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Episode 17: Moving On From 2020
96 Plays4 years ago
Grant and Fara discuss how to let go of (and heal from!) a pretty rough year. We touch on what it means to reflect during this time and think about ways that 2021 can be better for us- on both an individual and collective level.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Focus
00:00:05
Speaker
Every moment is a chance to turn a new page. Every moment is a chance to be reborn a new.
00:00:14
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on Doorknob Comments, a podcast that we created to discuss all things involving mental health. We take the view that psychiatry is not just about the absence of illness, but rather the positive qualities, presence of health and strong relationships and all the wonderful things that make life worth living. I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner.
2020 Reflections and Fresh Starts
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Doorknob Comments podcast. I'm Grant Brenner. I'm here with my co-host Farah White. Hi there.
00:00:39
Speaker
Right, it's the first week of December. It's December 2nd and we are looking forward to the new year. It's a strange time and so we thought today we would talk about New Year's. I've never looked forward to the new year more than I have this year. I think 2020 has just been really tough. What I was interested in talking about today is just the idea of sort of starting fresh and letting go and I think that New Year's is a good time to try to do that.
00:01:06
Speaker
People do that characteristically, right? The New Year's resolution, it's an attempt to use a change that I guess is societally kind of normed to motivate personal growth. And that's why I don't celebrate like New Year's Eve or anything, but I like that reflective aspect of it.
00:01:25
Speaker
Well, I thought New Year's Eve indiscretions were the main motivator for the positive changes in the new year. It wasn't that the idea. It's kind of like that's when you hit rock bottom. I don't think so. I don't know. Not for me. I don't think I've even stayed up till midnight. Are you really avoid the turn of the year? It sounds like generally speaking, although that was my thought that this year it's going to be a positive thing for
New Year Traditions and Symbolism
00:01:47
Speaker
a lot of people. I always love New Year's Eve. I mean, typically, you know, I'm up I'm up for a decent celebration.
00:01:53
Speaker
but it stirs up a lot of complex feelings for people. You know, there's a sort of, you know, the old man, old man, new year, but the idea is that the year is a person and the new year is a baby. And by the end of the year, he's an old man. And so, you know, it's on New Year's Eve that the old man and the baby kind of, you know, that baton is handed off. And so, you know, the idea that I think you're bringing up is that the beginning of the year is kind of like a time of rebirth.
00:02:21
Speaker
It also marks kind of like the middle of the winter in a sense. It's sort of the last holiday before the long stretch until spring. So January is like I think a time where people really reset. A lot of people do a dry January.
00:02:36
Speaker
What I mean is that the middle of the winter, from an evolutionary point of view, is usually a time of pestilence and famine and survival. Generally, we're fortunate nowadays because we have refrigeration and supermarkets and generally pretty good control over diseases, the current COVID pandemic.
Psychology and Mortality Salience
00:02:54
Speaker
Notwithstanding though, there is a vaccine. The new year could be a time of passing the midway point.
00:03:02
Speaker
And or you were saying that it can be a time of famine, but I think these days it's more like hibernation and overeating, overeating, overindulging.
00:03:11
Speaker
It may be like, you know, there's something called Terror Management Theory. So this is based on the work of Ernest Becker, interested listeners. You know, there was a book in the early 70s, which is still pretty widely read, called Denial of Death. A lot of people are motivated to deal with the fact of mortality. And, you know, the winter and the end of the year kind of stirs up mortality thoughts. And so in Terror Management Theory, they call that mortality salience.
00:03:40
Speaker
And if you do research, which people who research terror management theory have found that a lot of things are explained by this kind of annihilation anxiety, the fear of death. And so a lot of behaviors, you know, in psychoanalysis, we would call them like,
00:03:56
Speaker
reaction formations. Like you're afraid of death by starvation so you eat a lot. Sort of an analytic concept that when people are feeling some way inside that's uncomfortable for them for whatever reason and they want to disavow it, they act in the complete opposite way. Without knowing it. Right, so like if you bump into someone on the street that you really just like don't want to see, you might give them an overly enthusiastic hello.
00:04:22
Speaker
You tell your therapist that story and then they're like, well, that's interesting that you were like so happy to see them. I thought you said that you really dislike that person. And then you might say, I wonder why that is.
Social Dynamics in Uncertain Times
00:04:34
Speaker
But I see. So I see what you're saying, how we're reacting against a fear of death by overindulging. But I think there are other reasons to overindulge boredom. That's interesting.
00:04:47
Speaker
No, I mean a lot of the healthier activities and socializing and you know, positive things aren't able to to take us away. Like the gyms are closed. Some people are really good at working out at home, but not everyone is. I'm sure you're wondering why I said boredom so knowingly earlier. Yeah, it's on my mind.
00:05:09
Speaker
Since you asked, but it was what it was interesting to me, because I'm going to make another kind of psychology research reference that I love so much. I read a paper a couple weeks ago, it's called and I found it elucidating. It's called on the relation of boredom and sadistic aggression. They studied a couple of thousand people. And basically, they they created conditions that were very boring experimentally. And they found that when they make people bored, people become more sadistic.
00:05:36
Speaker
they're more likely to engage in sadistic behaviors in the experiment. For example, killing worms, I'm reading off the screen, destroying other participants pay. They set up a scenario and they give you a chance to lash out at someone else. They say, however, alternatives matter. When several behavioral alternatives are available, boredom only motivates sadistic behavior among individuals with high dispositional sadism.
00:06:03
Speaker
So it means that for the average person, if you get bored and you don't have any outlet, you might become more sadistic. But if you have options, only people who tend to be sadistic in the first place use sadism to prevent boredom. Do you think that that has something to do with the way that people treat each other during election time?
00:06:23
Speaker
Maybe during the holidays, you know, when you're cooped up or even maybe at family dinners, if they devolve into conflict, as we were sort of talking about on one of our recent podcasts, had a sort of not get bored, especially sort of doing Zoom or why people joke often about getting drunk when they get together with their family. Why to kind of diminish the tension and negative emotions?
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, to self-medicate. Although I think this holiday season will have changed a lot of that. We talked about, I think I mentioned that it's a time to really reevaluate, to tap into our own desires and what we want to do. And that's why I think the turn of the year is a nice time to implement those changes. You were saying that you felt like it was kind of a construct or?
00:07:11
Speaker
Well, it depends. It's a social thing. A lot of people are very aware of it being New Year's, and of course it's memorialized on television globally. It's the one time of the year when you can see the time zone sweeping around the planet. If you're watching TV, they're like, Brazil!
00:07:33
Speaker
It's New Year's and for half a day, it's like 2021 where you are and it's 2020 somewhere else, which is interesting. But I think the mortality piece really does play on people's minds a lot, especially if it's been a rough time the way it has been. One of the things is for people to be aware of their anxiety about this, and maybe that allows us to make better use of our remaining time.
00:08:03
Speaker
ridiculous. Sorry, I had to deal with mortality at a young age, as some folks know. And so, you know, I have a little bit of a different stance, you know, in relation to it. You're like the father time in the meme. And I'm like, saying that this is
00:08:22
Speaker
a new baby is being born and how do we wanna welcome it into the world, right? Well, I don't think I'm being that grim. I'm just saying that I don't necessarily mark the turn of the year in the same way. Like I've never really been one to see New Year's as like a time to start a new diet or resolve to work on that book I've always wanted to work on. I feel like every moment is the beginning of a new year. Every moment is a chance to turn a new page. Every moment is a chance to be reborn a new.
00:08:51
Speaker
So you never make any resolutions? I resolved not to make any resolutions early on, I think in the 80s around New Year's. I've kept that resolution very well, so thank you. Congratulations. Isn't it weird? I know it's amazing, right? Yeah, yeah, very impressive. It's the longest resolution anyone's ever kept, possibly. But it never even crosses your mind? It crosses my mind because, you know, I'm bombarded with that messaging, you know, culturally.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, so you don't think that it's more. What are your New Year's resolutions?
00:09:22
Speaker
eat right, exercise more, be kind, all the things that I would want to do anyway. Really, I think this year, I want to focus on being able to let go and being able to manage the uncertainty.
Global Issues and Leadership
00:09:35
Speaker
What uncertainty? The uncertainty around the vaccine, the uncertainty around the presidency, the uncertainty around when and how is life going to go back to, it's not going to necessarily be normal, but a new normal.
00:09:51
Speaker
That's an interesting concept for sure, like going back to normal. Definitely uncertainty is a huge factor in the ability to tolerate uncertainty, negative capacity, negative capability, tolerating ambiguity. That's challenging.
00:10:08
Speaker
And people who tend to be more anxious tend to have more trouble tolerating uncertainty because it relates to the ability to feel a sense of predictability or control over the future. Probably a lot of people are hopeful that 2021 will be 2021.
00:10:24
Speaker
will be a better year, but I'm on the fence about it. I'm going to reserve judgment. I think a lot of things will change for the better. I think the vaccine is going to be helpful, but I think we're still going to be stuck with coronavirus. It'll change our way of life. I think things will get better politically. We already see signs even today. What were we looking at before? It was the Secretary General of the UN made an unprecedented state of the world address
00:10:51
Speaker
really urging us to pay attention to our own survival. Talk about mortality salience. He's talking about species-wide extinction and what we've got to do in order to, you know, head that off at the pass. And he referenced the U.S., what he considers a lack of leadership on climate.
00:11:10
Speaker
So hopefully, you know, that'll be a good New Year's resolution for the planet. But it is true. Like the world has undergone crazy. I don't like to use that term loosely as a psychiatrist, but historically unprecedented changes in the last four years, largely because of information technology. I mean, stuff like we've lived through has gone on throughout the centuries. But the difference now is that we're all connected on this tiny little
00:11:39
Speaker
social media planet. So, but I think that can be a force for good, right? So we should be able to really like change the direction of things. Oh yeah, absolutely. I'm working on a piece in a disaster trauma and global health group. We're writing a letter to the editor.
00:11:57
Speaker
hopefully a prestigious journal, you know, we can get published. And we were trying to ask some big questions, but, you know, you only have 400 words to write about it. One of the questions I was tackling is a very heavy question, which is like, can the human race survive? And I started writing the answer to this last night. Luckily, maybe one of our future guests is going to be on and he's going to integrate everyone's different responses into a brilliant, you know, 400 word letter to the editor.
00:12:25
Speaker
But I wrote the question, can the human race survive? And the first thing I wrote was, yes, we can survive. It's not can we survive, it's will we and how will we. And interestingly, the UN head Gutierrez was speaking at Columbia University, and listeners, go check out Columbia University's Earth Institute.
00:12:48
Speaker
They have these incredible programs for global peace and justice. There's a group there that studies world peace, and they look at societies that have achieved peace and have tightly defined how they do it and what we would need to do. One of the funny things that they cite, Dr. White, is they cite the research on relationships
00:13:11
Speaker
And so things like, yeah, the Gottman Institute. So, you know, the ratio of positive to negative interactions has to be, you know, four to one or five to one. So they look at peaceful societies and they look at the kinds of feedback loops they have. And the peaceful societies have a preponderance of positive interactions. So it's more of a community-based, attachment-based society that is peaceful, you know, a family.
00:13:36
Speaker
Right. Well, that is
Societal Divisions and Empathy
00:13:38
Speaker
lovely. And I think that if I remember from Gottman's work, one of the big things, you know, there are these four horsemen of the apocalypse, right? Of the relationship, apocalypse. That's stonewalling, criticism. Contempt. Contempt is the big one. And there's a fourth, but I don't know what it is. But anyway, contempt was really the one where if it was present, the relationship like stood virtually no chance.
00:14:06
Speaker
on the flip side, if you wanna get out of a relationship, if you behave contemptuously. Right, but I think that we've been behaving contemptuously towards each other, like in this country. Yeah, only for the last 5 million years. But what have you seen recently? No, I'm just saying, I think that that is what happened with the election. And that happened between people, people who love each other and people who are families and connected and friendships. And like the election just blew a lot of that up.
00:14:34
Speaker
Well, I'd say it brought out what was always there. You may recall, I mean, we weren't alive then, but there was a civil war and, you know, half a lifetime ago for the country. But I think it's sort of similar. Some people are predicting, you know, this is like a civil war type of scenario. I've seen jokes on social media where it's like, you know, roughly speaking, conservative versus progressives. And the conservative memes say,
00:15:01
Speaker
If there's going to be a civil war, I'm glad I'm concerned because we're the ones with the guns. Right. And so the conflict is on the surface because we've had leadership that that really is bringing the conflict out. Right. Which is frightening. But from a psychoanalytic point of view, you know, in order to deal with conflict, you have to acknowledge it. But, you know, without it blowing things up. Sure. But I think that the root of a lot of this is seeing
00:15:26
Speaker
are fellow Americans, not as fellow Americans, but as other because they're conservative or they're liberal or they're whatever. We don't empathize. Then it's really hard to be on the same team. It was criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. Criticism, defensiveness. If you're having an argument with your significant other, it's very helpful for that person if you say, hey, I think you're being defensive.
00:15:57
Speaker
I think you're showing contempt toward me. Yeah. Well, the contempt actually is demonstrated. How do you know if someone is showing contempt? I think the eye roll. I just assume that people are contemptuous. And if I'm wrong, you know, it doesn't matter anyway. Yeah, I'm sort of not clued in to people's contempt.
00:16:15
Speaker
of the eye roll. Yeah, but the eye roll is a really big sign of it. Yeah. Oh my God. You always. You never. Yeah. And then I don't know if Gottman has any suggestions or what we can do, but I think with contempt or resentment, which I'm surprised is not really one of the four horsemen. I would add resentment in there because I think resentment is something that a lot of modern marriages carry around.
00:16:44
Speaker
How do you think that's different from how is that different from contempt? So contempt, I feel like is real, like a more visceral kind of like hatred. Contempt is like more on the surface kind of. Yeah. And it's more, I think,
00:16:59
Speaker
directed towards certain behaviors. I feel that resentment is more on the part of the person who holds it. You'll know that I do this a lot where people will sometimes agree to something that doesn't really work for them. It's not the fault of the other person, but if we've, let's say, agreed, okay, you sure I'll see this patient at 7.30 in the morning.
00:17:24
Speaker
And then I hold that resentment. It's really sort of on me and I'm the one who has to work it out.
00:17:30
Speaker
So if any of your patients are listening, they know that I don't get up early. You don't get up early. So you try not to make those deals with yourself that you then regret. Right. Mostly because I don't want someone else to be the object of resentment. Yeah. I feel like resentment is more festering, like lingering and growing. Resentment is something that people usually bottle up. Contempt is like when it leaks out. Right. So maybe it's two sides of the same coin. I don't know.
00:17:57
Speaker
I don't know. You could call up Dr. Gottman and let him know what you think of his horses. Yeah. Of his horsemen. You know, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are what? Pestilence, famine, disease, and death. Is that right?
00:18:13
Speaker
I don't know. That's like some biblical stuff. I'm not up on that. The Book of Revelations. I mean, people were worried, you know, that it was, you know, Ragnarok was coming with nuclear Korea and all that stuff a few years ago. From that point of view, I kind of wonder if we feel like we've backed off a little bit from the precipice. You know, a lot of people are breathing a collective sigh of relief to have a U.S. president come into power who appears to be sort of a more conventional, almost paternal figure.
00:18:43
Speaker
It's interesting, there's a woman vice president, you know, for the first time, and she's like super warm and feminine and.
00:18:52
Speaker
I was stoked to read that her husband gave up his high powered law firm position to be the first husband, the first first husband. He's the second. The first second husband. The second husband, yeah. I think it's pretty cool. I think it'll bring out the warmth and compassion and connection that we're sort of lacking. I mean, I'm not talking about really from a policy standpoint that I don't know.
00:19:21
Speaker
From like an attachment, like sort of family point of view, who would you want to be, your parents kind of? A lot of people would like to have Trump as a father, I gather. I don't know. I think he reminds a lot of people of their fathers.
00:19:36
Speaker
Well, you're saying, well, want to is in quotes, kind of. They might they might have that orientation or valence. Yeah, I think it actually would be really hard to have Trump as a father. I guess it depends what kind of kid you are, maybe. But, you know, I said depositive force because I was I was making an oblique joke. And what was what was it? Thank you for asking. I was referring to the work of Vamik Volkan, who talks. He's a psychoanalyst, I think, at the Baltimore, Washington. Very oblique.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I wrote I wrote a blog on cancel culture, and I used his work on large group psychology. So he talks about racism and bias. The way he describes it is that the culture you grow up in has these beliefs in it.
00:20:20
Speaker
And you never really have a choice as a kid. You're just raised in that culture. He says culture is like a tent and there are things written on the walls of the tent and you're inside of that tent and you see what looks like reality. And he says those ideas are deposited in people.
00:20:36
Speaker
And so they become like they seem like their reality. And so how do you talk to people who are in another tent when they have a different view of it? So the idea was kind of like, well, if someone tears down a Civil War statue in the South somewhere, for some people, that is incredibly healing and liberating. And for other people, it's the destruction of everything they hold dear. And those two different worldviews, how can anyone sort of hold them together, you know?
Perspective-Taking and Conflict Management
00:21:02
Speaker
Because if we all learn and accept the fact that, well, maybe this other person did grow up in a different tent, grew up on different literature, grew up with different customs, then we don't blame them as much for not seeing the world in the same way.
00:21:21
Speaker
I think a lot of times we use, we forget that people grew up in these different tents, and then we use shame and humiliation and contempt. We sort of throw that at people who don't see things the same way. It's like re-traumatizing. Kind of, yeah. But it's hard to see the other person's perspective, particularly when it feels very other. Yeah, but haven't you ever grown up
00:21:49
Speaker
Oh, I'm really good at it. But I'm saying for a lot of people, it's difficult. Yeah. But if you think back to a time for most people, I think they can think back to a time where they change their mind about something. What's your earliest memory of changing your mind about something? So when I was a kid, I was a really picky eater.
00:22:05
Speaker
And as you know, now I am a really diverse eater and like- I'm not sure that's consistent. I don't know if I've dined with you enough to really know that. Okay. Well, anyway, I used to really only eat like bread and pasta and I was a vegetarian for a long time. So when I was in high school, I started, my boyfriend's father would cook all these different
00:22:34
Speaker
foods and I started trying them and I changed my mind every time I tried something new and I liked it. What was the first food you ate that you thought you wouldn't like, but then you liked, do you remember? Squid risotto. Squid risotto. Yeah. That for me was a really big deal and it was intimidating to eat, but he used to make all this stuff. What was the intimidating part?
00:22:59
Speaker
The squid or the rice? The tentacles. The tentacles. Were a lot for me to take at the time, but no. Oh, yeah. What?
00:23:08
Speaker
That stuff doesn't bother you. No, I wasn't going to say that. But I was thinking I used to eat octopus, but I developed a desire not to eat octopus because I read an article about this really, really smart octopus who the researcher couldn't capture because it was too smart. So you changed your mind the other way, right? So based on something that you read in a book? Well, it was online. But I'm just saying that kind of thing happens all the time.
00:23:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, the question is, well, how do you sort of like, well, what if you don't change your mind, though? What if you still disagree with the other person's perspective? You know, maybe they still like a political leader. And you're never going to like that political leader. You're never you're never going to eat that squid risotto of a political leader. But you're still going to understand like their point of view.
00:23:57
Speaker
And they have a sort of a right to have their point of view. And there's room for everyone's point of view. But there's only room for everyone's point of view if we can actually live together, if we can follow the same rules. So you see a big problem with masks, for example.
00:24:15
Speaker
it's fine to respect someone's point of view that maybe they don't want to wear a mask because they feel it impinges their constitutional rights and that's okay if you're like on the beach or something, not too close, but then it's impinging on your rights if you want to wear a mask to go into, you know, a supermarket. I had that experience a bunch of times where I wanted to go into a store and someone was like lingering and I didn't feel safe and so I had to sacrifice what felt like my rights
00:24:43
Speaker
I guess that's part of being in a free society. I don't know. How do you see it?
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it is. I see it as people have different levels of information. People have different feelings, right? There's a lot about masks versus anti-masks and all over the internet. So people are getting their information in different places. Everybody thinks that what they're reading is the foremost authority on it. I just think that it's possible to disagree with someone's stance on something and not
00:25:16
Speaker
condemn them as a person. It's a black and white thinking. But what if the person you're trying to dialogue with doesn't see it that way and they're not willing to take your point of view into account. Not only that, but maybe they feel so badly toward you that you're maybe not safe with them. That's tough. That's a non-starter. They can not want to take in my point of view, but I'll certainly take in someone else's. That's all I can control.
00:25:46
Speaker
Right. This is the trickiest part about trying to sort of do conflict resolution because the parties have to be receptive enough. I'm thinking about what this has to do with the new year and sort of fake news. And I suppose a lot of people are looking forward to what you're calling like a new normal is returning to what feels like a more rational shared reality. Yeah. For other people, it's going to be returning to a more distorted reality. What do you mean by that?
00:26:13
Speaker
Well, people who, you know, people who might believe share some of the views of the more radical right or left for that matter, you know, aren't going to agree. You know, like I have someone I know on social media who is not he's not like right wing and he's not ultra left.
00:26:34
Speaker
He's a socialist and he believes that our democracy is broken and that the president elect is essentially a puppet for corporate interests. And I would say, okay, you're entitled to that point of view. I don't have a strong opinion about it, but his behavior, the president elect's behavior is more conventional. So it's reassuring for a lot of people.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yes, it seems more measured, more boundaried, but there are always going to be people on the outskirts who hold up very tightly onto certain beliefs. Right. Well, 70 million people on the outskirts who voted for Donald Trump, you know. But do you think all of those people hold on to those French beliefs? No, I think they had different reasons and their own reasons. And I think most of them, the majority of them will probably accept Biden.
00:27:28
Speaker
I'm not convinced that they're all fringe beliefs. You know, so I think I think one of the things that happens when you other is you tend to exclude information that's contrary to what you already believe. So there, you know, I'm not going to get into the arguments about sort of the details, but on a behavioral level, they're very different than the Trump and Biden. My fantasy is maybe that actually there won't be a new year that it'll stay 2020 for a while. Like maybe my nightmare.
00:27:56
Speaker
Someone will get on the TV and they'll be like, the year's not changing actually. God, that would be awful. Then we'd never have a new inauguration. No, I just wanted to be. It's brilliant. No, I just wanted to be like people celebrate quietly in their homes. We have this like serene birth of 2021 and then we sort of grow into a better year.
00:28:23
Speaker
I respect your point of view, even if I don't see it the same way. I feel generally optimistic about the future. How do you think people are going to heal from everything that we went through this year? That presumes that people will heal from what we went through this year.
Resilience and Adaptation Post-2020
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm presuming that people will heal because I believe pretty strongly in the power of the human spirit to reconstitute and survive. I think people will come to terms with it through grieving and collective memorialization.
00:28:59
Speaker
I also think as soon as there's a feeling of general safety, if the vaccines work out, I think a lot of people are essentially just going to go back to the way things are, which is good. In terms of healing, though, I don't think we have collectively healed in any significant way from the 9-11, from the Vietnam War, from the Korean War, from the Holocaust, World War II. I don't know that we've healed from the Civil War.
00:29:29
Speaker
So I feel like that's such a thorny question, which has to do with sort of how will humanity come to terms with itself. And so I think we'll come to terms with COVID and with the US presidency, though I read an article that is predicting that Trump will announce his candidacy for 2024 on, you know, the inauguration day.
00:29:52
Speaker
But I don't think we have to heal, you know, right away. I think healing takes time. And sometimes if you try too hard to heal, then it sort of interferes. How are you going to heal?
00:30:02
Speaker
I'm not sure. I'm going to try to spend time with the people that I care about as much time as I can while we're here. And I'm going to try to do stuff that I enjoy, even if it feels frivolous at times. Oh, frivolity is great. Yeah, I think it's good to get back to some just lightness.
00:30:26
Speaker
I like to I like to watch comedy sometimes. Yeah, that's great. Laughter's got a lot of physiological benefits, psychological benefits. I mean, there are other things that people can do that just feel good and feel fruitful and and that we can get better from from this. So do you think it's bad to feel sad or morose or grim ever?
00:30:45
Speaker
No, I think if we're in a place where those are the feelings, then we sit with them and accept them in that moment. But I'm just saying that I don't know how long people can stay with that before they need something a little different. Then I'm ready for something a little different.
00:31:02
Speaker
that's almost like a skill, sort of tolerating, distressing feelings. I saw on Facebook that someone, sort of Facebook friend, another therapist, probably I've never met him in person, but he posted something, what are you doing these days to keep yourself from being completely overwhelmed? And people were like Epsom salt baths, working out, studying, going to physical therapy, playing with my dog, meditation.
00:31:32
Speaker
I felt a little bit obnoxious, though I got some positive feedback right away, so it made me feel a little better. I wrote, keep from being completely overwhelmed? How about being overwhelmed at times and moving along? Or does overwhelmed mean functional impairment necessarily? That's interesting. I think you knew what he was getting at, but you were wanting to be. No, I have a real point. My real point is that it's okay to feel overwhelmed.
00:32:01
Speaker
And that doesn't mean the end of the world, unless you really start spinning with a reactive anxiety, right? Then people go into like a panic-ish state, right? I feel overwhelmed. Then what's your worst case scenario? Like, okay, I'm not gonna be able to function at all. It's like, generally that doesn't happen, right? Right. Most people can feel overwhelmed and continue to do the things that they need to do, but then maybe it's that you get grounded in your day-to-day routine.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think 2021 will bring a lot of positive changes. I'm trying to think if I have any resolutions. I think I'm going to stick with my longstanding resolution that you made in 84 or something.
Hopes for Global Unity in 2021
00:32:41
Speaker
It was the Orwellian year, probably. Yeah, 1984. Double Think, Double Speak, Newspeak, and Double Think.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah, definitely at the beginning of the last four years, everyone was like, Orwell, Orwell, Orwell. And we live in this weird reality now. It's so interesting to me around the election that the fake news thing is kind of like, that's a double-edged sword. You can try to use communication to distort the truth, but it can easily be turned back on you because other people can do that too. Right. Or there are many different truths.
00:33:19
Speaker
That's right. And self-deception is really healthy. In a lot of ways, the illusions, a lot of them are adaptive that we live with. I saw another paper I was looking at, which it was like, we're not rational. People are not rational. We rationalize. And so we need to create a narrative that works. But the narrative that works doesn't necessarily have to match whatever sort of objective reality is, especially if we don't agree on what
00:33:47
Speaker
objective reality is, you know, the consensual validation isn't there. You know, we live in different worlds, kind of. I tell you, I'm disappointed about 2020, though, because to me, 2020 was always the title of Arthur C. Clarke's book 2020. And 2020 always represented some kind of utopian year when humanity would be in the future and be in a much better place. And it doesn't seem to have played out that way.
00:34:17
Speaker
Also 2020 is like vision, you know, like clear sightedness. In a way, I do think we've become more clear sighted. I think so too. I was going to say, I think that's the one thing is now we all see things a little bit more clearly. That can be kind of a springboard to a more positive.
00:34:34
Speaker
My wish for 2020 is that we develop wisdom in response to what we've been living through and really learn it together and apply it together. I was actually super pleased to see the United Nations Chief Gutierrez giving a talk about the state of the world. I think we need to see ourselves as one world. We really need to see how interdependent we are.
00:34:59
Speaker
that is something that could come down the pipeline for 2021. So that's my hope, that we connect with each other, that there's less animosity and contempt and more just affection between people. That's what we look for. That's what we go towards.
00:35:17
Speaker
in the best possible sense. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Check us out. Check out our other podcasts at www.doorknobcomments.com. We appreciate your positive ratings. If you have anything negative to say, please email us at hello at doorknobcomments.com. And you can find it in the best possible light because that's
00:35:36
Speaker
or at least give us a lot of stars and then write something nasty. You don't have to be consistent. You can be self-contradictory. And you can find us on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook as well. We're more active on Instagram, but you can also find yourself on Instagram. I do a lot of soul searching. So weird. Okay. Well, I hope we have a very, very normal 2021 because being normal is working out so well.
00:36:06
Speaker
As long as we just conform and remain conventional and don't rock the boat, everything will be fine. Thanks very much. We're trailing off, but have a happy new year. Stay safe, be loving, be compassionate, and look out for yourself too.
00:36:27
Speaker
One disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any type of medicine. It's 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.