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Overcoming Unhealthy Emotional Patterns w/ Reneau Peurifoy
230 Plays1 year ago
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Reneau Peurifoy is an internationally known author, therapist, and teacher. Over his four-decade career he has written books that have been translated into multiple languages. He has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs as well as on many podcasts. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA), the nation’s primary organization for anxiety-related problems, has invited him to speak at eleven of their national conferences.
He hold a master’s degree in counseling and is the author of three previous books: "Anxiety, Phobias, and Panic: Taking Charge and Conquering Fear," "Overcoming Anxiety: From Short-Term Fixes to Long-Term Recovery," and "Anger: Taming the Beast." He was in private practice for twenty years as a marriage and family therapist specializing in anxiety disorders then retired from private practice to teach at a local college in Sacramento, California. His YouTube channel features videos on a variety of practical life skills and he has appeared on numerous shows. He now spends his time writing and speaking.
His latest book is “Why You Feel the Way You Do”: https://amzn.to/48tBoHw
Connect with Reneau:
https://www.whyemotions.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Renault Purfoy
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to Connecting Minds, Christian Jornoff here. Today's guest is Renault Purfoy. He is an internationally known author, therapist and teacher over his four decade career. He has written books that have been translated into multiple languages.
00:00:18
Speaker
He has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs as well as on many podcasts. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America, the nation's primary organization for anxiety-related problems, has invited him to speak at 11 of their national conferences.
Exploring 'Why You Feel the Way You Do'
00:00:34
Speaker
He holds a master's degree in counseling and is the author of three previous books, Anxiety, Phobias and Panic, Taking Charge and Conquering Fear, Overcoming Anxiety from Short-Term Fixes to Long-Term Recovery, and Anger, Taming the Beast. Today we're going to be discussing his fourth book, Why You Feel the Way You
Journey from Animal Behavior to Therapy
00:00:56
Speaker
Do.
00:00:56
Speaker
Renaud was in private practice for 20 years as a marriage and family therapist, specializing in anxiety disorders, then retired from private practice to teach at a local college in Sacramento, California. He also has a YouTube channel that has videos on a variety of practical life skills. Welcome, Renaud. That's a very impressive resume. Well, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
00:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, so let's start with your background and then we can talk about your latest book. What part you want. Well, how did you get into the work that you do? Let's start there. Well, I've always been interested in animal behavior as a kid. Both my parents came from farming backgrounds. And so I raised rabbits and chickens. We had the dog and a parrot and cats. And occasionally we'd raise ducks or other things.
00:01:53
Speaker
And we trained our animals. I didn't have my chickens where they could, you know, train chickens on the block where they could get up on little boxes and stuff because we have grapes.
Understanding Anxiety: Threat and Needs
00:02:01
Speaker
They do anything for grapes. And so when I went into college, I majored in what then was called entheology, which is animal behavior. And
00:02:12
Speaker
Conrad Lorenz had just done all of his work with imprinting. And so that type of stuff was just still brand new and very fascinated by it. Uh, taught school for a few years and then decided I wanted to move into counseling. I had a friend of mine who was a counselor, uh, MFT marriage, family therapist. And, uh, the more I talked with him and some of the school work I did, I just said, yeah, that's what I want to do. Cause I like to work with people. I like to help people. And so I thought that would be a good thing to do. So I got my master's in counseling and.
00:02:41
Speaker
You know, the rest is history, uh, worked with anxiety disorders, as you mentioned for a long time. And, uh, it's, it's very rewarding. I knew when I got into, um, private practice that I did not want to work with substance abuse because I like to win. And the nice thing about, uh, anxiety disorders is, you know, people get better. You give them the right tools, give them understanding for what's going on and anxiety, no longer, they're no longer having panic attacks. Now it just becomes a normal part of life. And that,
00:03:09
Speaker
they begin to understand what the message is when anxiety comes up. I think that's so important is to understand that emotions are just messages. They're messages about needs or wants that are either being threatened or taken care
Approaches to Managing Anxiety
00:03:22
Speaker
of. And once you kind of see that and start paying attention to it, then they don't stay in the background creating all kinds of anxiety or other stuff that goes on, you know, stress, stress reactions, things of that nature.
00:03:34
Speaker
So yeah, let's talk about anxiety for a minute. So you kind of alluded it. So how do you approach anxiety? My guess is the first step is acknowledging the emotion and not repressing it. That's causing it, right? Right. And of course, people I worked with had panic attacks. That was very common. And I understand that anxiety and anger are two sides of a coin.
00:03:59
Speaker
they both, we have to do a threat. And so partly, it's just to identify what is the threat, then how do I manage
Dealing with Panic Attacks
00:04:06
Speaker
it? So like with anxiety, again, there's a lot of things you can do with it or that you do with it. People with panic disorder as a group, they tend to have very reactive bodies. You know, some people are tall, some people are short, some people average height.
00:04:21
Speaker
And so your reactivity or the sensitivity of your nervous system is the same way. And so these people just tended to be more like a house where the wire is not quite up to code. So they pile on too much stuff and then they would get, you know, basically a stress reaction. The old fight or flight would generate the anxiety in the background.
00:04:40
Speaker
So a lot of times it was just a matter of once they got the excessive anxiety under control, understanding that, again, anxiety is a message I need to keep short accounts. A lot of times get somebody come in after doing really well for six months or a year and they'll say, you know, I had a panic attack. I don't understand why that happened. So I'd say, let's go through the checklist.
00:05:02
Speaker
How's your partner doing? How's your kids doing? How's work going on? Friendships, life goals, anything going on? That's different. And they say, well, this happened, but it wasn't that big a deal. That says, okay, back up the truck here. I think I've even identified what's going on. This is a big deal because you're having a lot of anxiety over it. So you need to decide what you're gonna do about it. And that's a lot of what really managing emotions is about is just becoming a realist that sometimes
00:05:30
Speaker
Life is unpleasant. You don't like what's going on, but you still got to decide what am I going to do about it? How am I going to manage this issue in my life? And of course, a lot of times it has to do with relationship stuff, you know, that people don't want to acknowledge. One of the things that's very common with anxiety is something we call emotional reasoning. And that's where you use your emotions to judge whether something is
00:05:55
Speaker
real or not, as opposed to your reasoning side. And to go back to, again, panic disorder, one of the fears that they often had was passing out because they would hyperventilate. And so I would say, so what are the odds that you might pass out when you go into the store? And they'd say something like, oh, 50%, maybe 60%. So then I'd say, so how often have you passed out in your life? Well, I've never passed out. So based on reality, the odds are very low.
00:06:23
Speaker
you know, based on their emotions, it was very high. So that's the first thing that people that do a lot of what we call negative anticipation or what if thinking do is they overestimate how likely this is going to happen. And the second thing is what
Emotional Reasoning and Reality
00:06:36
Speaker
are the consequences? Well, if I passed out on a scale of one to 10, that would be probably a 15 or 20. That's the worst thing I can imagine. So I say, okay, let's, let's, let's put at a 10, you know, having your arm cut off or your kid get killed or having a wasting disease.
00:06:51
Speaker
Now how bad is passing out in the store? Well, maybe it's only a one or two, you know, cause really no serious thing will happen to me. I'll just be embarrassed. Okay. So now let's come up with some things you can do to prevent it and some things to do if it were to actually happen. Okay. You could sit down so you don't hurt yourself. You could say something like, well, you know, I'm, I'm really okay. Just let me sit here for a moment and then, you know, collect your stuff and leave. And you know, you boil all that stuff down into a simple,
00:07:19
Speaker
maybe one to three sentences, you know, I've never passed out, it's not gonna be that bad. I've got some things I've thought about I can do and I know how to prevent it through breathing techniques and things of that nature. And then every time the thought comes up, then you hit it with your coping self statement. The self talk aspect is so, so important because what keeps a lot of the stuff going is again, the things you tell yourself and a lot of times they're not real or they're a lot of what we call
00:07:48
Speaker
should must rules, you know, the way the world should be or the way I should be. And one of the things you'll see that people do is they'll get into what we call circular or what I call circular questioning. I don't understand how could that happen? I mean, you see this on the news all the time. When something bad happens, they'll find somebody who's freaking out. They'll stick the microphone in front of them. And oh, I don't understand what's there. Why does it happen? How could this happen? Well, it's an accident or something or somebody, you know, there's some crazy person or something like that.
00:08:17
Speaker
We understand why it happened, really. We just don't want to accept it that that's part of life. So identify this is the way I would want it to happen, but that's not what's going on. So again, what am I going to do about it? You know, how can I protect myself? If it were to happen, what could I do? People who deal with, you know, anxiety and stuff, well, they kind of do this just naturally without even thinking about it. And again, if you grew up in a family where this was modeled for you,
00:08:48
Speaker
that's the way you approach life. If you grew up in a family where there was a lot of this, you know, Shidmas thinking or a lot of this catastrophizing of events and things of that nature, then
00:08:58
Speaker
A lot of times that's where people learn to do that, that sort of behavior. So it's a, it's a matter of just learning how to talk to yourself differently and how to just approach life more. Yeah. I used to say, I'm a positive realist. Again, sometimes I don't like what happens, but I
Handling Anger and Response Patterns
00:09:12
Speaker
got to deal with it. And it says getting that mindset going and it's just, it makes it much easier to deal with just all the little things that come up in life.
00:09:21
Speaker
I like that positive realist. Very cool. So definitely I agree that many of us have this imprinted from childhood, so we model that. And I probably would be one of those people where if a parent may have had a short fuse back when I was a kid, and I tend to
00:09:49
Speaker
I tend to have a little bit of a short fuse coupled with the fact that I'm from the Balkans, coupled with the fact that I'm an Aries, coupled with the fact that, or at this point, I don't know, we're coupling it, but with the fact that I do like the occasional coffee that will also amp up the nervous system, a high energy person. So when I feel threatened, I can definitely
00:10:17
Speaker
respond quite intensely, right? So what are some strategies for someone like myself to be able to respond from a more productive place and an emotional basis? And you're talking about what I call a core response pattern. As we grow up, we develop these response patterns. A lot of it's very unconscious. Excuse me.
00:10:46
Speaker
And there are some thoughts and stuff that go along with it, but most of it is just kind of an automatic response, maybe getting back to just emotions in general. One of the things about the brain is we are so unaware of how much activity is going on at an unconscious level. You walk down the street or walk through your house and there's a part of your brain judging distance, coordinating the body, looking for things that might be dangerous, looking for things that might be good,
00:11:17
Speaker
And all the while you're thinking about some trivial thing, you have some conversation you had or something you saw on TV or things of that nature. And so as you grow up, your brain starts... One of the things that that emotions do is they index information in the brain. They're kind of an indexing system. So as you grow up, your brain starts making associations about good and bad stuff. And whenever something happens that's really positive or really negative, it'll put an emotional stamp on that.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then that information will come up to your conscious mind when you encounter it in the world. That's why experiential learning is more effective than book learning. And the analogy I often use is driving a car. I can read everything about driving a car, but until I get behind the wheel and start driving, now the brain can start making associations. Oh, that didn't work.
00:12:10
Speaker
Oh, this feels good. And now with enough of those associations, that information gets sorted. So it can now take on that task in an unconscious level. I'm just listening to the radio, you know, thinking about where I'm going or stuff of that nature. Now that it's all going on very automatically. And so these response patterns, whether it's how you respond when
Changing Behavior Under Stress
00:12:28
Speaker
you're angry or whatever is the same thing, is there things that you've developed partly by modeling, partly through trial and error and just all that stuff kind of becomes an unconscious response pattern. So how do you change that?
00:12:40
Speaker
Well, I hit it from four basic levels. And again, you can take psychology and divide it into three general areas. There's the cognitive psychologists, which is thinking, which is the self-talk belief systems. There's the behavioral where you just change behaviors. And there's the psychodynamic, which is where you take a look at some of these unconscious forces that are driving it. So you got to kind of hit it from all different levels. And so the first thing I usually do with people is I'll say,
00:13:08
Speaker
Let's come up with just a label for what it is you want to change. So a kid who grows up in a family where anger is expressed a lot, then maybe I'll say something like, it's good to be angry, or angry is how you get things done. And so that might be the core response pattern.
00:13:29
Speaker
And again, you know, anger, understand, is an effective tool socially. You get what you want when you get angry a lot of times. People back off, you know? Unfortunately, if you do that all the time, nobody wants to be around you, right? So relationships aren't very good.
00:13:44
Speaker
So, okay, so let's say we put the label on what you're talking about is, you know, anger is how you solve things. Okay, so you come up with some things to tell yourself to why that's not true. There are times where it's good. And let me say too that when I talk about anger and fear, I'm talking about a very broad range of emotions. Because anger can range from just irritation to rage. Fear can range from just apprehension to panic, right?
00:14:11
Speaker
And there is a positive side to anger. Anger is what fuels assertive behavior. Somebody's stepping on your toes and you get irritated and you say, hey, you're stepping on my toes. So that's kind of a positive aspect of anger. I mean, anger always just looks, people tend to look at anger always from the negative side and they don't understand that it is a
00:14:30
Speaker
energy and motivation to take care of a need, right? It sets some limits a lot of times. And so that's what you want to do is not necessarily get rid of it, but just dial it back so you're doing more effective behaviors. Okay. So one of the things with anger that I find that's really super important is to learn to do nothing at first. People who handle anger in their emotions. Well, one of the things you'll notice is a lot of times though,
00:14:57
Speaker
the pause for a second before or two before they respond. And that's a hard thing to train, especially if you wanted to just react quickly, right? And if you're in a culture where that's going on, you know, then that tends to be how you do it. And sometimes that's effective. You know, if you grew up in a culture where people yell at each other and there's a lot of, you know, or, you know, your social group or something, sometimes anger is how you survive. Here in the US, if you grow up in, oh,
00:15:26
Speaker
where there's a lot of gangs and stuff and you get the reputation, you get in my face, you're going to be sorry. That's a survival thing, right? That's a survival tool.
00:15:38
Speaker
If you're in a typical middle class setting, though, business or something like that, that tool now becomes detrimental, right? Because it starts to interfere with life. So sometimes it's taking a look at, you know, where did that this come from? And maybe it was useful back there, but it's not useful now. So you got to come up with things to tell yourself why you want to change. And the next thing to do is you identify specific situations where that behavior comes up.
00:16:03
Speaker
Well, um, and you just got to watch yourself for a week or two. Okay. Uh, I tend to blow up here. I tend to blow up there, or I got over anger there. And then you start identifying what's the opposite behavior I could do. And you just start practicing that and understand that you will not do well when you are sick, hungry, tired, or stressed. And this is the other thing about changing behavior.
00:16:29
Speaker
is that a lot of times negative behaviors are simply an indicator that you're stressed out or that you're sick. Yeah, for sure. A lot of people aren't aware of that. They think, well, I can just make myself function in regards to how I'm feeling or how tired I am or how hungry. That's not true. Your body is a machine with a limited amount of energy and limited resources.
00:16:52
Speaker
when those indicators, usually old behaviors, things you don't want to start coming up, it's a time to just shut your mouth, take care of basic business and let all the other stuff handle. I mean, when you deal with parenting, this is one of the things, right? When you're sick, hungry, tired, and your kids misbehaving, just forget about training all the more sophisticated stuff, maintain order, do what you need to do, that other stuff you can take care of later on. And the same thing with yourself. If I know I'm sick, hungry, tired,
00:17:20
Speaker
I'm not gonna try to solve all these other problems. I'm just gonna deal with what I need to deal with and focus my energy. That's hard to do because when you're sick, hungry, tired, stressed, all the little stuff becomes super important.
Behavior Modification Techniques
00:17:33
Speaker
Everything your spouse does that irritates you suddenly becomes important, right? I gotta deal with it, right? And when you're well-fed and you're calm and everything else, it doesn't bother you. So that's just, again, another indication that when those behaviors are coming up, I need to use that as a signal to myself
00:17:49
Speaker
that I need to just take care of basic business and let the other stuff slide because it does seem to become super important at those times.
00:17:58
Speaker
And you kind of summarize some of the stuff in little cards and just remind yourself over the course of a week or so of these things. Sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you. That is exactly what I was thinking now. I need to write this down on some some post-its and carry it with me. Sorry, please continue. Well, yeah. And that's what I do in the book is I actually will have some examples of how people write this stuff down and just read it for about a week.
00:18:22
Speaker
And then by that time it's kind of drilled in your head and you can put it away. And then maybe a month or so later on, pull it out again, read it again and go through two or three cycles of this. And then you'll find you will modify your behavior over time, especially if you've got some very specific opposite things to do. You know, okay, when I get angry or I'm irritated, I need to pause and I need to decide what really is the issue here? You know, where's the threat? What do I want? Okay, that's what I need to do.
00:18:51
Speaker
Because again, a lot of times what happens when people get emotional, the frontal lobe shut down, the cognitive part of your brain is not working well and so you're not thinking clearly. So you need to pause, kind of regain control over those frontal lobes and start
00:19:07
Speaker
decide what do I want, what's important here, and then focus on that. Because when you're angry, like I said, everything, all the little stuff comes up. A lot of times it's totally irrelevant, but suddenly it all has to be dealt with and you lose track of what your central issue is.
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, this is gold, Renault, really, really gold. I have to, I'm definitely going to buy your book and read it because this is really, really good stuff. Yeah, when you frame it in that way, so I've noticed in the morning when you have more
00:19:43
Speaker
of a reserve, you're still not tired, but you have your breakfast, so you're not stressed, you're not tired, you're not hungry, and you're feeling well, you're not sick. Things don't perturb you, but by the end of the day, when you've done a bunch of stuff, it's time to get the kid ready for sleep, and bathed, and fed, and oh, where I can't find this, where is that, where did you leave this? That's when things start to,
00:20:10
Speaker
Escalate more easily over really very minor things sometimes so and so that's about it. Just training yourself Don't let it go Focus on just getting them into bed, you know getting teeth brushed or whatever and that's all you got to do all this You know the toys on the stairs or whatever that stuff. I'll take care of tomorrow when I got my wits about me
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. Definitely. And having some reminders around the house, just say just something along the lines of just get the basic needs sorted or something like that. It'll be helpful.
00:20:47
Speaker
Like I said, you practice it real intensely for about a week and then you get tired of practicing this stuff. So you do it throughout a week and usually you've made some headway and then a month or so later, you hit it again and you kind of reinforce that. You go through a couple cycles of that and you'll find that, yeah, you do start really, your behavior does change.
Guilt, Shame, and Emotional Development
00:21:07
Speaker
like that. So in your book, there's also you tackle the topic of understanding guilt and shame and how to manage them. Do you think guilt and shame are at a layer of complexity when it comes to anxiety and anger that we express it? So maybe there's a lower down the hierarchy. Yeah, you know, guilt is basically I've done something I shouldn't have done.
00:21:35
Speaker
So it ties into your belief structure of how I should be, what I should or shouldn't do. And so you deal with it on that level. And again, some cultures are very shame and guilt oriented, and some aren't. And guilt is a very effective tool for trolling kids. Yeah.
00:22:01
Speaker
That's why some kids, where you get a lot of guilt, you get a lot of doctors and lawyers and that type of stuff, right? So, really, that's more of an exploration of, you know, what should you have done and is it reasonable or not? And if you've done something that you believe you shouldn't have done, then how do you correct it?
00:22:23
Speaker
You know, and sometimes you can't do anything for the past. And so you decide how am I going to respond differently in the future? Shame is more somehow I'm tainted. You know, somehow I'm less of a person because of what I've done. And of course, a lot of times shame has to do with childhood stuff, either because you had a parent who shamed the person a lot or there was sexual abuse or things of that nature. So somehow I'm as an individual, I've been tainted. I'm no longer worthy.
00:22:53
Speaker
or as valuable as other people. And so again, that's a belief system you have to take a look at. And it's a very broad issue, so depending upon what specifically you're talking about,
00:23:06
Speaker
a lot of times it gets down to self-acceptance and the fact that, you know, this happened wasn't my fault or maybe it was my fault as an adult. But like for kid stuff, most of the time it's, you know, this, you know, had nothing to do with you, it had to do with the adults. And so the shame that I'm carrying really, if you imagine
00:23:28
Speaker
a child going through what you went through, how would you react to it? Usually people get angry and they say, no, that's not right. Well, that's the same thing for yourself. So that's kind of a therapeutic thing that you work with with people. It's hard to give general guidelines because again, both of these
00:23:47
Speaker
really tie into the should, must rules about who I am or the way the world should be and taking a look at those. And are they reasonable or not? Are they realistic? So working with that is basically how I've worked with that. And like I said, most of what I've dealt with, it has to do with childhood stuff and either guilt over things they've
Communication and Conflict Resolution
00:24:08
Speaker
done. And it comes to just accepting that you're a human being and you screw up. And so, okay, you make amends and you move on.
00:24:16
Speaker
And that's really hard for some people. Yeah. I guess there's a lot of modeling and imprinting again from childhood from what our parents were presenting as examples of behaviors. And the message is that you get about who you are as a person. Am I okay or am I not okay? A lot of kids grow up in families where they get all kinds of blamed and stuff for things that really
00:24:39
Speaker
It's the parents stuff. You know, the parents screws up or so they blade the kid. Uh, and so now the child starts accepting anything bad that happens. Somehow it's my fault. I don't understand, but somehow there's connection there. And so that's, that's kind of a deeper thing that usually you got to work with one-on-one with somebody. And so you've done, you've done quite a lot of work with couples therapy, marriage counseling, right?
00:25:02
Speaker
Actually, most of it was with individuals. I did some couple stuff, but most of it was with individuals. That was my, again, working with anxiety and anger. I would enlist the aid of whoever the partner was, but mostly it was one-on-one with people.
00:25:22
Speaker
And so would you be able to get because I'm married, obviously, it's I'm sure a lot of people listening have a long term relationship going. Would you is there any tips you could give us on how to improve the interpersonal communication between partners in the household? Well, you know,
00:25:45
Speaker
There's a lot of books out there that talk about how to do fair fighting, how to put what you want out there in a way that's not going to blame or escalate things. That can be learned. It gets into assertiveness, and assertiveness really is just how do you deal with conflict. Whenever you have two or more people together, you have conflict. I want to watch this, you want to watch that.
00:26:14
Speaker
I wanna go to have this food, you wanna go have that food, how do we resolve that conflict? And so I think for a lot of times as how do you, and again, sometimes you wanna be, there's three styles for resolving conflict, right? There's aggressive, there's the assertive, and then there's non-assertive. Non-assertive, if you think of it in terms of rights and stuff,
00:26:44
Speaker
you get what you want and I ignore my needs, right? I chose the needs instead of rights. So that would be not a sort of behavior. And sometimes that's appropriate, right? If I'm in a situation where somebody is robbing me and they got a gun or something, you know, you could take my wallet, you know, buy these and that situation is not important. If I'm in a job where I've got a boss who
00:27:12
Speaker
is really not a very good boss, but I really need the money to feed the kids. Sometimes not a certain behavior is appropriate. Likewise, sometimes aggressive behavior is appropriate. If I'm a police officer or a fireman or something like that, I'm in a situation where I need to take care of an emergency. Sometimes I need to be a little aggressive about doing that, and that's appropriate. Again, if I grow up in a culture or a neighborhood where aggression is valuable,
00:27:42
Speaker
for survival, then that's appropriate behavior. And sometimes we'll take those things from childhood or from those cultural or whatever things and we'll bring it into a situation, whether it's a middle-class business situation or a relationship, where now it's no longer being useful. So the assertive approach where I try to come up with some kind of compromise, get some of your needs met, get some of my needs met.
00:28:10
Speaker
And that's really what we're talking about when we're talking about assertive behavior. I think it's not always the most appropriate method, but if you're in a middle-class Western situation, probably it is the most appropriate or most effective, I should say, way of getting what you want and having good relationships with people. So it's a matter of basically identifying what do I want, how do I put it out there in a way that's very direct and non-accusatory.
00:28:40
Speaker
Going back to couples, it's interesting, because sometimes you'll have couples who are fighting over something, and so you'll say, so what do you want in this situation? You're talking about addressing one person. Well, you know, this person does this, and I do that, and I can't stand and do that, so what do you want in this situation? Well, you know, and then they do that, and I've had one couple where we went on for 20 minutes before the person finally said, well, this is what I want. And so when you deal with conflict, the first step is, what do you want
00:29:09
Speaker
focus on that. Because again, all these other side issues about how they're doing this or doing that sometimes will get involved with that. So getting clear about, you know, I just, I need you to be on time or I need this or I need that or this is what I want.
00:29:23
Speaker
and putting that out there without all the other accusatory stuff, side trips that people often make. And that's a skill that takes some training, but you can learn to identify, okay, let me take a moment. All these things are coming up in my brain, but what is it that I really want in this situation?
00:29:42
Speaker
and then focus on that and put that out there in just a simple, direct way. I need this, I would like that. I got embarrassed when you joked about this incident in the past, and I really wish you wouldn't do that, because I don't like to be embarrassed like that. So whatever it is, you can put it in very direct and simple terms. And that's the skill of learning.
00:30:07
Speaker
So if you feel like your partner is, let's say, upset, or perhaps they're trying to assert something in not the most productive way, or something is amiss, maybe that question, what do you need? Do you need anything right now? Yeah, what do you need, what do you want? Yeah. Is a good idea. Again, that's hard sometimes for people to identify. And part of being successful,
00:30:36
Speaker
We just celebrated our 49th year of marriage, my wife and I. 50 years next year. And part of being successful in marriage too is come and just accept some of the idiosyncrasies of your spouse. They're just funny that way. There's nothing I'm going to do to change it, so try to change it and just figure out how do I work around it.
00:31:04
Speaker
We live in a culture where there's not a lot of tolerance for that type of stuff. It's, you know, I'm in a relationship because you're here to satisfy my needs and take care of me and afford to feel good. And as soon as it quits doing that, I move on. You know, with younger people, especially this idea of kind of a, you know, you're here to take care of my needs attitude, whether it's expressed or just kind of underneath it is so common.
Relationship Phases and Intimacy
00:31:32
Speaker
Marriages, you know, relationships go through kind of a cycle. You know, you start off with that honeymoon phase, you know, where everything is just so wonderful. And if you do the MRI is on the brain, you find that the, especially with the women more so than men, the emotional centers are all lit up. The frontal lobes are kind of quiet.
00:31:51
Speaker
And then at some point you get that disillusionment. You realize that, wow, this person is not who I thought they were. And then you start going through a phase of kind of what we call rule negotiation. How do we set the parameters of our relationship? And sometimes that's done through trench warfare. And they can do that sometimes for 20 years. They can stay stuck there.
00:32:17
Speaker
If you can get through that and you start to negotiate, okay, who turns down the light? Who puts the cat out? Who, you know, who does this? Who does that? And you kind of work that stuff out in a way that's, you know, reasonable for both of you. Then you can start to move into a set of intimacy that's really very deep and what people really want. Again, there's difference from true intimacy and infatuation. Infatuation is a hormonal thing.
00:32:44
Speaker
And a lot of times that's what people are chasing is they want that hormonal infatuation all the time. And so they never get through the rule negotiation because as soon as it comes up, then they're out of there. If you can work it through, then you get somebody who you really trust, who you know has your back, that you're comfortable with. I can tell them anything that's going on in my life and they'll accept me. That's a wonderful feeling to have with somebody.
00:33:10
Speaker
And unfortunately, a lot of people never get there because they never get through that phase. And let me add a caveat to that. You have to be in a relationship where the other person is capable of intimacy. And again, that's something you have to take a look at when you're in the early stages of dating. I know it's not popular say, but especially with women, I always tell them, don't get into a sexual relationship right away. Take some time to evaluate whether this person
00:33:41
Speaker
has the capacity for intimacy and some of the qualities that you want. Because once you start getting sexually active, like I said, those emotional centers can all flare up and everything looks wonderful. At the sixth best out of the road, you look at and you say, who is this person? This is not what I signed on for. So you want to do that evaluation. So you want to wait at least a week, right?
00:34:07
Speaker
And again, it used to be people took longer time, and so you had time to evaluate. And plus people were looking for some of those things. They were starting to identify, does this person have the capacity to have a relationship that I want? And again, nowadays, unfortunately, people bypass that because they're just looking for that quick, high, or I mean that
00:34:29
Speaker
infatuation or, you know, somehow the sexual stuff is feeling good and satisfying some intimate needs that I have. And yeah, take time. Take time and evaluate the person and look for those little things. How do they deal with disappointment? You know, when you do have a conflict, how are they willing to negotiate with you?
00:34:52
Speaker
when you want to go out to a movie or dinner or something, do they listen to you and do they negotiate? Or do they just say, no, I want to go here and they go there. Those types of things, whether it's a guy or a gal.
00:35:06
Speaker
So we always, we have rises and falls and kind of rhythms with ourselves and sometimes we're down in the dumps, other times we're kind of elated, everything's going well.
Supporting Partners and Finding Purpose
00:35:17
Speaker
What are some, if your partner's kind of down in the dumps or going through a phase or they're complaining more, how do we snap them out of it in a kind of non-accusatory, productive way, would you say? Well, sometimes you can't.
00:35:35
Speaker
And you can't make somebody be the way you want them to be. I mean, you can encourage, you can provide help and listening, that type of stuff, but sometimes there's not a lot you can do. And this is why you need to have a support network of your own. For men, for example, they used to have lots of support network. They'd have the lodge, they'd go out hunting, or they'd have
00:36:02
Speaker
groups that they would get together with and people nowadays are often very isolated. And so having other relationships so that this is not where I get all my needs met. You know, same thing with women. They used to have lots of things where they would get together with other women and they would get some of their emotional needs met because I cannot take care of all the needs of my wife. She's got some things she likes to do and stuff that I just not interested in.
00:36:28
Speaker
So she gets together with her daughter, she has some women that she gets together with and that type of stuff and that's where she gets some of those needs about. That's the other thing that I think that's a problem with a lot of relationships nowadays is people don't have those outside
00:36:43
Speaker
places where they connect, so they're trying to get all their needs met from that one person, which is an impossible task, so having a wide variety of people. And if the spouse is truly depressed or something's going on, then maybe find somebody to help them with that or help you as a couple with that is important. Yeah, a lot of people grow up, they're damaged because of their childhood, and a lot of times they don't even realize
00:37:11
Speaker
you know, and they get relationships and sometimes, you know, they need to deal with some of that stuff in order to have true intimacy. In fact, it's interesting because this whole thing gets into the latter part of the book, the three things that make people happy. And the first one is relationship, by and far.
00:37:31
Speaker
above everything else, having relationships that are fulfilling and intimate and satisfying is the number one thing that makes people happy. You go to developing countries, right? And people have all kinds of people in their life. They have, you know, extended family. They have, you know, their village or their block or whatever. And we used to have that industrial countries too. You know, we didn't move around all the time. We had people we would grow up with. Nowadays, we're so mobile.
00:37:58
Speaker
that a lot of times there really isn't much of a social network. And so again, everything goes on to, you know, my, my, my partner supposed to satisfy my needs. So having rich relationships, whether it's just a single person or a variety of people, cause you can be single and have a lot of friends and very rich relationships and that can take care of that need.
00:38:22
Speaker
you look at a lot of, especially the younger generation, they're getting that relationship needs met through social media. And that's why you see so much anxiety and anger and that type of stuff going on, because it's really not satisfying at a deep level.
00:38:39
Speaker
When you look at the different emotions that people have, neuroscience has kind of identified seven core emotions, and four of them have to do with relationships. There's like two circuits, one that's called panic, but in babies we call it separation anxiety, and it's why we miss people when they're gone.
00:39:00
Speaker
And there's this corresponding caring circuit. So whether we're talking about puppies or humans or whatever, the baby cries, that triggers the caring circuit. So you want to comfort it. That's two very key circuits in what we call love and intimacy with relationships. They don't get satisfied through a superficial social media where everybody is living a better life than I'm living.
00:39:28
Speaker
The other thing that's important is having purpose in life. And a lot of people have no real purpose. That's why things like saving the earth, you know, global warming, you know, or COVID or these types of things take on such importance to people because it gives them a purpose. And we need a purpose that's larger than ourselves a lot of times. So how you, I mean, with me, part of my purpose is you can have more than one. It's helping people. I like helping people and I get a lot of satisfaction when I do that.
00:39:59
Speaker
And even in my church group, I teach kids guitar, I play guitar on Sunday, that type of stuff.
Keys to Happiness and Cultural Insights
00:40:08
Speaker
So I have a lot of things where I'm tying in with people and it gives me purpose, reason for getting up in life. It could be that being a good parent or selling the most widgets is your purpose. And that's okay. Again, the broader the purpose, the better it'll work. And then the third one is meaning, and this is the one
00:40:27
Speaker
That's hard to really define in clear ways, but it's how you answer the big questions of life. You know, is there a God? Is there not? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? And again, in the West, we tend to be very weak in that area of our life. We don't think about it.
00:40:46
Speaker
Because we're constantly pursuing entertainment, we're constantly pursuing things, and so we never take time to quiet down and answer those big questions. I know in the back of the book I just spend just a very brief amount of time, but one of the things I mention is some of the near-death work that's been going on since the 70s.
00:41:08
Speaker
Raymond Mooney wrote a book, A Life After Life, where he talked about people who have these near death experiences and that kind of kicked off a lot of research. There's one that was recently done with a lot of people and it's been very clearly established that there's something going on that science cannot explain. And so if you accept that maybe there's a spiritual side of life, something that, you know, more than just getting things and then you die,
00:41:34
Speaker
Then again, that needs to be incorporated into my meaning. Meaning is how you make sense out of the world when there's crazy stuff going on. There's things going on in Ukraine, things going on in China, things going on all over the world.
00:41:47
Speaker
And so how do I give some kind of meaning to that in a broader sense? And if you have positive answers for that or answers at least ways that help you understand it and put it in context, then that helps you with the little disappointments that come up in life as well. But again, that's something that people don't spend much time thinking about because again, like I said, they're so busy pursuing entertainment or getting things that never quiet themselves to answer the big questions in life.
00:42:14
Speaker
And whether you take a traditional religious approach or some philosophical approach, I leave that up to people. It's not for me to preach one thing or the other. But you do need to address that aspect of your life. That is brilliantly said. I love everything. Everything you said so far is just resonating really on every level with me.
00:42:40
Speaker
It's interesting. One of the fun conversations I would have with clients is I just ask them, so what's important to you? How do you answer those existential questions about your existence? Why am I here? That type of stuff. Those would be very interesting questions for people to ponder, because a lot of times people haven't really thought through and come up with an answer that's satisfying for themselves.
00:43:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've read some of the stuff around near-death experiences and the kids that remember past lives, the reincarnation research and, you know, having taken the occasional entheogenic, there's a lot that opens up there if you decide to look for it. I think a lot of people, maybe just that fear of death that Western society sort of imposes on us from an early age,
00:43:38
Speaker
that fear of death so we don't want to think about those things maybe prevents us from actually finding that deeper meaning because once you kind of kind of get over the fear of death I don't I don't suppose that you can get over the physical aspect of it but I guess the more psychological spiritual aspect you can
00:43:58
Speaker
you can grapple with and eventually understand at a deeper level that death could be just another gateway to another dimension, another life, another existence.
Neuroscience of Emotions
00:44:10
Speaker
As long as you realize that consciousness is eternal, that the consciousness that animates your body is eternal, and that is who you truly are. I think a lot of
00:44:21
Speaker
a lot more meaning comes from existence. And like you said already, the little things start to bother you a little bit less. And again, yeah, because it gives you context. And I would postulate that fear of death is not just a Western thing, it's pretty universal.
00:44:42
Speaker
It's one of the big things that underlies a lot of other stuff with people and it's pretty universal because we all got to face it. And it's interesting because it used to be death was a normal part of life. My mom did a lot of genealogy work and up before World War II, you know, women had lots of kids because a lot of them died early on in life.
00:45:08
Speaker
And so you experience stuff and in our modern world, a lot of people don't really experience it until they're quite older. And then, you know, they might be in their twenties, thirties or forties before they have a friend or somebody they know dies on them. And so that in itself becomes quite a shock for a lot of people. Just dealing with how do I deal with that disappointment? Yeah. I know my age is, you know, I get a lot of people I know that are dying. So I deal with it all the time. And that's, that's one of the things is you get older.
00:45:38
Speaker
We might talk for just a minute too about some of the different emotional circuits we have because I find that's really interesting and I spent some time with that. One of the ones that I found really interesting, in fact let me back up because neuroscience talks about affects and affects are a drive to do something. It generates energy in your body and it focuses your mind on something. So the most simplest affects are
00:46:06
Speaker
heat, cold, and pressure. If I'm really cold, I want to get warm. If I'm sitting too long, I got to move around. And the next level of affects are what they call the homeostatic affects, keeping a balance in your body. That's just a fancy word for balance. So hunger and thirst are two big ones. If I'm hungry, I really get focused on getting something to eat. If I'm thirsty, I really want to get something to drink.
00:46:31
Speaker
And so emotions are kind of a higher level of affect that gets tied into, again, that conscious part or that thinking part of our brain. And one of the ones that was really interesting for me when I was researching this was something that they call seeking. Seeking. And if you look at any baby, whether it's human, puppy, you know, kitten,
00:46:51
Speaker
bear or whatever, they want to explore their environment. They have this drive to find what's out there. And so there's an unconscious drive. It's part of our curiosity that comes from this, right?
00:47:02
Speaker
you go to a new situation and the first thing you do is you check out what's going on around you. If somebody enters a room, everybody looks just to see who or what that is and it's an unconscious drive just to what's out in my environment, is it safe or is it not safe? And it's actually an emotional circuit in the brain that I found to be very interesting. And again, we see that as curiosity in adults. Another one,
00:47:31
Speaker
That's interesting is is the We have two fear circuits and again, I already mentioned the panic circuit So that's how super relationship and of course the the fear circuit for danger. We have the anger circuit I'm missing one here. It'll come to me in a minute. Then we have of course lust. Oh, yeah I was gonna I was gonna ask about that. Yeah that comes up and you know, it gets activated and I love that's right
00:48:00
Speaker
And again, that's part of the things that binds us together. And then, I'm missing one here. There's Curiosity. It'll come to me in a moment.
00:48:14
Speaker
But anyway, these circuits again, they all just have to do with needs. And once you understand that emotions are just generating a focus of your attention and energy in your body, and that's the purpose of them, to protect ourselves, to help us to deal with, oh, play, play is the other one. Play, ah, okay, that's the big one. And in fact, the guy that's first started doing a lot of this research, Panacep, he just passed away not too long ago,
00:48:41
Speaker
But he worked with the rats and he found he could turn off all of the conscious, you know, higher parts of the brain. The rats still wanted to play. Amazing. And it's how he learned social limits. I mean, if you work with kids, you know, you know, like I've got this three and a half year old great granddaughter that we watch on Mondays and Tuesdays.
00:48:59
Speaker
And she likes to tickle me, right? That's one of her favorite games. And sometimes she gets a little bit too wild, right? And so it's like, okay, that's where we stop. We're getting too wild here, or she does other stuff. And so they learn through play what social limits are. And as adults, we still connect through play. Again, it's, again, one of those things that helps to bind us together. So yeah, so the seeking to play lust, too,
00:49:24
Speaker
the panic and the fear of danger and anger and carrying circuit. Those are the seven basic emotional circuits. That's fascinating stuff. About play, as adults, we seem to almost frown upon play. How would you encourage an adult to explore this effect in a healthy way? Well, it's because a lot of times adults, they see play as childish. Yeah.
00:49:53
Speaker
But again, it is a way that we connect with people and it reduces all kinds of good endorphins and stuff in the brain and does a lot of good stuff for you. When you play afterwards, you know, if you're stressed out, it's a great stress reliever, you know, it helps to again, relax your body afterwards.
00:50:12
Speaker
And again, I should mention all of these circuits, you know, they vary from person to person, you know, like some people are more fearful than others. And, you know, some people have a natural tendency to get more angry and all this stuff can be controlled by learning for most people.
00:50:26
Speaker
There are a few exceptions, and those are the ones that are in prison and stuff. And probably the saddest example of how childhood affects the circus is the babies that used to come out of Eastern Europe in the orphanages where they were never touched.
Personality, Upbringing, and Emotional Circuits
00:50:44
Speaker
You know, they were changed, you know, bottles would be propped up for them, but when they would cry, nobody would come and comfort them.
00:50:50
Speaker
And so when they get adopted, they have what they call attachment disorder. They have a hard time attaching to the adult. One of the hormones that is connected to that circuit of caring is the oxytocin. And so you take babies that have been a natural birth parent and they play a game.
00:51:11
Speaker
and you measure oxytocin levels and I go up through the roof, you take these babies and they stay very flat, which is an indication that something in this circuit has been suppressed because it's never was responded to. It's kind of like when they would bind the feet of women in China and so as adults now they become deformed and stuff. So early childhood experiences can change how these emotional circuits
00:51:41
Speaker
expressed and how they connect in with, again, the thinking part of our brain, especially as we get beliefs about who we are and what the world's all about. That all, again, exercises some executive function over these emotions. Sure. And you know, one example of that, I have one friend who told me
00:51:56
Speaker
that he was in a car accident, I think when he was about four years old, so he doesn't have the conscious memory of it. But he seems to me like anytime there's a new thing, well, not anytime, but very often I see if it's a new thing, he's very apprehensive. So he has this kind of apprehension towards new experiences. And I'm not like psychoanalyzing him or anything. But it seems like that we could call it a trauma. It's a trauma.
00:52:24
Speaker
programmed him to be more cautious, I suppose. What's your take on that?
00:52:29
Speaker
Well, it may be personality too. There was a study in New Zealand, the Danin study, and they took every baby born in this town over the course of a year, and they just started studying them, you know, their physical, psychological, social. And this study has been going on for about 50 years. And so it's the best longitudinal study, long-term study of any group of people that's ever been done. And one of the things they found is by three and a half,
00:52:58
Speaker
the babies fit into five different groups. And these personalities tended to just continue throughout life.
00:53:06
Speaker
And so the biggest group was what they call the well-adjusted group. And they had, you know, they were fairly easy going, going into new situations, they connected with people, that type of stuff. Then the next group was your, what they called, I think, the courageous group. And these are the kids that, you know, as a group, they were doing high gliding, they were doing all kinds of, you know, crazy stuff, you know, the drill and junkies, right? And, you know, both these groups did fine if their family groups were fine.
00:53:33
Speaker
They had a group that they called the reserve group. And these are the babies that were a little bit slow in getting into situations and stuff like that. And as adults, again, they tended to be more in the back room in parties. They tend to kind of stay in the background for a while until they kind of got comfortable with it.
00:53:50
Speaker
But again, if they were in a healthy family, they did fine, but they just still had that reserve quality, right? And then you had what they called the extremely shy kids of small group of those. And those were most susceptible if they did not have a healthy family to become very introverted and have a lot of difficulty with relationships and stuff. The group that had the most trouble, I think it was about 5%, were the under-controlled
00:54:20
Speaker
And these are the kids that when they do the marshmallow test, you know, I give you a marshmallow. If you wait five minutes, you can have another one. They would just gobble that sucker up. Right. They had a lot of they lacked impulse control. And so they were very, again, impulsive. In fact, they found that teaching kids to control themselves was probably one of the most beneficial things long term as an adult.
00:54:45
Speaker
is being able to manage your emotions and control them. But that group was the ones that were most represented in prisons and different kinds of problems and stuff, you know, drugs and, you know, that type of stuff. As they got older, those ones that were under controlled. Again, even they, though, in a positive family background would do well. So, you know, your personality is not a sentence to how you're going to be. Again, it's partly how you learn to deal with that stuff.
00:55:13
Speaker
One side story that I found to be just really fascinating. There's this guy that was doing research on prisoners, sociopaths. Will Walsh? Bill Walsh? Bill Walsh? Might be. William Walsh, PhD, yeah? Yeah, and they found that he had the same game. I was just going to mention it. Yeah, yeah. I was just going to mention it. And it was funny reading about his story because he says, you know, I like to win when I play games and stuff, you know, and I like to rattle cages.
00:55:42
Speaker
But, you know, again, he grew up in a family where he was adopted and he was really wanted. But it was funny because when he went back and looked at his genealogy, he had all these serial killers, you know, Lizzie Borden, all these people were part of his family background, right? But he grew up in a healthy family. And so he tended to be fine. He had kids, he was married, didn't do a fine life.
00:56:06
Speaker
But yeah, it tended to be more aggressive, you know, tended to be more, you know, wanted to win. He says, since I've done the research, I'm trying to moderate some of that board. I thought I'd understand where some of that stuff's coming from. So you can't, you know. Absolutely. So this friend of yours, part of it might be just his personality.
00:56:25
Speaker
You're right. And I think some of these things, the personality traits we have, have to do, of course, with the biochemistry that we're born with, and also certain genes that break down neurotransmitters and hormones.
00:56:42
Speaker
Some of them are slower in some of us and they're faster in others. So that's just the general error. And again, understand that we talk like we know a lot about this stuff, but there's so much about the brain. We have no understanding. I mean, how does the brain use emotions to index information? We don't know. How does the brain actually remember something? We can't even find where memories reside in the brain. Like they literally are probably in another dimension.
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah, if I remember, if I recall the picnic I was on, you know, the visual parts will light up, the taste buds will light up, you know, all the different centers that were going on at that time, light up how that works, we don't know. Yeah.
00:57:25
Speaker
So yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, this was an absolutely fascinating, very enlightening conversation. Thank you for that. This one I'm very excited to share with my audience. Before we wrap it up, please tell the listeners where they can connect with you, where they can find your books, any other things you want to share.
00:57:45
Speaker
Best and easiest way is to go to my website. It's YWHYYemotions.com. So you go to Yemotions.com. You get links to my books, to the YouTube channel. I got some freebies there. Just so much easier to remember than my name. So Yemotions.com. Yes. Yemotions.com. Okay. Are you on social media? I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn.
00:58:14
Speaker
Okay. I don't, you know, I, I'd limit how much time I do. I don't do Instagram. I was looking for you on TikTok. I couldn't find you bro. All right. Well, for my own mental health, I live with it. You know, when I, when I first started working with anxiety disorders before, you know, uh, the social, the internet came up, I would tell people, first thing you need to do is turn off the evening news. And even now I say, you know, um,
Conclusion and Resources
00:58:44
Speaker
limit how much time you spend on all that stuff. In fact, there was a study in, I think, Germany where they had people, something around 18 and mid-20s, just reduced their amount of internet social media time by an hour a day. And by all their measurements of happiness, they were doing better. Of course, of course. And it stayed with them for a long time. They were doing more productive things with their life.
00:59:08
Speaker
course just not being at a computer or looking staring at a device just that alone has so many benefits we can't even describe I actually the way I use social media now is I don't have it on my phones so I have to be here in the office at the computer and every time I open it in a incognito browser so because otherwise they steal all your cookies and they're tracking you so I open an incognito browser and I have to log in every time so I some days I just forget to log in which is
00:59:38
Speaker
I don't really feel that desire, that addiction to be logging in. But it also has to do with the fact that I was off of social media for more than two whole years, which was also very, I think, was a good exercise to do. And I like some aspects of it. I keep tracking my son down in Texas.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, when my daughter was over in Europe in England doing her masters, we were able to zoom with her every Sunday and talk with her. So there's some really good things about being able to do that. It's just that if you're spending all your time watching all these lives that are so much better than yours, they really not, but what you see looks better. It can create a lot of anxiety and discomfort inside of a person, discontent, I should say. Discontent, yeah, that's the word.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for your wisdom for sharing, uh, a small part of your wisdom. And I am looking forward to reading the book in more depth because I took copious notes down, but I feel like we only scratched the surface with our conversation. So thank you again. We can get a lot of different directions, but yeah, it's, it's a joy to be here. So thank you so much.