is whack-a-mole, by the way. You get it under control in one hole and then the gopher head pops up over here. And I never thought I would be the guy having to worry about my sugar intake, but here we are 31 years later. It's all about the sugar. But if there are listeners who aren't

as well versed in the language of therapy or the ability to excavate, how would one begin the journey of asking themselves what happened? That's a great question, Rob. That is a great question. I'm going to let the psychiatrist answer that. Come on, Doc. It's funny that it's important they bring that up because...

We don't tend to be a reflective society. You know, we're very much about the moment and then the next moment. And we're not even that very reflective, you know, about the far future. It's sort of like the near future. Yep. Quarteritis, if you're in corporations and you guys in Hollywood know more about, you know, what's happened next week, next month. And I think, Rob, honestly, this is one of the things that we hope happens with this book.

is that people start having more conversations themselves about this issue. But I would recommend, for example, whenever you can slow down a little bit and start to think, you know, if you have the luxury of time, I mean, not everybody has the privilege of reflection because it is a privilege to be safe enough and secure enough and have time where you can think about your own past and

And so this is one of the issues where we talk about this, that the issues around inequity are tied in with the luxury of reflection. But when someone does have that opportunity, you start by thinking about your own needs.

history and your own parents' history and how were they raised? And maybe that's the way they raised me. And why would they do that? And it basically, if you maintain this sort of curious historian's perspective about how I got to the present, you know, how did I get here?

You're going to start to see these little strands through your life and through your parents' life and through the lives of the people in your society and culture where you realize, wow, maybe I should reevaluate that as a core value. Do I really think that that's the right thing to do? But Rob, I think that's, you know, you've hit on, I think, one of the major issues in our society is

Our society is filled with very bright, kind people. But even those folks tend to be so overwhelmed and so frenetically busy that they shut down the smartest part of their cortex. And they're kind of automatically going through the inertia of life every day, every day, every day, every day. And three years later, they look up and they go, wow, wow.

I'm not living my life the way I wanted to. And I haven't learned anything. That is such a powerful question. You know, you were saying that you're well-versed in therapy. I've never had therapy. I've never been to a therapist. That's so amazing to me. That blows my mind with your curiosity and all that. Well, you probably had your own therapy on the show. I had all my therapy in front of the world. And my dosing, my...

You know, when I finished doing that interview with Dr. Perry for 60 Minutes, I actually said, maybe I said during the interview, so tell me why I'm not crazy. And he said, well, you had other things, you didn't have, you didn't come from a family where you felt love, but you got it outside of your family. So, you know, connection really bridges a lot of inadequacies that we have in our early lives.

early years. And so for me, it was teachers. It was the church. I realized in the writing of this book, oh, I never had therapy. I was doing all of those conversations in front of people on television. But where was my real therapy? Every night, after every show, every day, Gayle King watched every single Oprah Winfrey show. And every single day,

I would have a conversation with her after the show. And it was really kind of my dosing, releasing, letting go of what had happened that day, hearing what happened to her in that day, in her day. And it was my way of processing all this stuff that was coming at me. And so I realized that

As Gail has been for me, as I was for Gail, as teachers were for me, as growing up in the church was for me, we can be that for other people. So the willingness to share your story, to tell your story, to ask other people what happened to them opens up the aperture for that question to also be answered by yourself. And so...

It's possible to do it without therapy because I have done it, but I am also naturally a reflective person, you know, being raised the way I was raised in rural Mississippi, only my grandmother and myself. So I had a lot of time to think about myself and things and life and all that. So I'm a naturally reflective person. So Rob, it's interesting for me that, I mean, you probably connect with this really well because you have been in therapy before.

But the recognition that most therapeutic experiences take place outside of conventional therapy, the therapeutic moments with the people you love, your friends, a family member, where they're fully present and there's a connection and there's a little bit of growth. Now, the therapy can kind of guide that process and bring some clarity to some of that. But ultimately, even with therapy,

Without a therapeutic environment, without this relational environment, you're not going to make much progress. The real work happens outside of the therapy. So you go to the therapist, you talk about your issues, whatever that is, but the actual application and execution of what you're learning in therapy gets processed outside of therapy. And let's take a quick break.

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As an actor, I like to say I take direction for a living. I would like some direction, doctor, because I want to follow this. And

Let me just read this. This is directly from the book. For thousands of years, thousands and thousands of years, not just thousands of years, thousands of years, humans lived in small intergenerational groups. There were no mental health clinics, but there was plenty of trauma. I can assume that many of our ancestors experienced post-traumatic problems, anxiety, depression, sleep disruptions, but I also assume they experienced healing. Our species could not have survived the

If a majority of our traumatized ancestors lost their capacity to function well, the pillars of traditional healing were and are, one, connection to a clan and the natural world, two,

regulating rhythm through dance, drumming, and song. Three, a set of beliefs and values and stories that brought meaning to the senseless seeming random trauma. And on occasion, natural hallucinogens or plant derived substances facilitating healing with the guidance of a healer. I'm fascinated with that. How did you come up with those four

sets of where healing goes on outside of a therapeutic situation? Well, it's been a journey and it started a long time ago when I was exposed to and spent some time with some Lakota healers. And I was just curious about some of their ceremony and some of their ritual and

And I didn't really understand what they were telling me, actually. And I but I cataloged what what the elements of the experience were. You know, there was storytelling and there was dancing and there's community eating and they would have what you and I might think of as sort of a powwow or there's nonstop community partying.

And then I spent time with people who were Maori and people who were Aboriginal and people who were Cree and people who were Blackfoot, people who were from West African tribes. Every one of them had these core elements. And now at the same time that that was kind of going on, and I'm sort of being a semi-pro anthropologist, I'm studying the brain and looking at how the stress response systems work in the human brain and recognizing that

The lowest part of the brain, the stress response systems are influenced and can be regulated by pattern, repetitive, rhythmic activity like song, music, dance. And then you move higher in the brain. I realized that, well, you know, the middle part of the brain that's influenced by these systems is.

will be profoundly influenced by connection, by relational interactions. And then the top part, the third part of the brain, which is again influenced by the stress response system and can be altered by trauma, that that part of the brain changes when there's meaning, when there's a story, when there's a narrative, when there's a set of values that can create hope.

And so when you weave all of those together, you have this incredible biologically interesting

respectful catalog of activities that would very predictably influence an altered stress response system and make it much more regulated and functional. And now when you look at modern psychiatry, there are these little elements that people are doing, you know, talk therapy and some people do cognitive things and some people do relationally based. There are people that are now beginning to do somatosensory. And I think that when you weave these together, right?

you're going to have much more effect about it. What I like about it, too, is this is stuff that

Like you say, it isn't traditional therapy. You can do all of these things without paying a nickel to anybody or having to find somebody you trust. It's practical. Oprah, as you're talking about yourself as an avatar for your audience, I've really been thinking, again, I know I said it, about how I'm so well-versed in it, but I want to talk to the people who aren't well-versed in it, who may be coming to this who need it the most.

Well, it's also, let's go back to the book. I think it's Bozeman in the book who is suffering from PTSD. And Dr. Perry has a conversation with him about how many nights he can't sleep and has all these other relational problems, except he finds on a particular night he does sleep really well and things go really well for him. And that's the night he went dancing. Yeah.

Same thing happened. We were on our campus in South Africa and Bruce was walking around with me on the campus and we ran across a group of girls because God knows they love to dance and they love to sing. And Bruce was like, wow, there's a lot of healing going on there. I go, well...

no, there's not healing. They're just dancing. He goes, oh no, that rhythmic pattern of movement actually is helping them heal their brain. So I think it's also, may I just say, as simple as you're in an argument with your spouse or anyone, and you can't seem to get through to them. And the argument is escalating, escalating, escalating.

And literally you say, you're not hearing me. I've heard lots of people in conversation like, you're not hearing me. The truth is, based upon that diagram we just saw, which is on page 26 of the book, they're not hearing you because the flight or fright flight mode, the anxiety mode, the upset and fear mode is all operating from that brainstem. You're not getting through the cortex. And so the way to get through is for you

somebody to regulate or calm themselves, the best way to do that is to go do something rhythmic like going for a walk. Heel, toe, arms moving. Heel, toe, arms moving. That changes. That's why you feel better when you go for a walk.

That's just not, oh, I feel better. That is scientific proof that that whole mechanism of rhythm and movement works. Take a break, go for a walk. Take a break, go listen to some music. Do a little movement. Take a break, calm yourself, regulate. Then go back and try to have the discussion so you can reach the reasoning part of the brain, which is the cortex. And the reason we get hijacked

and it can happen to us at any given time, a lot of it is, I'm just making sure I understand it correctly, is booby traps that have been laid in our early traumas in our life. Yeah. Right? Exactly. You get it, Rob. That's exactly right. I so get it. Gold star to you, Rob. Thank you. Gold star. Here's the dilemma of human communication, right?

is that all of the smart things that we have, you know, when we formulate an idea and we think about something that we'd like to communicate, we're using the very top of our brain, the cortex, that most human part of our brain. But the dilemma is we have to get that out of our cortex and into another person's cortex. And human beings don't communicate cortex to cortex. That would be telepathic. We have to communicate. And again, this is one of the things we didn't really mention, right?

But every single thing you hear, see, taste, smell, when somebody talks to you, when you're looking at them, all that information comes into your brain in the lowest part of your brain first. So the dumbest part of your brain, the part of your brain that can't tell time, the most reactive, gets first dibs on interpreting the current moment.

Amazing. And if, and that's where a lot of us get into trouble because we have these little, as you said, little landmines about our past experiences that the last time somebody looked like you talk to me that way, there was a big fight. So I'm going to actually act before I get hurt. And in reality,

If you had the opportunity to fully process the experience, you'd recognize that this moment really is not at all like that moment when you were eight years old. With practice and success in thinking like this and being aware of this,

Does the information more easily get to the top part of your brain? Well, it can, but you need to practice. Part of what is helpful is you might say, listen, tomorrow I have a meeting and these people are going to be there. And historically, I've had trouble with authority figures, particularly arrogant guys that wear suits and act like they know everything. So what I need to do is before I go into that meeting, I need to do something regulating. So I keep...

access to the smart part of my brain. And so if you know what your landmines are by reflecting on what happened to you, you'll be able to anticipate places where you can sort of avoid conflict or to the degree that you can manage it. So again, it kind of goes back to the key issue as you brought up earlier, Rob, that

You know, how do you actually get to the point where you think about the things that that have influenced who you are currently? But if you can do that, it can make a huge difference. But you can do it because we're not doing it. You know, after Bruce said that three years ago, I went back to the board and my school and I said, we're doing something really wrong here because at one point we had.

five girls in the hospital at the same time suffering from depression, anxiety disorders, suicidal ideation, all kinds of things as they were preparing to go into college. And I realized that what the way we were teaching, the way kids were learning in our school, we hadn't asked or weren't we're not operating from that basic tenet of what happened to them.

So much so now we brought Bruce's teachings, the neuro sequential model into our school. Girls know how to regulate themselves. They use that language. So much so that one girl said to me the other the last time I was there, you know,

Momo, what do I do to regulate myself when somebody else is trying to regulate themselves and it's dysregulating me? So what a genius. Yes. I'm trying to regulate. That's the neural sequential model 202. Yeah, exactly.

You said the girl kept clicking her pen and that she recognized it as she's clicking that pen back and forth. She's stopping that pen, trying to regulate herself. But her clicking of the pen is dysregulating me. So how do I regulate myself with her dysregulation? So we are now speaking the same language at our school and now approaching dysregulation.

What was at first, everybody was like, what is wrong with these girls? They're brilliant girls, so intelligent. I brought 20 girls from South Africa to the United States. They're all in schools from Wellesley to Brown to Stanford. So they're really, really, really intelligent girls who had come from so much trauma that they averaged

On average, any girl comes to our school is like six aces in the adverse childhood experiences. And so being able to understand that kids coming from traumatic backgrounds, Rob—

are really good at disassociation because being able to disassociate when you're in a chaotic, uncertain, traumatic environment saves your life, protects you. And so when you get into school and anything that is uncomfortable or feels unsafe, meaning, you know, math lesson, you're gone. You're gone. You're gone. You're gone.

And so having teachers understand that that's what it is. It's not a kid being lazy. It's not a kid who's just daydreaming. It's not a kid who's just trying to, you know, not obey the rules, but it's a kid who that's what they do when things become uncomfortable. And so being able to teach from that aspect and not stand there and lecture for 40 minutes, but

But do dosings of teachings. You do 10 minutes. Kids take a break. Do something that's regulating. Have some movement. Come back to the lesson. Has made a world of difference in the school and a world of difference in how the girls experience the school. So I found in my life that I had this issue with if I felt like something might be wrong and I went to – I would never ask the question directly.

So whether it was with my wife or my kids or in the workplace, it was talking to my financial guy about how much money I had or didn't have. Whatever it was, if I ever had an inkling or a sense that there might be an answer I didn't want to hear, I wouldn't ask the question at all. And so what I would do is I would stick my head in the sand. I would disassociate.

and let events take care of themselves, which as we know is no way to live. And then it occurred to me as I was writing my first book where this came from, what happened to me? And what happened to me was I was four years old and it had been bothering me that my dad had not been around. And I'll never forget it. I was in a lumber store with my mother and I said to her, are you getting a divorce? And she said, yes.

It blew my fucking mind. And I mean, I can still feel it in my – it was bad. And so what I learned then was don't ask a question you're unwilling to hear an answer to. Don't do it. Wow. That is profound. That is it. Wow. I will do anything still to avoid it. I know I'm doing it. I know why I'm doing it. Yeah.

I know that it has nothing to do. They're not going to say we're getting divorced. When I talk to the president of the network and I say, how's 911 Lone Star doing? Are we getting picked up next year? He's not going to say you're getting divorced. I know that. I still don't want to have that conversation with the network president because it might not be good news. And we'll be right back after this.

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Dissociation involves this set of stages. And the first stage before you kind of completely shut down is avoidance.

And then the second stage after avoid, if you can't avoid it, you act compliant. Like, oh, oh, great. No problem. And, and, and you try to please basically the people who you're trying to interact with. So what you just, just described is exactly what happened to me as a little girl, um,

It was you asking your mother in the lumber store. It was me getting a whipping all the time from my grandmother for the slightest infraction. And what that taught me is to keep my mouth shut, that my opinion didn't matter, that

Not only would I get a whipping, but after the whipping, a lot of people listening who grew up in the black culture understand this. You get a whipping and then your grandmother walk around 10 minutes later and say, you better wipe that frown off your face. You better put your you better not be pouting. And I've gotten a whipping for not pouting.

smiling soon enough after the whipping. Oh, it's just, yeah, yeah. So what does that teach you? That teaches you that even when you're hurting, you keep smiling. And I've been in the middle of a whipping where my grandmother is like literally lashing me and saying, you better stop that crying. But you're beating me. So anyway, what that taught me is exactly what you're talking about even to this day.

that when I have to confront someone that I might possibly, I'm going to get a no from, or they're going to have a response that is not favorable. I would used to get so much anxiety, like so much anxiety. I didn't even know to call it anxiety. It was just fear. And I remember once I was almost 50 years old, somebody had done something really terrible in my business and they had to be let go.

And I was the one to do it. It wasn't something I could give to somebody else to do. And I went into my closet in my office and literally just I'm praying, God, give me strength, give me strength. Oh, ancestors, give me strength. And I asked the question out loud, why is this so hard? Why am I so why is why am I so afraid to do this when I'm the one with the power? It's my company. It's my business. It's.

And the answer came back, you're afraid of getting a whipping. I'm afraid, still afraid of getting a whipping. I'm afraid of that rejection. I'm afraid that somebody is going to say, you know, go to the corner and wipe that frown off your face. And that fear carried me for so long in my life.

Exactly what you just described about the lumber store. This is what I was coming back to. And that is not a sign of, because there was a time in my life where I thought, well, that's just a sign of weakness on my part, that I still let that bother me after all these years. But what I've learned from you, Doctor, in the book is, no, no, no, that's actually in the brain. Yeah. I mean, there are synaptic connections in your brain that

that were created from that experience that continue to shape the way you experience the present moment. Now you're in the process of trying to build new synaptic defaults, but that takes repetition, repetition, repetition. So you're going to have to kind of approach that kind of a question, get yourself ready to do it, regulated, go ask the question, deal with the answer,

Uh, and realize, wow, it's not as bad as the divorce answer. Let's say that that triggered for someone. They wanted to go and smoke a pack of cigarettes whenever they felt that way, or they wanted to eat sugar or they wanted to act out sexually, or they wanted to go gambling or wanted to, whatever it is. And you get some progress, your work, your, your working on it. You're cognizant. You've excavated, you're doing the work and you're getting results. And yet you're

every once in a while, you go, you know what? I don't really want to do it. And I've been so good. But you know what? Today, I think I'm going to act out. You know what? I'm going to have that cigarette. I don't even want it. But you know what? I've got to control it. What is that about us? Why don't we just keep doing what we're doing? Well, I can speculate about that. But one of the things I think most people know, on one hand, most people know this,

But very few people understand why. Everybody knows that under certain circumstances, they're able to have an interaction with somebody and be polite and act their age and tolerate somebody being rude to you without being rude back. And then if you have the exact same experience a different time, you tell them to go fuck off.

And what you know wasn't really the right thing to do. I shouldn't have done it. You know, it's going to impair me, my situation at work. That's what we call state dependent functioning. When you're in a state where you feel very regulated, you're not hungry, you're not thirsty, you're not cold, you've had lots of sleep, you're not sick, you don't run down, you don't have a lot of pressure on you. You can use that most mature part of your brain and basically contain the lower sort of

those little landmine areas. But the more sort of tired out you get or a little bit of stress or a little bit of this, a little bit of that, then you start getting this other voice that's saying, come on, take the old road. Come on, take that old road. That fits so well. Thank you. That totally fits. Because for me, it's like when I'm drained, when I'm drained, that little voice comes out and is like,

You should pound all of that Haagen-Dazs immediately. Yeah. Or whatever. You can work it off. You can work it off. Which would also explain why – I was just having this conversation with somebody today at breakfast. Why on some – and willpower can be about anything. It can be financial willpower. It can be – it doesn't have to be food. It can be in any area of your life. But why is it on some days you have willpower in spades and then other days you have none?

What's different? And what's different is your level of exhaustion. It's where you are in that chart. Exactly. Exactly. And they do studies that show around many things, but let's take dieting.

You wake up in the morning and you've rested and you've got this what we call executive functioning. You're ready to go. But by the end of the day, by four, five, six, seven, eight, your executive functioning deteriorates. And this is why most people cheat on their diets laterally.

later in the day and at night, you know, and you're like, uh, so everybody starts out fresh. Everybody starts out fresh and in alignment and ready to go. And then as the day wears on you, the phone calls, the stresses, the compound decisions, literally you just go worn out. That's right. You got to give me a hack as the kids today would say, um, when, um,

when I'm feeling that way, is there anything I can do? Yeah. I mean, one of the best things to do is move your body. Just get up and say, teach, train yourself, and you can do this because you know how to dissociate. I mean, you know, one of the things that I, a lot of people I know that are good at dissociation, I teach them self-hypnosis so that they learn how to harness that dissociative capability.

And rather having it sort of pop into them and I'm dissociating, other things make me dissociate. You go, I'm going to dissociate on purpose and control this. And so if you learn, you know, you know, forms of self, you know, meditative prayer, self-hypnosis, induction techniques, you know, the indigenous communities have used all kinds of.

uh, practices to get to the trance state. But if you control, when you get to that state, you can then manage this stuff a lot better. Wow. But one of the easiest things is if you, if before you learn that is to move, just get up and move, walk for two minutes and then, and then go through the same decision-making process. Okay. I got it before this is over. Cause we're coming sort of to the, to the end of our time. I need to ask you about SSRIs.

There are people that say it should be in the water. Like if we put fluoride in the water for our damn teeth, we should put this in for our damn brains. Where do you stand on all of that? Being a neuroscientist, one of the things that I learned even before I went to become a physician was that the human brain and the animal, even the rat brain is complex. The brain's complex, right?

There are individuals who have serotonergic dysregulation where medications can really help them with depression or anxiety. And then I also learned that people can have the exact same kinds of symptoms, look just like, you know, they can also be depressed, but that won't help them at all.

And so it's all in my, we try to step away from the one size fits all fantasy that a lot of people try to use in, in any kind of medicine. Yeah. There will be people who in SSRI will really be lifesaving. And then there will be people where it doesn't make much difference. How do you know, and how do you know what side of the coin you're on?

trial and error? Is it a diagnostic? Part of it is to get somebody who knows a little bit about finding out what happened to you. Somebody who really takes a developmental perspective on how you're functioning. And if along the way there appears to be a catalog of things that may be helpful,

They start putting them in place. And if those aren't making the progress that you see, then maybe a medication can be helpful. And then you kind of do, honestly, it's a little bit of an individual trial and error process. And for those of you who don't know what the SSRIs are, they're Zoloft and Prozac and all of the drugs that are out there for anxiety, for depression. Like I said, I've been in recovery for 31 years and nobody ever recommended that I be on anything like that. And then somebody

did, who I trusted. And so I tried it and for me, it changed my life. And you probably know people

who have tried it and it didn't have the same impact. 100%. And with ostensibly the same issue. Mine was just that on any given day, I was capable of waking up and thinking, oh, this is it. Today's the day it all ends. And it's so ridiculous. It's like nothing has changed. Literally nothing has changed from when I went to bed. Not one thing. And I wake up and like, oh, boy, today's going to be rough. This is going to be, this is the light that I see at the end of the tunnel. It's a train.

It's a train and it's going to run you over. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then this was, I've never had that ever since I started, you know, with, with the right, with the right SSRI. So some people, it can be the answer. Other people's no. Absolutely. And Rob, I've heard that from a number of folks as well, that just, it's, it's lifesaving. And then I've also heard from other folks. I've tried it and I've tried this and I've tried that and nothing really seems to work. Does the way the SSRI affect you affect,

depend upon what happened to you or whatever is going on in your brain? Why is it it affects some brains and not others? You know, that is a great question. And in fact, that's an area of active investigation in our field. In animal studies, you can manipulate the early life experiences of an animal. That's in fact some of the research that I did, you know, early in my career.

You would stress animals early in life and basically give them bad experiences. And then as they grew up, they would become less functional, less capable. But then SSRIs would help them become more normal in their behavior and functioning.

And so it does appear that that at least to some degree, that may be a factor. But it also may be genetics. There are sort of family histories where like all kinds of people as far back as you can look have struggled with depression. And it's an area that we probably know one 1000 of what we're going to know about the brain. And it's an area of active investigation.

That's why, again, what happened to you is so important because I have seen from multiple interviews over the years where there was a history of depression or anxiety or other disorders in a family, but nobody ever asked. And I think that's why it's so important where you say, Bruce, about knowing your tribe, knowing your people, knowing what happened to you, and also knowing what happened to your people. Yeah.

Exactly. A young depressed parent, they're going to parent differently than someone who's not depressed. And so then there's this compounding of the potential, if it's, let's say it's genetic, but then it gets compounded by challenges with early life bonding and attachment and all kinds of other stuff. So...

And also all the things that you say in the book about the timing is also important because when Rob was sharing being in the lumber store at four years old, I was thinking if he was eight years old or 10 years old, that would not have had the same impact on the synapse of the brain as four years old did. It would have been a very different experience, might've still been shocking to you or disturbing to you, but it wouldn't have gone into the brainstem the way that it did at four.

And, you know, again, one of the things I love about the book are those sort of charts and that sort of actual science around that, because I sort of have been aware of it. But to see it actually laid out in a way that's not overly complicated and that people can relate to, I think is really important as one of my favorite things about the book. And this raises the point of so many times I've interviewed women engaged in domestic violence situations who were –

Always saying I'm going to leave when the kids get older, when in fact the most damage is done when the kids are younger. Thank you for bringing that up, Oprah. That's an amazing part of the book. Say it again because it's so important. I want you to say it again. I want to say it again too, Rob, because mothers and fathers who think that arguing and fighting in front of their kids when they're younger is

The kids will get over it. The kids will be resilient. Or even when the kids don't have the language so you can say whatever you want to say, the kids are responding to the vibration in the house, the energy in the house. The same thing that allows your child to learn how to say mama and daddy and take in all

of the information that allows them to develop their language and social skills. That same thing is taking in the energy, the negativity, the chaos, the disruption, and you're doing far more damage the younger they are. As early as zero to two months is what Bruce says in the book, the most damage is done then. And then those zero to six years, that's why

Four years old in the lumber store is a very different experience than eight years old in the lumber store for you. I could go on for hours. I think what you guys have done with this book is spectacular. And it's – again, I'm going to keep –

the drum on it. I also... It was a great conversation. Gold star to you. Yeah. Gold star to you. Pleasure to have in class. That was always me. That was always the nerd. The nerd in the front row with his hand up. That was me. Yeah.

So we need to also do a little bookkeeping here, no pun intended. We got to thank the Politicians and Pros bookstore in Washington, D.C. It's all because of you and Books and Books in Miami. So thank you, Dr. Bruce. You're great. And Oprah, you know I love you. I can't wait for you to get back in the neighborhood and we'll cook up some more fun like this because whenever you and I put our heads together, we come up with fun stuff. So I love this. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about what happened to you.

Thank you, everybody. Enjoy your Sunday. And here it is again. What happened to you? Got a lot of Sunday left over here. You have been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced and engineered by Devin Torrey Bryant and me, Rob Schulte. Our coordinating producer is Lisa Berm.

The show is executive produced by Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Jeff Ross, Adam Sachs, and Joanna Solitaroff at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. Our talent bookers are Gina Batista, Paula Davis, and Britt Kahn, and music is by Devin Tory Bryant. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.

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