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Embracing Your Many Sides for Growth & Productivity
140 Plays2 months ago
On this episode of Doorknob Comments, Fara and Grant focus on why people often struggle to do things that are good for them while continuing habits that might be harmful. They discuss the concept of multiple self-states or personality parts that can sometimes conflict with each other, leading to procrastination, guilt, and difficulty in enjoying leisure activities. The conversation touches on topics such as the challenges of balancing productivity with self-care, the role of brain activity in procrastination, and the importance of self-reflection in understanding one's own motivations and behaviors. Throughout the episode, Fara and Grant draw on psychoanalytic theories, personal experiences, and clinical observations to offer insights into how individuals can better navigate their internal conflicts and make more constructive choices.
We hope you enjoy.
Resources and Links
Doorknob Comments
https://www.doorknobcomments.com/
Dr. Fara White
Dr. Grant Brenner
Recommended
Transcript
Struggles with Relaxation vs. Productivity
00:00:00
Speaker
I think one thing that we see a lot is, let's say when we're doing something like getting ah massage, right? that they're ah A lot of times people have trouble enjoying it because they feel as though they should be doing something more productive.
00:00:17
Speaker
And then when they're doing something productive, they wish they were getting a massage and it becomes very hard to really enjoy anything. And I think that's the challenge with finding a balance.
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello, I'm Dr. Farrah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner. We're psychiatrists and therapists in private practice in New York.
Origins of Doorknob Comments Discussion
00:00:38
Speaker
We started this podcast in 2019 to draw attention to a phenomenon called the doorknob comment.
00:00:43
Speaker
Doorknob comments are important things we all say from time to time, just as we're leaving the office, sometimes literally hand on the doorknob. Doorknob comments happen not only during therapy, but also in everyday life.
00:00:55
Speaker
The point is that sometimes we aren't sure how to express the deeply meaningful things we're feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Maybe we're afraid to bring certain things out into the open, or are on the fence about wanting to discuss them. Sometimes we know we've got something we're unsure about sharing and are keeping it to ourselves, and sometimes we surprise ourselves by what comes out.
00:01:16
Speaker
Good morning.
Seeking Help and Balancing Responsibilities
00:01:18
Speaker
I'm Grant. I'm here with Farah. Today we're going to talk about how hard it is sometimes to look for help and to get help, even when we know we want help, even sometimes when we know what kind of help we need.
00:01:32
Speaker
And we're going to talk about it from the point of view of having different selves, different self-states, different versions of ourselves that may sometimes not be acting together effectively.
00:01:50
Speaker
We sort of got onto this topic because just lately it's come up in a number of ways, this question of why is it so hard to do things that we know are right for
Procrastination and Task Selection
00:02:05
Speaker
us? Why is it so hard to ask for help when we need it? Why is it, why do you think, you know, people are have have trouble doing the things that make them feel good and continue doing things that make them feel bad. I mean, there is a lot of psychoanalytic theory behind this, but I think, Grant, you've been sort of exploring this other area, which will be really cool to talk about today.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, and I would even say it's not necessarily about feeling good. Actually doing things that make people feel good is often problematic because let's take procrastination, for example.
00:02:41
Speaker
There's some really interesting research where they looked at brain activity and they found that there was reduced brain activity in the frontal cortex when people procrastinate because they weren't regulating emotions well. Right.
00:02:53
Speaker
What does that mean? It means that when they had to sit down and do something unpleasant, they had trouble saying no to something more pleasant, like watching a TV show or even doing something that they need to do, like cleaning up the apartment, which is still less distressing than the task that they wanted to do or felt they should do.
00:03:13
Speaker
And so feeling good is often problematic. I would reframe the question as doing you know what is best. best for a person or more functional than dysfunctional, or making more constructive and adaptive choices. Yeah, you know, basically having more wins.
00:03:30
Speaker
Right? What I meant was feel leads people to feel good about oneself. Right? Not like the pleasure in the moment, but how do we see ourselves in this world?
00:03:41
Speaker
Well, that's the rub because you know you can feel good that you pampered yourself because you've been meaning to get your hair done or get a manicure or get a massage or you know go shopping.
00:03:54
Speaker
And then when you do that, another part of you, so to speak, can feel bad for not you know working on your taxes. So I just don't think, I think that whole construct of what makes me feel good and bad is part of the problematic thinking because it is more complicated.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I think one thing that we see a lot is, let's say when we're doing something like getting ah massage, right, that let's say that also they're up a lot of times people have trouble enjoying it because they feel as though they should be doing something more productive.
00:04:33
Speaker
And then when they're doing something productive, They wish they were getting a massage and it becomes very hard to really enjoy anything. And I think that's the challenge with finding a balance.
00:04:46
Speaker
Right, if you're gonna do something that's so-called more indulgent, people often feel guilty about it if they're not doing something else. And then while that's happening, they're having intrusive thoughts, they're feeling guilty, they're feeling ashamed, or maybe they can tune it out, but then maybe it kind of comes up somewhere else, like they feel bad afterward.
Pleasure vs. Productivity Conflict
00:05:06
Speaker
So one of my questions is, is it useful to think of ourselves as being a collection of different personality states, like the me that is parent and the me that is a doctor and the me that has a personal life and my own pursuits.
00:05:25
Speaker
And I think a lot of times people have trouble dealing with that inner conflict or self-contradiction. And we generally want to think of ourselves as being consistent and and unitary, like just one of me.
00:05:40
Speaker
And in a sense, that's definitely true. We, you know, whoever you are, like you're inside one physical body. But the thing is that body can really only do one thing at a time. And one of the questions that comes up with more, I guess, pronounced situations is if someone has dissociative identity disorder that used to be called multiple personality disorder, that there would be some kind of vying for control of what the body will do and sometimes characteristically loss of memory or amnesia for certain activities.
00:06:14
Speaker
So someone who might, for example, think that they shouldn't spend money on clothing might find a closet full of expensive clothing and not know how it got there. Mm-hmm. And then they would look at their credit card record and see that they spent it and maybe they wouldn't believe it. It's tricky.
00:06:30
Speaker
But aside from that more clinically severe condition, there's a case to be made that we all have different parts and that they're not always...
Personal Productivity Balance
00:06:40
Speaker
aligned.
00:06:41
Speaker
And to your point, you know, the executive function kind of model would say, well, do the more unpleasant things first, so that you can freely enjoy the other things later, without calling yourself lazy, or, you know, some other judgment.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that works for some people. And I do think there's research to back up, oh, well, how do we have the most productive days? My belief is that people function differently.
00:07:12
Speaker
Some people might be super productive in the morning and some people might feel more productive in the afternoon or evening and that we can't necessarily impose on each person.
00:07:25
Speaker
like, oh, this is the way to have maximum productivity and maximum life enjoyment and the best relationships, but that we can pay attention, i think, a little bit to what feels, you know, what what evolves organically in terms of a balance and what are the days that feel good versus otherwise.
00:07:47
Speaker
Well, how do you think about yourself? Like, you know, I could ask this question of anyone, like what model is a person using for how they think about how their personality is structured?
00:07:58
Speaker
I don't know if it's because of, you know, this group that I do, this developmental group, but I do try to look at myself over time. And rather than be self-critical, which I was very self-critical for a long time.
00:08:18
Speaker
I think about, am i did I make any progress this year? Those are the types of things that I have started to do because otherwise it just becomes demoralizing.
00:08:31
Speaker
So how does a person think about themselves? Do they think like, I'm just this one person who should not have any self-contradictions? Or do people start with an assumption that they're made of different parts or facets and may have conflicts and competing desires?
00:08:48
Speaker
Is it useful to think about oneself that way? Because so much of our psychology is designed to some extent, to deceive ourselves into thinking we're more consistent than we are.
00:09:02
Speaker
And so people have a confirmation bias. They think,
Self-Deception and Identity Consistency
00:09:05
Speaker
well, this is who I am. And that' that's a useful deceit. Like, oh, I'm ah i'm a hardworking, good person. So I look for things that confirm that.
00:09:15
Speaker
And maybe I ignore the other things. Or if I'm insecure and self-critical, maybe I tend to focus on the negatives. And again, I have like an inaccurate model of who I am.
00:09:26
Speaker
One of the things you mentioned is important, like when do I do my best work for what kind of work? I should manage my calendar so that those are the times of day that I do those things. And if I expect myself to do something at nine at night,
00:09:41
Speaker
and I kind of quote unquote, know that I'm not going to do it, you know, what's going on there? Why, why would you do that to yourself? If you want help with something, why would you set yourself up to fail if you know what you need?
00:09:56
Speaker
Well, I think there are a few theories of that, um, of why. And I think there's one analytic theory that you had mentioned, um, and you can probably explain it better than I can,
00:10:11
Speaker
of this internal saboteur? Well, people talk about self-sabotage. you know i think that idea came from the the work is a Scottish analyst named Fairbairn.
00:10:23
Speaker
He talked about the central ego having parts that are split off from it. And the internal saboteur would be paired with another part. I'd have to go look at you know his work again, but I think the internal saboteur was paired with the exciting object.
00:10:40
Speaker
And it was tied back to development and how the family was. And there's an idea from object relations psychoanalysis that you internalize your early developmental environment. So that's part of the map that says all these different people are kind of part of my personality.
00:10:57
Speaker
And if they don't get along, then I'm going to have trouble with my own self-relationships. and ability to have good teamwork, right? In the corporate world, they talk about like rowing in the same direction.
00:11:08
Speaker
You can ask yourself, are all the the different capacities that I have, are they rowing in the same direction? Are they well organized to accomplish my goals so I can feel good?
Identity Conflicts and Self-Reflection
00:11:20
Speaker
Right.
00:11:21
Speaker
But I think that if we say, well, it's a given that there's a part of you that wants to get ahead at work. And then there's a part of you that is sabotaging that effort.
00:11:36
Speaker
And maybe it's because you're conflicted or ambivalent about what more responsibility would mean. Maybe a part of you wants to be the boss, but a part of you really enjoys like being one of the people. i think that really sort of being able to interrogate that either in therapy or just with oneself is how people sort of move forward and progress.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah. Everyone loves a good interrogation. You know, it reminded me of ah some kind of spy movie. It doesn't sound that pleasant to interrogate oneself, but I hear that term used to a lot. I know what you mean, sort of self-appraisal.
00:12:17
Speaker
And one of the common factors in psychotherapy is is self-reflection and self-knowledge. So, you know, I might ask, how well do you know your own landscape? Or have you mapped out all the different sides of yourself? Yeah.
00:12:30
Speaker
the different parts. And how do you think about different self versions of oneself or parts of oneself? You know, there's a less psychologized way, which is like, well, my professional identity, my family identity, you know, different parts of personal identity and my relationship and obligations to myself.
00:12:51
Speaker
And what I find is a lot of people have serious hangups usually with a lot of moral judgment about taking care of themselves. They've either been raised to think that they should be self-sacrificing, it's virtuous, or that taking care of oneself is indulgent or selfish,
00:13:10
Speaker
or that if they don't do work, they're lazy. And so I'm curious what you think about that. So someone could be a parent, they could be a doctor. As a doctor, they could be like the person who does the clinical work, but they could also be the person who has to do the stuff they don't like maybe, like the paperwork and the, you know, redoing bank accounts when there's some kind of fraudulent activity, you know, like...
00:13:35
Speaker
You know, and if they have something like also maybe ADHD, then it's also going to be harder to do some tasks than others or other forms of learning differences. Like they might have difference difficulty with reading comprehension, you know. So how do you self appraise, you know, and how do you develop a sort of a coherent like um and and comprehensive image of oneself from which to make good decisions?
00:14:03
Speaker
Hmm.
Value of External Feedback for Growth
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that sort of self appraisal can come a lot from within information about, you know, what feels authentic and what feels good and what aligns with who we want to be But I also think outside feedback, in this case, can be really valuable that a trusted friend saying in a non disparaging way. Hey, I really love meeting with you. But when you're 20 minutes late, every time we have coffee, it makes it hard to plan.
00:14:38
Speaker
I find that never works. It almost never works. Because that kind of information is, you know, straightforward, it seems obvious.
00:14:50
Speaker
If it works, then you know there's a process of elimination, right? If it worked, that's great. Then that person is able to take that in and make changes. But if they have some kind of significant internal problem in their relationships among the different parts of themselves, that won't work.
00:15:06
Speaker
Maybe not. But if they are someone... who truly, let's say, cares about others, right? And I can think I can use myself as an example. I never mean to disrespect anybody's time.
00:15:20
Speaker
Not consciously. Not consciously. That would be the psychoanalytic kind of, gee, I wonder if there might be something else going on. Right, maybe, maybe there's something else going on, but this has been like chronic Like what might the something else be, right?
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, this has been... ongoing for me. and And it is important information. time management is always going to be a struggle for me, but I can try harder if I know that it really hurts someone, because that's never what I would intend.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I see this in a lot of relationships and I've and've written some relationship books, which if we're seeing the video clip or featured behind us that are based on co-written on the model of having different self states.
00:16:05
Speaker
So the person right says, hey, you know, it's really important to me. i know you're a caring person. I've been praying for you to be on time. And you're like, oh, no, I'm a good person. It's really not intentional. I'll i'll try harder.
00:16:21
Speaker
But the thing is, like I said, I've seen this with a lot of different people. I don't want to use you as an example here. a lot of times they don't change their behavior.
00:16:32
Speaker
They try harder, but they don't use a calendar. Or they can't use a calendar. Or they try to use a calendar, but they forget. And then you start to wonder if there might be something that is not...
00:16:44
Speaker
as much in their awareness. So that kind of quippy remark, like not consciously. So this idea of an internal saboteur, I don't really like the sound of it because it suggests sabotage, which is a bad thing.
00:17:00
Speaker
There's no good way to sabotage something, but there may be you know behaviors that are interfering and there may be underlying attitudes or there may be developmental experiences Maybe there's a version of me that doesn't want to be good all the time.
00:17:15
Speaker
And maybe that idea, hey, I'm a good person. My intentions are really great. Maybe that's an example of self-deception. Say, oh, I'm a good person. But maybe it would be more accurate to say, well, maybe have good parts and not so good parts.
00:17:34
Speaker
And maybe I'm actually resentful that I always have to cater to other people's
Internal Conflicts and Relationships Impact
00:17:40
Speaker
needs. But that's my brand. Like I'm someone who just bends over backward for everyone.
00:17:45
Speaker
I'm a compulsive caregiver and it's because of my parents and blah, blah, blah. But how ah how do people change? You know, one way is to become aware of the different sides of themselves and start to have a real dialogue rather than just having it be played out, like interpersonalized with other people.
00:18:03
Speaker
You know, in the psychoanalytic model, it's like, I'm good. The other person sees me as bad because I'm late. But that's inevitable. And that's not me. It's not who I am. and It's like, well, let's look at the data though. Well, it might be part of who I am or part of who I am in that moment.
00:18:21
Speaker
Or the alternative would be, right? That people who stick so tightly to a schedule. They're uptight. Well, yeah.
00:18:32
Speaker
They don't know how to enjoy themselves. They're too rigid. They're ruining everyone's fun. They're bad. Yeah. I don't think they're necessarily bad, but I do. They are bad. That's not how I would be able to live.
00:18:50
Speaker
I'm not able to live like, oh, the clock strikes and it's, oh, we have to end now. And maybe that means that I'm not going to be successful in some areas of life.
00:19:04
Speaker
But do I accept the trade-off? It depends who you hang out with, too. as well as kind of what you want to do with them. But one of the questions that comes up is like whether each person's internal landscape, you know, their character structure, all these different parts, you know, how they get along with the other person's parts.
00:19:25
Speaker
it's It's very different to think about just like person A and person B, but if person A has some ambivalence or conflict about being available, And person B is a little bit more like, oh, I totally get it. Like, if you're off, that's fine. I wouldn't want to, you know, impose on your downtime.
00:19:45
Speaker
However, if we've scheduled like a meeting, something like, i don't know, let me just come up with a random example, like a podcast. Yeah. And we've agreed to record on such and such a day at such and such a time.
00:19:59
Speaker
What gets in the way of sticking the landing, right? Is it ADHD or is it, is it ambivalence about the task? You know, like part of me agreed to do it and people do this all the time.
00:20:11
Speaker
The, this that people do all the time, myself included is they make a deal with themselves. The me of today makes a commitment that the me of next week needs to keep.
00:20:25
Speaker
But the me of next week never agreed to that. And so there's a form of internal coercion. And then the me of next week has a lot of conflict.
00:20:36
Speaker
Well, I want to be good and keep my obligations, but I actually didn't want to do this. And so if the person had interrogated themselves, they might have said, you know, I really wish I could, you know, schedule this meeting with you next week.
00:20:52
Speaker
However, looking at my calendar, i don't want to commit to that. um let's Let's meet in two weeks when I have more time. Or, you know, I really appreciate you thinking of me.
00:21:04
Speaker
Right now, I just am overcommitted and I would love to work with you on this, but it wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't feel comfortable committing myself to it. Yeah, yeah.
00:21:15
Speaker
Versus committing to you, which those are two sides of the same coin, maybe committing to someone else and committing to oneself. But my top line is kind of like, when you agree to do something, you're making a deal with yourself to do it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I think most people would want to stick to those commitments, though I do think that there are various things that get in the way. And sometimes maybe it's ambivalence, sometimes maybe it's a legitimate health or other reasons. But I guess when do we um sort of hold our own feet to the fire?
00:21:52
Speaker
Well, that sounds painful, but yeah you know there's a moral aspect here, right? If someone is lazy or if they're inconsiderate or if they're irresponsible or if they're unreliable, all of those things are tagged with moral emotions.
Role of Moral Emotions in Decisions
00:22:07
Speaker
The moral emotions are like shame, embarrassment, pride. Right. If you're good, you're proud. Right. You did what your parents wanted you to do. If you're oppositional, you take pride in being bad and going against authority, blah, blah. blah But regardless, there's a moral dimension. Right. Someone's angry, but they also feel wronged when someone commits to something and they don't do it.
00:22:29
Speaker
And they might expect the other person to make better decisions. And so. I think there are two classes of things like this in a broad sense. There's things that could have been anticipated and there are things that can't be anticipated.
00:22:43
Speaker
If you get the flu, I mean, no one should really blame someone for getting the flu. Usually. Now, if like... all the time they don't wash their hands and they're around sick kids and it's preventable.
00:22:57
Speaker
When you look at moral decision-making, one of the things that people do is they make an assessment, whether it's conscious or unconscious, as to whether it could have been prevented. And if it was preventable, then there's more likely to be blame, right?
00:23:11
Speaker
And so- Is that a fact? has that been research? There's research on this, yeah. That's what people do like in a court of law, like they look at guilt and punishment. And if someone should have known and could have prevented something, then the punishment is greater.
00:23:25
Speaker
And the likelihood of being found guilty is higher for obvious reasons, right? yeah You expect a physician to make good medical decisions, but you would not hold your massage therapist to the same standard necessarily or your buddy, right? Yeah.
00:23:41
Speaker
But that is a big deal. So like if someone misses an appointment because they just can't keep track of their schedule and, you know, it's been going on for a long time and you're not sure why they haven't definitively done something about it versus, you know, if they had to pick up their kid from school because, you know, he got into an accident or something. Mm-hmm.
00:24:01
Speaker
you know, it's going to be a totally different experience for the two people together, but it still goes back to this kind of sense of, do I feel good or bad? You know, in this kind of splitting way, like in psychoanalysis, things are either all good or all bad.
00:24:16
Speaker
What was, what was it you talked about when we were discussing this beforehand, not the idealized and the devalued self, but you used a different expression. Aspirational. And I don't know what the, what I said.
00:24:29
Speaker
Let's see. What did Farrah say? Let me just check the text message. Thread. all right. Which is a form of extended cognition, meaning we can remember things. Aspirational and devalued self. Yeah.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah. Idealized and devalued. I mean, I think aspirational and idealized are related but different. And then there's like the actual self, which is what people often don't really think about because – it can have, it's more of a mixed bag right there. It can have uncomfortable and comfortable parts in the psychoanalytic tradition in which I was trained or raised.
00:25:04
Speaker
This psychiatrist, Harry stack Sullivan was one of the founders and people quote him over and over again, because it makes a lot of sense. He talks about good me, bad me and not me, but there's also like actual me.
00:25:18
Speaker
But I think tracking the actual me is a challenge. it sort of brings up that if we see that as a composite of all the different selves, then there are going to be things that we don't want to accept about ourselves and things that we do. And we may be blind to certain realities.
00:25:42
Speaker
So if we're going to use the term actual self, which is kind of a nice term, I'm okay with it. like it. you know, the lived self, right? The behaved self, like what, you know, and what gets in the way of fully knowing oneself, it seems to me in a simplistic way, there's emotional obstacles, and then there's cognitive or intellectual obstacles, conceptual ah obstacles.
00:26:10
Speaker
But I think if you have a good conceptual framework, the emotional obstacles become clearer. you know, let's say someone comes up with a worksheet.
00:26:22
Speaker
It could be a worksheet that's out of the box, or you could work with a coach or a therapist and make your own kind of map. And it just covers everything that a human being could possibly experience behaviorally and internally, whatever it is.
00:26:36
Speaker
It's not that many things, but you know, it could sound overwhelming, but it's not, there's probably, i don't know, six to 12 basic things, different versions of myself.
00:26:47
Speaker
or different functional areas, right? And then, you know, you fill in the boxes for each of those areas and then you integrate it together. You get like a snapshot, right? a You know, 30,000 feet bird's eye view.
00:26:59
Speaker
And, you know, that's me. Like, I pride myself on being very, very caring And it's not infrequent for me to have people be upset at me because I forget stuff.
00:27:12
Speaker
And, you know, and I can compensate for that by being super nice and caring in other ways. And on some kind of secret mischievous level, I i kind of know I get away with it.
00:27:22
Speaker
No, think so. Not you, not you. But I'm just saying like a lot of people are like, well, I know I'm difficult in some ways, but I'm also very useful and caring. So people often have...
00:27:34
Speaker
and not fully verbalized or articulated understanding of themselves, and you can pull it out. So what I mean is if you have this kind of cognitive map on a pragmatic level, then you could look at each of those areas and you could say, well, how do I feel about each of those areas?
00:27:51
Speaker
You say, feel really good about being caring when it comes to scheduling things and being reliable with showing up on time. You know, I have really complicated feelings about it. And then you can have an emotion map for each of those self states.
00:28:05
Speaker
yeah, you could, but you could only do that if you can accept ah certain truths. i Well, that's the emotional part, right? What makes it hard for certain truths to be accepted.
00:28:19
Speaker
know And I think that for some people, you know, it is linked to a more ah maybe overarching or existential idea that, well, there's such limited time and not wanting to believe that there is wanting to believe we can do more with our days than we actually can.
00:28:37
Speaker
Well, where would that come from? because that would be a serious miscalculation, right? it but And it would be a serious misconception to continue to harbor for many, many years in the face of evidence to the contrary, right? like So you in putting it it, we spoke with Carl Frist in a few podcast episodes ago about active inference.
00:28:58
Speaker
From that point of view, it's like, well, I have a model, right, about what I can do. And I keep getting evidence that is contrary to my model. that I can do more than I think I can do.
00:29:10
Speaker
How come I'm not updating my model with this information?
00:29:16
Speaker
I think it could be a number of reasons, but I do think that model, and we can talk about sort of what is transmitted to people. What do you mean by transmitted? As grow up, like had- when someone sneezes?
00:29:31
Speaker
If you had parents who never said no. ah like how people were raised and ah social learning. And then you grew up with this belief that you should be able to really do everything because you had parents who could do everything, but you have some limitation that they don't have.
00:29:51
Speaker
Could it be that those parents didn't really do everything though? Or it could be, maybe they just had the appearance of doing everything. But I i actually think that that's one, and I don't want to like veer too far off the course here, but I think that one thing that's happened as a result maybe of social media or just being more public with what we do and how we raise kids and is presenting this idea that, you know, we have it all together a real focus on how conscientious we are about each given role.
00:30:31
Speaker
And I think that that can sometimes be a little bit damaging, you know. you Some of it is generational,
Parental Influence on Self-Perception
00:30:39
Speaker
too. I grew up with this idea that when you get older, and maybe it's still true, you realize who your parents really are and that they're actually human and that parents may present a kind of idealized self.
00:30:52
Speaker
And maybe there's some thinking that that is good for the child as a parenting move. to, you know, present an idealized self. So the kid will have the most expectations of themselves.
00:31:04
Speaker
But maybe it also leads to perfectionism and being hypercritical when people fall short of their aspirational self, to the extent that that aspirational self is modeled off of parents, or teachers or, yeah you know, TV shows. Yeah.
00:31:20
Speaker
Or now i think these parasocial relationships like this influencer, like, look at her after her pregnancy. And, you know, you mean like, oh, like, she's in shape, and she's got a washboard stomach. And how did a baby come out of her? And?
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, she looks even better than she did. You know, what is really going on? It reminds me of the wizard of Oz, right? You've got this kind of like God-like figure who's fearsome and terrifying and no one feels like they can beat him.
00:31:55
Speaker
And then behind the screen is kind of a schlubby middle-aged guy. And he's got like an amplifier and some smoke and stuff. It's smoke and mirrors, right? Right. Right.
00:32:05
Speaker
But I think that in the wizard of Oz, everybody sort of understood, oh, well well this is the wizard, right? The wizard is not like the mom friend next door.
00:32:16
Speaker
Whereas I think that part of what makes certain things take off today is their relatability and this feeling like, well, this person is just like me, but they have it a little more together, right? Or maybe the parents are competitive with the kids and they are in denial about that.
00:32:35
Speaker
You know, there's that partnership between parent and child. But if there's competition and envy and the parent is insecure and they're masking it behind sort of being perfect, then that can really do a number on the kid.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah. You know, I think about this self stuff a
Self-Awareness and Personal Development
00:32:51
Speaker
lot. i I've co-authored some books on it. The most recent one is called Making Your Crazy Work For You From Trauma and Isolation to Self-Acceptance and Love.
00:33:01
Speaker
And we really spell out this idea of viewing oneself as being made of different parts that in health and good development work well together.
00:33:14
Speaker
And it's predicated not only on self-awareness and good internal communication, but also on self-compassion. and creating an environment which is not so much based on moral judgment and criticism, but creates more of what Michael Levin, the developmental biologist, calls cognitive glue, like a positive but realistic sense of self within which some of those emotional problems we were talking about earlier are better managed so that there can be better internal communication and over time greater...
00:33:50
Speaker
you know true cohesion, not the illusion of a consistent sense of self, but actual consistency.
00:34:00
Speaker
How does one work with people to help them develop and overcome these internal conflicts, to develop a more accurate view of oneself, better regulation of emotions so that we can sort of design a better way of moving through life?
00:34:17
Speaker
um And how do you think about yourself? I made this really long list of like different ways of thinking about the self, but. Yeah, I think. in terms of my work, right? It's very important for me to be able to accept certain things about myself so that I model that acceptance for other people, um that it is okay, that things are not going to go. people ah you know It's not all going to unravel if we stop beating ourselves up over mistakes that we have made.
00:34:50
Speaker
a lot of times, people who are very tightly wound and anxious and uncomfortably anxious in their day-to-day life. Worry that if they let go a little bit, then everything that they've worked for is just going to go to ship.
00:35:08
Speaker
So you've, you've been around a while in this field. What function do you think it seems to serve for people when they quote unquote, beat themselves up?
00:35:20
Speaker
That there's this fantasy, that they're keeping themselves in line, keeping themselves honest, getting themselves to do their best work, this no pain, no gain idea.
00:35:35
Speaker
Right. But I think what I try to help people see is, okay, there's no pain, no gain. There's also pain and no gain, and um which we have to watch out for.
00:35:52
Speaker
and That something like anxiety or, you know, where people imagine, oh, this is what keeps me up at night finishing this deck is also working against them in other ways that maybe they don't see.
00:36:08
Speaker
Some of that is how they want to appear to others and to themselves. I like to say no gain, no pain.
00:36:18
Speaker
Well, we don't really know. I guess my point is that we have to break it down and really look at it and see what we say a lot is like both sides of the coin, right?
00:36:32
Speaker
Coins have edges too. Yeah. And the edges. One time I flipped a coin in the air and it landed on the floor and it landed on and stayed on its edge. It was the best moment of my life.
00:36:45
Speaker
Probably will never happen again. What are the odds of that? Was it lodged between like two? um I don't know. No, no, no it was legit. If that's what you're insinuating.
00:36:57
Speaker
It just landed on a flat surface and stayed on its edge. I mean, the odds are not very, very high, but they're certainly not impossibly low. Yeah. But people forget that when they use that expression that coins are three dimensional. Yeah. um If you flip a sphere in the air, what are the chances that it will land on the surface?
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, 100 percent. Right. So one way I like to think about there's a lot of different ways to think about self and maybe we'll talk more about self in another podcast.
Time Scales of Self and Goals
00:37:25
Speaker
um But one thing I want to mention is the time scale.
00:37:29
Speaker
So there's like the me in the moment. There's the me over the next few hours. There's the me over the next days to weeks. There's the me over the next months to years.
00:37:40
Speaker
And then there's this kind of lifetime sense of me. And then there's all these different versions of myself that fit within much bigger timescales, like my family, how I represent my family or my ancestors or my culture.
00:37:54
Speaker
And then there's a sense of one one being part of you know, the human species. And then there's all these imaginary selves, spiritual, mystical, psychological. But that time scale, I find really useful for people to make sure that when they're trying to get their the help they need, that they think about the help and what they need short, middle, and long term. It's a very useful executive function perspective. Okay.
00:38:22
Speaker
Short, middle, and long term. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And presumably some of your goals are long term, but the steps to get to those long term goals, number one, occur, you know, near term.
00:38:35
Speaker
And number two, require, you know, reappraisal periodically and adjustment possibly. Right. So how do you work with people around that? Well, i I describe it.
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah. And then then you get into the details of their own particular existence, as well as what are the obstacles to doing those things? Because sometimes there's impaired self-care. if they were you know If they were their parents' caregivers or if they had trauma or adversity as a kid, if they have a negative sense of self,
00:39:05
Speaker
or if their relationship with themself isn't very good, insecure rather than secure. Sometimes there's something neurocognitive like ADHD or a learning difficulty. Sometimes it's just a matter of not having developed the right routines and methods.
00:39:21
Speaker
You know, people will sometimes use in their workplace like a very clear and consistent rubric for planning things like a Gantt chart or a spreadsheet or a calendar, and they don't use it for their own needs.
00:39:34
Speaker
And so a lot of it is triage, you know, and a lot of times people just say, oh, I'm lazy. But that is almost always a smokescreen. And they may have been raised in a tradition that was very moral.
00:39:45
Speaker
Like if you don't do this, you're lazy, right? You're good and you're bad. And so sometimes those developmental factors, which can be numerous, are often emotional obstacles as well as a conceptual obstacle.
00:39:57
Speaker
how they think about themselves. So, you know, it it is a kind of detailed work. Unfortunately, a lot of times it's not as simple as people would like, or at least the people who tend to come into more long-term therapy, the simpler fixes didn't work.
00:40:11
Speaker
Right. Right. They weren't able to just use, you know, this plan that their executive coach worked with them on. How do you work with it? ru Not your specialty.
00:40:28
Speaker
You help people with more important problems. I guess what I think for this type of thing is I try to let it come from the patient and I try to point out what I see and hear and patterns that are emerging and figure out if that sounds right.
00:40:49
Speaker
um And then I would say it's much later where we're figuring out what to do with it. If that's that's how it goes in therapy, which is more exploratory and we have more time.
00:41:02
Speaker
It's a little bit- I work that way as well, but to your to your point about being client driven in a sense, I think that's that could be another podcast is sort of when does a therapist take a more active role and offer more tools and when do they work more of a sounding board and sort of gradually helping people put things together?
00:41:25
Speaker
and when you know when is it necessary and important to try to focus on some of those functional issues nearer term? Right, right. And a lot of it, as you're saying, is kind of stylistic. Mm-hmm.
00:41:38
Speaker
Exactly.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:41:40
Speaker
Exactly. Well, this was fun. Did you have fun? and did. I did. did and Anything else you want to say?
00:41:51
Speaker
or Yeah, thanks for listening. You can find us at doorknobcomments.com. Listen to our other episodes. If you're feeling more cerebral, definitely check out the episode with Carl Friston, as well as the episode with Mark Solms, when they get into some of the details of neuroscience and the particulars of how to think through difficult problems, particularly in Carl's episode. And please feel free to reach out to us. hello at doorknobcomments.com with any comments or suggestions. And if you liked the episode, please leave a positive review. Okay, great. Thanks so much.
00:42:30
Speaker
Remember, the Doorknob Comments podcast is not medical advice. If you may be in need of professional assistance, please seek consultation without delay.
00:42:46
Speaker
Say one, two, three, four.