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Episode 34: The Paradox of Change
119 Plays4 years ago
Fara and Grant discuss reasons it can be so hard to change even when we know what needs to happen, ways to become more aware when we don't know, and ways we can connect our dots to catalyze growth and change.
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Transcript
Embracing Vulnerability
00:00:04
Speaker
accepting our own vulnerability so that we can really realize how important it is to make use of our time. Hi, thanks for listening to Doorknob Comments. I'm Farah White. And I'm Grant Brenner. We are psychiatrists on a mission to educate and advocate for mental health and overall well-being.
00:00:24
Speaker
In addition to the obvious, we focus on the subtle, often unspoken dimensions of human experience, the so-called doorknob comments people often make just as they are leaving their therapist's office. We seek to dispel misconceptions while offering useful perspectives through open and honest conversation. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Please feel free to reach out to us with questions, comments, and requests. Hi, I'm Farrah White. Thanks for joining us today on Doorknob Comments here with my co-host, Grant Brenner.
Facilitating Change
00:00:54
Speaker
Today we are going to talk about change, how to make it happen and what keeps it from happening when we know and understand exactly what we'd like to do differently or how we'd like to be.
00:01:08
Speaker
You know, in some ways it seems like a straightforward question, but in other ways, at least in my experiences as a therapist and as someone who runs a company and does a lot of things, it's a tougher question than it might seem, or it comes up more often than you might think. What keeps us from changing when we know what's wrong?
00:01:32
Speaker
It's one thing when people say, well, I don't really know what I need to do or how do I do that. A lot of times people know what they should do. For example, quote unquote, should. Because a lot of times people feel like they should do something right. And if you don't do what you should do, then you're bad. And then it gets very distracting. You're caught up in self criticism or feeling like you did something wrong. You're mad at yourself or you're feeling ashamed or embarrassed or ineffective.
00:02:01
Speaker
But it's like, okay, I know I should exercise regularly or I know that meditation would help me if I did it 10 minutes a day. I know it's not a matter of time. I mean, I literally have 10 minutes a day.
00:02:15
Speaker
Or I should, you know, go to sleep earlier. I know I should stop looking at my cell phone when I'm about to go to sleep. I know I shouldn't watch TV and fall asleep with the TV on. I know I shouldn't have coffee at 9 PM, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And yet I think actually kicking those habits. I mean, some people seem to be able to do it quite easily and for others it's much harder.
00:02:42
Speaker
And I think it probably boils down to a couple of different things. One is that how deep and how certain our desire is, right? Because when we change one thing, we're giving something up.
Habits and Personal Transformation
00:02:56
Speaker
Maybe that's a mental block though. Maybe it feels like a zero sum game.
00:03:01
Speaker
And of course, a lot of the examples I gave are, are sort of day-to-day exercise, sleep eating, you know, work habits. I know I should, I should do my work sooner. I shouldn't watch Netflix and, you know, start working at midnight and then wish, you know, I had not stayed up all night. But we could also be talking about areas of deep personal change.
00:03:23
Speaker
changing our relationships, taking better care of ourselves, not just changing our lifestyle, but also changing our whole orientation toward ourselves. What sometimes people talk about is self-parenting, like a fundamental change in how we treat ourselves. People are often aware that something just doesn't feel right about how they're living. And they, quote unquote, know they should change, but like they, quote unquote, can't.
00:03:52
Speaker
Well, I think it does come down to sometimes there's comfort in behaviors or habits or relationships that even if we know they're not good for us, they're familiar. And so to change would be to go into this unchartered territory, which, yes, could potentially make things a lot better, but it's going to feel uncomfortable at first. Well, the habit thing comes up a lot.
00:04:22
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of validity to the idea of dialing back the perfectionism, creating routines that are small habits. There's some good neuroscience there that you're building like brain pathways little by little. So it'd be better to do five minutes of exercise twice a week for 10 weeks than to intend to do two hours of exercise four days a week.
00:04:51
Speaker
starting tomorrow for the rest of my life. It'd be better to succeed at five minutes of exercise twice a week for five weeks and build on that than to fail at doing it the right way, quote unquote, the right way all of a sudden and then feeling disappointed in oneself and sort of embarrassed. Right. And I think it's almost demoralizing for people to
00:05:17
Speaker
you know, want to do things, feel unable to, and then it sort of contributes to this negative self view that they are someone who can't exercise, can't find the time or the motivation. It's a vicious cycle. Yeah. On the other hand, like what you're describing would be to be in a state of acceptance about the reality
00:05:43
Speaker
of the time constraints or whatever it is to manage our expectations of what we can actually accomplish. And then I guess to develop an exercise routine accordingly. What does it take to be in such a state of acceptance though? I think it takes a lot of work figuring out not let's say from, and this is where I have issues with all of the sort of external forces
00:06:12
Speaker
that people take in, whether it's from parents or partners or friends about what we should be doing and how we should be living our lives, people sometimes have trouble listening to their own voice and what they really want. And that's, I think, what really good therapy can help with. Why do you think people have trouble listening to their own truth? Because I think that the intrusions from the outside world can sometimes
00:06:41
Speaker
I don't know, instill doubt or they can be louder than our own needs or
Motivations Behind Habits
00:06:48
Speaker
wishes. Do you think people are conditioned to get a sense of self-esteem by sacrificing their own needs and turning themselves toward tending to others in order to feel like they're good, good father, a good mother, a good doctor, a good husband, a good wife, a good friend? You see that everywhere.
00:07:10
Speaker
Right. A lot of therapists, compulsive caregivers, and every family probably has one, not more than one. But I don't know if that's necessarily what always contributes. I think it's other, it could be other things where people just, you're right, don't learn to put their needs first, but also might feel weird saying, Hannah's done, I don't need to be super fit and look incredible. I just want to not have a heart attack if that's,
00:07:38
Speaker
you're cold, you're not going to find that many, or maybe you could, but not that many people who have those motivations, right? Or, you know, with that example, I want to be able to run around and have a good time with my kids or with friends. I want to be able to go for a hike. Yeah.
00:07:58
Speaker
that it's pinned to sort of things that you actually want to do, rather than something scary like, okay, I'm trying to have some remote sort of remote benefit of preventing a heart attack. Or someone close to me died suddenly of a heart attack and underneath my compulsion to exercise and be like super fit is a fear of death.
00:08:20
Speaker
and some kind of unresolved trauma versus kind of like, okay, I like it if I can walk around and not get short of breath. I like it if I can be active and enjoy myself, which isn't necessarily going to be accomplished by running on a treadmill for a couple of hours a day, five days a week. You could be super fit, but what are you going to sort of do with it? How is it going to enhance your quality of life?
00:08:46
Speaker
Or if you're doing it in order to look good for other people and it's not really coming from within in some way, it's coming from insecurity, which I guess is another way of something coming from within, but it's not from a secure place. Right. Right. And that might also not be enough of a lasting
00:09:06
Speaker
motivation, right? Well, you might be conflicted about it, like resentful, like a part of me is like, Oh, I have to, you know, make sure, make sure I keep myself in a certain way so that people, you know, people will think the right way about me. So I'm managing sort of other people's perceptions of me and my image. And then another part of me might be going like, you know, no resentful and oppositional and angry and feeling trapped and
00:09:35
Speaker
So how does that change your answer about what the work of acceptance requires, if at all? Well, I just think it means that we have to acknowledge that there's some conflict there. Like we could want to change 99%, but if we take one side of it and we're not even thinking about that other 1% that just wants to stay the same.
00:09:57
Speaker
1%, right? It's only 1%. It's usually like 30%, right? But you're only only aware of 1% or something. Because we're maybe in some level of self-denial. I mean, denial of self-awareness. Right. Not in the sense of self-deprivation, but
00:10:14
Speaker
We're half aware of who we are.
Rebellion and Self-Destruction
00:10:16
Speaker
And most of us aren't comfortable with feeling self contradictory. And so we try maybe a lot of us I don't know to think of ourselves as being whole and complete, but we might have like a sneaking suspicion
00:10:30
Speaker
that there's more parts or sides to ourselves and we don't make room for that in ourselves. And then if, if we feel self-contradictory, we're afraid we're hypocritical. Maybe people have accused us of being hypocritical, but it can help to say, I don't really want to exercise, but part of me does part of me doesn't. And then people get stuck and then you, you know what you need to do, but you don't do it. Yeah, because it's hard to sort of,
00:10:58
Speaker
disavow this rageful resentful deprived angry right vengeful side yeah because there is something that's quite invigorating about it though it can lead to self-sabotage too i think which isn't antithetical to invigoration right right just acknowledging that that can be enticing right what's enticing about it do you think i don't know just the idea of
00:11:28
Speaker
doing everything bad, right? Eating what we shouldn't eat, sleeping when we shouldn't sleep, watching TV that we shouldn't be watching. It's like a little bit of a rebellion. Like the cliche joke at this point would be paging Dr. Freud, the idea being that it's like a rebellion against some kind of internalized parental or societal morality. Right. Right. And I think that's something that is at times kind of glamorized, not so much anymore, people
00:11:58
Speaker
seem to see the merits in like a healthier lifestyle. But there's a little bit of a shift. Yeah, but rock stars. It's not as cool to be so self destructive. Nowadays, it's more like I'm suffering from bipolar disorder. And it's not so glamorous. Yeah, and it's tough and I have to work at it and I green juice and you know, meditate and
00:12:24
Speaker
that is the way, I think, to a longer and happier, healthier life. But I do think that there, if you look at, say, certain writers who are considered brilliant and their substance use and philandering and whatever else sort of burnished their image. Burnished? Burnished, yeah. Seems like something aspirational. Like it's a positive thing. Yeah.
00:12:51
Speaker
It's sexy or it's marketable. Yeah. A lure. Right. But then eventually it catches up in these ways. Right. Right. How does it catch up? Well, I was just thinking about, um, you know, like Hemingway, there was this, I was watching this six part series on PBS. That was incredible. And it talks about how for a period of time, the drinking and the women,
00:13:21
Speaker
you know, that he had this sort of idyllic life and lifestyle that, you know, was in the end what probably killed him. It may be that he was also quite depressed. And I think he ended his own life. He did. And there was a lot of suicide in his family. But I think there are a lot of people who are depressed who can get treatment and recover, especially if they have resources and
00:13:48
Speaker
Right. So I think where we started with this part of the conversation was that self-destruction can have an allure. It can be hyped up by the media. From the outside, it might look really cool. But more and more, we hear stories about where from the inside, it's not quite as appealing. And I think the idea might be that if our role models and archetypes change of what is
00:14:18
Speaker
a cool, exciting way to live, then it may be easier for people to make changes in their own life because they may not take as much pleasure from being rebellious when it's at their own expense. Right. I do really like when people who have some sort of fame or celebrity are open about their struggles and what they go through and deal with or their own treatment.
00:14:46
Speaker
And I know that's something that probably would have never happened 20 years ago. Yeah, we're seeing that a lot I'm thinking about Britney Spears and her conservatorship. But I'm also thinking about a lot of the recent athletes Naomi Osaka, and even some of the people who have said you know I can't compete in the next.
00:15:05
Speaker
you know, whatever the big athletic event is in their field because my knee is messed up and I need to recover. And there's been a whole slew of those recently in the media. And it's, it's really unusual in a way, it's striking to me because it's like a kind of a coming out of the closet, where these elite athletes are saying I need time to heal, and I need to take care of myself because I want to keep competing as long as possible. Whereas 10, 20 years ago, maybe even more recently, they would
00:15:34
Speaker
just quote unquote suck it up and maybe hurt their careers or hurt their bodies for that matter. We're also seeing it occurs to me more athletes, particularly male athletes coming out as gay. There was recently someone in the NHL who was the first NHL player and someone recently in the NFL for football. And I wonder if it's connected with sort of norming vulnerability and whether
00:16:01
Speaker
you know, not being ashamed of being allowed to be vulnerable, being allowed to grieve.
Athletes and Cultural Shift
00:16:06
Speaker
That's what I was hinting at with self-acceptance. I think when people, when we accept ourselves, we undergo a feeling of loss and there's a grieving process which partially has to do with accepting our own vulnerability and maybe ultimately mortality so that we can really realize how important it is to make use of our time. Absolutely.
00:16:30
Speaker
that these athletes who are under an enormous amount of pressure to perform and to do press and to be role models. And to sacrifice their bodies. Right. To sacrifice their bodies, to sacrifice their emotional and mental well-being. Their private lives. Yeah. I just see it as the greatest sort of role modeling of all, to be able to say, hey, I had to step out.
00:16:58
Speaker
Um, I'm sure there are people that are disappointed, but the message that gets communicated to fans is, Hey, my, I'm more important than a tournament or then Olympics. Like I have to put my health first. And so if they can do it, even, you know, in spite of they're like the super elite athletes, you know, then maybe it will allow one person to just call out of work one day when they need a, you know,
00:17:26
Speaker
take some time for themselves or they're not feeling up for it.
Balancing Work and Well-being
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder how it might affect fans too, because they can get pretty rowdy. And of course there's some terrible tragedies of fans coming to great harm bodily, you know, that's a separate issue. Maybe is the way the body is viewed in sports.
00:17:47
Speaker
But it's not so different. If you're working super hard at a job and you're not sleeping enough or you're not setting aside time for things that are important to you outside of work, then if you're not sleeping enough, that's very common. You're hurting your body. And I think there's a way where society really says it's OK for you to hurt yourself. Like it says, on one hand, our society says, don't hurt yourself.
00:18:15
Speaker
wellness, wellness, wellness, and don't hurt yourself, don't end your life. On the other hand, tacitly, it says, work harder, be more productive, make more money, be well known, impress people. We can do those things up to a certain point, whereas the point at which we decide, okay, we have to go to sleep tonight.
00:18:37
Speaker
Or the point of no return where you just get used to not going to sleep, but you're saying sort of something like if people hit rock bottom, then they're forced to change. Like they can't keep going. Right. Or forced to reflect that this is not the life that they want. And for people that are super, super high achieving, I think they need to be making sure that they're achieving the right thing. Cause we have to design the lives that we want. And.
00:19:07
Speaker
If they're achieving, you know, they're on partner tracks somewhere and working really hard and things are going so well career wise, but they haven't gone on a date in the past three and a half years. Um, they may look back on that and wish that their life were fuller or more balanced.
00:19:29
Speaker
You know, one of the things I find useful here, though I have this open question about whether people can be helped to change without needing to reach sort of those external sort of rock bottoms. You know, can therapy actually help people realize what they need faster? But what I'm thinking about with the example you just gave, the way we sort of sell ourselves out,
00:19:55
Speaker
we make commitments, we commit our future selves to things without being able to fully consent to it. So you take on a job. And then like you said, a few years down the road, you look back and you go like, gee, I don't know why I agreed to that. I kind of realized at the time,
00:20:15
Speaker
that this would require a lot of sacrifices or it could really, you know, maybe it would lead to all my relationships falling apart, but I didn't really know what it meant until I actually, until it was too late, or maybe it's not too late, but hopefully not too late until I started seeing the impact it was having. Why do you think people get locked into seeing things a certain way when they've say like made a commitment and recognize that it's only kind of half working for them?
00:20:45
Speaker
but they can't turn around or disappoint people. Yeah, I was going to say, I think a lot of it is about a fear of disappointing others, a fear of disappointing that past self, who said, oh, sure, you can go to school and work full time and be present with family and friends, even if that wasn't realistic. But I also think that it comes down to, and this is something that comes up a lot,
00:21:15
Speaker
with the birth of a baby or, or some similar life change where people don't know how they're going to feel. They think they're going to feel one way or going to be able to manage something. And then it turns out not to be the case. And I think that's very disappointing of course, but a lot of times we're cut off from that. And I think that's one of the roots of some, you know, postpartum
00:21:42
Speaker
depression and just these things that should feel one way, but they feel another way. That happens, I think, in a lot of different types of achievement. When we meet our goals, there's this sort of, there can be this sadness that, oh, it's not everything it cracked up to be. And medicine is that way too, right? You sacrifice time to take the MCAT thinking, oh, well, it'll be great to like be in med school. And then
00:22:11
Speaker
you're in med school you can't wait to be a resident and then when you're in residency you're like oh well when I'm in attending my life is just going to be so awesome. Do you think people need to do you think we need to deceive ourselves sometimes in order to move forward with things that are challenging? You know in other words do you think if people really knew what they were getting into they might make different decisions? No one would go to med school or babies.
00:22:37
Speaker
Well, I'm not sure about that, but I think that's the fear. I know some people apply to med school, for example, or grad school or for a law degree or anything really challenging. And more and more, I hear stories that during the application process, they're told, well, listen, this is what you're really getting into. Are you sure you still want to do it? And of course, you can't fully consent to it because you really don't know what something's going to be like. Right. Exactly.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's such a difference between saying, Oh, you're going to take a 24 hour call or, and you're going to have 15 admissions or whatever it is. Or you're going to be up all night with a screaming newborn.
Career Path and Self-Discovery
00:23:20
Speaker
If you haven't experienced that and experiencing it at each stage in life is different than how do you really know how it's going to affect you? And, and can we give ourselves permission to say,
00:23:33
Speaker
Well, I want to try my best, but if this isn't for me, I need to get some help with it, call in reinforcements, you know, transfer to a different type of program. I don't know. Did you ever, do you feel like speaking about your experience in surgery or not really? Well, I don't think that applied. Okay. I worked very long hours as a surgical resident.
00:23:55
Speaker
110, 120 hours a week, sometimes on call every other night. It was prior to the regulations that were put in place. But I didn't leave surgery because I thought, oh, like this lifestyle right now is terrible. Though I thought it wasn't helping me at the time. I thought, you know, down the road, what I would end up doing wouldn't have been
00:24:21
Speaker
Terrible, I was anticipating being a specialist in a relatively manageable surgical field that involved a decent amount of working directly with patients around psychological issues that appealed to me. The reason I left surgery is because as much as I loved some aspects of surgery, I really, really wanted to work with this sort of broad range of the human experience. So the way it applies is I might have had I been a little more conventionally oriented.
00:24:51
Speaker
said, okay, well, that's good. I'll be a surgical sub specialist. I'll, I'll make a great living. You know, I'll have a good work life balance. Um, but the day to day work, I didn't think I would feel sort of as into, as I knew I loved psych, but not everyone knows what they love. Right. But what was it like for you? Once you realized that and knew that you needed to make a change, like telling your program director and your co-residents and
00:25:20
Speaker
I didn't feel too guilty about it. I knew it would be okay. I also knew that they would easily replace me because I was in a very desirable subspecialty and they did. I did wanna make sure I wasn't leaving anyone in the lurch though. So I did decide about a quarter of the way into my second year of surgery that I wasn't going to stay in surgery, but I finished the entire year.
00:25:47
Speaker
It was important for me for my wanting to have a sense of completion because I did like it a lot. And I didn't want to feel like I had left people without support. I wanted to be doing my part for the team that I felt that I was a part of. Yeah, I think it might have been more difficult for other people or that people don't necessarily that they're not able to perceive themselves.
00:26:15
Speaker
as replaceable, which might be sort of defensive in certain jobs. Well, if people are getting, say, too much of their self-esteem from their work and their sense of self-efficacy, more particularly, sense of self-efficacy is important for people. And self-esteem is dependent on self-efficacy more than the other way around. Then work can mean too much.
00:26:45
Speaker
feeling sort of too important to everyone can become a burden in your personal life as well. If part of your thing is for everyone to need you a lot, then that can get stale. For sure. And so I do think that there are probably a lot of people listening who are thinking, yeah, I don't want to always be needed, even though it sometimes feels good. It's also burdensome. And how do we set limits around that?
00:27:15
Speaker
My father would always say everything in moderation.
Self-Actualization and Obligations
00:27:20
Speaker
And so we get a lot of positive things from helping others. It's kind of wired into us on a species level. There's even some research I remember reviewing a few years ago on self-actualization. Some listeners may have heard of Maslow's
00:27:40
Speaker
Pyramid or triangle hierarchy hierarchy. Yeah, in the traditional model at the bottom of the hierarchy is basic needs food, shelter, and then there's like education and at the very tippy top is something that he called self actualization, which is often associated with kind of the 60s.
00:27:59
Speaker
And like spiritual realization and we're doing what you're passionate about and stuff like that. And I remember the research that I read, they asked people to actually talk about what gave them a feeling of self actualization. And it turned out to be status.
00:28:16
Speaker
and kin care. So status like doing well in your profession and kin care, like taking care of people around you was kind of a distant second in a way. Though, of course, you can get status and be a caregiver. Yeah, I think a lot of people get status by being caregivers. Well, a certain kind of status and you make yourself important and irreplaceable. And, you know, it's it's a way to have like a security in the community to be needed.
00:28:46
Speaker
and useful, but it can go overboard, of course, is what we're saying. Yeah, I think that awareness of that and of our motivations behind it, that we might need to find other things and other ways to feel, I don't know, happy with ourselves.
00:29:04
Speaker
You know, some people listening might be afraid that if they start feeling like they're giving too much or they're not paying enough attention to their own needs, that they're afraid that maybe they'll end up becoming callous or checked out or turn into bad people or uncaring people or they won't work hard enough or they won't go to med school if they want to. It's very hard for people to really know what we want, I think. Right. It reminds me of this idea
00:29:33
Speaker
you know, when we sort of take on obligations, right? That our obligations might reflect something about what we really want, like hidden desires. So that there's something that feels burdensome, but also good. Can you say a little more? Like when we take on certain roles at work or with friends or even wanting to be the one that's there for everybody that shows up for people. That's something that I hear a lot.
00:30:04
Speaker
in my practice that nobody, it's almost shameful to forget a birthday or disappoint a friend. I know you don't feel that way. Shameful? Well, I'm just saying. I can feel that way. Really? OK. I thought maybe it was a more gender-based thing. I don't know. But there are a lot of guys, I think, who see themselves as very social and affable and having a lot of friends.
00:30:33
Speaker
Well I find it hard to remember birthdays, I think for developmental reasons, because of difficulties that I experienced in my family of origin growing up around birthdays and in my family environment. So it's hard for me to keep track of individual birthdays sometimes.
00:30:51
Speaker
And then some people are very, very exquisitely sensitive if you forget their birthday. Other people, they're kind of like, that's fine. And then sometimes you meet someone who's like, birthdays don't mean anything to me at all, which I always wonder about as well. But I would like to remind you that I know that birthdays happen. I know that people have birthdays. Every year. Every year. And I'd like to point out that every day is the beginning of a new year.
00:31:21
Speaker
It's true. And that if you had been born on Mercury, you would have a birthday like every 20 seconds or something. But the days are a year, and the years are a day on Mercury. And how could you plan all those parties? That really is my point. Yeah, but there are some people who would try to find a way to do it. Of course. They would bend over backwards, and they would step up. Right.
00:31:51
Speaker
Isn't there a term in Yiddish for someone who is like a quintessentially excellent homemaker and hostess? Yes, Vallabusta. Vallabusta, you taught me that word. Really? Can't believe you didn't know that word. It's like the Martha Stewart of the shtetl. The Martha Stewart of the shtetl.
00:32:11
Speaker
a balabusta. But what people don't realize is kind of what goes on behind the scenes as we're sort of saying about athletes maybe or famous people where there's pressure to maintain a persona of always being like perky and energetic and happy and so on. One of the thoughts they have about what makes it so hard for people to change is that in a lot of different ways we have partial knowledge or partial awareness of various important things.
00:32:39
Speaker
I came up with a list of those things. So I think I organized them in order of like how basic they are.
00:32:47
Speaker
So the first one was I called how development proceeds. Yeah. So that's like, are we aware of how development works? That's like the user's manual to your personality. And, uh, I was thinking of a psychoanalyst named beyond B I O N who talked a lot about how people have a basic psychoanalytic function of their personality, which is that you shepherd your own development.
00:33:11
Speaker
And if you weren't sort of raised to raise yourself to be a good self parent, then you have maybe a partial knowledge of how to help yourself to grow. And so people have a lot of trouble, you know, doing what they need because they don't even have a basic idea of how they're supposed to develop, which makes it also hard maybe to be a parent or maybe a manager.
Strategies for Personal Change
00:33:35
Speaker
Right. And I think everyone has, you know, is born with a different operating system. So.
00:33:42
Speaker
For some people, drastic change, going cold turkey is going to be the way to do it. And for others, it might be cutting back slowly. But I think being able to play around with it from a place of curiosity and compassion rather than these stringent demands probably would be more helpful in just understanding that even the smallest change over time
00:34:11
Speaker
can will grow. Yeah, or sometimes small changes reverberate quickly and surprisingly. So it's kind of like, you're, you're, I'm hearing you say something like, learn how you work, right? And learn how to sort of scaffold your own development. Right. There's some trial and error. For sure. And when people say things to me, like, Oh, well, meditation doesn't work for me. Right. I try to honor that. Oh, and
00:34:41
Speaker
you know, what did you like about it? And what didn't you and I don't assume that something, one thing is going to work for everyone. Well, meditation is a funny example, or medication, meditation, I don't know, like either one, but I wouldn't expect that people will respond the same way. Yeah, of course, everyone is different. But of course, we're all pretty much the same. Okay.
00:35:08
Speaker
I once went to a talk that the Dalai Lama gave, though I'm not a Buddhist, but he started out by saying everyone is pretty much the same, you know, to two eyes and nose, you know, of course, there are exceptions. And we're all born a little bit differently and raised a little bit differently. But our basic motivational systems are the same. And if you learn how yours work, and if you really take in the idea that part of your job as a human being is to
00:35:34
Speaker
ensure your own development. That's a pretty significant responsibility, but an important one to embrace, I think. Well, you sort of touched on that second part of your list, the self-knowledge part. Yeah, it flows into self-knowledge, right? Yeah, totally. How can you scaffold your own development if you don't really have a good grasp of yourself? Right. And if you don't know that nobody can see their own blind spots, but we can get a sense of what they might be.
00:36:04
Speaker
What do you mean by that? Meaning if we have, let's say a block, um, around a certain topic, it's almost impossible for someone to just decide to remove it. It's defense and it's there for a reason. Oh, you mean sort of in the moment. Yeah. See, I would say, I would say no one can see their own blind spots until they can.
00:36:28
Speaker
And I think a lot of times when people are, in a crude sense, anxious about who they are or how well they know themselves, we tend to get stuck in the moment and think, it's always going to be this way. Like, I'll never be able to see my own blind spots. It's like, yeah, actually you can if, you know, but do you want to or what will that mean? And how will it feel, right?
00:36:52
Speaker
And okay, it's very easy to have self-knowledge about all the wonderful, wonderful things about who I am, but it's much perhaps harder to have self-knowledge about the things that aren't so wonderful. I was joking today about pickled vegetables. What about them?
00:37:08
Speaker
It's like a pickled vegetable is like talking to a bunch of people and the pickled vegetable is going like, do you guys smell garlic? I swear it smells like garlic. You know, and of course pickled vegetables are usually pickled in garlic among other things. And that flows into the emotional awareness. Well, I think a lot of times that's the pivot because you can have really, really good sort of intellectual awareness. You're just in the wrong, what they call the wrong register.
00:37:35
Speaker
you're in an intellectual register and you could write a book about your psychology and what you need to change and why you are the way you are. You could even have a whole section in that book about how it affects you emotionally, but you're in this intellectual framework and it doesn't actually precipitate change because in some sense people are disconnecting themselves from where the action is in their own psyche. I think the feeling
00:38:05
Speaker
being attuned to the feelings within ourselves. Understand why things affect us the way that they do. It's not always like you're- Some people are scared of their own feelings.
00:38:20
Speaker
where they've been scared by other people when they show feelings, hold, they can't cry, or not had someone, especially when you're younger, say, well, how are you feeling about that? It's okay to be embarrassed. It's okay to fail. Quite the opposite. Right. And usually in therapy, we learn to feel and name our feelings.
00:38:46
Speaker
And to explore what they mean. Right. So, which can be really frankly nauseating for a lot of people. You can. Yeah. Right. But ultimately it's helpful for people to know how they feel about something. The feelings can be misleading too. Feelings are facts, but they might be their alternative facts. Well, it's important information to be able to work with. It's not, it's not either or, you know, you notice you have a feeling.
00:39:10
Speaker
And then then you join it with your understanding of yourself. And then you can have good, you know, what's called reflective function or mentalization, you can exercise proper self control, you can regulate your emotions. Yeah, it's very powerful. Right. I do think it's important, though, to acknowledge whatever one is feeling.
00:39:32
Speaker
Um, in that moment, and even if they're not really in danger, but it feels that way, or they're panicking to be able to sit with that, to understand that it comes from somewhere and where is it coming from? What kind of.
00:39:44
Speaker
information is giving us? I think that's right. In order to be able to do that, you have to have some capacity to hold those feelings and talk with yourself about them without needing to jump one way or the other, either to necessarily believe them or to reject them.
Interpersonal Dynamics
00:40:01
Speaker
And a lot of times, if you stay with a feeling, it changes. So the initial feeling maybe is anger, and then you slow down and you realize actually, quote unquote, underneath the anger is hurt.
00:40:11
Speaker
And then you realize you were hurt. And then it's very different to feel hurt by someone than to be mad at someone, for example. That's a good example, because it leads into this sort of interpersonal piece. When we changed, you know, we're not changing in a vacuum, it has implications for our relationships. And if we decide we're going to, you know, be the type of person that says, no, when we don't want to do something,
00:40:38
Speaker
it's gonna echo through in some way and we have to be okay with that. Or you say, let's talk about what that looks like. But the pressure of having someone ask something can often lead people to not be curious and to either feel like they have to say yes or no. A very powerful thing I think we talked about a podcast or two ago was something like, well, that sounds very appealing to me, but my schedule is very packed, let me think about it.
00:41:05
Speaker
Or even if it's okay to have some things that are just yours. Right. And you're not a bad person because we're rigid. Because, listen, this is this is my private thing for my own use. We were talking about
00:41:22
Speaker
sharing technology, a microphone or a headset, where it's like, well, you know what, this is mine. And that doesn't mean I don't care about you. And we can get you a similar headset, but this one I need. And that's why it is here. And it doesn't make that person a bad person. Or rigid. It's totally reasonable, arguably. Different families function in different ways.
00:41:52
Speaker
Right? And so if someone says, well, I need this now, and they just grab a charger and go. Well, how come there's not enough chargers? I have a theory about this. There's never enough chargers. That's like, where did the socks go in the dryer? Totally. But I have a theory that you have to reach charger saturation.
00:42:14
Speaker
It's like chemistry. So you keep getting more and more chargers. And at some point, the concentration of chargers in the house is high enough that there's always a charger. Yeah, that's like antithetical to everything in, you know, Marie Kondo and sustainability. So you're just going to have chargers everywhere. Well, I mean, I would assume Marie Kondo would say if you have five people in a perfect world, you have five chargers and they never break. Yeah. And they never get misplaced.
00:42:44
Speaker
But in other worlds that might be perfect in more messy ways, you've got 20 chargers and there's always a charger. And maybe they're in a drawer or something like that and they're all tangled up and it takes a few minutes, but there's always a charger. You've reached charger saturation.
00:43:07
Speaker
It's like receptors in the brain. There has to be enough molecules around to occupy enough of the receptors. And then no one has to go without. But it's not for everything. It's only for chargers. It's only for things that you squabble over. Those things, you can eliminate the interpersonal situation by just reaching charger saturation or headphone saturation. It's like, OK, if you have the best pair of headphones in the house and everyone wants them,
00:43:34
Speaker
And you have the luxury of being able to afford it. Get a few pairs of those. Yeah. I don't know if that's what it's really about in that case. What do you think it's really about, maybe? Trying to sabotage resentment over someone. Well, I don't want to get too deeply into it. You don't want to get too personal. Yeah.
00:44:02
Speaker
But there often is something else. I agree with you. And I think we can sort of generalize this for listeners that a lot of times when we do something, we get stuck on something or we end up feeling like one way or the other way is the only
Avoidance and Future Planning
00:44:14
Speaker
way. When you solve the problem, like, OK, just, hey, why don't you just get a whole bunch of chargers, get a whole bunch of headphones? You won't have a problem. Then you don't have that problem. That problem was a symptom.
00:44:26
Speaker
of fighting over the headphones, then the real problem, which you have sort of half, you want to be half aware of, then it's on the surface. Right. Which goes back to this idea of what do you need to change? You need to really feel what's going on and know what's going on. Yeah, exactly. Then you have to be willing to kind of do this sort of whatever your self-acceptance, which requires this sometimes difficult choices that we'd like to maybe avoid. Yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
So like avoidance of change somehow is important. There was one, I guess, one other thing I thought about was the future, like a partial knowledge of the future, which requires, like you're saying, being curious and self compassionate and very planful thinking about worst case scenarios as well as things that you want to happen so that we can really think through.
00:45:19
Speaker
and really use the mind that, in my opinion, nature has endowed us with to think about what we want down the road to have a healthier dialogue with our future selves.
00:45:34
Speaker
then we would otherwise have if we were in a state of fear or shame or avoidance or partial knowledge, partial emotional awareness. So being able to really grapple with our thinking about the future and our feeling about the future, I think is, it's very hard for people to do. It's hard, I think, because it's so fraught with fantasy or anxiety. Well, fantasy is a good thing, right?
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, it can be. It can be a really good thing because it can tell us what we want in a perfect world, get as close to that as possible. But there's something scary about it as well. And I think just being able to kick the can down one path and then another path mentally is helpful. Being able to think through different paths. Kick the can to me usually means avoiding and procrastinating, if I understand that idiom. Yeah, kicking the can down the road is like putting something off.
00:46:31
Speaker
Oh, I thought it meant just like explore. I'm not sure. I'll check that after we're finished today. But I believe kicking the can down the road means to hunt, like not to go for the touchdown. Oh, I thought it meant like a nice meander. But that explains a lot about my interpretation. I love looking up words. To avoid or delay dealing with a problem. U.S.
00:46:58
Speaker
So what I was meaning was to just explore, to meander. To design through exploration, like to use your imagination properly, perhaps. But to think about all the different possibilities and ask, maybe what are the pros and cons and keep an open mind to let yourself think things. And just to have it be exploratory, I guess, is what I'm saying.
00:47:26
Speaker
But at some point, you have to put your nickel down. You have to make a decision. And people sometimes have trouble closing off possibilities. That's one of my sort of closing thoughts, is that a lot of times people have trouble, you know, the fear of missing out. Like, well, if I pick this, then I close that door, another door opens. But what if, you know, the other thing was better?
00:47:51
Speaker
And a lot of times the future ties in with feelings about mortality, which the psychological field that deals with that is called terror management theory. And there's plenty of research that what's called mortality salience determines a great deal of the decisions we make in life. I think particularly regarding the future in some way.
Conclusion and Engagement
00:48:12
Speaker
Okay. Well, maybe that's a good topic for another episode. We have to wrap up right now. Yeah.
00:48:19
Speaker
We would love to hear your thoughts about change and challenges with change. So drop us a line. Yeah. Thank you for listening for your time today. Yep. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Dornop comments. We're committed to bringing you new episodes with great guests. Please take a moment to share your thoughts. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. You can also find us on Instagram at Dornop comments.
00:48:45
Speaker
Remember, this podcast is for general information purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any other type of medicine. This is not a substitute for professional and individual treatment services and no doctor-patient relationship is formed. If you feel that you may be in crisis, please don't delay in securing mental health treatment. Thank you for listening.