<markdown>

与克里斯·帕尔默博士（Dr. Chris Palmer）的 这期播客的主题是代谢健康、线粒体功能与心理健康的关系，涵盖了从基础科学到临床应用、饮食、补充剂、疫苗争议以及公共健康的广泛话题。
00:00-02:01 开场与嘉宾介绍

• 休伯曼开场：休伯曼介绍自己是斯坦福大学神经生物学和眼科学教授，播客旨在探讨科学及其在日常生活中的应用。他介绍嘉宾克里斯·帕尔默博士，一位哈佛大学的精神病学家和研究员，专注于代谢健康尤其是线粒体健康如何用于治疗精神疾病（如精神分裂症、自闭症、抑郁症、双相障碍和ADHD）。
• 主题预告：讨论将聚焦线粒体健康，涉及生活方式因素（如运动、睡眠、阳光），以及一些新颖话题（如肌酸、亚甲蓝、尼古丁、B族维生素、铁对大脑功能的作用）。还将直接探讨疫苗是否通过炎症损害线粒体，进而影响心理健康，尤其是疫苗与自闭症的争论。此外，会涉及公共健康、NIH和CDC的变革。
• 播客背景：休伯曼强调播客独立于其斯坦福工作，是他免费向公众提供科学信息的努力的一部分。

02:01-03:02 帕尔默的领域：代谢精神病学

• 休伯曼提问：休伯曼称帕尔默为“代谢精神病学”的先驱，询问他对这一领域的定义以及公众应如何理解线粒体与心理健康的关系。
• 帕尔默回应：帕尔默感谢休伯曼，但表示自己只是站在前辈的肩膀上。代谢与精神健康的研究已有150年历史，19世纪到20世纪60年代，研究者关注代谢在重性精神疾病（如精神分裂症、双相障碍）中的作用，测量乳酸、葡萄糖等代谢标志物，发现异常。但后来精神病学转向神经递质假说（neurotransmitter hypothesis），忽视了代谢因素。

03:02-05:58 代谢精神病学的历史与整合

• 历史背景：帕尔默提到，精神病学后来分裂成生物学（神经递质）、心理学（认知行为疗法、童年创伤）和社会学（社会因素）三大阵营，忽视了整体视角。
• 帕尔默的愿景：代谢精神病学旨在整合生物、心理和社会因素，回归100年前的研究方向。他认为，心理疾病的成因是多方面的，不应简化为单一因素（如“全是生物学”或“全是心理”）。
• 童年创伤的影响：帕尔默举例，童年不良经历（ACEs）不仅增加创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）风险，还增加所有DSM-5诊断（如精神病、抑郁、焦虑、痴呆）的风险，同时也增加代谢疾病（如肥胖、2型糖尿病、心血管疾病、自身免疫病）的风险。统计显示，经历6次以上ACEs的人平均寿命缩短20年。

05:58-09:46 代谢与线粒体：心理与身体健康的桥梁

• 代谢视角的统一性：帕尔默强调，代谢（尤其是线粒体功能）是连接心理与身体健康的桥梁。童年创伤导致的应激通过代谢和线粒体影响全身健康，解释了为何心理疾病和代谢疾病（如心血管病）有共同风险因素。
• 饮食的作用：帕尔默澄清，他并未宣称“饮食能解决一切”，但饮食干预确实能显著改善一些人的心理健康。他强调，代谢健康不仅仅是饮食，还涉及其他因素（如运动、睡眠）。
• 公共健康挑战：帕尔默呼吁更复杂的视角，利用AI和现代技术（2025年）整合生物、心理、社会数据，超越单一的“神经递质失衡”模型。

09:46-12:28 休伯曼对帕尔默的认可与赞助商插播

• 休伯曼的认可：休伯曼称赞帕尔默普及代谢精神病学概念，愿意公开讨论并推动科学与公众对话。
• 赞助商插播：
  • Our Place：介绍无毒炊具品牌，强调其不含PFAS（全氟化合物），休伯曼推荐其钛制不粘锅（Titanium Always Pan Pro），并提供折扣码（fromourplace.com/huberman，10%优惠）。
  • Element：推荐电解质补充饮品，强调钠、镁、钾对细胞（尤其是神经元）功能的重要性，休伯曼分享自己每日饮用习惯，提供优惠链接（drinkelement.com/huberman）。

12:48-16:05 抑郁症的传统模型与代谢视角

• 休伯曼提问：休伯曼以抑郁症为例，提出两种传统模型：（1）分子缺陷模型（认为抑郁是血清素或多巴胺缺乏）；（2）神经可塑性模型（认为药物通过改变神经递质水平打开可塑性窗口，配合心理治疗改善症状）。他询问帕尔默是否认为这些模型不足，以及代谢和线粒体如何融入。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 代谢是核心：帕尔默认为代谢（尤其是线粒体功能）是上述模型的“伞状概念”。神经递质的产生、释放及其对细胞的影响都依赖代谢。例如，神经元活动需要ATP，而ATP由线粒体产生。
  • 神经可塑性与代谢：神经可塑性（突触生长、修剪）需要能量和代谢资源，线粒体是基础。
  • 超越单一模型：帕尔默批评“血清素缺乏导致抑郁”的假说过于简化，指出该假说源于SSRI（选择性血清素再摄取抑制剂）的偶然发现，而非直接证据。

16:05-21:11 血清素假说的起源与局限

• 血清素假说起源：帕尔默讲述，SSRI抗抑郁药的发现源于偶然。1950年代，医生用异烟肼（iproniazid，一种MAO抑制剂）治疗肺结核时，观察到患者抑郁症状改善，意外发现了首个抗抑郁药。
• 机制解释：MAO抑制剂和SSRI通过减少神经递质（血清素、多巴胺、乙酰胆碱）的分解或再摄取，增加其在突触中的浓度，从而改善症状。但这并不证明抑郁是血清素缺乏导致的。
• 帕尔默的观点：帕尔默强调，这种“分子缺陷”模型过于简化，忽视了代谢和线粒体在神经递质功能中的作用。

21:11-25:23 线粒体在心理健康中的多重角色

• 休伯曼提问：请求帕尔默解释线粒体在心理健康中的作用。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 基础功能：线粒体是细胞的“动力工厂”，利用食物分解产物和氧气生成ATP（细胞能量货币），并产生二氧化碳。停止这一过程，人体将在6分钟内死亡。
  • 超越能量生产：过去25年的研究揭示，线粒体远不止能量工厂：
    • 神经递质调控：线粒体直接参与神经递质（如GABA）的合成、储存和释放。例如，线粒体在突触处移动并释放神经递质囊泡，单纯提供ATP无法替代这一功能。
    • 免疫与炎症：线粒体调控免疫细胞的炎症反应，既启动也终止炎症。
    • 激素合成：线粒体参与皮质醇、雌激素、睾酮、孕酮等激素合成的第一步和最后一步，激素失调与线粒体功能障碍密切相关。
    • 表观遗传调控：线粒体通过活性氧（ROS）、钙离子等信号调控基因表达，影响表观遗传。
  • 应激反应：线粒体参与心理应激的四个方面：皮质醇释放、去甲肾上腺素释放、炎症和表观遗传变化。研究通过操控线粒体基因，证明其对这些应激反应的调控作用。

25:23-30:34 线粒体的动态与整体视角

• 线粒体动态：帕尔默描述，线粒体在细胞内移动、融合、改变形态（线粒体动态），影响信号传导。单个细胞内的数百到数千个线粒体像一个“村庄”协作。
• 跨细胞通信：线粒体通过激素（如皮质醇）跨细胞通信，调节其他细胞的活动。帕尔默提到，有人将人体细胞视为“线粒体网络”，强调其整体作用。
• 适应与生存：线粒体的核心功能是帮助生物体适应、生存和繁殖。心理健康问题本质上是线粒体适应能力下降的表现。

30:34-32:31 赞助商插播

• AG1：休伯曼推荐AG1（维生素、矿物质、益生菌饮品），称其自2012年起每日使用，强调其对消化、免疫和心理健康的益处，提供优惠链接（drinkag1.com/huberman）。
• Eight Sleep：介绍智能床垫套，支持睡眠温度调节和跟踪，休伯曼分享其改善睡眠质量的体验，提供优惠链接（eightsleep.com/huberman，最高350美元折扣）。

32:31-35:34 改善线粒体健康的基础方法

• 休伯曼提问：询问改善线粒体数量和功能的方法，从基础到高级，包括补充剂和药物。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 生活方式医学的六大支柱：

    1. 饮食与营养：强调饮食对代谢健康的深远影响，但批评常见建议（如“多吃蓝莓”）过于简单。

    2. 运动：运动增强代谢健康，增加线粒体数量和功能。

    3. 睡眠：良好睡眠支持线粒体健康。

    4. 物质使用管理：减少或避免酒精、毒品等对线粒体的损害。

    5. 压力管理：通过冥想、瑜伽等减压方式支持线粒体。

    6. 关系与目标：良好的人际关系和生活目标（如使命感）对整体健康有益。

  • 适用性：这些基础方法适用于预防和轻中度心理健康问题，但对严重疾病（如精神分裂症、重性抑郁）可能不足。

35:34-39:04 运动如何改善线粒体

• 帕尔默解释：运动是改善线粒体健康的关键。
  • 耐力运动：以马拉松运动员为例，其肌肉中线粒体密度远高于普通人，尽管肌肉大小可能相似。线粒体数量和功能的提升使其能更高效地产ATP。
  • 建议：对于不运动的人，建议从简单活动开始（如早晨散步并获取阳光），逐步增加运动量。

39:04-43:31 物质使用对线粒体的影响

• 休伯曼提问：提到音乐家（如70-90年代使用兴奋剂的艺术家）常因心脏病去世，询问兴奋剂（如可卡因、安非他命）是否耗竭线粒体。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 兴奋剂的双重作用：
    • 低剂量：兴奋剂（如ADHD治疗药物）通过增加多巴胺改善脑代谢，刺激线粒体产生更多ATP，缓解ADHD症状（因ADHD患者脑葡萄糖代谢不足）。
    • 高剂量：高剂量兴奋剂过度刺激线粒体，导致电子泄漏，产生活性氧（ROS），损害线粒体，引发慢性代谢功能障碍。
  • 剂量依赖性：帕尔默强调，兴奋剂的利弊取决于剂量、个体差异和使用方式，拒绝简单回答“兴奋剂好坏”。
• 其他物质：
  • 酒精：1960年代研究发现，酒精通过乙醛（acetaldehyde）毒性损害肝脏线粒体，导致肝硬化。10,000多篇研究证实酒精对线粒体的毒性，尤其影响肝脏和大脑。
  • 烟草：烟草中的致癌物（而非尼古丁本身）损害线粒体。
  • 尼古丁：低剂量尼古丁刺激线粒体，可能有益；高剂量则可能毒性。休伯曼分享自己每周几次嚼低剂量尼古丁口香糖（2-4毫克），作为50岁时保护脑健康的实验，但警告年轻人避免使用，因其易成瘾。

43:31-50:06 物质滥用的代谢后果

• 帕尔默继续：
  • 成瘾机制：刺激代谢的物质（如兴奋剂）因快速提升能量而易成瘾，但耐受性增加后需更高剂量，导致线粒体耗竭和更多活性氧产生。
  • 酒精与镇静剂的恶性循环：瘾君子常通过镇静剂（如酒精）抑制兴奋剂引起的过度刺激，形成代谢健康的“过山车”，最终损害线粒体。
  • 代谢疾病关联：物质滥用通过线粒体损伤增加2型糖尿病、心血管疾病和早逝风险。
• 整体视角：帕尔默强调，代谢健康是生物、心理、社会因素的交汇，需整体看待，而非分裂研究。

50:06-53:27 线粒体与衰老

• 休伯曼回忆：提到其博士后导师Ben Barris曾问：“为何随年龄增长能量减少、脑可塑性下降？”他认为答案指向线粒体。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 线粒体衰退：儿童时期线粒体数量多且健康，随年龄增长，线粒体数量和功能下降。细胞通过自噬（mitophagy）清除缺陷线粒体，但此过程随年龄减弱。
  • 证据：研究发现，微胶质细胞通过“纳米隧道”从神经元中清除缺陷线粒体，抑制此过程加速神经退行性疾病，增强则减缓。
  • 衰老疾病：帕尔默列举衰老相关疾病（肥胖、2型糖尿病、心血管病、癌症、神经退行性疾病），指出心理疾病（如抑郁、焦虑、精神病）也属此类，因其发病率随年龄增加。

53:27-59:02 心理疾病是衰老疾病

• 帕尔默数据：
  • 抗抑郁药使用：CDC数据显示，65岁以上人群抗抑郁药处方率最高，而非年轻人，颠覆了“心理疾病是青年问题”的刻板印象。
  • 抗精神病药：80岁以上人群抗精神病药处方率最高，因痴呆患者40-50%会出现幻觉和妄想。
  • 安眠药（苯二氮卓类）：65岁以上处方率下降，因医生被警告避免给老年人开此类药。
• 联系代谢：帕尔默强调，心理疾病和代谢疾病的共同性需通过线粒体生物学理解，而非血清素假说。

59:02-01:00:49 赞助商插播

• Function：休伯曼推荐Function健康检测，提供100多项血液测试（包括毒素如BPA、PFAS），分享自己通过测试发现高汞水平并调整饮食（减少金枪鱼、增加绿叶蔬菜、补充NAC）的经历，提供优惠链接（functionhealth.com/huberman）。

01:00:49-01:04:08 饮食对线粒体健康的影响

• 休伯曼提问：询问饮食如何改善线粒体健康，尤其是酮症饮食的作用。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 饮食的重要性：饮食对代谢和线粒体功能有深远影响。孕期营养不良增加胎儿代谢疾病（肥胖、糖尿病）和心理疾病（精神分裂症、双相障碍）的风险。
  • 超加工食品：大量证据表明，超加工食品损害身心健康，因其导致过量热量摄入（平均每天多500千卡），增加脂肪组织，释放有害物质。
  • 酮症饮食：帕尔默提到，酮症饮食最初用于治疗癫痫，后用于减脂，其改善线粒体功能的机制将在后续详细讨论。

02:04:17-02:08:02 补充剂与高级干预

• 帕尔默讨论：
  • 尿石素A（Urolithin A）：研究显示，尿石素A可改善老年人（55-65岁以上）的肌肉质量和性能，8周内见效，具有抗衰老益处。帕尔默认可其潜力，但强调饮食和运动仍是基础。
  • 其他干预：对于严重心理疾病（如精神分裂症、重性抑郁），基础生活方式可能不足，需考虑补充剂（如亚甲蓝）、神经刺激（如经颅磁刺激，TMS）等以增强线粒体功能和神经可塑性。
  • 非灵丹妙药：帕尔默澄清，没有单一方法能治愈所有心理疾病，即使酮症饮食对一些人效果显著，也并非通用的“灵丹妙药”。

02:08:02-02:11:54 公共健康反思

• 休伯曼反思：人类似乎需要多次“撞墙”才会改变行为（如技术发展带来的健康问题）。他提到《医学史》和《癌症史》书籍，指出人类在进步中常忽视显而易见的健康原则。
• 帕尔默回应：同意人类需要反复教训，但过去5年通过社交媒体和播客，公共健康讨论已显著进步，呼吁回归基本原则：以非加工食品为主、适量蛋白质、规律运动。

02:11:54-02:18:57 维生素缺乏与心理健康

• 休伯曼提问：提到研究发现抑郁患者脊液中维生素缺乏（如B族维生素）可通过补充逆转，询问B12、叶酸、铁的作用。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 基础作用：B12、叶酸、铁是线粒体功能必需。若缺乏，线粒体会受损，导致神经精神症状。
  • 铁缺乏：JAMA研究显示，美国12-21岁女性40%铁缺乏（因月经失血），与青春期后女性心理疾病（如抑郁、焦虑）发病率激增相关。铁缺乏是代谢问题，可能导致大脑功能障碍。
  • B12缺乏：
    • 人群：印度50%人口（多素食者）B12缺乏，因其主要来源于动物性食品（红肉、蛋类）。素食者需补充并定期检测。
    • 药物影响：口服避孕药和二甲双胍（糖尿病药）会干扰B12吸收。
    • 后果：B12缺乏与抑郁、焦虑、精神病、双相症状相关，严重时可致幻觉、妄想，甚至永久性神经损伤。
  • 恶性贫血：一种自身免疫性B12缺乏症，因抗体破坏内在因子（intrinsic factor），阻碍B12吸收，随年龄增加常见，可表现为痴呆，需B12注射治疗。

02:18:57-02:24:54 新发现：中枢性B12缺乏

• 帕尔默继续：
  • 新研究：近年发现一种新的自身免疫性B12缺乏，抗体针对CD320蛋白（负责B12跨血脑屏障运输）。患者外周血B12正常，但脑脊液B12极低，需脊液检测确诊。
  • 患病率：健康人群中6%有此抗体，神经精神狼疮患者20%，不明原因脱髓鞘疾病患者50%。
  • 治疗：使用免疫抑制剂和高剂量B12注射可逆转部分患者的神经精神症状。
  • 建议：帕尔默建议检测B12水平（常规血液测试），但中枢性B12缺乏的商业测试尚未普及。

02:24:54-02:28:41 心理疾病的病因与治疗

• 帕尔默观点：
  • 治疗潜力：60-80%的神经精神疾病患者可通过现有干预（如生活方式、补充剂）改善，但20-40%严重患者需更深入研究（如中枢性B12缺乏）。
  • 诊断误区：当前精神病学常将诊断（如精神分裂症、双相障碍）视为“终身判决”，忽视潜在病因（如维生素缺乏、自身免疫）。帕尔默呼吁寻找具体病因（如B12缺乏导致的精神病）并针对性治疗，而非仅用抗精神病药或抗抑郁药。

02:28:41-02:45:20 疫苗、炎症与自闭症

• 休伯曼提问：疫苗或其佐剂是否通过炎症损害线粒体，进而导致心理健康问题（如自闭症）。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 炎症与线粒体：高炎症（如TNF-α、IL-6）明确损害线粒体功能，导致疲劳、性欲下降、退缩行为等神经精神症状（如流感或癌症患者）。
  • 炎症与自闭症：过去100年数据表明，孕期感染（如流感、风疹）增加后代神经发育障碍（自闭症、精神分裂症）风险。动物实验（孕鼠注射LPS）也证实炎症增加后代神经发育问题。
  • 疫苗的炎症效应：
    • 疫苗确实会引发炎症，个体间炎症反应差异大，部分人可能出现过度炎症反应。
    • 在过度炎症情况下，疫苗可能影响神经发育，尤其在有线粒体缺陷的个体中。
    • 一个案例：一名已知有线粒体疾病的儿童接种疫苗后出现严重神经发育症状，法庭判决疫苗为诱因。
  • 疫苗与自闭症的复杂性：
    • 现有研究（回顾性队列研究）显示，未接种疫苗者自闭症风险高于接种者，但研究未充分控制变量（如肥胖、糖尿病）。
    • 感染本身（如麻疹）也可能通过炎症损害线粒体，增加自闭症风险。
  • 建议：
    • 接种前优化健康（如睡眠、营养），降低炎症风险。
    • 若儿童接种后出现神经发育异常，应全面检查（维生素缺乏、中枢性B12缺乏），考虑酮症饮食等干预，而非仅贴“自闭症”标签。
  • 帕尔默立场：他不持极端观点（疫苗完全安全或疫苗导致自闭症），呼吁更细致的科学研究，而非简单标签化。

02:45:20-02:53:54 自闭症的其他风险因素

• 帕尔默继续：
  • 代谢健康与自闭症：父母的代谢健康（如肥胖、糖尿病）是自闭症的重要风险因素。肥胖女性后代自闭症风险翻倍，糖尿病女性同样翻倍，若两者兼有，风险增至4倍。
  • 男性因素：肥胖男性后代自闭症风险翻倍，年龄（50岁以上）的影响较小（仅轻微增加）。
  • 代谢综合征：美国仅7%人口在代谢综合征的5个生物标志物（腹部肥胖、血压、血糖、甘油三酯、HDL胆固醇）上全部健康，代谢健康恶化与自闭症、ADHD发病率上升同步。

02:53:54-02:58:03 代谢健康的误解与解决方案

• 帕尔默澄清：代谢健康不等于体重。瘦人可能因铁缺乏（如青春期女孩）或其他代谢问题（如低HDL、高ApoB）而不健康，导致心理疾病。
• 休伯曼提问：是否可创建代谢健康指标（如BMI），激励人们改善健康，减轻医疗负担。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 现有研究：多个研究组正在开发代谢/线粒体健康生物标志物：
    • 一商业公司开发血液标志物，预测自闭症风险。
    • 一线粒体研究者提出20个标志物。
    • 另一团队筛选出5个标志物（男女略有不同），可区分重性自杀抑郁患者与健康人群（90%敏感性和特异性）。
  • 挑战：目前无单一标准测试评估线粒体健康，需进一步研究验证。
  • 前景：帕尔默认为，开发此类测试无需额外激励，因大多数人真心希望自己和孩子健康。若能提供证据支持的工具（如评估代谢健康、干预策略），可显著改善后代健康。

02:58:03-03:09:26 帕尔默的未来计划与总结

• 休伯曼提问：帕尔默未来计划，尤其是否参与NIH改革。
• 帕尔默回应：
  • 近期目标：通过麦克林医院和哈佛医学院，帕尔默专注于研究和临床实践，计划建立医疗系统，治疗严重慢性心理疾病患者（已有5300人等待名单）。
  • 愿景：培训更多临床医生，开发AI算法，验证代谢干预的效果，帮助数百万甚至数十亿人。
  • 公共角色：愿意担任NIH或HHS顾问，推动研究转向有效治疗和预防，而非仅开发新药。
• 休伯曼总结：
  • 感谢帕尔默的先锋工作，弥合心理与身体健康，阐明代谢健康即线粒体健康。
  • 强调线粒体在细胞中的多重角色，改善线粒体健康的路径（生活方式、补充剂、药物），以及预防的重要性（尤其对计划生育者）。
  • 赞扬帕尔默对疫苗问题的严谨回答，呼吁持续关注新研究。
• 帕尔默回应：感谢休伯曼的贡献，认为其对全球心理健康的推动无人能及，称其为“同志”。

03:09:26-03:11:37 结束语与推广

• 休伯曼结束：
  • 提供帕尔默资源链接（包括其书《Brain Energy》）。
  • 鼓励订阅YouTube频道、在Spotify和Apple上关注播客并评分。
  • 推荐赞助商，邀请观众在YouTube评论区提问。
  • 推广新书《Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body》（protocolsbook.com），介绍其涵盖睡眠、运动、压力管理等内容。
  • 推荐社交媒体（Huberman Lab）和免费Neural Network通讯（hubermanlab.com）。
  • 感谢观众对科学的兴趣。

---

总结

这场播客围绕代谢健康与线粒体功能展开，帕尔默强调线粒体不仅是能量工厂，还调控神经递质、炎症、激素、表观遗传和应激反应，是心理与身体健康的桥梁。他批评传统精神病学过于简化（如血清素假说），呼吁整合生物、心理、社会因素，通过生活方式（饮食、运动、睡眠）、补充剂（B12、尿石素A）和高级干预（如TMS）改善线粒体健康。讨论还涉及疫苗与自闭症的复杂关系，帕尔默以科学数据为依据，提出炎症可能通过线粒体影响神经发育，但需个体化分析，而非简单归因。帕尔默的未来计划包括临床实践、研究和公共健康倡导，旨在帮助更多人摆脱严重心理疾病。

</markdown>

Edit:2025.04.12<markdown>

访谈嘉宾与核心主题

• 嘉宾： Chris Palmer 医生，哈佛大学精神病学家和研究员。
• 核心主题： 探讨如何利用代谢健康 (Metabolic Health)，特别是线粒体健康 (Mitochondrial Health)，来治疗甚至在某些情况下治愈精神疾病，包括精神分裂症、自闭症、抑郁症、双相情感障碍和 ADHD。

代谢健康与精神疾病的历史与现状

1. 历史回顾与迷失： Palmer 医生指出，将新陈代谢与严重精神疾病联系起来的研究已有约一个半世纪的历史。19世纪末至20世纪60年代，研究人员曾高度关注精神分裂症、双相情感障碍患者的代谢生物标志物（如乳酸、葡萄糖），认为代谢紊乱可能是病因。但后来，精神病学领域迷失了方向，过度专注于神经递质（如血清素），同时心理学和社会因素（如认知行为疗法 CBT、童年不良经历 ACEs）的研究也各自发展，导致领域分裂。
2. 整合的必要性： Palmer 认为，现在是时候整合生物、心理和社会因素，认识到它们共同影响精神和身体健康。代谢和线粒体健康是理解这种整合的关键。例如，ACEs 不仅增加精神疾病风险（几乎所有 DSM-5 诊断标签），也增加代谢性疾病（肥胖、糖尿病、心血管疾病、自身免疫病）和过早死亡的风险（6个以上 ACEs 平均减寿20年）。只有通过代谢和线粒体的视角，才能将创伤与心脏病、抑郁症等看似无关的疾病联系起来。
3. 超越简化论： 不能简单地认为精神疾病“全是”生物、“全是”心理或“全是”社会因素。它们是相互作用的，并且对不同个体而言组合方式不同。Palmer 强调他的工作是站在前人研究的基础上，推动精神健康领域范式的革命性转变。

线粒体：超越“能量工厂”

1. 传统认知： 线粒体是细胞的“能量工厂”，利用食物和氧气产生 ATP（能量货币），维持生命活动至关重要。
2. 扩展功能（近25年发现）：

   * 神经递质： 参与神经递质（如GABA）的生产、储存和释放调控。

   * 炎症： 调控免疫细胞炎症反应的启动和停止。

   * 激素合成： 在类固醇激素（皮质醇、雌激素、睾酮、孕酮）合成中起关键作用。

   * 表观遗传调控： 是表观遗传学的主要调控者，通过 ROS、钙信号等影响基因表达。线粒体在细胞核周围的排列和形态变化直接影响基因的开启和关闭。

   * 应激反应： 参与人类心理应激反应的所有方面（皮质醇、去甲肾上腺素、炎症、表观遗传变化）。

   * 细胞网络： 线粒体在细胞内移动、融合、改变形态，甚至可能被视为连接全身细胞的“网络”，通过激素等信号相互沟通，协调机体适应、生存和繁殖。

生活方式对线粒体健康的影响（六大支柱）

Palmer 强调，改善线粒体健康的基础是生活方式的调整，这比任何补充剂都重要。他提到了生活方式医学的六大支柱：

1. 饮食/营养 (Diet/Nutrition)： 这是最复杂但也极其重要的部分。后面会详细讨论。
2. 运动/活动 (Exercise/Movement)： 运动能显著增加肌肉等组织中线粒体的数量和健康度（如马拉松运动员），提高能量产生能力。即使是简单的散步也有益。
3. 睡眠 (Sleep)： 对代谢和线粒体功能至关重要。
4. 物质使用管理 (Managing Substance Use)：

   * 兴奋剂（如可卡因、安非他命）： 低剂量（如治疗 ADHD）可暂时改善大脑代谢（刺激线粒体产生 ATP）。但高剂量会导致线粒体过度兴奋，电子泄漏产生大量活性氧（ROS），损害线粒体和细胞，导致慢性功能障碍。成瘾者常陷入过度刺激和镇静剂压制的恶性循环。

   * 酒精 (Alcohol)： 明确的线粒体毒素。自1960年代起就知道酒精通过损害肝脏和大脑（对代谢紊乱高度敏感）细胞的线粒体导致肝硬化等问题。乙醛是关键的有毒代谢物。

   * 烟草 (Tobacco)： 主要危害来自致癌物，而非尼古丁本身。

   * 尼古丁 (Nicotine)： 低剂量是线粒体刺激剂，可能对大脑健康有益（Huberman 提及自己少量尝试）。但高剂量（如尼古丁袋成瘾）可能过度刺激导致毒性。

5. 压力管理 (Stress Reduction)： 正念、冥想、瑜伽等有助于调节应激反应，保护线粒体。
6. 人际关系/目标感 (Relationships/Purpose)： 社会连接和生活目标感对整体健康（包括代谢和精神健康）有积极影响。

饮食干预与线粒体健康

1. 超加工食品 (Ultra-Processed Foods, UPFs)：

   * 危害： 大量流行病学研究明确显示，UPFs 摄入量与身心健康状况（肥胖、糖尿病、心血管病、癌症、抑郁、焦虑等）呈线性负相关。一项研究显示，高 UPFs 摄入人群中有 58% 心理健康不佳，而低摄入人群仅为 18%。

   * 原因： 可能包括：1) 导致过度摄入热量（平均每天多 500 大卡）；2) 高度成瘾性（与暴食症关联）；3) 食品添加剂和化学物质的潜在毒性（但这方面缺乏足够研究，因缺乏资金和监管漏洞 GRAS）。

   * 公共卫生挑战： 食品工业的巨额营销投入、对健康组织的渗透（如美国心脏协会 AHA 为反对限制垃圾食品补贴而游说）导致公众认知混乱，难以推动健康的饮食习惯。需要类似反烟草运动的策略（税收、广告限制、揭露行业操纵）来改变现状。

2. 生酮饮食 (Ketogenic Diet, KD)：

   * 背景： 百年历史的循证疗法，用于治疗耐药性癫痫，效果显著（Cochrane 评价）。精神病学中也使用抗癫痫药（情绪稳定剂）。

   * 精神疾病应用： 超过 50 项初步研究（涉及 1900 多人）表明 KD 对多种精神疾病（精神分裂症、双相、抑郁、焦虑、厌食症）有效，有时效果惊人，能使耐药患者达到缓解。

   * 机制： KD 模拟禁食状态，深刻改变全身代谢。动物研究表明，KD 能改善线粒体自噬（清除受损线粒体）和线粒体新生，最终提高线粒体健康度。

   * 肠-脑轴联系： 研究显示，KD 改变肠道菌群（或其代谢物），这种改变足以在小鼠模型中产生抗癫痫效果。进一步研究发现，这种肠道变化导致了大脑中与线粒体功能相关的基因表达变化。这说明肠道、线粒体和大脑功能紧密相连。

   * 定位： KD 是一种干预性饮食，而非适合所有人的日常健康饮食。需在专业指导下进行，确保营养充足、避免副作用。

3. 间歇性禁食 (Intermittent Fasting, IF) / 模拟禁食饮食 (Fasting-Mimicking Diet, FMD)：

   * 历史与文化： 禁食作为疗愈手段在多文化中有数千年历史。

   * 现代研究： Walter Longo 的 FMD 研究（低热量植物为主，模拟禁食）显示，每年进行几次为期 5 天的循环可能改善多种健康标志物，有益代谢健康和长寿。

   * 限时饮食 (Time-Restricted Eating, TRE)： 目前证据好坏参半，主要因为研究通常不控制禁食窗口期外的食物质量，导致结果混杂。

   * 共同点： 无论是 KD、FMD 还是 IF，都通过改变能量供应状态来影响代谢和线粒体功能。

补充剂与线粒体健康

Palmer 再次强调，在考虑补充剂前，必须优先优化生活方式。没有补充剂能抵消不健康生活方式的损害。

1. 肌酸 (Creatine)：

   * 作用： 细胞内能量（磷酸基团）穿梭的关键分子，对能量代谢和线粒体功能至关重要。

   * 来源： 主要来自动物性食品。素食者脑部肌酸水平通常较低。

   * 与疾病关联： 精神分裂症、阿尔茨海默病、抑郁症患者脑部肌酸水平偏低。

   * 补充效果： 初步随机对照试验显示，补充肌酸可改善抑郁症、双相情感障碍症状，以及认知功能（如 MCI、AD）。但缺乏大型高质量研究（因肌酸无专利）。

   * Palmer 的建议： 虽然证据显示有益，但他目前并未常规推荐给患者，认为应先关注生活方式。

2. 亚甲蓝 (Methylene Blue)：

   * 作用： 主要作用于线粒体，作为电子受体和供体（电子穿梭）。在有氧化应激（ROS 过多，与衰老、神经退行性疾病、精神疾病相关）的情况下，它可以接收“流浪”电子，减少 ROS 产生。

   * 应用潜力： 初步小型试验显示对多种神经精神疾病（抑郁、双相、精神分裂、AD）可能有益。

   * 风险： 剂量是关键。过量可能导致还原应激（与氧化应激相对）。有 MAO 抑制作用，高剂量可能导致血清素综合征（症状易被误认为精神症状加重，严重可致命）。

   * 注意事项： 若使用需确保来源可靠、剂量准确。IV 输注是一种给药方式。同样缺乏大型研究。

3. 尿石素 A (Urolithin A)：

   * 研究： Timeline Nutrition 公司进行了较好的随机对照试验，显示其能改善老年人肌肉质量和功能，并带来与延缓衰老相关的代谢生物标志物改善。

   * 定位： 可能作为生活方式优化后的额外助益。

4. 辅酶 Q10 (Coenzyme Q10)： 未深入讨论，但属于与线粒体功能相关的常见补充剂。

维生素、矿物质缺乏与精神健康

1. B12、叶酸、铁： 对线粒体功能至关重要。缺乏会导致线粒体功能障碍。
2. 铁缺乏： 美国年轻女性（12-21岁）中高达 40% 缺铁（主要因月经失血和摄入不足）。青春期后女性精神疾病发病率飙升，缺铁导致的代谢/线粒体问题可能是生物学因素之一（与心理社会因素并存）。
3. B12 缺乏：

   * 高风险人群： 素食者/纯素食者（印度 50% 人口缺乏）、老年人（吸收能力下降）、服用二甲双胍或口服避孕药者。

   * 症状： 可导致各种神经精神症状，包括抑郁、焦虑、精神病性症状（幻觉、妄想），严重且不及早治疗可致永久性神经损伤。

   * 恶性贫血： 自身免疫性疾病，抗体攻击内因子导致 B12 吸收障碍，需注射 B12 治疗。是可治疗的痴呆原因之一。

   * 新发现：自身免疫性中枢 B12 缺乏症： 抗体（抗 CD320）阻断 B12 通过血脑屏障。患者外周血 B12 正常，但脑脊液中严重缺乏。这在健康人群中约 6%，在有神经精神症状的狼疮患者中 20%，在不明原因脱髓鞘疾病患者中高达 50%。治疗可能涉及免疫抑制剂和高剂量 B12。目前尚无商业化检测方法。

   * 启示： 这些例子说明，精神症状背后可能有可识别、可治疗的生物学原因（如维生素缺乏、自身免疫问题），需要超越简单的症状标签去寻找根源。

疫苗、炎症与自闭症

Palmer 医生对此敏感话题给出了细致的回应：

1. 炎症损害线粒体： 这是明确的科学事实。高水平炎症因子（如 TNF-α, IL-6）会损害线粒体功能。感染（如流感）期间出现的疲劳、退缩、性欲丧失等“疾病行为”就是炎症影响大脑功能的体现。干扰素治疗也会引起类似症状，并已知会干扰线粒体。
2. 炎症与神经发育障碍： 历史数据（感染爆发后代发病率升高）和动物模型（孕期注射 LPS 增加后代神经发育异常风险）都表明，孕期或早期炎症暴露是自闭症等神经发育障碍的风险因素。
3. 疫苗的潜在联系：

   * 疫苗确实会引起炎症反应。

   * 个体对疫苗的炎症反应存在差异。

   * 极少数个体可能对疫苗产生过度的炎症反应。

   * 理论上，这种极端的炎症反应可能影响神经发育。

   * 引用了一个胜诉的法庭案例：一个本身有线粒体疾病的女孩在接种疫苗后出现严重神经发育问题，法院裁定疫苗是促成因素。Palmer 认为这符合他的理论：有线粒体脆弱性的个体，疫苗可能成为“最后一根稻草”。

4. 宏观数据与复杂性：

   * 现有的流行病学研究（尽管有方法学局限，如未控制所有混杂因素，特别是父母的代谢健康状况）反而显示，未接种疫苗的儿童患自闭症的风险更高。

   * 可能的解释： 未接种疫苗意味着暴露于感染本身的风险更高，而感染本身就是神经发育障碍的风险因素。

   * 选择的困境： 这是一个风险权衡。难以预测谁会对疫苗产生过度反应。

5. Palmer 的核心观点：

   * 疫苗本身不太可能是自闭症的唯一或主要原因。自闭症的急剧增加更可能与人口整体代谢健康状况恶化（父母肥胖、糖尿病等显著增加后代风险）有关。

   * 关键在于干预： 当儿童出现神经发育异常迹象时，不应仅仅贴上“自闭症”标签并放弃治疗，而应积极寻找并干预潜在的代谢/生物学原因，如进行全面的代谢检查（维生素、矿物质、自身免疫 B12 缺乏等）、考虑生酮饮食等。

未来展望：诊断、治疗与公共卫生

1. 需要更好的生物标志物： 目前没有单一可靠的血液测试来评估线粒体健康。多个研究团队正在开发基于多种生物标志物的组合测试，希望能早期识别神经发育障碍风险或区分精神疾病亚型，但这需要时间和大量研究验证。
2. 个体化治疗： Palmer 相信，对于大多数（60-80%）神经精神疾病患者，通过现有的生活方式干预就能实现康复。但对于剩余的重症或难治性患者，需要更深入地寻找特定原因（如自身免疫 B12 缺乏）并进行针对性治疗。
3. 临床实践与研究： Palmer 正在积极建立临床实践，将他的理论应用于治疗重症精神疾病患者，并计划利用 AI 等工具开发治疗算法，同时培训更多临床医生。
4. 公共卫生改革： 需要彻底改变对精神疾病的认知，从仅仅对症治疗转向寻找和治疗根本原因（通常与代谢/线粒体功能障碍有关）。这需要 NIH 等机构大幅增加对营养学、生活方式干预和基础代谢研究的投入，并摆脱食品和制药行业的过度影响。

结论

Dr. Chris Palmer 探讨将代谢和线粒体健康置于精神与身体健康核心的革命性视角。他强调生活方式的基础作用，但也指出了针对特定机制的干预（如生酮饮食、补充剂、免疫调节）对难治性病例的潜力。他呼吁整合生物-心理-社会因素，寻找精神疾病的根本原因并进行治疗，而非仅仅依赖药物缓解症状。他对改善公共卫生、推动研究方向和改革临床实践充满热情和决心。

</markdown>

Edit:2025.04.12<markdown>

00:00

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and bestselling author and is considered one of the world's leading experts on relationships.

00:24

How to find relationships, how to be in relationships effectively, how to leave relationships if necessary, how to grieve them after they're gone, and how to renew them. All from the perspective of looking inward at ourselves and the stories about ourselves and others that we tell ourselves that can lead us to what we want and what's best for us or that lead us away from those things.

00:43

During today's episode, we discuss how the feelings we experience when we're with certain people are the absolute best guide of how poorly or how well those people are suited for us as partners and the ways in which we miss key signals, both good and bad in relationships by not paying attention to how we feel. Laurie explains how to better our communication skills, how to determine if somebody's critique of us is valid or not. That certainly is important for everybody. And how texting and technology has changed relationships

01:12

and how to navigate all of that by leaning into our own sense of agency, the things that we can control. And last but not least, Laurie explains how we can all access more vitality and enjoyment of life and how so many people don't allow themselves to do that because the familiarity of their present circumstances overrides their willingness to move forward.

01:32

This was a really eye-opening episode and one that I'm certain will help you better understand yourself and what your needs really are and how you can be happier in or out of a relationship. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

01:47

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, this episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Lori Gottlieb. Lori Gottlieb, welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. What's the first thing you ask a patient when you're meeting them for the first time? Usually it's something like, tell me what's going on. Tell me why you're here.

02:15

Tell me what made you decide to come in. And are you listening both to the content of their words and their tone, their physicality? Everything. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so interesting because sometimes people will say, I'm here because of, and they'll talk about something very difficult, but they're smiling through it. You know, I think it's very nerve wracking to come in and see a therapist and you don't know this person and you're about to share some very personal information that maybe you haven't told anyone in this way.

02:46

And so you want to make somebody comfortable. You want to make sure that, you know, you…

02:52

feel like they are not being rushed to share something that they're not ready to share. So it's just the process. I think it's a very human interaction. You know, therapy to me is not like expert and this other person, and then it feels very asymmetrical. Of course, we're using our training, and that's why they're coming to us. But I feel like it's very much a human-to-human interchange. Do you think…

03:19

because I've heard, but I don't know if it's true. Do you think that some people tend to create a lot of internal and perhaps external narrative about what happened, who they are, how people are in the world, how they're not in the world? You know, a lot of words to their experience, either spoken or internally, versus

03:43

people who maybe experience life a little bit differently. Once somebody said in a comment on Instagram, and I still think about this, they said, I don't think in words, I think in feels. And my first reaction was like, yeah, I'm from Northern California. People talk that way sometimes. So I thought that's interesting. Maybe there are a lot of people who

04:06

for whom language isn't the primary mode of understanding what's going on around them? I think that as humans, we try to make sense of our feelings through stories, that we tell ourself a story about why we're feeling a certain way. And sometimes we aren't that skilled because nobody taught us this,

04:25

to access our feelings. And that happens because kids are often talked out of their feelings. So when you're young, for example, and say you say to your parent, I'm really worried about this. And your parent will say, oh, don't worry about that. That's nothing to worry about. Or I'm really mad about this. You're so sensitive.

04:44

Right. Or because parents are really uncomfortable when their kids are feeling sad because they feel like it's my responsibility to make sure they're not sad, which is not your responsibility as a parent. You're there to sit with your child and be present for them. So if your child says, I'm really sad that so-and-so sat with so-and-so at lunch today. And, you know, the parent will say, well, here's what you can do or that's terrible or right instead of like, oh, tell me more.

05:12

And I think that as a parent or even as a partner, when your partner comes to you or your friend comes to you or a family member comes to you and tells you something, often what we do is we try to talk them out of the feeling that they're having or help them get rid of the feeling because we think it's a negative feeling. When feelings are all positive because they're like a compass, they tell us what direction to go in if we can access them.

05:37

So when you say to someone, tell me more, then the kid might say, well, yeah, it was really hard. And then they'll talk about maybe like why the person might have sat at a different table or what might have happened. And we really do have a lot of answers inside if we listen to the feelings. But we're talked out of the feelings. And then we grow up thinking, if I'm feeling sad or angry or anxious, then, you know, I need to get rid of the feeling as opposed to I need to use that feeling.

06:06

And so instead what we do is we come up with all these stories like the problem is out there as opposed to, oh, I have some really good information in here. I had a now ex-girlfriend who we're still on great terms who we had an agreement that served us super well and that I try and apply going forward, which is –

06:26

Nobody tries to shift anyone else. In my mind, I was the one that came up with that, but I think in reality she was the one that came up with it. Because now I'm like, there's no way I would have come up with that. But I think it came about through a couple different interactions where I would get off work and sometimes like the initial 20 minutes of interacting was…

06:47

much more difficult than it needed to be. And then I remember we just came up with this plan where we just decide no one's going to shift the other person unless they're like, shift me, please, you know, like help me relax or help me get excited about this, which we would never do. Right. So like when so a policy of not trying to shift anybody.

07:05

or somebody trying to shift our emotions, I think felt really liberating. Right. I think what you're talking about is self-regulation versus co-regulation. So self-regulation is when you're having some kind of internal experience,

07:19

you have choices. Like, I'm really angry about this. Okay, how do I self-regulate? Not to ignore the anger because the anger is telling me that maybe a boundary was broken or maybe somebody is treating me in a way that I don't want to be treated or maybe I'm upset with myself for the way that I acted. So it's good information, but then what do you do with it? Can you self-regulate? Can you find ways to

07:42

Look at the anger without screaming, yelling, self-sabotaging, whatever people do that's not a productive use of their anger or your anxiety or your sadness. Co-regulation is important though.

07:55

And that's something that you see – again, you can see it with parent-child where if the parent can stay calm when the child is not calm, that helps the child to learn to self-regulate. And with a partner, like say you had a really hard day at work and you come home and you're just not in a good mood, it's not your partner's responsibility to –

08:16

help you through that. You need to self-regulate. But it sure helps if your partner is regulated and they can help co-regulate you just because they happen to be regulated. You want two adults in the room or at least one adult in the room. If you have two children in the room, like grown children, adults, then everybody gets dysregulated.

08:35

So it's really important that at least one person is being the adult in the room and one person is regulated. If both people, like you're in an argument, both people are dysregulated, nothing good is going to come from that. In which case is the best option to just pause it until somebody returns to adulthood? Yes. And that happens so often. It's such an easy fix for couples because sometimes they think, we have to deal with this right now. And it feels urgent to deal with it right now because I feel hurt right now. Right.

09:02

Or I can't believe you said that. Or we need to, you know, resolve this right now. That can be the worst possible thing. So it's not like let's forget about it. It's I'm going to go take a walk or I'm going to go to the gym or I'm going to go, you know, read for a few minutes or I'm going to go relax, whatever that is. And then let's talk in an hour about it or let's talk tonight.

09:24

And you can stay connected during that time. So what are you going to do in the intervening time if you're just making up stories about the other person? They're insensitive. They don't care about me. They don't prioritize me. Then that's not helpful. But in that intervening time, if you can say, if I were telling this story from the other person's perspective, what would their version of this story be? And is there a nugget of overlap?

09:50

And is there a nugget of something that feels really genuine to me that I can understand and even have compassion for? And that's going to help you come back when you have the conversation. But you have to be regulated. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs.

10:12

Now I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night. How soft it is or how firm it is, how breathable it is, all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two minute quiz

10:35

which will ask you questions such as, do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Now, maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress. I started sleeping on the Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.

10:56

So much so that when I travel and I'm not on my desk mattress, I really miss it. And when I get home, I just find that I sleep so much better because of that mattress.

11:05

If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for you. Right now, Helix is giving up to 20% off on all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to get up to 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

11:30

Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all,

11:45

It provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about pretty much any issue with second of all it can provide support in the form of emotional support and directed guidance and third expert therapy can provide useful insights Insights that allow you to better not just your emotional life in your relationship life but of course also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and to all sorts of goals and

12:07

BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you resonate with and that can provide you those three benefits that come from effective therapy. Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy to be done entirely online, it's super time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, you can go to betterhelp.com slash Huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com slash Huberman.

12:31

One thing that I've observed, I don't have any formal data on this, is that some of the happiest couples I know are couples where I would refer to one person in the relationship as more emotive and expressive and the other person as a little bit on the spectrum. And my observation is that part of the reason those couples seem so harmonious is that the little things don't seem to bother the

12:57

person on the spectrum because they don't register them. They don't get entangled in the other person's downs or ups, which I guess could be problematic in theory, but it just seems like they get along really well because, and I won't, you know, kind of stereotype the labels, but these couples that I know, it does happen to be the male who is a little bit on the spectrum and the

13:30

it just seems like there's so much harmony there. And when I talk to him, I'm generally closer to the man in the relationship, although not always.

13:40

They say like, yeah, like, you know, it doesn't bother me. There's, I just like will listen or if there's something to a request, I'll respond to the request. There isn't this entanglement of she's upset. So I like have to respond or this is really painful to listen to. It's more of like a kind of matter of fact. And I just think it's an interesting dynamic. It's obviously not one that people can pre-program themselves for.

14:07

But I do think it's an interesting dynamic as opposed to what you're describing where emotions can kind of ratchet together like gears. And that can be wonderful when people are in ecstatic states or happy or there's like the banter of certain couples that seem pretty emotive is something I'm also familiar with observing. Yeah.

14:27

Those couples also seem like more volatile, like when somebody is upset, the other person gets upset that they're – and it just starts to deteriorate pretty quickly. Yeah. You don't want two highly reactive people to be together. You also, I think, need to think about – there's a saying, we marry our unfinished business. Right.

14:46

So let's say that there's somebody who had a parent who was very kind of avoidant or withdrawn. That person, if they haven't processed that, will be drawn to the partner who is more avoidant, but not because it feels good, but because it's familiar. Right?

15:05

And so sometimes in the kind of couple that you're describing, and I don't know the experience of your friends, but I've seen a lot of couples where it looks like that would be a good match because one person is, you know, sort of more in the emotional sphere and one person is less so. But sometimes what that is, is one person gets very lonely because they're not really getting that kind of emotional interaction that they want. Right.

15:30

So it can be a solution for some people because they don't know how to be with a different kind of person. But I also feel like you want to make sure that you have figured out your unfinished business, that you're not just – you don't just have radar for the kind of person who hurt you. So what often happens is –

15:47

People haven't processed whatever it was that they wanted more of or less of when they were growing up. And then they go out into the world and they're looking for a partner. And they literally have radar for a person who is exactly like the person who hurt them but doesn't look like that. So it's like I'm going to choose someone who is the opposite of the parent who hurt me.

16:09

And then you find this person and after you get to know them a little bit, you're like, wow, that person drinks a lot too. I didn't realize that. Or that person is really withholding too. I didn't see that at first. Or that person yells a lot. I didn't notice that at first. And you're like, how did I get into this exact situation that hurt me as a child? And that's because your unconscious is saying, okay,

16:33

you look familiar, come closer. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to win. We're trying to master a situation where we felt helpless as a child. We couldn't control the situation with our parents when we were growing up. And now we think, again, this is completely outside of our awareness. I'm going to win this time. I'm going to master this. I'm going to get love from that kind of person. And it doesn't work out. So I'm

16:56

I think that you really want to make sure that you are choosing someone for healthy reasons and not because there's some unfinished business that you're trying to work out with this person who is not going to meet your needs. To go a little bit further into this idea, which, by the way, I fully subscribe to based on your explanation of this and my belief that our unconscious mind is driving a lot of our choices, my understanding is that what you just described is

17:24

doesn't adhere to mom, dad, male, female compartmentalization. What I mean by that is that I think a lot of people will hear what you just said and assume, okay, if my dad hurt me in the following ways, then let's say it's a woman. And she said, you know, my dad hurt me in the following ways. Maybe he was a drinker, withdrawn, or he was violent or whatever. Then that woman will seek out men that mimic that.

17:54

Here I'm assuming heterosexual relationship. But if her mother was the one that was the drinker, violent and or withdrawn, and she's heterosexual, my understanding is based on the dynamics that you describe, if she will find those traits in a man. Yes. Because she's heterosexual, she's seeking men for romantic partners. And I think that's very important. I think that sometimes we put the mom, dad labels on top of the the.

18:26

attraction to, again, staying in the heterosexual framework here,

18:31

the opposite sex framework. And then people say, well, why is it that this woman always seeks out these like what end up being really terrible guys? Like she had such a great dad, but she had a dreadful mom. That is absolutely correct. And I think it's so interesting because I think that people think that having one parent that gave you what you needed is protective. And in some ways it is. But the thing that hurts is the thing that gets the most attention inside of our bodies.

18:57

So we don't necessarily think it, but we felt it. We internalized it. It lives inside of us. And so, yes, having a good parent, one of the two, if you have two parents, one of the two is important. But it's interesting that it's not like we seek out the person that's like the good parent always. Sometimes, again, because we're trying to work something out, we seek out someone like the parent who really hurt us.

19:23

Such a flaw in our wiring. Well, I mean, I think that's where therapy is really helpful. I think that's where, you know, people are like, well, what is therapy really for? And I think it's really about what are the things that are outside of your awareness, but that are sort of driving the car.

19:39

So it's like we think we're the driver of our own car, but often like someone else is driving the car and we don't realize it and we think, why does this keep happening? Or, you know, what is happening in my life that I'm not getting what I want in, you know, whatever dimension it is, whether it's professionally or personally. And so often it's because there's some force that you are acting out that you don't even realize.

20:02

And I think the role of therapy is to kind of hold up a mirror to people and help them to see something about themselves that they haven't been willing or able to see. You said that people will pick the person who's exactly wrong for them, who feels exactly right, at least at first, that it has this kind of come here mentality.

20:25

this summoning aspect to it. Like we feel drawn to it. It feels drawn to us. I mean, that's how relationships start after all, one would hope. But in this case, you said that people come to find that that person harbors some of the exact same traits. I'm calling them that, behaviors, traits, whatever it is that hurt them in the context of their child-parent relationship.

20:54

Why do you think initially it presents as the opposite? I think it's about the familiarity.

21:03

that there's something so visceral about this feels like childhood. And even if childhood was not optimal or even miserable, it still feels familiar. And humans in general are very afraid of uncertainty. They're very afraid of the unfamiliar. I remember when I was in therapy, my therapist said to me, you know, you remind me of this cartoon and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open, nothing.

21:32

No bars. Right. So why do we stay in this prison? Why don't we walk? Why don't we even see that it's open? And why don't we walk around the bars? And it's because with freedom comes responsibility and uncertainty. We don't know what's we know what it's like to be in prison.

21:48

That's been our experience. So that feels comfortable, even though we say we desperately want to get out. And then if we choose the uncertain path, we're responsible for our lives now. We can't blame it on mom or dad or this situation or that situation. I'm not saying those situations weren't impactful. Of course they were. But we have choices as an adult. We have freedom as an adult that we didn't have as a child. And sometimes it's really hard for us to say, okay,

22:15

I'm going to have to be responsible for my life. That's terrifying because we feel like we don't have the tools to do that. We feel like, again, the uncertainty. We'd rather have the certainty of like, I know what it's like in prison. At least I know what that's like. And I know, you know, the devil, you know. And that's not, again, that's outside of our awareness. I think what you're describing is a pervasive feature of being human. If I may, there's this

22:41

He's now a young adult. But I've watched grow up from a very young age who got into college. He was doing really well. Then he fell in love. He made the decision to leave school. The relationship ended and I was talking to him recently and he's kind of in this kind of dizzying spin of like,

23:01

thinking about how great things were, how he blew it. And he's young. I'm like, listen, you're good. Like he didn't drop out. He just withdrew. He can go back and, you know, he'll find another relationship. But, you know, and I empathize with him. But I passed something along to him that was actually discussed on a by a former guest on this podcast, Josh Waitzkin, who was a former child trust project. He's gone on to do a number of things. And he said exactly what you're saying, which is in a different context. He said, we

23:29

get so attached to our current identity and our past identity and trying to resolve those that we're more willing to stay in that state of discomfort than we are to step into a path of potential success. Right. It makes no sense, right? I mean, and so I pass this along. We'll see what he does with that knowledge. Yes, it's kind of like the misery of uncertainty, the certainty of misery, right?

23:58

is sometimes more palatable to people than the misery of uncertainty. So you can be certain that you're going to stay miserable if you stay in jail, but the misery of uncertainty is worse.

24:12

So it's really interesting that people will make that tradeoff. And the other thing about this attraction question that you're asking about, it's like I had this therapy client and she would pick people who were exactly like one or both of her parents. And she would be so attracted to those guys. She would always go for them. And she'd say, men are terrible. Guys are terrible. It's like, no, no, no. The men you're choosing are

24:34

are terrible to you. But then you go out on dates with these like great guys and she's like, yeah, no chemistry, no chemistry. Yeah. Let's talk about that. What, what, what is the, the flip side is the lack of, of interest in somebody that doesn't overtly or covertly harbor the, the, the painful thing that you're so used to. Right. So, so that's the thing. She was working out this, this way of, she hadn't separated yet from her childhood and

25:02

So she was trying to kind of reenact her childhood, reenact her childhood with these men. And she didn't realize she was doing that. She'd just be like, oh, I'm so attracted to this person or things like, you know, I just I like this guy so much. I don't know why he doesn't call when he says he will.

25:17

Right. And it's like, well, who is that like? Who does that remind you of? When have you felt that before that? Like, I never know where I stand with this parent, with this boyfriend. And then the people who are really reliable, who, by the way, it wasn't about their physical traits. Like these men were all physically attractive. It was she felt no sort of, again, that word chemistry, because there's something very threatening about like, oh, there's no friction.

25:43

It's a frictionless, you know, thing where he says he's going to call and he does. He's reliable. He does what he says he's going to do. I don't know what to do with that. It just doesn't like light her up in that way because she's not having that big emotional reaction to it because it doesn't feel like the thing that would give her a big emotional reaction.

26:04

shit. And so once she sort of works that through, by the end of the therapy, she became very attracted to the kinds of guys who would treat her the way she wanted to be treated. And she was no longer attracted to the guys that she… So she'd get that initial kind of like, oh, I feel something when I'm in the presence of a guy like that, but I'm not really interested in a relationship with that kind of guy. So that's, I think, what therapy can do for people. Yeah. One of the things that I've noticed in my own life is that

26:36

As I've gotten older, I'll be 50 later this year, been looking forward to that. I feel great. But some of the things that I assumed for so many years, like slow is low. Like when things are really slow, like for many years it felt kind of depressive. Now I love slow, mellow, like peace is the thing that I'm,

27:01

Just I savor so much. But for so many years, I think what you're describing, that sort of activation state of excitement, that was a pretty wild youth. And then, you know, I mean, I like adventure and I'd taken on at times dangerous adventures that I shouldn't have lived.

27:19

Told myself I wouldn't do them again. Picked a different adventure. But even in like my scientific career or podcasting, things that feel at times like a bit of a tightrope walk, just given the number of variables that I can't control just by virtue of what they are and the challenge of like long cycles of trying to publish. Like they're kind of scary at some level. It's your profession after all.

27:38

But I did the same thing in a lot of my relationships. Lovely people in some cases, some cases not, but in most cases, fortunately for me, lovely people. But there was this sense that like if something felt like a little bit of an upstate, kind of like a bit more of autonomic arousal or a lot more autonomic arousal, that it had this kind of magnetic quality to it. Whereas I think, and I'm not joking or lying here, I think owning a bulldog

28:08

taught me how to really savor relaxing. I'm not saying this just to highlight Costello again. I mean, I observed his relationship to the world and the Bulldogs contract with its owner is an amazing one that I think I learned a lot from. The contract is, I will die for you. I will literally give up my life to protect you, Andrew. But if that's not on the line,

28:33

I'm not going to do anything. We're just going to sit here and enjoy the sunshine. Right. We're just going to breathe and we're going to eat food. Right. Friends are coming over and I'll get excited. And, you know, and I'm not trying to make too much of this. I really noticed. I was like, wow, he needs so little to be blissful. And yet I know that if like push came to shove, like he's on my side, we've got each other's backs. Yeah. As opposed to let's talk about a more human contract of like,

29:00

this picture or story of a couple that they have about themselves. Ride or die is something people say a lot nowadays. It's a beautiful concept, right? Loyalty, like you're in it together no matter what. But there's a calm version of that, like ride or die. And then there's like ride or die, like we'll take on anything. We'll bring in chaos. We'll be the chaos and we just don't quit. Very different activation states. Oh, absolutely. And it took me

29:27

49 years to learn this. I see it in professional relationships too. People want the exciting thing, the big build, and then they're like, it's the chaos of like, oh, this founder left and this person. It's like, well, of course it started in drama. It's going to end in drama. Does this, some of this resonate? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, two things. One is that there's this concept of cherophobia, which is kind of fear of joy. And

29:50

And so so many people, because they grew up in a way where whenever – let's say the parent was reliable in moments, right? Like at certain times. And then they were unreliable or they were really calm. But then they would blow up. And you never knew what was going to happen. It was like you were walking on eggshells the whole time, right? So you're very afraid of anything that goes well. You think the other shoe is going to drop. Right.

30:12

Like at any moment. So you don't want to pick something, and again, outside of your awareness, like you don't pick the calm partner because it feels too good, like something's going to go wrong. So I'll pick the volatile partner because I'm prepared. I'm prepared for that level of volatility, right? And so people sabotage all the time, whether it's about a job or a partner or, you know, whatever they want. They think,

30:38

I am not going to go there because it's not safe to feel joy.

30:44

Because something will go wrong and I will be crushed and it will be harder to have the experience of joy and to have it crushed than to never feel the joy. So there was a woman that I wrote about in my book who she just – she wouldn't let herself feel any joy or get excited about a partner or excited about – she wanted to be an artist and doing her art and things were going really well. And then she'd self-sabotage.

31:10

It's like, you can't fire me, I quit, right? It's like, I'm going to create the bad thing to happen to myself because if it happens from the universe, it's going to feel even worse.

31:21

So I think we need to kind of really be aware there are lots of people out there who are terrified of good things happening even though they say they desperately want good things to happen. And so they make bad things happen or they make sure good things don't happen to them because it feels so uncomfortable to sit in that space of the other's just going to drop at any moment and I can't deal with that.

31:40

But the other thing I want to say about this slow burn type of thing is there was a study that was done that I wrote about in one of my books where they did a longitudinal study and they looked at people over 20 years and they followed up with them every five years from the first date to where they are later.

31:56

And they had them instead of like historically saying, you know, when you ask people in relationships and you say, what was it like when you first met? And they'll tell you some story. But it's retrospective. It's not like you weren't there at the time. You're sort of telling it through the lens of where you are now. What was great about this study was people wrote down at the time, here's what, here's how I feel.

32:16

So people who were, let's say, got married and were happy would say almost unilaterally, like, there was so much chemistry. We had such a good time on the first date. It was amazing. Whereas at the time they might have said, like, yeah, it was okay. Maybe I'll see this person again. Fine. Like no butterflies or, you know, whatever. But that's not the story they're telling themselves about it.

32:39

Now, people who either are unhappily together or no longer together would say, yeah, there was nothing there. There was no chemistry. I didn't really like the person. But at the time, they might have said, like, wow, I'm really interested in this person. It was like we had so much chemistry. So we change our stories based on our present experience.

32:58

And we think we're telling an accurate version of what actually happened. And the reason I bring this up is because since people who are sort of happy couples tell these stories to other people, we think in our culture that if you go on a first date and you don't have that immediate spark, that it's not worth it. Like don't go on a second date.

33:20

And what happens is sometimes a lot of the time when you have that immediate spark, it doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not that a spark is bad. It means that you really need to see what it means. And it's not that not having a spark is bad. If you go on a date

33:35

And you feel like it was a nice conversation and I had a good enough time. Go spend another hour with this person. Just go on another date with them and see what happens. But we don't do that because we have this illusion that you can just go back on an app or there's so many people out there. And so we try to optimize.

33:55

as opposed to saying, what would it be like? I felt good when I was with this person. I didn't feel that rush, but I felt pretty good. So I think I'll go see what that's like again. And that should be our bar, not like, do I feel this rush? Do I feel like this is amazing? But did I have a good enough time? Sure, let me go see what that's like. Yeah, one certainly wouldn't want to be bored in somebody else's presence, right?

34:23

But calm seems like a good touch point to look for as opposed to this activation state.

34:32

Maybe it's the neurobiologist in me and I'm guilty of also working on this autonomic arousal thing for so many years, the seesaw in us of being like upstates that can either be stress or bliss and downstates, which can either be depression and fatigue or can just be like pleasant relaxation. Like the label becomes critical, right? Alert and stressed versus alert and elated is- Very different. Same level of alertness, two very different things. Same depressed versus peaceful state.

35:00

When relaxed, you know, and looking for or trying to figure out what sorts of interactions bring about that kind of even seesaw might be best. Not one or the other. Maybe a little erring even a little bit more towards peace. Yes.

35:16

And when I see couples who come in and they've been married for a long time now and they say, you know, well, say, what is the origin story? How did you meet? What was that like? What were you attracted to in the other person? And so often I'll hear words like, it was so exciting. I found this person so exciting.

35:34

And it's like that's the very thing that what you thought was excitement was actually volatility or was actually sort of anxiety as opposed to that sense of you can be calm and feel excited about the other person.

35:52

So we're talking about a neurological state, right, your nervous system, and then we're talking about your interpretation of what that means. So sometimes calmness is exciting. Sometimes excitement is anxiety-provoking.

36:07

And so you have to be able to tell the difference between the two. I'll just say yes and yes to both those statements. I think peace is not everything, but it's necessary but not sufficient, as we say. If I may, I'd like to get kind of a little deep and abstract along this dimension of why people

36:31

are so much more willing to stay in a state that doesn't feel good versus risk the unknown and the opportunity to win in relationship, in life, in career, et cetera. 'Cause I do believe that.

36:49

I happen to be reading, it's a hard book, a genuinely difficult book, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading Ernst Becker's The Denial of Death. I highly recommend it to everyone. One of Pulitzer, after all, you don't need my endorsement. And, you know, I mean, the central thesis of the book, right, is that we're a weird species because we understand that we're going to die at some point.

37:12

We're all going to die. And that humans go through these very complicated gymnastics related to ego and symbols. And we create notions of meaning and story to try and distract us basically from this really scary reality. It's terrifying, right? It's terrifying. Nobody really understands or knows what happens next. We can't be sure. And I have this idea in mind as you're telling me that indeed people are willing to stay in a set of circumstances that don't work for them.

37:40

even ruminating on the mistakes that got them there for a very long time, willingly, when all they need to do is make some new choices that they're fully capable of making. And I wonder whether or not it's because they're alive now. They know they're, quote unquote, safe now. Like, they're not dead. I mean, the number of people I know who stayed in circumstances that didn't work for them for so long, professionally, relationally,

38:06

It's like, how do they do that? And I understand sometimes there's kids, sometimes there's financial issues, but it's always the case that they've eventually gotten out, thank goodness. And they always say, I wish I had done it so much earlier. And I wonder whether or not as a biological and psychological being, we do this because we're thinking, well, I'm alive now. I'm breathing now. I'm, quote unquote, safe now.

38:32

but I don't know what's going to happen if I make this other choice. Like it defies logic, but at the same time, if one just assumes that our, like our biggest fear deep down in our unconscious is fear of death, we'll pretty much stay anywhere where we're continuing to be alive and not

38:48

like in the moment of fearing death. Sorry to get a little philosophical here, but I think this unconscious thing, a lot has been made of it. The word means, okay, well, it's happening, but we don't know what's happening. But like, what are we really afraid of? And I do think ultimately we're all just really afraid of death. I don't think we're afraid of death. I think we're afraid of not having lived.

39:08

So what I mean by that is I think we deny death. We're all sort of death deniers. Like we know it's out there somewhere, but we don't know when or how it's going to happen. And so we just pretend because there's no real, no pun intended, but deadline. Right. And so we just think sort of,

39:24

We know intellectually we don't have forever, but we kind of think we do. And so when you think about sort of the stages of psychosocial development, you know, you start with, you know, these conflicts that you have to work through at every stage of life. And sort of the one where you're sort of the last stage is integrity versus despair.

39:43

So integrity is if you have lived a life where you don't have a lot of regret, you feel like you lived the kind of life that you wanted, you accomplished the things that you wanted to accomplish for the most part, whether that's relationally, professionally, some combination there, you have a sense of integrity at the end of your life. If you didn't, you have this sense of despair. People who work through that and have integrity are not afraid of death.

40:12

The people who are in despair are very afraid of death because they have so many regrets and they can't go back. You don't get a redo.

40:20

And so I like to, in psychotherapy, really remind people that they need to keep death awareness sitting on one shoulder, not to be morbid, but to actually make you live more fully. If you are aware of death, if you really look death right in the eye, you have more intentionality when you wake up every day. You say, I don't have forever. So it's not like sometime in the future I might die. It's like you could die today, tomorrow. You know, anything could happen.

40:49

And I think, you know, when I saw I write about this in my book where I was seeing this woman who was in her early 30s and she was diagnosed with cancer and everyone thought she was going to be fine. And then there was a sort of rare recurrence. And when she was newly married and her whole life was like turned upside down. And she really made me as the therapist look death in the eye in that way. You know how like.

41:15

You want to say something like, you know, she was talking about the things that people would say to her because we all have this death denial. And they would say, did you get a second opinion? As if, no, she's not going to get a second opinion about whether she's going to die, right? You know, they'll say things like, well, these experimental treatments might work. You know, anything to deny the reality that she was going to die and very soon. And nobody wanted to sit with her in that. And it was my job to do that. Even her husband. Right.

41:45

had, had trouble sort of sitting with her in that in the beginning. Right. Um, and, and there was this one moment, this beautiful moment between them that she came in and told me about where he was like, you know, uh, doing something and trying to relax. And, and he was a great, like incredibly supportive of her. And she came in and said, Hey, there's this thing. And I read about this and I want to talk to you about this. And, and he said like,

42:12

Can't we just have one night off from cancer? And she said, I don't get any nights off from cancer. There's no nights off. Right. And I understand both perspectives on that, but it brought up this beautiful conversation between them that really helped them to think about how much do we let death in?

42:32

And how much do we let sort of life or whatever's left in? And how do we let death inform the aliveness that we still have? So I think it's really important that, you know, why do people stay in relationships too long? Why do they stay in jobs too long? Why do they make choices that are not serving them and that they will later regret? It's because they are in full-blown death denial.

42:58

And I think when people really acknowledge their mortality, it's one of the most healthy, invigorating things that they can bring into their lives. When people say, what is the opposite of depression? It's not happiness. It's vitality. And where do we get vitality from knowing that we have a limited time here and we get to choose how we spend it? I agree 100%. This is something I think about.

43:27

constantly, although I've never looked at it through the lens that you just presented it. And I, I love what I just learned from you, which is that vitality is the, is the state, the state of, of being vitality is so key. I, um,

43:45

I think about death probably more than I should because for a kid who wasn't from the inner city or in the military, I've just had a lot of friends die, a lot of suicides, a lot of drug stuff, unfortunately, and all three of my scientific advisors, suicide, cancer, cancer. I was very close with all of them, and I got to say goodbye to the second one. That was a disaster.

44:06

rough conversation. Anyone that's ever had a conversation with somebody where it's a goodbye conversation. I had to do the, like, this is it. And it was brutal, but I don't want to well up. I've cried before on this podcast. I don't feel like doing it today. I don't have a problem crying from time to time on camera, but I don't want the plot line here to shift too much. But

44:29

I started after that conversation to adopt a practice. I do this yoga nidra, non-sleep deep resting every day for about 10 to 30 minutes. And there's this moment right at the beginning where you're supposed to take a deep breath and then a long exhale to relax your body. And then you go into listening to the script. And ever since that conversation, I've insisted on doing that. And as I do it, I remind myself, this is if I'm awake.

44:57

or if it's not an accident that happens very fast, this is probably what it's going to feel like to like die. And so just trying to like, so I like this idea of readying myself for death every day as a means to access what you're talking about, which is trying to live better. Right. Again, not to be morbid, just try to like, yes, I'm like a biological vessel at some point. My body, my brain are both. We'll just give out.

45:21

or i'll get bullet buster cancer is kind of what i always say something will take me out and there'll be this final and that's it and the closer that i feel like that we can get to that understanding and be like okay super scary and i'm not there now so i'm going to go back into the world

45:40

And do the best I can. And it doesn't have to be scary. It sounds like you're aiming toward an acceptance of death, which is, I think, the way that we get motivated to live. So it's not fear of death. That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I don't think we should be afraid of death. I think we should say we get this precious time, however long we get. Everybody gets their own amount of time on, you know, in this life.

46:05

And so it's an acceptance of that. It's not a fear of that. And I think about how when people are afraid of death, they do things that are counterproductive. Like a lot of affairs happen in the wake of a death. So a parent dies and somebody then feels like, oh, I don't have a lot of time left. Am I really happy in this relationship? Am I really alive? Am I really living? And then they go and do something like have an affair.

46:31

because they want that sense of vitality, because they're doing it out of fear, not out of, oh, I accept that death is a part of our existence. And if I'm not feeling alive, is it because of my relationship or my marriage? Or is it because I am not actively doing things in my life to create that sense of vitality? So very often in the wake of some kind of

46:57

brush with death, like some kind of closeness, like maybe you had a brush with death or maybe a parent died or someone close to you died or a friend or a sibling. So often people act out and they do these things to create the sense of I'm alive as opposed to saying, wait, what do I need to look at in my life that will make me feel more alive that is not self-sabotaging?

47:22

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I even knew what a podcast was.

47:35

I started taking it and I still take it every single day because it ensures that I meet my quota for daily vitamins and minerals and it helps make sure that I get enough prebiotics and probiotics to support my gut health. Over the past 10 years, gut health has emerged as something that we realize is important not only for the health of our digestion, but also for our immune system and for the production of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things like dopamine and serotonin. In other words, gut health is critical for proper brain function.

48:03

Now, of course, I strive to eat healthy whole foods from unprocessed sources for the majority of my nutritional intake, but there are a number of things in AG1, including specific micronutrients, that are hard or impossible to get from whole foods. So by taking AG1 daily, I get the vitamins and minerals that I need, along with the probiotics and prebiotics for gut health,

48:21

and in turn brain and immune system health, and the adaptogens and critical micronutrients that are essential for all organs and tissues of the body. So anytime somebody asks me if they were to only take one supplement, what that supplement should be, I always say AG1 because AG1 supports so many different systems in the brain and body that relate to our mental health, physical health, and performance.

48:41

If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman. For this month only, April 2025, AG1 is giving away a free one-month supply of omega-3 fish oil, along with a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2.

48:56

As I've highlighted before in this podcast, omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 have been shown to help with everything from mood and brain health to heart health and healthy hormone production and much more. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get the free one month supply of omega-3 fish oil plus a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 with your subscription. Today's episode is also brought to us by David.

49:19

David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right. Twenty eight grams of protein and 75 percent of its calories come from protein. This is 50 percent higher than the next closest protein bar. David protein bars also taste amazing. Even the texture is amazing.

49:38

My favorite bar is the chocolate chip cookie dough. But then again, I also like the new chocolate peanut butter flavor and the chocolate brownie flavored. Basically, I like all the flavors a lot. They're all incredibly delicious. In fact, the toughest challenge is knowing which ones to eat on which days and how many times per day.

49:53

I limit myself to two per day, but I absolutely love them. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein in the calories of a snack, which makes it easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, and it allows me to do so without ingesting too many calories. I'll eat a David protein bar most afternoons as a snack, and I always keep one with me when I'm out of the house or traveling.

50:15

They're incredibly delicious, and given that they have 28 grams of protein, they're really satisfying for having just 150 calories. If you'd like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com slash Huberman. Again, that's davidprotein.com slash Huberman.

50:31

So much to go into here. This thing about vitality is so key. A friend recently said to me something. I was talking about how, gosh, there's like these certain interactions in life that are like, I feel like they like pull me in. I don't like them. And then it just like really takes away from what I know I should be doing. And he said, you know, you have to do things

50:57

that energize you and immediately i thought yes and be very careful about the things that activate us like there's this difference between activation and being being activated versus being energized i mean it's a little bit semantic right but i feel like something that energizes me it's like i love cephalopods i used to have cuttlefish in my lab i love octopuses and by the way it's octopuses is the plural folks not octopi we go into a whole thing here but i won't um

51:25

And, you know, looking at one of those guys or gals solving a puzzle, that just energizes me in a way. I feel it in my body. It's energy that I can use for other things. It's, you know, it's like an inspiration for me. And there are many other things that do that.

51:42

And then there are things that activate us like where we – it's like a stress response. It's arousal but it's negative valence. Right. It's draining. It's like pulling and it's taking from these things that energize us. And I feel like it's being able to notice those subtleties is hard in real time.

51:59

And but I feel like vitality is about the things that energize us. Right. And so when you talk about that draining kind of activation, sometimes what we do when that happens is we go numb.

52:12

Right. So we don't want to feel anything. So, you know, there's this great expression that the like scrolling through the Internet when people mindlessly do that. It's a colleague of mine said it's the most effective non-prescription painkiller out there. Can you repeat that? Because I want people to understand this. So, yeah. So it's the most effective non-prescription painkiller out there.

52:30

And so it's interesting when you think about numbness because people think that numbness is the absence of feelings. But actually numbness is the sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. And so you're shutting down. So when people say, oh, I'm numb, I'm not feeling anything.

52:49

Actually, you're feeling so much and you're feeling flooded. You're feeling overwhelmed. And so we need to figure out what are you feeling? So it's actually a state of arousal that you can't handle. And so then you're shutting down. But it's not that you're not having feelings. You're having so many feelings that you can't tolerate it.

53:10

And that is not, you know, that is not the, you know, people say, oh, I'm feeling numb. I'm feeling nothing. No, we need to figure out what is so overwhelming to your nervous system right now. Gosh, it's so important. I hope people will listen to that a hundred times because, you know, we've heard so much about dopamine hits that I think people have lost sight of the fact that when you're online and you're just awash in all this information and videos, you're

53:37

You're not getting those hits. You're in the post-dopamine hit trough. And we've been there for a long period of time unless we're judicious about our use of social media, an hour or three minutes or 15 minutes, whatever it is. But hours upon hours, there's no dopamine hit anymore. The peak is gone. You're in the trough. And that's why it feels kind of like, how did all that time go by? The importance of this really can't be overstated. I think that we hear so much about fight or flight and the stress response, right?

54:06

that I think people forget that another component of the stress response, of drama, of being awash in all this information and movies and politics and violence and sex and all that stuff coming at us at once as we just scroll our thumbs is this thing of brachycardia. There's this phenomenon where when we're stressed, our heart rate actually slows down. And that's the kind of numbing and you're just kind of blanking out.

54:37

And I think that's a lot of what people are starting to experience with a lot of high drama input. Yeah. I see that in couples a lot where they come in and one person is saying, you know, like, I feel nothing. I don't know what this other person is so upset about. Right? And then when you really get into it, it's like this person is feeling all kinds of things. Right.

55:00

And it's really important that we understand, you know, when we are shut down versus when we are calm. Those are two very different states.

55:10

Could you go into that a little bit further? Yeah, well, here's an example. So a couple comes in. Let's say it's a heterosexual couple, but it could be any couple. Often it is the woman in the couple who will say something to her partner like, I just feel like I can't reach you. I feel like we're very disconnected. I want you to tell me how you feel. And because of our cultural stigma around men showing emotion,

55:35

He has told himself like, yeah, this bothers me or that bothers me or I'm unhappy in this way, but I don't feel anything. I'm fine. Our marriage is good. So he doesn't even understand why he's there. And he thinks he's there for her because she insisted on it.

55:51

And so when we finally get to maybe something that he's feeling and he finally does open up, it's so interesting because maybe he's sharing something very vulnerable or maybe he tears up a little bit. So you can tell like your body will tell you what you're feeling even if you aren't aware of it. You see, okay, there's some moisture there in his eyes or maybe a tear falls or maybe he actually starts crying sometimes.

56:13

And her reaction and her whole reason for bringing him in was, you know, I need you to open up to me. I want to feel connected to you. I want to understand your inner life more.

56:22

Well, he does it. And she then looks at me like a deer in headlights, like, oh, wow, I don't feel safe when he doesn't open up to me. But I also don't feel safe when he's being vulnerable in this way. And these are sort of gender stereotypes that we think we might not fall prey to, but we do. And so it's so interesting that often men are the ones who seem sort of numb or calm, right, which are two, again, very different things in the relationship.

56:52

But that's not really the case. It's that there's no room for him to express anything. So he has to kind of push everything down, probably, again, outside of his awareness. And then the couple feels disconnected and both of them are unhappy. This idea that more words…

57:11

means more emotional, I don't buy it. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's interesting because men will come in if I'm seeing them alone and they'll often say something like, I've never told anyone this before. And they literally mean, I've never told anyone this before.

57:28

Because when men hang out, they're not – it's not the same sort of level of let's talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right? Women will come in and say something like, I've never told anyone this before except for my mother, my sister, my best friend. So they've told maybe one, two or three people. But they feel like they haven't told anyone because for women, that's kind of not telling anyone. Well, now you have people concerned. So if somebody – if a woman says to me –

57:58

Didn't tell anyone that means she only told four people. I don't mean I Mean like something about themselves where they feel maybe hesitant to share that or they feel ashamed about that Or they're not sure about something so you can see that difference But I also think it happens very early. So I'm the mom of a boy I mean he's now a teenager but it's interesting because when I didn't notice this till I was raising a boy and

58:24

And I grew up with a brother, but I didn't notice it, that when he, let's say he would like fall on the playground, right? And like at like two or three years old, everybody would say to him or the boys around him like, oh, it's fine. Brush it off. You're good. You're good. Right? Even if he was like in pain.

58:43

And if a girl falls and she's in pain at that age, they're like, oh, honey, come here. How are you? Let's see. How are you feeling about this? Are you hurt? Are you okay? So very early on, they get these messages like girls can talk about it. Boys can't talk about it. I remember when my son was – he was a basketball player in high school and he had – or this was in actually middle school. And in a practice, he got pushed down and his arm was kind of like not right and

59:11

And, you know, everyone was like, get back up. It's fine. Well, his arm is like hanging off, right? And so, you know, I was like, no, I think he needs to go to the ER. And, of course, he was mortified that I said that. But, in fact, he had broken his arm. So that's the difference. If a girl had fallen down and her arm was like that, people would say like, oh, why don't you get it checked out?

59:33

So what happens when these people get into adult relationships and this was what they were told about words and talking about things? You really see those differences. But the other thing I want to say about words is women are brought up to think that whenever you have a feeling, you should share it.

59:53

And my response to that is no. So, and people say, what do you mean you're a therapist? What do you mean don't share your feelings? You don't need to share every thought or feeling that crosses your mind unfiltered with your partner. That is not healthy communication. Healthy communication means we have filters and we get to think about, and we call it mentalizing, how we

01:00:16

How will what I'm about to say land on the other person? It's not like you're regurgitating all of your thoughts onto the other person. They're just supposed to deal with them. It's about relationally thinking, how will this person respond to that? Not like you have to take care of their feelings, but is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful? Does it meet those three criteria? And if it doesn't, why am I talking? Why am I sharing this?

01:00:46

You said it, not me, but I'll wager a theory that I think that some people, when they feel something, the kind of relief that comes from evacuating that feeling or trying to evacuate it with words feels reflexively better to them than sitting with it internally. Right. So I think people, when they feel an emotion, I think sometimes they feel like if they just talk about it or evacuate it, then it's like get…

01:01:22

They get rid of it, but they forget that it has an impact. Yes. Yes. And what you're talking about is projective identification. So projection, right, is when you're feeling angry about something. Say you had like your boss did something to you at work.

01:01:38

And, you know, they upset you in some way or they were, you know, unkind and you're angry about or they're going to make you work all night and you're really pissed about that, right? So you're angry. So you come home and you end up, you know, yelling at your partner, right? So you're projecting – you're really mad at your boss but all of a sudden you're like yelling at your partner. You're angry at your partner. That's projection. You're projecting one feeling over.

01:02:05

about someone onto a different person that had nothing to do with the situation. Projective identification is a psychological process where you actually insert your feeling into the other person. So you're angry about something that happened at work. It's not that you are now angry at your partner. It's that you make your partner angry. It's like a hot potato. Like you take your feelings and you toss them to someone else because you can't tolerate the discomfort of that feeling.

01:02:32

So I don't want to deal with the feeling. So I'm going to say something to you that's going to make you angry, right? And now they have to hold all the anger. You feel great. You're fine because you're not holding the anger anymore. And now they're the ones who can't sleep. They're the ones who are upset. They're the ones who have to deal with what you couldn't tolerate.

01:02:49

So, again, we have to think about, you know, do we need to – like why are we saying what we're saying? Can we be more intentional about how we communicate? Which doesn't mean you have to walk through a minefield. It just means that you have to be more aware of your feeling state first.

01:03:05

And owning your feeling state and making sure that you aren't using other people in your environment to release your feeling state to something else. That you need to learn how you can shift your own feeling state to one that feels better for you. I love that. I realized recently that…

01:03:27

Thinking is something that we can practice. For all the tools and protocols that we talked about on this podcast and elsewhere, like physiological size and morning sunlight and working out and zone two cardio and cold and all the things I realized recently, like spending five minutes just thinking about something and really trying to work through it linearly.

01:03:56

like a, like a challenge, like a life challenge is so valuable. Um, and I didn't come up with this on my own. I now have a practice of, of like when something feels irritating or activating, I'll just like stop, put everything away and just sit and think like, what's going on here. And, um, inevitably there's some, like some growth in understanding at the end of that, but it's hard work like to think like, what's going on here? Am I activated because it's

01:04:23

Like true? Am I activated because it's false? Am I, you know, like having to sort all that, you might think, well, who has the time for this? But actually, I would argue you don't have the time to not do it. I think that's the difference between reacting and responding. So often what we do is we react to something. And that's not processed, not thought through. And again, it doesn't have to take, like you're saying, it doesn't have to take a long time to just even count to five and breathe.

01:04:48

And see, you know, because reacting, reacting means acting again. So you are normally, when you're reacting and it's like that zero to 60, you're acting on something that happened in the past and you're layering it on to whatever's happening in the present. So you're having a big reaction to something. We like to say if it's historical, if it's hysterical, it's historical. Meaning if you're, and by hysterical, I mean if you're having a big reaction to

01:05:15

There's probably something from your past, some reaction that is visceral to you that you're having that is getting layered on to this current situation, experience, problem, and you don't realize it. So that's reacting. You're acting again. You're acting on something that happened in the past. If it's hysterical, it's historical. Responding is I'm going to take a breath.

01:05:37

I'm having a big reaction. I'm going to sit for a minute, again, regulating your nervous system. And now I can kind of think about this differently. So we need space between, you know, there's that famous Viktor Frankl quote of, you know, between stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our choice and our freedom. That's a paraphrase of it. But you need that space between the stimulus, whatever the thing is that activated you, and your response.

01:06:05

So that's the difference between reacting and responding. I totally agree. And yet life happens in real time. I mean, parents with kids, they got to pick them up and they're working and there's stuff coming through on the phone. My question is, do you think nowadays there's too much communication bombardment through text, social media, phone, and real life that we…

01:06:31

We've eliminated all the space?

01:06:44

And I had one client who was telling me this story in therapy a while ago. And now I understand what this means, but this was several years ago. And she was telling it like this. She had her thumbs in the air and she said, and then I said, and then he said, and then I said, and I'm thinking, what is she doing? And then I realized, I said, wait, you had this conversation on text?

01:07:05

And she said, yes. And it was a really important conversation. And I said, I was trying to explain to her why they were missing certain cues. They were missing what it feels like to be in the space together. They were missing the experience of looking in each other's eyes, of seeing facial expressions and body language. And she said, oh, no, but we also used emojis.

01:07:26

And I had to explain to her why an emoji does not replace face-to-face interaction. Face-to-face interaction slows you down, right? You can just text anything and you don't realize there's another person at the other side of this on their phone who is reacting to your reaction.

01:07:45

And I think that, you know, this is when we go back to comment sections. We don't realize like there's another person out there. We know that. But when there are so many times that we would have a very different kind of conversation with our partner, with family members, with friends, in our workplace, in comment sections, if we could remember that there's a human there. And the easiest way to do that is to see someone there.

01:08:11

like this, looking across the table at you. We can't always do that. But I think when you're having important conversations that we should remember, wait, this probably isn't appropriate to talk about on text, even though people think that, well, of course, it's so much more efficient. Actually, it's not because now you're going to have conflict. Now you're going to have misunderstandings. And now you're going to spend all this time trying to repair the rupture that just happened because you had the conversation on text.

01:08:37

I refuse to argue over text. Yes. I just won't have an argument over text. And I'll say to people, you know, because like I have a client and he's always sort of, he says, well, I just get pulled into it with my girlfriend.

01:08:50

And I'm like, really? Does somebody have a gun to your head? Right? And this is where I think change, you know, we talk about what we want to accomplish in therapy and it's change. It's not just coming in and downloading the problem of the week and leaving and downloading the problem of the week again and leaving. I like to say the insight is the booby prize of therapy, that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't make change out in the world, the insight is useless. So someone will say,

01:09:15

oh, I got into that argument with my, you know, whoever, my partner over the weekend. And I'll say, well, did you do something different? They'll say, well, no, but I understand why. Great. That's good that you understand why. But you need to do something different because we're all doing this dance with someone else, right? And if you change your dance steps,

01:09:36

So people say, I want the other person to change. And I say, well, you can't change the other person, but you can influence the other person by making changes yourself. So if you change your dance steps, the other person will either have to change their dance steps too because you're not doing that old dance with them anymore or they'll leave the dance floor. And people are so afraid the person will leave the dance floor. And it's like, well, if they're not going to dance with you in a way –

01:10:01

that is the kind of relationship that you want, it's okay that they leave the dance floor. Go find someone who will dance with you in the way you want to dance. When it comes to behavioral change, are you a fan of small one-degree turns? Or I'll propose an alternative, not as a counter, but just to explore next. But do you like…

01:10:27

Do you encourage your clients? Do you call them patients or clients, by the way? Either. I don't think either is a good word. I think it's so interesting because I think that it's just – we're just –

01:10:36

humans and I don't mean to sound all woo-woo about this, but I really feel like the relationship that you have in that room, it's so unique and I have not figured out a way to describe it. And I don't think client or patient quite does it, but for simplicity's sake, we use either. Okay. Thank you. I've always wondered about that. Do you recommend that your clients…

01:11:00

make specific subtle changes, behavioral changes when they're – after they have an insight or maybe even before they have an insight. I think the reason that people have so much trouble changing is because the step that they've chosen is too big of a step to take at once. You need small manageable steps. And I think people also forget – this is why New Year's resolutions tend not to last very long because –

01:11:24

Change is a process and there's a chapter in my book called How Humans Change and I think it's so important for people to understand that there are stages of change. And it starts with pre-contemplation where you don't even realize that you're thinking about making a change. You think like something's not right but I don't really need to change. Like something's just not right in the world. You know, it's my partner. It's my, you know, it's my child. It's my whoever, right? Right.

01:11:50

Then there's contemplation, which is, oh, maybe I could make a change, but I'm not quite ready to do it. And that's when people usually they come to therapy somewhere around pre-contemplation. It's kind of between pre-contemplation and contemplation. Like something's not right. They come to therapy. We get them to contemplation, which is like, oh, maybe I'm contemplating making some changes.

01:12:13

And then there's preparation, which is you're taking some steps to prepare for the change. So it's not like I'm going to dive into the deep end of the pool. It's like, oh, maybe I need to take some swimming lessons or maybe I need to get a swimsuit or maybe I need, you know, whatever it is, like I need to prepare to make this change. And then there's action where you actually make the change. And people think that's the last step.

01:12:35

That's action. No. The last stage is maintenance. And maintenance is how do you maintain the change? And maintenance does not mean that you are perfectly maintaining the change. It's more like chutes and ladders if you remember that game where like kind of you go up and then you go down. You can make mistakes during this time because you're forming a new habit. You're forming a new way of being. And until it becomes familiar, going back to our discussion about how the familiar feels really good to us and the unfamiliar feels really scary –

01:13:03

The new thing will take a while to feel familiar. So let's say that you say, like, I'm going to eat healthy. And that means that I'm not going to, you know, like, eat an entire Haagen-Dazs or something when I'm sad. Then I'm going to do something different. Well, sometimes when you're sad, you might do that again.

01:13:21

But then you don't self-flagellate. So it's not like, oh, it failed, so forget it. I'm not going to – like I failed and I'm not able to make this change. No. Or you don't say like, oh, I'm so terrible and that was awful and I'm so weak. No.

01:13:33

Self-flagellation is not helpful. Imagine if your kid came to you and they said, like, I did really poorly on this test. Are you going to say, you're so stupid? You know, like, what's wrong with you? No, you're going to say, well, let's talk about what happened. And they might say, I needed help and I was embarrassed to ask or I didn't understand it and or I didn't study. I messed up. I should have studied and I didn't study. Okay, well, what are you going to do differently next time? Let's come up with a plan.

01:14:01

So you need to have, just like you'd have some compassion for your child and hold them accountable, both,

01:14:07

It's hard to hold yourself accountable when you self-flagellate. In the short term, you can, but it doesn't last because it feels so unpleasant. You're just sort of bathing in shame. What you need is self-compassion. And actually, if you have more compassion for yourself, you're more able to hold yourself accountable. So you can say, oh, you know what happened? I was feeling really sad. I had this whole pint of Haagen-Dazs. But

01:14:31

I it's okay that I was sad and there's another way to do this. So next time when I'm sad, I didn't have enough support. So I'm going to call a friend next time. Oh, self-compassion with accountability or I'm not going to keep the Haagen-Dazs in the house because I know that when I'm sad, I'm susceptible to that. Maybe one day I'll be able to do it. But right now I'm not going to keep that. But

01:14:51

There's something else I can do, which is I really feel like I want for me, self-compassion is related to I'm going to give myself a treat. So maybe my treat is I'm going to, you know, I'm going to have like a healthy snack that I like.

01:15:05

Or maybe my treat is I'm going to go to a movie or, you know, whatever it is. But you have to figure out what works for you and what works for other people might not work for you. So it takes a little bit of experimenting. So maintenance is this kind of experimentation, but having self-compassion with accountability until you find a system that works for you and the new thing becomes a habit, it becomes familiar, and the thing that you used to do becomes unfamiliar and doesn't feel good anymore.

01:15:33

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance.

01:15:54

It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking element dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning.

01:16:20

I also drink Element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of Element. They have watermelon, citrus, etc. Frankly, I love them all. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack.

01:16:50

Yeah, for so many years, the field of popular psychology was obsessed with, you know, how long does it take to make a change? It was like 28 days and it was like 90. I was like, as somebody who studies neuroplasticity, I can tell you that

01:17:04

there's one trial learning, you'll never go back. And there's stuff that takes years. Um, it's just depends on the intensity and the consequences, right? And, and even with consequences, I mean, anyone that's seen somebody relapse from drugs so many times over, it's, you clearly they're working with more complicated dynamics there. I think that, um, this notion of reinforcing change is, is super key. I'm really glad you raised that. I, I want to ask, um, as a

01:17:32

I don't know how to phrase this as a counterpoint or as an alternative. There we go. As an alternative to one degree shifts or I'm somebody that I've always benefited from deadlines. I love deadlines. Like a deadline is how I get things done. And I just if there's a grant deadline, a paper deadline, you know, deadlines work. And even if you don't meet them.

01:17:58

It's great to see how far off you were, you know, if you did your absolute best and the mistakes you made to lead to the place where you didn't complete things in time. It's just I love deadlines and I love rules. And so I've become a pretty strict rule enforcer for myself in my life. And I think one of the rules that's really helped me in recent times with vis-a-vis relationships has been no drama, just none.

01:18:29

Like none. I don't tolerate any drama. But that's rigid, I realize, but it's helpful. Far happier than I've ever been, truly, in large part because of that. Like no drama. But the thing that I had to accept with a hard rule like that

01:18:45

is that I'm going to lose people. So earlier you said, you know, that this patient client, you know, maybe he doesn't have to put up, maybe there's somebody better for him. There's someone else out there that they don't have to deal with. I think that one of the things that I notice in my own past and with others that I know struggling with a dynamic with people, typically it's romantic relationships, but it could be anything, is you have to be willing to let go.

01:19:14

You can't like always resolve the conflict. And I find that a lot of people, maybe it's this childhood thing. They feel like they have to like remain on great terms or they have to stay friends or they have to put a bow on it. And I so admire the people in life that are like, yeah, that didn't work. Done.

01:19:35

Because I look at the time wasted. Yes. And I think that in our desire to make everything kind of okay in the end, we burn valuable life energy and incredibly valuable time. And so some people might hear like no drama and think, well, you're going to lose a bunch of people. And I will. I certainly will.

01:19:58

or they'll rise to the occasion or whatever you want to call it. But I have a full life of many people with whom I have zero drama and wonderful relationships. So I'm full. My dance card's full. Right. But I'd rather, I feel so firm about this

01:20:16

given the peace that it's brought me. Yeah. And that I realized like, yeah, like I may never talk to that person again. I might, I might not. Right. But at the first hint of drama, like I'm done. And I think it's because I forced so much suffering on myself for so long of trying to resolve these things that clearly wouldn't work.

01:20:37

And I don't know, I feel immense freedom from it. But I think I hear this with other people like, oh, yeah, but, you know, they're going to change or, you know, he's going to stop drinking or not referring to me. I'm not a drinker, but there's a hard fact. I quit drinking. Didn't have a problem with it. I just was like, I'm done with alcohol. Just like that relationship's over. And.

01:20:59

They just cling to this like thing that it's got – like they just won't let go. Yeah. And I don't – what is that about? Why do we hold on to the thing that doesn't work even if we know we're not going to like stay with it? Yeah. What is this obsession? It's interesting. So I'm thinking about how when you say no drama, what does that actually mean? And it's really important because –

01:21:25

when you look at why people who are most satisfied with their lives, you know, what is it about their lives? They're surrounded by people that they feel good about. Now, let me be clear about what that means. So, you know, we talk about this concept of idiot compassion versus wise compassion. Idiot compassion. Idiot compassion. I love that phrase. I don't even know what it means and I love it already. So idiot compassion is what if you surround yourself with people who are only going to validate your experience. Right.

01:21:53

when you say no drama, that's not necessarily a great thing. So like, for example, you know, let's say that, you know, someone says to her friends, like, I don't understand why he broke up with me, or I don't understand, you know, why this keeps happening to me. And your friend's like, no, you go, girl, he's wrong, you're right, you know, whatever. Or, you know, my partner's doing this. And we tend to kind of feel like our job

01:22:16

as a friend is to support the position of our friends. That's idiot compassion. Wise compassion is what you get in therapy where we say, you know, like what might be going on here? It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you.

01:22:30

We don't say that to our friends in Idiot Compassion. Okay? So think about that. So is it that you want no drama, meaning you want your friends to kind of back up everything you're saying? You're not going to grow as a person. You're not going to hear what you need to hear. The friends you want to surround yourself with are people who will tell you the truth in a kind, respectful way and that you're willing to hear it. So some people think that it would be drama if their friends kind of called them on their bullshit.

01:22:59

Right. That's not drama. So that's a healthy, communicative, open, honest relationship. I agree, by the way. I think that my definition of drama is when challenging things are presented in a way that's not in effort to resolve. Right. Right. What I'm talking about is evacuative expression. You know, I mean, I'm sort of chuckling on the inside, too, about this thing about friends. I mean, I would say my group of friends is I'm

01:23:28

They're amazing. I'm blessed with incredible friends and friendships. I'm so blessed. I only wish I had more time for all of them. We're pretty hard on each other in terms of being very blunt, very like, that was dumb.

01:23:44

is maybe more male specific kind of language. Like that was dumb. Like why'd you do that? It was super stupid. Or yeah, don't be an idiot. Don't do it again. Or no, I totally disagree. That's a lot of the exchange in my friend group.

01:23:59

I would say maybe it's just the culture I grew up in and academia, very little validation. Validation isn't a big part of it. But I am also surrounded by people that are very self-critical. So it's sort of inherent to the way they work in their work, in their relationships, in their life, in their fitness. Like pretty much everyone's pretty get after it. Right. What I'm talking about is when people say no drama, what they mean is don't bring anything up.

01:24:26

Right. Don't don't challenge anything. Don't bring anything to my attention that maybe needs to be brought to my attention because I could be better in this relationship. You know, to me, I think what you're talking about is volatility, which is drama. Right. Like, can you express the thing you want to express in a way that feels right?

01:24:48

like an invitation or like it comes from a place of curiosity as opposed to blame. So often people will come at the person and say, you did this as opposed to,

01:24:58

I was confused by what happened back there. What happened? Why did you make that choice? Or what happened between us here? Can we talk about that? So you're being curious about the other person's experience as opposed to blaming the other person and assuming their intentions or why they did something or something about their character. So drama tends to be from all the assumptions. Like, I know that my truth is the right story. That's

01:25:25

That's how you would come at that, right? And yours, you were wrong. And I think it's so interesting because people come to therapy with these faulty narratives. You know, we're all storytellers. We all try to make sense of something. And we all believe that our story is the absolute accurate version of the story.

01:25:43

And it's actually so funny when you see couples and they experienced the same, you know, they were part of the same experience and they have wildly different versions. And then there's some part where the Venn diagram overlaps. And then finally they can see, oh, that person's not a bad person. They were coming at it because they, in their story, they believed this.

01:26:05

And that's so important. So drama happens when assumptions are made. People characterize the other person's story as inaccurate, their own story as accurate. And then there's lots of kind of – there's no space for curiosity or connection. It's all rupture, no repair. As you're saying this, I realized what I mean by drama because it's a very broad term. Yeah.

01:26:27

And I come from a background where my dad's from South America, my mom's from New York. So like emotive expression is not what I'm referring to, right? Like people being passionate about something or even angry about something or even having a problem like, hey, that didn't feel good. That's not what I'm referring to. I realized as you were saying what it is that gets me. It's when that I put under the category of drama, for which I have zero tolerance for, unless you can convince me otherwise.

01:26:56

is when people dynamite the mind on the way out. It's, yes, I'm telling you how much this sucks. This is how I feel or this is what you did. And then I'm inaccessible. And, you know, so they're not really interested. It's this evacuative expression or projection, as you said. That's what I'm defining as trauma. That to me is far and away different than saying, hey, listen, like this sucked. Can you think about this? Can we talk about this?

01:27:23

Andrew, you screwed up. Like, okay, great. Like, let's figure it out. Absolutely. But it's this, I'm rolling a grenade in the door and I'm out of here. Right. That to me is the one that I just, I'm too old for that shit. The silent treatment is actually incredibly aggressive and hostile. People think that the loud one is the problem in the relationship. Sometimes the silent one. Yeah.

01:27:49

is the one who's the problem. You know, it's the person who smiles through everything and doesn't really say anything, but they're being so passive aggressive. Or the person who then, as you said, detonates the bomb and then goes silent, and that's their punishment. They're punishing you by not talking to you for a day or two or three. That's incredibly hostile. And

01:28:09

And the other way that people do that is you bring up something in a nice way to someone and here's how they create drama but they're shutting something down. They're shutting down any possibility of communication. Every time you bring up something to them, they cry. Now, people don't like it when I say this. They say as a therapist, they should be able to feel sad or hurt when someone brings up something and they should be able to cry. And I'm saying, no, sometimes crying is a manipulation.

01:28:36

You can manipulate someone. So I'll see a couple and one person will bring up something. Let's say, you know, like when you do this, you know, or this hurts me or I don't like this or I need more help with this. And the person cries like you're hurting my feelings. This is, you know, as opposed to saying this person is trying to communicate with you. You're going to have feelings about it. But there's a manipulative way in which people will cry. Right.

01:29:03

every time or many times, and it shuts down any possibility of communication. And so we have to say, you know, what are you doing here? Every time you cry, then the other person feels like, well, I can't bring this up because I'm hurting my partner. And now we can never have communication because if I bring something up, I'm in a catch-22. If I don't bring it up, we have a problem. If I bring it up, you're going to say I'm hurting your feelings, and then I have to stop, so I have to be extra careful.

01:29:33

And I don't know, there's no way to move forward here. So what do you do in that instance? We have to talk about the functionality of the crime.

01:29:43

You know, why is it so hard for you to hear something that your partner is saying? Do you feel blamed? Do you feel shame? Shame is something that we avoid at all costs, right? No one wants to feel that. Do you feel like this person is making a global statement when they're not, that they're saying you're a bad person as opposed to what you did hear was bad?

01:30:02

So there's a difference between who you are and what you did. And often we paint with a big brush when we're trying to communicate with our partners, you know, like you're bad as opposed to that thing that you did, that was not good. That thing you did was bad. But you inherently are not a bad person. And we tend to tell our partners in all kinds of ways that they're bad people when they do something that displeases us.

01:30:28

We have to be really careful about separating what they did from who they are. And we need to do that with ourselves. So often we do something and then we feel so much shame around what we did and we say, oh, I'm a terrible person. I did something that doesn't align with who I want to be. It doesn't align with actually who I am.

01:30:46

And that's good that you feel bad about it because if we didn't have guilt, right? So guilt is a good positive feeling. Shame, nothing comes from shame. We just tend to sort of like retreat from shame. Guilt is great. Guilt is saying you're not a sociopath. Guilt is saying…

01:31:03

What I did did not align with the person that I am. So I am a good person. I did something that felt not aligned with that. And so I need to be aware that it's good that I feel guilt. If I didn't feel guilt, that would say something about my character. But the fact that I do feel guilt means that I'm willing to look at myself and I'm willing to do something different and I'm willing to make a change. And here I'm making a bunch of assumptions. I wonder if the crying is…

01:31:33

pre-programmed in some people because it's what was able to elicit sympathy and protect them. Like if they didn't do it, that they'd get hit or if they didn't do it, it would like the bombardment would continue. Yeah, absolutely. Everything we do is for self-preservation and we're just not aware of it. Like we want to avoid pain at all costs. And so even though a lot of what we do to avoid pain creates more pain, but that's not our intent.

01:32:04

So anything that, you know, when people, there's somebody that I write about in my book who comes off as very unlikable at the beginning of the book. And people say, why did you even write?

01:32:15

take him into your practice? Why did you work with him? Why did you treat him?“ And when they get to the end of the book, not to spoil everything, but he's probably the person they love the best. And it's because I'm looking at that person's actions as they're coming from a place of he's protecting himself from pain. So he's an asshole to everybody because it doesn't let anybody in. It doesn't let him have the possibility of being hurt again because he was terribly hurt. And so, you know, we say hurt people hurt people.

01:32:44

What are they doing? They're protecting themselves from more pain because if they let themselves be vulnerable, they're exposed to the possibility of pain and they don't want that. Are there some people for whom therapy just ain't going to help? Yes. People who are not willing to self-reflect. And it's hard, right? I think a lot of people come to therapy and they say, I want something to change. But what they want to change is something else or someone else.

01:33:12

And you, again, you can influence that. You can't change another person. Before people come to couples therapy with me, I ask them to each separately come up with the one thing that they want to work on about themselves. So it's not what do you want to change in your partner? It's if you are going to be the best possible version of yourself.

01:33:34

in a relationship, what is the one thing that you really want to work on in our couples work together? Well, no, I want to work on things, but I really need the other person. No, wait a minute. I won't even see them in the room until they each have a very clear sense of this is the thing that I want to work on. Now, that might change over time depending on what we uncover, but they need to come in with a goal. Like we all know that there's something about ourselves that we could do better at in a relationship.

01:34:01

And so what is that thing? What do you want to work on? And if the other person happens to change, great. If they don't, that's good information too. But you're not coming in because you think the other person is going to change. You're coming in to grow on your own.

01:34:17

And you're growing in the context of this relationship, but you are doing some personal growth in the couples. I happen to think couples therapy moves us along faster individually than individual therapy does. Interesting. Because in individual therapy, you're telling a story. It's your perspective. I have to, as a therapist, intuit what else might be going on out there. In couples therapy, I see how this person reacts individually.

01:34:41

with other people. Now, I can see that in the therapeutic relationship individually, like whatever, this is a microcosm of how they interact out there. But

01:34:50

I'm different from the people they interact with out there because of the nature of the therapeutic relationship. So there will be what we call transference, where they transfer some of their feelings about other people into the relationship with the therapist. And that gives me a really good idea of how they interact out there. Could you give me an example of transference? Sure.

01:35:11

Yeah. Positive and negative. Yeah. So let's say that I say something and it turns out that they felt criticized. Well, it could be that I said something in a critical way.

01:35:22

Maybe. Entirely possible. It could be that they have kind of transferred feelings about a parent onto me if I happen to be the age of their parent or similar to or if there's enough of an age difference between us. And they heard something that was –

01:35:40

meant to be compassionate, but it was also true and something they need to look at, but they heard it as criticism. Sometimes you transfer, there's romantic transference. People get, you know, romantically attached to their therapist.

01:35:53

And you have to be able to talk about that. Obviously, you know, you have very clear boundaries. Nothing can ever happen, all that. But it's okay to bring that up. People think I'm not allowed to say that, you know, I have these feelings. And then we deal with them and we see, you know, how we can talk through that. And it's generally not that the person wants to get with you. It's really more about like,

01:36:14

What it means to feel romantically loved or what it means to be loved in general and that they put like a romantic veneer over that. So, you know, love is so complicated and it's so multifaceted. So there's that kind of transference that happens.

01:36:33

But I think with couples, when I say you need to be able to work on something that would – if you were to be the best possible version of yourself in this relationship, what would you want to work on? It might be I need to self-regulate better. It might be I need to be less needy. I need to expect – in other words, a lot of people think that their partner needs to be like everything. You need to telepathically read my mind and if you don't, you don't care. You need to intuit what I wanted to do for my birthday.

01:37:02

And if you didn't, then you don't really know me. And these sound like kind of extreme, almost immature examples, but these are the kinds of things that people get caught up in, you know, and I'm giving kind of like the highest level of that, but they can be much more nuanced and much deeper. And so, you know, I think that people, yes, who cannot be helped, people who are not willing to self-reflect and look at themselves.

01:37:26

I love that statement you made, which is if people are coming to therapy, they need to ask about the change they want to make in themselves. Yeah. And what their role is and what is not going the way they want in their lives. And this isn't about blaming them for the problem at all. It's about saying there might be some truly difficult situations out there. You might have a parent with mental health issues. And, you know, what are you going to do about that? You probably aren't going to change the fact that they have mental health issues because

01:37:55

But your reaction can change. So you can do something different. We can talk about what that might look like. You cannot engage in that dance. You can set boundaries. You can, you know, there are different ways to make choices about that. There are sort of like societal things that we can't change, but like,

01:38:15

What can you do so that you feel like you have agency in the world? Because we all have agency to some degree. So where do we find that agency as opposed to going into this like helpless, I'm the victim position? And people don't like to hear that. They say, what kind of therapist are you calling people victims? I'm not saying people are victims. I'm saying people have the mindset that they don't have agency and then they become victims.

01:38:40

But when you realize that you have agency, you realize, well, there are really difficult people, things, circumstances in the world. But I get to choose how to respond to them. Going back to this thing about texting, how many of the challenges that people present to you in your office these days incorporates or starts with

01:39:02

Yeah, so I got this text versus, you know, somebody came to me or called me and we had a hard interaction or we had a conversation or something happened at work. I mean, how much of it is in the digital world nowadays? Yeah. So here's what's interesting about texting is so many times people will come in and they'll say, we had this conversation on text. And I'll say, can you show me the conversation?

01:39:28

Which people think, why would you do that? Why wouldn't you want to hear the narrative from that person? Well, I just heard the narrative, but I want to see what was actually said because they're like, oh, I don't really know. Or let me read you what they said. And so, but I want to see what both parts of that were. And then the person can see, oh, here's how I contributed to that. Or here's a choice that I made in that moment. Right.

01:39:53

Again, I prefer that these conversations that people have are face-to-face conversations when they're kind of about something in the relationship. You know, text is great for like your dailiness of, hey, look what I had for lunch or how are you doing or I love you or whatever, right? Or, you know, can you pick up the kid? But when you're having some kind of conversation

01:40:13

you know, again, rupture or conflict between you. That's not a text conversation, but many people will do that on text. And then now we have a record. So it's not just like what my client is saying to me. It's like, this is how the conversation actually went down. We have a transcript of it. And it's really helpful for people to be able to look at that transcript. I agree. Yeah.

01:40:37

At the same time, I feel like breakups are much harder than they used to be because you can block someone on social media, but then the block itself becomes this thing. You can mute people. You can put your phone away, but unless you block their number, they can send you things. You can go back and read texts if you're an obsessive person. Yeah.

01:41:06

There are just so many venues or avenues, excuse me, for people to access our psyche when we're trying to move on. In the old days, kids, you had a phone with an answering machine. You broke up. It sucked. You looked at the photos. You put the photos in a box or you burned them and you put the box in a shelf. And then when you got into a new relationship, you either hid the box or you destroyed the box and you moved on. And people's phone numbers changed.

01:41:37

And it was so much easier. I noticed that one tended to just remember more good stuff because there wasn't other stuff coming in. The bad stuff tended to dissipate or maybe it didn't. It was just so much easier. You weren't being infiltrated by the past. And, you know, because of the nature of electronic stuff, I just feel like it's like the past trying to like

01:42:02

hold us back. And this is on both sides. So, you know, it doesn't matter if the breakup was amicable and you long for the person now and again, or the breakup was rough. And then you're like, you relive element, you know, there's so many variants on this that, um,

01:42:17

I don't know. It just feels like breaking up's already one of the hardest things. People, I think, don't acknowledge just how hard breakups are. Right. They don't. And I think there's this hierarchy of pain that people have about certain things. Like, well, you only dated for this amount of time. How can it be that painful this amount of time after the breakup? You know, like there's this hierarchy. But if it was a divorce, then, you know, people understand why a year later you're still dealing with it. Or, you know, how

01:42:45

if you were only married for five years versus married for 20 years, like there's some hierarchy of pain that we have around things. Like it was a miscarriage, but your child, you know, your eight-year-old didn't die. You know, you know, sorry. I mean, that's just, people say that kind of thing. No, no, no. They don't, they don't say it, but that's how they treat people. It's like you had a miscarriage. Like what they say is like, oh, it's okay. You'll get pregnant again. If your child dies, they're not like, it's okay. You'll have another child. Right. But it feels the person who had a miscarriage that they lost their child.

01:43:14

It's very, very painful. But listen to how we talk to people who have these experiences that we tend to think that some experiences are sort of higher on the hierarchy of pain than others are.

01:43:27

And so we think like a breakup is not as bad as – like a breakup in a non-marriage or a short marriage is not as hard as a breakup with a long marriage or whatever the hierarchy is. Or even someone who – it's like, well – and this is the reason that people don't actually get help for things because they think, well –

01:43:47

it's just this, it's not really that bad. Or I'm feeling kind of sad or I can't sleep or I'm having trouble in this relationship. But it's not that bad because I have a roof over my head and food on the table. So I don't need to go get help. But let's say you fall and you clearly have like, you know, broken your wrist. You're not going to sit there and go, I don't need to do anything about that because I don't have stage four cancer. You're going to be like, I'm going because I need to get my wrist repaired.

01:44:15

So we treat sort of physical health and mental health as two separate entities when, of course, the mind and the body are all intertwined. And I think that with breakups, it's the same thing. It's like people think, well, it's not that big of a deal after the first X amount of time.

01:44:33

And breakups can really mark you depending on how they went down. Like if it was really volatile, if it was one of these things where you got no sense of if you were cheated on, if you didn't understand why the breakup happened, like it was very surprising to you, you know, all those things. It can really be a different kind of breakup than a breakup where

01:45:00

A person, it might be very painful, but you understand sort of why the breakup is happening. It doesn't mean you don't feel the loss.

01:45:08

But there's something different about the quality of the breakup. And so then people tell stories about the breakup because they didn't get the real story. So the story now becomes like you don't really understand why the person is breaking up with you because they didn't communicate during the relationship that maybe they were unhappy. And now you watch them on social media. So you're watching a story and you have this whole story in your mind of –

01:45:30

look at them. They're on this vacation or they're not even like with another person. They're just like, look, they look so happy, but it's social media. Of course they look happy. People are not posting on social media of I'm so sad about my breakup. Generally, there's a whole like sort of subculture of people who do that, but it's a different thing. Very generational. Yes. Yes. But I mean, in general, you're having to, you sort of like, you want to move forward and

01:45:57

And by the way, about grief, it's not like moving on because we're sort of shaped by every experience that we have, but it's about moving forward. So people always say about grief, you need to move on. No, you need to move forward. Let's just talk about that. Yeah.

01:46:11

So let's say you have to move forward. It's very hard to move forward when you're watching the other person's life. You're not moving forward at all. They're moving forward, maybe. You don't really know. But why are you spending so much time watching someone else move forward? Can we focus on how you might move forward, whatever that might look like? But it's really hard when you have this split screen of their life is happening and your life is happening.

01:46:37

I definitely want to talk about grief. Before we do that, I'd like to kind of double click into this breakup thing. In my observation and experience, one of the hardest things about breakups is this idea that we want to somehow come to a common narrative. And there seems to be a lot of desire to kind of understand where the other person's experience of what happened and a very

01:47:09

I don't think it's intentional, but I think people can be somewhat destructive in a breakup by changing the whole, this notion like it was all an illusion or something or, you know, where, you know, I mean, I guess I've had enough relationships and breakups to realize that, you know, there's love that continues. There's things that you thought were love that weren't. I mean, there's love that doesn't continue and there's all sorts of shapes and forms of this stuff, but that

01:47:41

like good, well-meaning people that take divergent paths. I've learned it doesn't mean anything else sometimes. It literally just means that. Right. There isn't a need to rewrite the script like it wasn't what I thought. It actually was what I thought, and then it was something different. Or it just circumstances changed or things changed. I'm not trying to make light of this. I mean, I would argue I'm probably one of the least skilled people at breakups, although I've gotten…

01:48:12

quote unquote, better at it, it's always super painful. Like I've never had a breakup that didn't really hurt. It doesn't matter if I left or they left. That just didn't really hurt. And I think it's this idea of like, and this is why I think it's an interesting, perhaps segue to grief is that it's almost like as something ends, we look back and we evaluate the story. Mm-hmm.

01:48:36

and try and figure out, was that real? Right. Was it not real? How could that have been real? And then we're here, right? There was all this hope and expectation. And I, um,

01:48:47

Yeah, I think about this a lot. Yeah. So sometimes what the loss is about isn't so much about the other person. It's about the loss of what it feels like to be in a primary relationship. So you're losing the primary relationship and then happens to be with this specific person. And so there were good qualities about that specific person and qualities that maybe weren't right for you. But

01:49:12

What you're losing is the dailiness. So, so much of what feels good about being in a primary relationship is

01:49:19

You know, you get to tell the person the minutia of your day, the little things, the shared history and the shared experiences that become the shorthand and the inside jokes and the routine of, you know, your flight landed. Who are you going to text? Oh, text your partner. Right. You know, just the built in infrastructure of being in a primary relationship and someone who knows, like, what kind of pizza you like and, you know, all those little things.

01:49:44

that come from, you know, going through daily life together. And you know all the things about their families and you know all the things about the people in their lives and the people they're talking about, like this friend and this boss and whatever, their co-workers. So it's this whole world that's been co-created. And then all of a sudden, when that person isn't there anymore,

01:50:07

that the dailiness of your life changes drastically. Like you're not waking up with that person. You're not eating meals with that person. You're not talking about what's for dinner with that person. You're not saying, you're wondering how that thing with their sister worked out, but you don't know now because, right? And you're losing the side kind of shared people too. Like you might've liked that person's family a lot. Sometimes you stay in touch with the family, but sometimes you don't. So like,

01:50:36

Your world changes so much in the day-to-day. You're not just losing that person. You're losing an entire world that you were living in.

01:50:44

And now your world looks so different and you have nothing to replace it with yet. So it doesn't mean you have to replace it with another partner. You might replace it with things in your own life. But you just – you know, breakups tend to happen. Maybe you saw the breakup coming but you're not really imagining what it will be like after until you're in it. And you can't really understand what it's like until you're in that breakup phase. So I think that makes it so hard because you're losing –

01:51:13

a lifestyle, right? Like the dailiness of your life. And, you know, it's like when you're in a relationship, you're in the present, but you're also in the future. So you imagined that the present was going to be the future. And now, mother of all plot twists, the future was just taken away along with the present. So it's not just you're losing the day-to-day, you're losing what you imagined next year was going to be like and five years were going to be like. So it's a huge thing.

01:51:42

It's so interesting because in my most recent book, it starts with my breakup and that's how I end up in therapy. And my whole thing is like the idiot compassion that we were talking about with my friend. He's a jerk and he's terrible and you dodged a bullet. My therapist, who I thought was going to validate this position –

01:51:59

Didn't, for the better. And so by the end of the book, you know, people even write in now, they're like, oh, I can't believe I call him boyfriend in the book. I can't believe he did that. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I was trying to say he's a good guy. Like, you have to understand that I was seeing this through the lens of the breakup. And then over time, I see that I was responsible for this, too. I had a role in this, too. I chose not to see the things that I didn't want to see because I…

01:52:24

I didn't want to live in that world of the breakup, right? So I think it's wanting what you were saying earlier about wanting to have a shared narrative. Like we feel so wounded by the fact that the person…

01:52:42

let's say that they broke up with us or even if you break up with them, that they don't see the relationship the way you saw it. Like they had a different experience of it and you feel like, well, they're not seeing it in the right way. No, they're just seeing it. They are seeing it in the right way from their perspective.

01:52:59

And I think that we have this way of wanting to heal the wound by their saying, oh, no, no, you were great in this relationship. It was me. Or we were both great and it just didn't work out. Yes. Yes. Right. Right. And we so want that. And the reality is that your partner is going to see things about you that maybe you don't agree with or maybe they're true and that's why they hurt. Mm-hmm.

01:53:25

I always find I miss the person's smell. Yes, it's those little things, those sort of intangibles. I think that takes the longest. Yeah. I have a really good audio memory too. I can like close my eyes. I've been able to do this since I was a kid and hear people's voices. And yeah. Yeah.

01:53:45

But like smells, I think we come to expect them. Yeah. And then we don't notice they're there. Yeah. And then the person's gone. And then we're like, it smells different here.

01:53:58

So there's this theory, it's from the Gottmans who do this research on couples, and they talk about the bank of goodwill, that you need five deposits into the bank of goodwill for every one withdrawal. And so we tend to, when we're in a relationship, we don't like something about something that's happening in the relationship. We think about what's not working. We're taking all these withdrawals from the bank of goodwill, but like things like smell, that

01:54:25

That's a deposit. Like, you smell so good. I really like your smell. Do we say that enough? Do we focus on the things? Like, how many deposits are we actually making so that when we do make a withdrawal, it doesn't empty the bank account? And it's usually when a breakup happens that all of a sudden we think about all those things that we didn't deposit but now we miss, right? That we're sitting in our bank account and we don't have access to that account anymore. The account's closed. Right.

01:54:54

But when the account was open, we didn't look at what we had in there.

01:54:59

And I think that the people who are what I see with couples who are most successful are the people who do notice what's in the bank account even if they have to take a withdrawal every now and again. I'm always struck by how people talk about their partners when their partners aren't around. Very important. The other day, this kid came up to me in the gym. Kid. He was probably in his 30s. But there I go again. He was a podcast fan. We were just chatting. I like to ask people, like, what do you do? And he said, no.

01:55:29

tech or think I don't recall but um and uh it's like where are you from and he's like he's from Brazil cool you know and then we were talking about something he said you know my girlfriend um and then we got into some discussion about about travel in South America or something and then at one point he said oh yeah yeah she's like my flower

01:55:49

And the way he said it, I was like, wow, that's beautiful. You know, again, I'm half Latin. But I haven't heard that enough. And I was like, wow. And I said, that's amazing that you just referred to her as a flower. He goes, yes, she's like the flower in my life. And I was like, wow. Like you don't hear that that often. I also don't get into conversations like this very often. But somehow he just shared that spontaneously. And she wasn't there to hear it.

01:56:16

I can't remember the guy's name. Forgive me. She'll never know that he referred to her that way. It was really beautiful. Yeah. And there are certain people – like I heard Rogan one day talking about his wife on a podcast. He was like, she's just so nice. Like he just – the appreciation he has for her in the small details of how he refers to her. And those are just two examples. And then I could give a bunch of negative examples about people –

01:56:47

Gosh, I don't want to put it on one or the other side of the male-female dynamic. But when people say like, oh, yeah, like they're a pain in my ass or like referring to people as their old lady or their old man, like that's an interesting but kind of in my mind not the sweetest way. Maybe it could be. Maybe it depends on the tone. Anyway, I'm casting a lot of –

01:57:09

shadows and light where perhaps I shouldn't. But that interaction was delightful. And I thought, awesome for him and awesome for her. That's why I often start a couple session with how did you meet? Because usually when people come to couples therapy, they think the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to say, so what's going on? What's not, you know, what's then they'll start with the problem.

01:57:31

And then they're like in that withdrawal from the bank account space. So I like to say, well, tell me how you met. And immediately, usually there's like, oh, and they have this great story, right? And they remember what they love about the other person. So we start with that. And you can see them sort of remembering who the person is that they fell in love with. Like, oh,

01:57:52

oh, I thought he was so cute or, you know, oh, was this really – we were friends for a year and I didn't know if he liked me and then this happened and then I really admired this about him or her, right? And so they start in this different space. And I think about it like – and this is going to sound like a weird metaphor, but you think about like nonstick pans versus like, you know, a regular pan that you have to put something in so that the stuff doesn't stick to it.

01:58:17

When I think about like there are people for whom the good stuff, they're like Teflon pans. The good stuff doesn't stick. But the bad stuff about the other person sticks like a non-stick, like a pan that sticks, right? So it's like you think about like

01:58:33

What is sticking about your partner when you think about like what they're putting in the pan, right? Like are you in a Teflon pan for good things or are you in a different kind of pan for good things? Because you have to think like what am I focusing on? Where does my attention go? And so why are you focusing on the things that are upsetting you so much and

01:58:55

And, you know, there are certain things that you're never going to change about your partner. Like your partner, we don't get to order up our partners a la carte. We don't get to say like, I'll take these qualities of my partner, but I'll take this thing that I don't like about them on the side. You don't get to do that. People come, there are no substitutions. They come as a whole. That's it. That's what's offered on the menu.

01:59:15

And so people think, well, I can change the thing that I don't like and I can make that person a la carte. You can't do that. You can't order them up that way. So there are always going to be things that irritate you or that are suboptimal in a perfect world about your partner. Are you going to focus on that or are you going to focus on the things that you really love about your partner? There's a saying from 12 Step, which is identify, don't compare, which is like because you'll hear people –

01:59:45

outside of 12 Step talking about, for instance, you know, like,

01:59:50

you know, well, he's this, this and this and ambitious and this and that, but he's like kind of emotionally unavailable, but he's more available. And people will talk about male or female partners, right? Or potential partners is like, or people that they're dating as if you could kludge together the best of all people and get this like perfect tapestry of the person that's got all the features you want. Because yeah, some people are a little more easygoing, lighthearted and

02:00:16

sometimes, not always, less ambitious. Those things, in my experience, tend to correlate, not always. Some people are super hard driving, they get it done, and they have the capacity to be immense providers, but they have less time, and sometimes they're not as emotionally available. Again, stereotyping like crazy here.

02:00:35

But people get this idea that they're sort of like through the comparison, they can arrive at the perfect person when, in fact, I think appreciation not being Teflon about the positive stuff comes from kind of shutting out the idea that there's an alternative. But, of course, you don't want to end up in a situation where the person is perfect.

02:00:53

you know, not truly not good for you. Right. Well, right. That's not what I'm talking about. Right. And I don't think you are. But yeah, with that caveat, I think that accepting that people are complicated and there is no kludging together.

02:01:05

of people. At some point you make a choice. And this is when people cheat. What often happens is there's a specific quality about their partner maybe. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your partner, by the way. And I think this is so important to talk about when we talk about infidelity, that often it really has nothing to do with

02:01:24

the partner that somebody is expecting their partner, again, going back to vitality and aliveness, to provide that for them. And if the partner doesn't provide that for them, but your partner shouldn't be providing that for you, they're additive. They're not providing a lack or a deficit in you. That

02:01:41

Sometimes that's why people cheat. But other times they say, like, there's this quality about my partner that is really, you know, like, I don't like it. Like, let's take, for example, I wish that my partner were more, let's say, ambitious.

02:01:55

So they go and they like cheat with someone who's more ambitious, but then the person isn't loving or isn't communicative or isn't, you know, whatever the other good qualities that the partner they have has. So they think that by replacing this one trait that the other person is going to have all the other great traits that the existing partner already has. And generally you're treating like one set of problems for another set of problems.

02:02:19

So it's interesting that people think, like, I can fix this problem because this person has that thing that I really want. Now, if your partner doesn't have any of that, like, it's a degree. It's on a spectrum. So is your partner not ambitious at all? Or is your partner ambitious about different kinds of things? Like, they want to be a really good parent and they're really, you know, invested in that. Or they want to do something like philanthropic and they're really invested in that, but it doesn't pay a lot. You know, so what happens?

02:02:47

What energizes them? Where's their purpose? Where's their meaning? There's different kinds of ambition. I feel like placing one's attention on the good things as much as possible and really letting those fill us up.

02:03:05

as much as possible is really key. I didn't say this, I borrowed this, but that two of the most dangerous words in the English language are if only. This idea like if only this, because for two reasons, one is it's very unlikely that if only comes true, but the other one is it takes our attention away from

02:03:26

We're seeing what what's there right? So I like to say it's the difference between the what-if and the what-is and People who focus too much on the what-if what if this they lose sight of what is and usually there's so much good That's that they really don't want to give up in the what-is So if you're gonna keep focusing on the what-if you can you blind yourself to the what-is and I think the what-if is a big trap and

02:03:52

Yeah, I think this notion of attention and appreciation just seems so fundamental. Well, it's kind of like, think of it, so I am sort of an amateur photographer, and I think about it like you can take a picture, you can focus on the same subject, you can focus on one part of it, or you can just move the camera slightly, and then you're focused on something entirely different, but it's the same thing that I'm taking a picture of, right? So I always say to people like,

02:04:21

Can you, your focus is always on this. Can you like move the camera slightly and focus, you know, find a different part to focus the camera on. If you're always focusing on something that makes you unhappy, you're going to be unhappy. So why don't you just move the camera and focus on the other things? You get to choose. People think they have no choice in the matter, right? Like, well, my brain just goes there. My mind just goes there. It's like, no, you get to choose what you put your attention on. You actually have a choice. Yeah.

02:04:50

What I love about what's coming through here is that you emphasize the role of these unconscious processes. We default to people that aren't healthy for us sometimes, not always. And yet you also emphasize that we have a lot of agency. These days it seems like there's a default toward looking outward sometimes.

02:05:11

you know for all that's been said about meditation and reflection and journaling on this podcast and others like we all know these tools are available they basically just take time i mean with meditation you don't even need a pen and paper but we tend to look outward for for answers do you ever give homework to your patients to

02:05:34

Just like think or journal or is there work tend to be more behavioral? You know, it's kind of like I feel like the work that we do in the room is about understanding and, you know, and understanding sort of like where the gap is between what we say we want and what we actually do.

02:05:54

So usually it's all about what is in that gap, what is getting in the way. Because we're very clear, by the way, about what we want usually. And then there's like some gap between our behavior that isn't moving in that direction. In fact, moves us often either keeps us stuck or moves us in the opposite direction. So it's kind of out in the world between sessions. We're working on the behavior around what is getting in the way in that gap.

02:06:21

And then we're doing kind of the thinking and the feeling in the session. I don't mean that people aren't thinking and feeling outside of session. It means they're using their feelings and their thoughts differently. They're taking different actions with the feelings and thoughts outside of the session. Do you ever tell people whenever you think that, just do the opposite? So it's really funny because so many people say like, your gut knows, right? Like, listen to your gut. And for some people, because it's,

02:06:50

historical, right? Like what's in their gut. It's like, no, no, no, don't listen to your gut. And it sounds really strange for a therapist to say to somebody, no, don't listen to your gut. But sometimes you literally have to say to people, whatever your first instinct is there, do the opposite. Do the thing that feels uncomfortable because your gut is what feels comfortable.

02:07:08

And the thing that feels comfortable, again, is the familiar and the familiar isn't necessarily the thing that is going to lead you to where you want to go. So it's not like I want people to second guess themselves or not trust themselves. It's that sometimes you have to learn how to hear that very, very quiet voice inside you because your gut is the louder one. Right. Your gut is your first instinct.

02:07:29

And it's kind of the pre-programmed, the pattern, the automatic response. Like if you think when we talk about sort of like neurological pathways, there's this like freeway that's been built with this one response. Like here's the input, right? And here's the map that –

02:07:43

follows. Like this person did this and you're going to like travel down that freeway because that's been the well-paved road because you've done it a million times. It doesn't really work out for you. I want people to create kind of side roads and different roads and let's take a different path and let's kind of dig out a new, like a new road, right? That now, so your first instinct is still going to be like, let's get on the freeway. And I'm like, no, let's take a side road.

02:08:09

Let's do something a little bit different. Let's take a different path. And that path will now become the new freeway because you're going to keep going down. We're going to dig out that path. The freeway is going to not be trafficked on. We're going to shut down that freeway eventually. And you're going to have a new freeway that's your automatic path. So right now you've got to do the opposite to build this new freeway. I just mixed 20 metaphors. But the point is that sometimes your gut is just taking you down a well-trodden path that is not the best path for you.

02:08:37

There's a great line in that movie High Fidelity based on the Nick Hornsby novel, which I also highly recommend, where he's like, you know, people tell me that we should listen to our gut. Well, after 30 years, I've come to the conclusion that my gut has shit for brains. That's right. You know, he's just realizing that his reflex on what to do with, you know, his relationship life is completely off. Yeah.

02:09:03

Some people will hear what we're talking about right now and will say, yeah, but my gut also tells me when I'm in danger. We're obviously not talking about when you can sense danger. So here's the thing. So what feels dangerous sometimes, so your gut is trying to protect you.

02:09:19

So what feels dangerous is going into this new situation because it's uncomfortable to do something different. So your gut is saying, oh, let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done, even if the comfortable thing makes you miserable. Let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done because it feels very dangerous to try this new thing.

02:09:39

But sometimes doing the thing that feels dangerous is actually less dangerous. Oh, my. So in other words, people say – a lot of times people say, I don't want to take a risk. It's too risky. But sometimes the safest thing you can do is to take a risk. Doing the safe thing is actually – you say it's too risky sometimes.

02:10:03

if the safest thing you can do is to take a risk because it's going to lead you closer to what you want to accomplish or the thing that you're trying to get toward. I, um, completely agree. I also, in my life, I've had the experience of, I've taken big risks with my career multiple times and it's always worked out. Thank goodness. A lot of my teen years and twenties and thirties were, were spent, um,

02:10:32

learning to overcome the adrenaline response. And I learned to take progressively more and more risk and ended up having a air failure, scuba diving, cage exit diving with great white sharks. I don't say this to sound tough. I say this because it's like, what was I thinking? I took it too far. So I think learning to overcome the adrenaline response and

02:10:56

and be calm and adrenaline I think has its value. I also took tremendous risk in my personal life getting involved with people I never should have gotten involved with. And I blame myself, I don't blame them, right? I mean, I was in choice. So I can imagine that some people are so averse to danger that they don't put themselves into circumstances in which they could really come to thrive. And some people are just wired to go to the bathroom

02:11:21

go into the fire to the point where it's destructive either in with with physical pursuits or in romantic relationships you know i i'll take take it outside my own story i mean i have a friend a dear friend who um you know was in an like an incredibly physically abusive relationship number 12 and she eventually came to the conclusion that her threat sensing um

02:11:45

threshold was just way too high. Did some really good work to understand why that was and realized that her fear response didn't kick in until it was like a nine alarm fire. Right. And so, you know, she needed to listen to that, as you mentioned, that like super quiet whisper early on.

02:12:06

because anyone else who didn't have her history, which is sadly a very, very challenging history in her family would have immediately been like, yeah, I'm out. But she was like, this is normal. Yeah. When I was in medical school, I remember the people who wanted to work in the ER and

02:12:25

Like I want to do emergency medicine, were people often who grew up in environments where danger was a part of it. Right. So they're used to that and it doesn't really strike them as like their sense of danger, their barometer is different from maybe a different person's.

02:12:45

I think of it as like a thermostat. When you think about like let's say you want to set your thermostat at like 72 degrees, right? Some people, their thermostat is off because in their house like they did the slightest thing and their parents treated it like it was a huge, horrible mistake and they're bad and it was an emergency, right? So they don't know how to calibrate like what does 72 actually feel like?

02:13:11

Or the opposite, like some big thing happened and their parents underreacted. And so they don't really know kind of like what does 72 feel like? I don't really know what that like good –

02:13:22

temperature is like. So I think that there's a lot of people who stay in situations that are like, it's like other people would say, whoa, it's like 100 degrees in here. Get out. There's a fire, right? And this person's like, no, it just feels like 72. They don't know. And so it's really about recalibrating. And I think when we talk about risk and danger, you have to learn how to calibrate your own thermostat.

02:13:51

And I think that that's really important. We talk about the difference between productive anxiety and unproductive anxiety. So unproductive anxiety is there's some kind of danger and I'm going to ruminate and ruminate and ruminate and I'm thinking about it all the time and somehow that's going to keep me safe because I'm thinking about it.

02:14:10

And then there's productive anxiety, which is, oh, it's good that I sense the danger because I'm going to do something about this. Like I have a plan for how to deal with this. So it might be I'm in this relationship and it just doesn't feel right. But and this person is is acting this way toward me and I know I shouldn't be treated this way, but I don't know, maybe it's OK. And that's not productive. That's just anxiety. You're just circling, ruminating.

02:14:35

productive anxiety to be like, something's wrong. Like I shouldn't be treated this way. So my plan is I'm going to try to talk to my partner about this or we're going to go to therapy about this and see if it improves. And if it doesn't, I'm going to leave to find a different relationship. You're right. You want to sense danger. But the question is,

02:14:52

is it productive or is it unproductive? What do we do with it? So people, when I say like, trust your gut, somebody might say, well, my gut is that like when things are really unpleasant, you stick with it because my parents stuck with my other parent when things were really unpleasant. That's what you do, right? So that doesn't make sense. So I think that do the opposite in that case. It's like, oh, you think you're supposed to stay in this case because your parents did? Like, do the opposite. See what happens if you do something different.

02:15:21

We hear that there's value to being able to be on one's own. Like, you know, some people seem to always need to be in a relationship and some people probably don't. But do you think there's value to people really understanding themselves first? I know some couples that got together in like their first year of college that are still

02:15:47

They have kids now in college, which is a trip. And they seem super happy. They are super happy from what I know. And I know people that have had many relationships and then find somebody and some people take time on their own. Some people don't. How important is this?

02:16:04

Yeah. So when you look at what are the factors that determine the success of a relationship or a marriage, emotional maturity is number one. Number two, by the way, is flexibility.

02:16:19

that being with someone incredibly rigid is very hard. Define rigid. Rigid is things have to be this way. In the practical space, like toothpaste has to be on the right, not on the left kind of thing. And emotionally rigid, like this is wrong, this is right. This is the way you do it. This is not the way you do it. You know, you behave this way, you don't behave this way. As opposed to people have different personalities, they have different ways of communicating. Right.

02:16:43

And yes, the rigidity around sort of like the household, of course, too. But just a rigid personality, you know, like I can't leave it this time. I have to leave it this time. We have to be here now, you know, like whatever. We can't – there's no flexibility around anything or even flexibility around plans. Like when you get married, you don't know what five years, ten years down the line is going to be like. Are you flexible with how you're moving in whatever direction? The other person is moving in whatever direction? Like –

02:17:10

If you need things to be static, that's very rigid. And it's hard because people are not static. There are things about their core personality that tend to be static, but people evolve. And so you have to leave room for the evolution of their three entities. There's you, there's the other person, and there's the relationship. And all three of those entities are going to evolve over time. And if you don't have flexibility and you insist that they stay exactly the same, that's going to be problematic. Okay.

02:17:38

Going back to whether somebody needs to spend time alone before they get into a relationship or how much you need to know yourself before you get into a relationship, I think people have this misconception that they have to be fully formed and then before they can get into a relationship. And the thing is that you grow in connection with others.

02:17:57

And so people you're saying you're so surprised that these people met in college and, you know, they've been together all this time. And of course, they were so young. Oh, no, I'm not surprised. OK. No, no, no. I'm envious. OK. Because they in a in a in a light way because they got their first jobs in parallel. They they they.

02:18:15

sadly their parents passed away and they went through a number of life evolutions together. Their life story is a commingled story. Yes. You know, it reminds me of I had a therapy client who was divorced and she was talking about dating again and she met someone great. And she said, I love this person so much. And this person is actually a much better person for me. But there's a sadness that she said, I'm

02:18:40

He will never have met my parents because they had died. He will not know like all these things about who I was when I was 25 or 35 or, you know, what it was like when I went through this particular thing in life. Or, you know, again, like the, you know, wasn't there with the birth of our children, didn't know our kids at that age. Right.

02:19:05

So it's true that there's something very important about having a shared history. It's not end all, be all. She's happier in that second marriage. But there is something to be said about people think, well, I have to wait until I'm at this point before I can seriously consider dating someone who might become my life partner. And I think that you grow in connection with people.

02:19:29

Or people say, you know, like, I'm not ready to be in a relationship because I don't know enough about myself. You're going to learn so much more about yourself when you are with someone because you're forced to. Someone's holding up a mirror to you. It's like how I say that, you know, I was saying earlier that when I see couples, people grow individually so much faster because they're in relationship with someone and really having that mirror held up to them. I mean, you can sit there and think, like, by yourself.

02:19:57

till you turn blue in the face. But the reality is no one's giving you feedback. You're not interacting. You're not pushing up against anything. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, certainly most of my evolution has been in relation to other things and not just romantic relationships. I mean, like jobs that didn't feel right that I eventually moved on to a different job. Like you just learn so much based also on what didn't work. Yeah. I mean, there's real information there.

02:20:25

I definitely want to go back to grief and talk about loss, but I feel like there's a hatch that we opened earlier that I'd like to peer into for a bit, which is this male-female distinction dynamic that nowadays is very prominent, especially in, I would say, people like 40 and younger people.

02:20:51

It's so different now in terms of the dynamics of what boys and men hear about boys and men generally, what girls and women hear about girls generally, and therefore how we think about ourselves. But you have a son. What do you think are some of the

02:21:08

positive things that have evolved in this kind of landscape? And then what do you think are some of the things that are creating problems for sake of romantic relationship, but also just relationship to self? I think romantically, it's very hard for young people like in their teens and early 20s because they don't have kind of an infrastructure around romantic relationships.

02:21:34

There's not the typical kind of courting because it feels kind of old. Guys don't ask girls out on dates anymore. They do, but they don't really know how or they do it on text, right? As opposed to just like there's something really profound about having to call someone on the phone and ask them out on a date.

02:21:57

You grow so much as a person by doing that, and it kind of sets the stage for the relationship as well. Or asking someone out in person. It's hard. You're really vulnerable. So it's easy to kind of avoid vulnerability because you can do so many things on text and, you know, pretend that it's not a vulnerable act. And people, you know, don't necessarily even call it a date. You know, it's like, hey, you want to hang out? You know, which…

02:22:26

is just kind of the language around it. So there's not sort of like the structure of we're going on a date. That's much less common. Whereas in your era and my era, it was much more like you knew when you were being asked on a date. It was not so ambiguous.

02:22:42

And I think social media makes it really hard because, you know, any misstep, someone's going to post about it potentially or they've got you on video or things that are really embarrassing or scary when you're first getting into a relationship with someone. You know, that could become if you're with the wrong person who's emotionally immature and many young people, you know, they're learning and growing. Yeah.

02:23:06

They do all kinds of things that humiliate the other person. You know, like here's a list of someone's red flags that I'm going to share with everybody. Can you imagine? And it's on social media. So teens are doing this? People in their 20s are doing this? Yes, yes, yes. Or can you believe someone – you know, like information that should remain private is

02:23:26

Does not remain private. I'm not talking about things that are bad that someone did that are like need to be reported. I'm talking about like embarrassing things or someone was, you know, socially unskilled. Her breath was bad. Yes. His, his, his, he smelled bad, that kind of thing. Yeah, anything like or, you know, this is, this is what or this is what he did on the date that was, you know, embarrassing. Yeah.

02:23:50

You know, he did this weird impression or, you know, whatever it is. But also just like sexual encounters or, you know, like nothing feels totally private. Like you just the level of trust that you have to have in your partner now that was just taken for granted. Like, sure, people might have said something to their best friend, but they also had better boundaries around that. Like you kind of knew in our society what was private and what was not. And because

02:24:19

people grow up on social media, they don't really have experience with this sort of there's a private sphere and there's a public sphere. So it's all kind of blurred and they don't really learn like what is private and what is not. And I think it's really nerve wracking for people. So people don't take, we were talking about risk, people don't take risks in relationships. They don't, they aren't really vulnerable because they're afraid that, you know, they will be humiliated.

02:24:44

So what do you think the need is to share that with the world? Is it because then they don't have to acknowledge that it might have been at least in part them?

02:24:55

Like if you paint red flags on somebody, then the person painting is not the one under scrutiny, right? I think they just feel hurt and they want to feel – and so they feel like a dip in their self-esteem and they want to feel validated. And of course if they make this list, their friends are going to say, yeah, you dodged a bullet. This person wasn't right for you. You deserve better. Yeah.

02:25:20

and then they feel better about it, but you don't grow from that. So the thing is that if you can sit with, that really hurts and this isn't, like this person is not the arbiter of my self-worth, whoever broke up with me, and for whatever reason, you know, just because someone doesn't value you doesn't mean you don't have value. And I think that's a really important lesson for people to learn. So, you know, if I took like a, a, a,

02:25:47

some gold, right? Like a brick of gold. And, you know, and someone said, like, I don't like that. I like silver or I like whatever I like, right? Doesn't mean the gold inherently lost value. It means that for that person, that block of gold didn't have value, but the gold has the same amount of value that it had. And I think that we tend to kind of

02:26:10

consider somebody else's opinion of us to be the arbiter of our worth. And it's not like your worth is stable and people, some people will value it. Some people won't find the people who value it because those are the people that you want to be with. But it doesn't mean that you have less value because somebody doesn't value it or you have more value because someone does value it. You have the same amount of value either way.

02:26:35

But I think young people are not, you know, it always hurts. We talked about breakups earlier. They always hurt. And especially when you're young and you don't have experience. But my concern is that they're not getting the experience of kind of sitting with it. And yes, you want to, you know, have your friends support you and all of that. But I think once you start posting about it or once you start kind of vilifying the other person, you're not learning the lesson. You're not learning how to deal with loss. It

02:27:03

In your adult clients, how much of the struggle that you hear about in terms of romantic relationships relates to, again, online aspects like apps and things like that? Do you think they facilitated things or made them?

02:27:22

relationships more challenging? Well, I think what the apps do is there's a phenomenon that Barry Schwartz talks about in his book, The Paradox of Choice. And it's the idea that the more choice we have, the less happy we are. So you need some choice, but it's kind of like, think of like a fishbowl, an aquarium, and an ocean. Fishbowl is not enough choice, just too constrained.

02:27:44

Ocean, too much choice. You're like, yeah, there's no direction. Oh, my gosh. The aquarium is perfect. It's a certain amount of choice, but it's manageable. You don't get flooded. You don't get overwhelmed. So they did these experiments where, like, you –

02:27:57

be able to test out like we have this new jam and we have 10 different flavors and which one do you like best and which one are you going to pick? People would get so overwhelmed. They didn't even want to try that. They're like, it's too much. Or we have two flavors. Which one do you like better? Right? Manageable.

02:28:16

So there are people who are what we call satisficers and people who are maximizers. So satisficers – well, let me tell you about maximizers first. Maximizers are people – let's say you want to buy a sweater, okay? You go into the store. You find a sweater that you like. It's the right material. It's the right price. It fits you well. It's the right color. It's good. Great. Okay.

02:28:39

The maximizer says, but maybe I can find something better. So I'm going to take that sweater and put it on the bottom of the pile so that nobody buys it. I'm going to go to the store next door and I'm going to see if they have something better. Maybe something's on sale. Maybe it's slightly higher end material, whatever it is, right? But they keep going to stores and they keep doing this. And then they think, oh, well, I found the greatest sweater ever and I'm going to get that one. Guess what? They are less satisfied with

02:29:08

with that purchase than the person who, the satisficer, who would have bought that first sweater in that first store and would have been super happy with that sweater. It's all opportunity cost. Okay. Because all of the energy, the emotional and cognitive energy that went into maximizing something for what kind of benefit, like what percent benefit, not much, compared to the amount of

02:29:32

energy that they spent trying to maximize. They're never satisfied because even when they get that great product, something better is going to come out. There's going to be a new color that comes out like two weeks later that was in none of the stores. So you're always kind of looking over, if you're a maximizer, you're always kind of looking over your shoulder for like, what if something better is out there? In dating, that's what the apps are like. You go out with someone, you have a good time, you

02:29:57

You think, well, no butterflies, you know, no sparks, pretty good time, but I don't know. Um,

02:30:04

I can go back on the apps. You go back on the apps, look at all the people there. Maybe they're better on this dimension or that dimension. And so what it does is it turns everyone into maximizers because there's an illusion of choice. Like not everybody you see is going to be better. And again, we don't get the a la carte option with people. So there will be different dimensions in which people are more aligned with what you're looking for. But no one's going to be like perfect.

02:30:29

right? So why are we looking for perfection? Why don't we look for, and by the way, the satisficers are not settling. This isn't about like, eh, I'll just settle for something. It's like, that sweater was great. You liked everything about it. You don't need to look for anything more. Will there be, if you pick a partner, will there be someone more attractive? Of course. Will there be someone less attractive? Of course, right? And by the way, if we treat dating like shopping,

02:30:56

We forget that in shopping, we're the choosers. But in dating, someone has to choose us too. And we, by the way, are not perfect.

02:31:05

So an exercise that I like to do with clients is I want you to write down all the reasons that it would be difficult to date you. So instead of making a list of all the qualities you want in a partner, like the partner has to be this, they have to be that, they have to, you know, have these interests, they have to have this amount of ambition, they have to look a certain way, they have to have these interests, whatever it is. I want you to write down everything that would make it difficult to

02:31:30

What a great exercise. To be with you. And some people, it's kind of like in a job interview when they say, what are your weaknesses? And we tend to say things that sound positive. You know, like my weakness is that I work too hard, that I'm too dedicated, that I can't, you know, let go. It's a non-answer. It's a non, right. So you have to be scrupulously honest with yourself. So what makes it hard to be with you? And if you're really honest with yourself,

02:31:55

Suddenly you're less of a maximizer, right? Because suddenly you're like, oh, someone is thinking about the things that, you know, they're looking at me holistically as well. And overall, I'm a pretty good package. But there are things that, you know, maybe they could maximize if they really wanted to. But then they're going to have to give up some other qualities that I have that the other person might not have.

02:32:20

So I think it's really important not to think about dating as shopping. And I think that people who grew up on apps tend to treat dating like shopping and they don't sit there and make the list of, oh, I can be this way. And that makes it hard for someone to be with me. And you could name a million reasons. Oh, and by the way,

02:32:38

I tell them that for all the traits you're looking for, however, whatever that number is, because they tend to have a lot, right? It's not just like I need these three things. It's like I need these 20 things. The list. Right, the list. So I said for every quality that you're looking for, whatever number that is, if it's 20, you need to name 20 things that make it hard to be with you. So it can't be like there are two things that make it hard to be with you, but you have a list of 20 things that you want. Do you think that…

02:33:05

after people make that list that they might take a look at that list and make some effort to like

02:33:13

reduce or eliminate some things from that list is that good self-work like if somebody is super rigid about punctuality anyone that knows me clearly that's not me like I know some people that are so rigid about that let's say someone identifies that as one of the things that can be really difficult like they get really upset if somebody's five minutes late I've interacted with these people you're very difficult to be around as an academic everything starts 10 minutes late we end late that's how it works but

02:33:43

Should they try to resolve that or reduce that feature? Or should they look at the list and say, you know what, like, I'm not going to change that. This thing, well, I should probably change that. What else can the list do for people? Okay. So relationships are like cement. So when you're first putting down, right, the cement, it's wet and it's malleable.

02:34:04

Um, when it dries, it's very hard to then now you have to like dig it up. So let's say that punctuality is really important for someone.

02:34:13

And they think, well, I don't want to rock the boat. It's the beginning of the relationship. So yeah, this person comes late all the time, but I'm going to say nothing about it and I'm going to be cool with that even though I'm not and I'm sitting there seething every time they come late, right? And it's kind of like in the first three months of a relationship, I think it was Chris Rock who said this, in the first three months of a relationship, you're not you, you're the ambassador of you. So sometimes people will, you know, who really are not punctual will be punctual and then they'll change. That's not what I'm talking about.

02:34:41

I'm talking about someone who, you know, someone has, they're just not a punctual person like you're saying you are. So if you're dating someone and that person is telling themselves, like, I'm not going to bring it up. I don't want to rock the boat. It's early in the relationship. The cement is wet. This is when you need to bring it up. So because if you don't, what happens is it's like six months down the line. The person is like, I can't believe you're late. What just happened? You know, why are you, you're always late. You don't prioritize me.

02:35:09

It's like the person's like, this is the first I'm hearing about this. Like the person has had A, no opportunity to change it if they want to, but B, no opportunity to explain. So it might be that as happened with one of my therapy clients, the person was always late, but it was because he was trying to please her because she wanted to have dinner. He knew that she liked to eat on the earlier side.

02:35:32

He worked really late. So he was trying to kind of like get his work done and get there. And he was always late because he was trying to like be there when she wanted to have dinner. So he said like, I'm late because I do prioritize you. I'm actually leaving work early to be with you. But I should have just said I can't be here at this time. That's what I should have said. And I was worried you would get mad because it would be too late for you.

02:35:59

So you see the assumption that she made was you don't care about me. I'm not important to you. Your work is more important. And he's saying, no, I actually was leaving work to be with you and I still couldn't get there on time. So we need to figure out how to work this out. Like, can we have dinner later? Because I'm just going to be late if we do it earlier. And, you know, what can we work out? So that's an example of…

02:36:21

If you just bring it up early, you don't build up all these stories about the other person. This person doesn't care. They don't prioritize me. Whatever the story is that you're making about that person.

02:36:31

And you have a chance to see, is the person willing to do something about it? Or if they're not, are you willing to be flexible and say, you know what, this person, they just run late. And I like so many other things about them. And I'm going to adjust to the fact that this is one thing that in a perfect world, I would like them to be more punctual. But there's so many great things that this is one thing that I'm going to adjust to. Weaving this with what we were talking about earlier about gut sense. Mm-hmm.

02:37:00

the validity or lack of validity of gut sense. I certainly have had the experience and I know many other people have that after a relationship ends or when it's ending, they think back and they go, you know, there was that thing at the beginning and I knew it then, but I pushed it aside. Like, is that just a story we tell ourselves?

02:37:23

I think that the most important question to ask yourself after you go on a first date or a second date or a third date is how do I feel when I'm with this person?

02:37:35

Because all the other stuff is just kind of like a cognitive exercise, right? Like, so one of my clients, she was said to herself, like, I don't want to date any. She was in her early 30s. And she said, I don't, I want to have kids with a partner. I'm 31 years old. I don't want to date anyone. I'll date someone who's divorced, but I won't date someone who has kids. Right.

02:37:59

She met someone online. It didn't have the kid question in that particular app that she was using. She went to meet him on the first date. She's having such a good time. And it comes up that he has a kid. And she was having such a good time that she really debated, like, should I go out with him again? Should I not go out with him again? This is not what I want. I don't want to deal with that. It's too messy. And it's not what I imagined.

02:38:27

If she had known on that dating app that he had asked if he had kids and he had put that, she would never have met him. That is her husband. She is so happy. I mean, they've been married now for like 15 years. They have kids together. They have the other kid. She's so happy. So I think that when we make that list that you said like should you take things off the list, I think that you need to have flexibility about things that –

02:38:54

may not matter, but you have to be very inflexible about the things that do matter. So character qualities, they matter. Values that align, that matters. So those are things that don't be flexible on that. So I just want to make sure I understand. So we're talking about two different lists here. One is a list of features about the other person. This is what we hear as like the list of

02:39:17

the number of times that friends are like, you have to make a list. I'll never get around to making a list. But I like this other list that you described, which is all the things about ourselves that would make us difficult to be with. Which list or both do we need to have rigidity versus flexibility? I'm saying that when we think of that list, and by the way, a lot of people don't sit there and write a list, but they have it in their head.

02:39:39

You know, there's this process of I know what I'm looking for or whatever. Some people say, like, I know it when I see it. But there's really a list in there because you know what you're looking for and it matches this list in your head. So on that list, I'm saying you need to put more things like character qualities. Are they honest? Are they reliable? Can I trust them? Do we have the same kind of vision of the kind of life that we want to lead?

02:40:04

You know, where are we aligned on those important things? Because those things are those are those are sort of hard to bridge those gaps. You know, like they're just going to keep coming up and be very difficult to deal with. Things like do we have to have all the same interests? No. Right.

02:40:21

you know, do we, you know, does the person have kids or not? Well, you may, that may not be the ideal choice, but look what happened to this other person that, you know, like, you don't know. I think that question that I'm going back to of how does this person make me feel if the character qualities are there? Because sometimes people who don't have the character qualities that you want are very charming and they can make you feel great. But if they have the character qualities,

02:40:46

Do I feel calm around this person? Going back to this idea of peace and calm. I like this idea. Somebody had mentioned that I love this metaphor of being able to bring your rough drafts to the other person, meaning that you don't have to be on all the time with this person, that you can bring sort of the rough draft of yourself, of this idea of, you know, your kind of imperfect draft, right?

02:41:14

And they collaborate with you on that. And I think that's so beautiful, right? What it means is you can be yourself. And yourself doesn't mean I can act in any way I want. I can have no boundaries. I can be abusive. No, that's not the rough draft. But it's kind of like I am working this through. I'm trying to understand this. I'm not perfect. Sometimes I will make mistakes.

02:41:37

And can you be comfortable enough around each other to hold yourself accountable but still feel loved by the other person? I love, love, love the criteria, for lack of a better word, of, you know, how do I feel when I'm around this person? Yeah. Peace being an anchor point or a place to look for. And when I say how, I mean, do you feel calm? Mm-hmm.

02:42:06

Do you feel content? And so calmness is different from sort of the activation. Contentment is different from like out of your mind happy. Of course, in the beginning and hopefully throughout the relationship, there will be times when you feel this like incredible energy around happiness and joy and being around the other person.

02:42:29

But most of the time what you're going to feel around your partner is a sense of safety, a safe place to land, contentment. I enjoy this person's sense of humor. I enjoy sitting with them even through our silences. I enjoy like sitting on the couch and watching a show with them. I enjoy basically doing anything with them just because I like their presence. That's what I mean. Like how do you feel –

02:42:54

Does their presence feel additive to you? Does it feel like you just are happier with their presence than you would be without their presence? And sometimes people feel like, oh, we have such a strong relationship. We're so drawn to each other. But what you're drawn to is when you're with each other, the presence is volatile. It's either like the high highs and the low lows. And that's not, you know, I'm talking about that sense of contentment just being in the other person's presence, the dailiness of it.

02:43:24

There's so much made of these love languages, like they're acts of service and I like gifts, all that kind of stuff. I've heard it said, what's your love language? And someone, I would say, all of them. That person was me. All of them. Who doesn't like all of those? I like to think I offer them too. Yeah.

02:43:50

You know, who doesn't like all of those things. But I realize that some people place more value on certain gestures and expressions. And I think that's all fine and good. What I love about what you're saying, however, is that it's more of like a, now we're sounding woo, but it's more of like an energetic match. This feeling of safety.

02:44:13

You know, the word peace to me just like holds so much value these days. I feel like the two things that I've come to really value more and more are peace and self-respect because it's hard to have peace without self-respect. Yeah.

02:44:27

Certainly hard to have self-respect without peace. Now, sometimes lack of peace can be from external things, but then we have to ask ourselves, like, do we have any control over these external things? Yeah, I'm curious what your reflections are on like an energy match. Yeah.

02:44:42

So instead of love languages, I look at it as understanding each other's operating instructions. We don't get a manual like when you get it by a car or a piece of technology, right? It comes with operating instructions. So you know exactly how it works. Like don't push this button. Do push this button. This makes it run more smoothly. This will destroy it, right? So you understand those things. So we don't know that about the other person. Like we make so many assumptions.

02:45:10

you know, if this person is coming to me to talk about this, here's what I would want in that situation. So we do that and the person's like, no, no, no, I came to talk to you about it. I just wanted to vent. I didn't come for you to fix it, right? But maybe you like it when people fix it. So you have to learn the other person's operating instructions. So we talk about this idea of love languages. People like all those things, as you said. Operating instructions is something so much deeper and more intimate, which is

02:45:38

I understand that being late means this to you, right? I understand that it helps you when you're anxious if my voice gets quieter instead of, you know, I understand that you need a hug in this moment, right?

02:45:57

I understand that when we're going on a trip, you like to pack this way and I like to pack this way and let's do it our own ways, right? Or, you know, just like I understand these things about you and you understand these things about me. And so if we understand them, we know how the other person operates and we're going to operate ourselves with an eye toward that. And there's something so loving about understanding somebody's operating instructions and honoring them.

02:46:26

And we don't try to figure out the other person. We try to think like, why are they acting that way? We don't get curious and ask, hey, why are you acting that way? What's going on? And you learn then, oh, well, this is why. And then now you know that in those situations, here's how they can go more smoothly.

02:46:43

i rarely ask guests on this podcast to editorialize about other guests but here it feels uh appropriate um bill eddie was on this podcast he's a therapist and lawyer and he wrote the book i think it was like five types of people that will ruin your life and one of the um cardinal features of a person that he claimed will ruin your life is somebody one of the early warning signs let's not say cardinal features but is um somebody who

02:47:10

has a story about their past failures that's

02:47:15

always about how they were wronged by somebody else. Yes. Like the victim stance. Like there's no other word for it. People who are constantly talking about how they were a victim of somebody else. There is a word for it. It's called help-rejecting complainers. Help-rejecting complainers. So a help-rejecting complainer is a person who is always telling you, you know, this went wrong and it was somebody else's fault. And they're seemingly coming to you for advice or guidance. Right.

02:47:44

And no matter what you say, like, how about this? Or have you tried this? Or have you thought about this? No, that won't work because no, I've tried that. That's not going to help. No, because people are like this and that won't help. So they don't actually want help. It serves them in some way to be to complain and be the victim and be wronged.

02:48:06

And so it's almost like, you know, that makes them feel better. They don't want to look at themselves. They don't want to look at their role in things. So beware of help-rejecting complainers because they're always going to –

02:48:21

come to you and you're going to at first feel bad for them. You're going to be like, wow, they've really had a hard time. Wow. You know, I wonder if I could help them this way. And then you start to realize they don't want help. They don't want to be helped. They will reject any help that comes their way because if they get help, they can't complain anymore.

02:48:38

I'm guessing you see this sometimes in therapy. And in the world. Yeah. We've been making a fair number of assumptions about relationship structure. There are so many different permutations these days that we don't have to explore them all. But do you think that some people are just not well suited for romantic relationships?

02:49:01

I've known a few people in my lifetime, a former advisor who he passed away, as I mentioned earlier, but who had tried romantic relationships and decided they weren't for him. Most everyone I know in my life is either partnered or yeah, pretty much. Thank goodness, happily so.

02:49:25

But are there people for whom like they just opt out of the game for reasons that are healthy as opposed to fear of rejection or otherwise? I think that we are wired to want to love and be loved, whatever that means. There's all kinds of love. There's all kinds of ways to love. I think that people don't know how to love and be loved if they haven't seen it.

02:49:52

So generally you learn that because you've had it modeled for you or if you haven't had it modeled for you, you by trial and error start to learn these things. Maybe you go to therapy and you learn more about it. But I think no matter what people come to therapy for, no matter what we call the presenting problem, you know, they're coming because whatever they want to say it is. Deep down, something got kind of ruptured in the love or being loved area of their life.

02:50:22

And really that's the core of it. And we have to solve that problem so that the problem they came in for, you know, it's kind of like you're dealing with content, which is like here's the problem and process, which is what's going on underneath. And if we can solve the process, then you solve content in multiple areas of your life.

02:50:43

It's not just this one problem that you came in with, but generally if you learn at the core what the issue is that gets in the kind of love or be loved area, you learn how to navigate through the world differently in your professional life, in your romantic life, in your platonic friendship life, in your family life.

02:51:01

So it's not just therapy isn't just about solving like that one discrete problem. Sometimes it is, but many times it's about if we can get to the deeper process issue, then you will solve so many different problems simultaneously. Throughout today's conversation, I feel like what seems to be in contrast is

02:51:24

is kind of our stories about ourselves and other people and life versus just really being present. This image of the Teflon pan is really kind of looping in my head because this idea that, you know, positive thing happens, it slips right off. Negative thing sticks. What does that mean?

02:51:44

it's like we create a story about the negative thing and that the story about the positive thing was a very brief story. It was like one of those three sentence poems or something and then it's gone. Versus presence, like the more presence we can bring to something, the more positive, meaningful experience we can extract from it. I really believe this. I learned this in science actually because I had an absolutely spectacular neuroanatomy professor when I was an undergraduate and he said,

02:52:13

When you look down the microscope, if you're looking for something, you'll find it. But you're going to miss all this context of like the inputs to that structure. And you lose the pattern recognition that's going to serve you going forward. So I learned I had this – I had so much time back then. I would just sit at night as a graduate student after I left my undergrad and went on to 11. I would just like stare at brain tissue. And you learn about it.

02:52:40

in conscious and unconscious ways. And then later when you're doing an experiment, you see things like, oh, you know, there's a deficit here. There's a real effect here. And you learn that through presence you –

02:52:53

you're like experiencing things so much differently than if you go looking for something. And science, if you go looking for something, it's actually bad science. Right. And I've tried to transport that onto relationship in some ways, like in relation to things and people and dogs and all the things in life, if you're really present,

02:53:13

Like the story's writing itself, but you're not scripting it out. I don't know. I don't think I have a language for this. Rick Rubin's talked a little bit about this in his book, The Creative Act. Like we need to be on the front end of the vehicle, experiencing space and time as it's happening, as opposed to sitting next to it or in it and kind of creating a narrative about what's happening around us. Does that make sense? Right. So most of us, all of us, myself included, you, all of us, we're unreliable narrators.

02:53:40

because we're only telling the story through our own lens. And so it's really important for people to kind of be expansive about what the story might be about themselves. Like someone might have a story, I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone, or nothing will ever work out for me. That's their story that they're carrying around from childhood or from some experience that they had in life.

02:54:05

And they don't realize that they're carrying that story around. So everything that they experience is viewed through that lens. And so, of course, they're not finding, you know, they're not finding people they trust because their whole worldview is I can't trust anyone, even though the person might be trustworthy.

02:54:21

Or they feel unlovable. So, of course, they can't take in the love that they're getting because, again, what are they paying attention to? This predominant storyline. So they need to rewrite the story. I created this workbook that's like a step-by-step guide. I'm not sort of doing this to plug the workbook. I'm saying it's a very methodical process to

02:54:42

You have to break down the story. And my background is that, you know, I come from a writing background. So I feel like I'm almost like an editor in the therapy room when people come in and they bring this story. And my job is to help them edit the story so that this faulty narrative that was never true or someone, you know, whoever told them that story, whether they explicitly said you're not lovable or showed them through their actions that they then felt not lovable, they're

02:55:10

that story was told by another narrator. So that narrator was unreliable, gave you this story that now you take as gospel and you move through life with that story. So let's examine that story. And can we look for examples of counter examples of when that story is not true? Because generally there are stories of you being lovable. There are stories of people being trustworthy. There are stories of things working out for you.

02:55:38

So we have to really rewrite those narratives and say, you know, what is true and what is an artifact of somebody else's story that we're carrying around? And why why are we like writing the next chapter with somebody else's narrative that we never owned anyway? Yeah, it seems that like one of the challenges of being human is unless somebody is a narcissist where they basically dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel good.

02:56:04

in which case they miss out on so much of life and everyone can't stand them anyway. If you're a permeable person, like you're paying attention to what people say, you're trying to integrate that, you're trying to do better, be better,

02:56:19

The hard part is being semi-permeable. You have to know what to let in, what to reject, what to accept, what to work on. I mean, it's a challenging thing, this process of being a person in relation to others, right? Well, right. And again, the story, think about like how much we tell stories about ourselves and other people. That example I gave you earlier about the person who said, well, he doesn't prioritize me because he comes late and work is more important to him. And in fact, he was prioritizing her.

02:56:47

So we tell all kinds of stories and we make meaning of interactions with people. And generally, we don't have enough information and we need to say, can we expand this story? What would that story look like if I got curious?

02:57:01

and ask more about it or even just things that happen in our own lives. Can I examine that story for myself? Is that the story I want to tell myself about that experience that didn't go the way I wanted? Or can I look at it a different way? Like, am I a failure or am I actually growing? Right? You can look at the same story the same way. I'm a failure. That didn't work out. Or, oh, that's really interesting. I learned something really important and I'm really a courageous person for trying that and now I learned something.

02:57:29

totally different experiences of the same event. And I think sometimes the way we get to that story in the moment is to look at our senses. So we have five senses. We don't tend to pay much attention to them. We just think through everything. So can you say in a moment, right, like even about your partner, when you're upset with your partner, can you say like with each sense, like here's one thing I see about my partner that I really like.

02:57:56

Even though I'm upset about something they just did, right? Here's something I hear. I like the tone of their voice or I like the way they laugh. You know, I like the way they smell. You know, whatever it is, you know, I like the way you can just reach out. By the way, touch is so important. What I have couples do sometimes when things are getting a little bit

02:58:19

escalated in the therapy room is I'll say, can you take each other's hands right now? And it's the last thing I want to do in that moment. I'll say, can you just take each other's hands? Calmness, right? Their nervous system is calming down. And all of a sudden they feel, oh yeah, I forgot what that touch feels like. And you feel connected now. So can we use our other senses sometimes when we get really in our head to

02:58:42

and use it to kind of expand the story and connect, whether it's connecting with yourself. Sometimes with anxiety, we do that, something I can see, hear, taste, touch, smell. We can do that with a partner too. I feel like the whole landscape around relationships has changed so much in the last 20, 30 years. It seems like in some ways for the better, like there's a lot more discussion about

02:59:10

the sorts of things that you're explaining and better understanding of self, how to show up better, better choice making and so on. I was thinking about the

02:59:21

At the same time, this example you mentioned before, like someone in their teens or 20s, a couple will break up and then somebody's posting all these things about them. That kind of quote unquote feedback, because it's not really feedback, it's more signaling and posturing about what they aren't as opposed to what the other person is, has got to create pretty detrimental stories in the person that it's about, right? Because they have the choice of either believing those things

02:59:51

Um, or disbelieving them, but it's not really an opportunity for growth in the same way that sitting down with somebody and saying like, Hey, these were some things that you did well, and here are some things that didn't go well. Um, and I guess how much of the story for, um, for men and women, young men and women nowadays and older, do you think like, uh, is being, uh,

03:00:19

written through the, like what we hear about the opposite sex, right? Like in the last, I would say 10, 15 years, there hasn't really been a moment of really trying to prop young boys up and men of it's like, like maleness is great. Like that's not something you hear very often. Yeah. And I certainly understand why there was a need and an effort to balance opportunities, right? But a lot of young guys grew up hearing that

03:00:47

maleness having a Y chromosome is a bad thing, that testosterone is bad or something like that. You know, and I've been asked to comment on this more and more recently in the press. And, you know, I only know my experience and what I observe, but

03:01:02

I mean, you take any group and tell them that they're bad. That hasn't really worked out well for any group or for society. When my son was in preschool, there was a shirt that girls would wear, little preschool girls. And it said, boys are stupid. Let's throw rocks at them. And it was supposed to be somehow girl power, empowering. But you don't empower by putting down another group, right? You lift up.

03:01:32

but you don't bring down. And my son was so confused by that. I remember he was like, why? What does that mean? And can you imagine if some boy showed up at preschool that said, girls are stupid, let's throw rocks at them? Yeah, he'd be in a different preschool pretty quick. Right. I mean, you know, it's, so I think it's interesting to think about how it became that

03:02:02

It's very hard for young men to navigate what does masculinity in a positive way look like. And they get all kinds of messages, you know, all men are bad. Men should be more like women. Men need to, you know, be this way or that way. But no, if they are more communicative, then they're weak. But if they aren't communicating, you know, like there's no kind of right way.

03:02:29

uh, to be. And I think that, um, I think it's very confusing for young men. Like if a, if a, a young, like a teenager or someone in college wants to kiss a girl, right? Like on a date. Um, and they don't do it because like it for, like, they don't know what to do. Like, do I need to say, can I kiss you? Right. Which feels a little bit like,

03:02:54

takes away from the moment. But at the same time, they don't want to assume that she wants to be kissed. But like, it seems pretty obvious to him that like they're standing out in front of their cars in front of the restaurant and like maybe she wants a good night, you know, it's just so confusing.

03:03:09

And I think that there's definitely, I think, a positive correction in what we call toxic masculinity, the ways that men didn't really assume the personhood of women. But I also think that it's gotten to a place where it's so confusing for both young men and young women to understand sort of

03:03:33

How do we how can we be with each other? How can we relate to each other where we won't be criticized, canceled? You know, we don't know what's right. Like, is it do I do I put myself out there? Do I not put myself out there? Will I get in trouble?

03:03:52

And so, you know, obviously it's a good thing that people are having conversations and there's more communication around like what is okay, what do you want, is this okay? But at a certain level, it becomes people are afraid to do anything.

03:04:07

Yeah. Talk about lack of presence. It sounds like they have to like write the story all the way to the 10 different outcomes for a given action, you know, evaluating if then they're no longer reading the other person's signals. I mean, it sounds incredibly complicated. Right. It is very complicated. I think there's progress, too. I mean, I think it's much better than having these situations where men just assumed like it was OK to do certain things, whether, you know, the woman consented or not.

03:04:33

But I also feel like the education that they're getting around this, which again is, again, it's so complicated because it's positive that they're getting this education, but they don't know what it looks like in practice because the way that, you know, even when you think of like corporate training and you have to watch those videos, right? And, you know, what is okay and what is not okay. They give the most obvious examples of what is not okay. But then there's just sort of like how, like say you're at work

03:05:01

And there's someone that you – you're a woman and you're at work and there's a guy that you're attracted to because a lot of people meet at work, right? Because it's hard – and where do you meet people when you're an adult?

03:05:12

Where do you spend all your time? You spend a lot of your days, five days a week at work. So you might meet someone through work. And then there's this sort of – and maybe it's not someone you directly report to or reports to you. They're in like a different department. There's like a cute guy. What do you do? People don't know. So women are confused too. What is okay? What is not okay? In the ways that organically people used to be able to say like, hey, that guy, I'm going to go talk to him. But people don't know what to do. Wow.

03:05:40

Wow. Tricky landscape, but you're offering tools for people at least, not at least, but to communicate better and certainly to understand themselves better so they know what they're bringing to the table. Well, I think that it's about understanding that whatever we see in TVs and movies, you know, it's…

03:05:57

It doesn't look like that. You know, there's always like somebody doesn't know what to do in a certain moment or something doesn't go the way that you imagine it will go or sex can be ridiculous at times and, you know, all these like weird things happen. I don't mean not consent. I'm talking about like it's just –

03:06:16

It doesn't look like it does in the movies all the time. Well, and sometimes there's great chemistry. And guess what? Sometimes there's not. Yeah. Like this chemistry thing is a real thing. And sometimes it develops over time and sometimes it doesn't. The idea that there wouldn't be much room for healthy exploration, error, and adventure kind of breaks my heart. I guess that's what I was referring to about things –

03:06:38

But young people are smart. They can figure it out. And they also like to throw off the kind of like rules and standards of the adult generation. So I trust they'll come up with a better alternative for themselves, right? I want to make sure that I ask you about grief. When a client is grieving a breakup or a loss of some sort –

03:07:07

Do you tell them to feel their feelings or do you tell them to compartmentalize and only feel their feelings certain times a day? Or do you, you know, ever have to say, hey, listen, you know, it's time to,

03:07:20

I'm laughing because there's no one way to grieve a loss and even the same loss. Like, you know, siblings can lose a parent and they'll have very different ways of grieving the loss of the exact same person. Yeah.

03:07:39

You know, there's just no right way or one way. And I think you really have to honor that person's process. And what I mean by that is it doesn't mean sort of, you know, just spend the rest of your life like dwelling and not living. Right. But I think people have this misconception about grief that somehow you're going to get over it. And often people.

03:08:06

We carry those losses with us throughout our lives. Like you lose someone important to you, you're going to feel that loss and you might feel it in different ways at different times. If someone was important to you and you lost that person and you hadn't thought about them in a while and then you're in an elevator and you hear this music, this song, and all of a sudden it's like someone just stuck a knife in your heart, even though you were doing fine. Yeah.

03:08:31

So people, you know, I think that we are the accumulation of all the different people who have been in our lives for better or worse. And everybody makes some kind of impression on us that sticks with us.

03:08:47

So I think it's really important for people to understand what the loss is about because the loss can represent lots of different things. You lose a parent, maybe it's the loss of your youth. You're like, oh, no, I'm now the older generation. So part of it is the parent. Part of it is this kind of I'm closer to death. And what does that mean? You know, you lose a marriage and you

03:09:12

It could mean, oh, look, just like my parents, they got divorced and I failed, even though that's not necessarily the meaning of it. So we make meaning of the loss too. So it's what does this loss mean to you? How do you make sense of it? How do you sit with the loss? And then how do you, again, not move on but move forward? I love that concept. We integrate the things for better or worse into us. Yeah.

03:09:42

Moving forward is something I think everyone would probably want, one would hope. Yeah. I know you're not here to promote anything, but you caught my attention with this workbook because I think I and a number of people probably want to think about how to –

03:10:01

put some of this into action um and you've given us a lot of great tools to do that a lot of different ways to think about things i certainly am um taking notes uh can you tell me about the notebook um and what the notebook is and and what who can make use of it yeah this one by the way folks this wasn't preceded into the conversation we'll talk about the notebook i just want to know for people who want to understand how to how to do good work is

03:10:27

It sounds like a great tool. Right. So the workbook came about because I wrote this book called Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. And it's the stories of it's my story going to therapy. And then it's the story of these four other patients that I had and my working with them. And people said, wow, there was so much that happened.

03:10:49

made me think or feel or resonate with, but I need some structured, like sort of a step-by-step guide to how I can make those kinds of changes too. And maybe they don't have access to therapy or they don't want to go to therapy. They want to work on it in a different way. And I really wanted, I feel like therapy is this thing where

03:11:09

certain people, you know, it's sort of like one-on-one or if you have a couple, it's like, you know, three people in the room. And how do you bring that out so other people can use those tools? So I created basically a workbook that's a companion to maybe you should talk to someone. And it's, I really focused on stories because I feel like

03:11:26

the narratives that we carry around shape so much of how we think, feel, and act every day. So it's a guide that really, it's what I would do with someone in the therapy room if I were helping them to rewrite their story and to look at, is this a faulty narrative? What does this look like? What are the true stories? What resonates with me now at this part of my life? Where do these stories come from? Who told me these stories? Can I try this out in real life? Here's an exercise to do this week. So I think that,

03:11:54

more of us sometimes need that kind of guidance. It's one thing to theoretically think about something, and as a therapist, I'm just very

03:12:02

very direct and active anyway. As I said, you know, the insight is the booby prize of therapy that I want people to have more than insight. I want them to have a plan with action and I want them to have small manageable steps because I feel like if you get overwhelmed and the step is too big, that's really the only reason that people don't succeed at a change they want to make. It's that you need the steps to be manageable.

03:12:24

So I really break it down for people. You know, how can we do this? It's kind of like weekly therapy. It's like, how can we do this this week and work on that? And then you can kind of reflect on it. And there's all these different exercises that take you at the pace that works for you. It's great. I'm a huge fan of workbooks and online courses. I'm taking an online course right now just for my own enrichment. I'm going to get your notebook. I

03:12:51

I think it's a fabulous idea. I think there's so many books about the changes we can make and in any domain of health, wellness, psychology, fitness, whatever. And we read it, we might incorporate one or two little snippets and then it goes on the shelf and then we're proud to have it on our shelf because it says something about how we view life and it's cool to see those books elsewhere and all that's wonderful.

03:13:14

But I think workbooks are like a real thing. So we'll put a link to that. Again, this came up spontaneously, but I know a number of people will want to know that. I have one more question. Mm-hmm.

03:13:28

You write this column. Is it a weekly column? Every two weeks I write Ask the Therapist. Yeah. Are there things thematically that are coming up more these days? Like you're getting a thousand letters about blank and then two about something else? I mean, where are things batching these days? And there can be more than one bin, excuse me, bin to how it's batching.

03:13:52

Yeah. So I think the same things come up. I've been doing this for so many years. I wrote it for six years at The Atlantic and I'm writing it at The New York Times. And it's interesting because people talk about the same issues differently, but it's the same issue. So someone might say, you know, a lot comes up around, should I cut off this person, whether that's a family member or a friend, whatever.

03:14:16

You know, should I, you know, this person did this and boundaries are a big thing and everyone thinks everyone's a narcissist, which they're not. Everyone thinks everyone is, you know, gaslighting them, which generally they're not. It's all dopamine. I'm just kidding. But I mean, like the language is different is what I'm saying. But I think that what they're really struggling with and what we all struggle with are, you know, relating. It's hard to.

03:14:40

Humans are unpredictable. Humans are – well, in some ways they're very predictable, but I think they're hard for another person to understand in that way, going back to the operating instructions, that sometimes you think this is going to be the expected response and you get something completely different. They can't understand why a friend or a family member or a coworker or whatever.

03:15:00

whatever would do or say or think something. I think at the end of the day, people really know what the answer to the question is, but they want permission. So many times people say like, you know, what do you think about this? Or I really want to do this, but the people in my family think this, right?

03:15:21

And so they're almost asking for permission that it's okay to want something. It's okay. We are so cautious about desire in our culture that sometimes we think that if I have a desire, it's indulgent as opposed to you should, you know, have desires, live a big life. I always say to people, when you're making a decision, choose the bigger life.

03:15:47

That's how you make the decision. And I heard that somewhere. It's not mine originally, but I think it's so true that, you know, it's okay to have these desires. But then we get these messages from our culture or our friend group or families that no, no, no, it's not okay.

03:16:04

And so a lot of people want permission that it's okay that you don't want to go to medical school. It's okay. It's okay that you don't want to have children. That's okay.

03:16:17

You know, so I think sometimes people want permission, but I think what they're really I think most of the letters are about. I'm having trouble relating and I don't know if I'm crazy. They're crazy. What's happening? And so they need sort of that person who's going to zoom out and see it from a more objective place and help them to see again, going back to narrative, both sides of the narrative.

03:16:39

So I'm not just in my column. I don't just say, here's what you should do. I do do that. But I first say, I want you to have some context around this. So here's how you're thinking about it. And that's understandable. Here's the other side of the story that you're not really paying attention to. Now that you have this wider lens, here's how I think this might be managed. Love it. I love this concept of make the choice that is going to bring the bigger life. Yeah.

03:17:09

Because as you pointed out, it's so easy for people to stay stuck in what is unpleasant but hasn't killed them yet. Or they're waiting for something. Like, I will buy a house when? I will look for a partner when? As if there are these prerequisites that need to happen because that's the conventional view of the order in which you should live your life.

03:17:33

You know, like I won't buy a house until I'm married as opposed to why? Why can't you buy a house that you like if you have the money to do that, right? You know, why do you have to wait for marriage for that? Or I won't look for a partner until I have this kind of job.

03:17:50

You know, that you have to have all these little pieces in this order. And there are so many different ways to live your life. And sometimes, by the way, you might want to live your life in that conventional order, but it just doesn't work out that way for you. So you might have to switch up the order and that's OK. I love a vote in favor of people enjoying their life more and hopefully deriving more self-respect by doing it.

03:18:11

Yeah, this asceticism of like we're going to deprive ourselves of things in order to respect ourselves, you know, even though I value discipline and I think learning to enjoy life is also important. Right. And I think that, you know, when we talk about, we're not talking about hedonism, we're talking about reflecting on what will make a meaningful, purposeful life for you and then being very intentional about that.

03:18:41

going after that goal. So much here, Lori. Thank you so much. I, uh, for the work you do with your patients slash clients slash, we don't have a better word for it. Um, and also your willingness to get out and teach and, and literally every two weeks, you know, field questions from the general public. It's not easy to do, I imagine. And, um,

03:19:06

Clearly, you're thinking about things past, present and future. And, you know, people really need these tools. And not everyone will make it into your office, unfortunately, and have the experience of working one on one with you. But I think that the workbook, I'm so glad that came up so that people have an opportunity to put these things into action. And you've given us a ton to work with here.

03:19:29

i listed out many things i won't i won't list them out here we'll time stamp this episode in detail so people can go back and find them but um

03:19:38

Yeah, I've learned a ton. I'm going to put this to action and hopefully you'll come back again and talk with us about what's new because I know this is an evolving field and as the landscape of society changes, we're going to need new tools. But it sounds like the fundamentals are really in there. It involves self-reflection. I love this thing about a list of the things that make us difficult to be with as opposed to the list of the things we want in other people. And that Teflon pan is something I'm going to think about a

03:20:06

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for this conversation. I love having these longer conversations and really exploring what it means to be human. Thank you. You've certainly enriched my thinking about it. And I'm sure everyone listening as well. Thanks so much.

03:20:21

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gottlieb. I hope you found it to be as interesting and as actionable as I did. To learn more about Lori Gottlieb's work and to find links to her excellent book and other resources, please see the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

03:20:41

In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast.

03:20:59

if you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the huberman lab podcast please put those in the comments section on youtube i do read all the comments for those of you that haven't heard i have a new book coming out it's my very first book it's entitled protocols an operating manual for the human body this is a book that i've been working on for more than five years and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience and it covers protocols for everything from sleep

03:21:26

to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body.

03:21:49

And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

03:22:12

And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, the Neural Network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries, as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training.

03:22:33

All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to newsletter and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Lori Gottlieb. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.

</markdown>

Edit:2025.04.12

<markdown> </markdown>

讨论列表 AKP讨论 查看原帖及回帖