Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show, you may not
Speaker 1: realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes
Speaker 1: in our archives. We've had so many wonderful guests that
Speaker 1: we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that may
Speaker 1: be new to you, but if it's not, it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth another liston. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with
Speaker 1: Dr Eric miss Hell. In this modern world, with so
Speaker 1: much that we have, people are nevertheless not feeling like
Speaker 1: they have enough because they're not living their life purposes.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great tinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Eric Mazell, PhD.
Speaker 1: Eric is the author of more than forty books, and
Speaker 1: his titles include Why Smart People Hurt, Making Your Creative Mark,
Speaker 1: The Future of Mental Health, The Van Go Blues, Mastering
Speaker 1: Creative Anxiety, and Creativity for Life. In addition, Dr Mazel
Speaker 1: is in the forefront of the movement to rethink mental health.
Speaker 1: He writes the Rething Psychology blog for Psychology Today, and
Speaker 1: among his books in this area are Rethinking Depression and
Speaker 1: Natural Psychology The New Psychology of Meaning. His latest book
Speaker 1: is called Overcoming Your Difficult Family. Eight Skills for Thriving
Speaker 1: in Any Family Situation. Hi Eric, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, you have a name I'll remember exactly. This
Speaker 1: should be pretty straightforward in that regard. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: have you on. We're going to discuss two of your
Speaker 1: books today. One of them is called Overcoming Your Difficult Family.
Speaker 1: Eight Skills for Thriving in Any Family Situation, or other
Speaker 1: thing we'll talk about as a book he wrote called
Speaker 1: The Future of Mental Health. So thank you for coming on.
Speaker 1: Let's start like we normally do with the parable. Though.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like ed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I'm not sure what it means, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you what it brought to mind, and
Speaker 1: that is that for myself and I maybe I think
Speaker 1: for everyone, we'd better feed both wolves. I think, not
Speaker 1: exactly equally, but I'm not sure we want to in
Speaker 1: Friday and language, repress the bad wolf and act like
Speaker 1: it's not a part of us. I know that I
Speaker 1: need to create the occasional revenge fantasy and me and
Speaker 1: get even with the world. In my mind and maybe
Speaker 1: that's feeding the bad wolf. I'm not sure how the
Speaker 1: metaphor goes exactly, but I think if I didn't do that,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have a way of getting rid of that
Speaker 1: anger and upsetness and bile. So that's what came up
Speaker 1: for me, was that probably have to feed both wolves,
Speaker 1: but not in equal measure. You certainly want to feed
Speaker 1: the good wolf more, but there's some way in which
Speaker 1: you have to do I'm not sure what the right
Speaker 1: language would be. Befriend or honor or understand or deal
Speaker 1: with the other one. The shadow the darkness, because it's there.
Speaker 1: It's in us. We know it from human history and
Speaker 1: current politics and everywhere. We know it's in us, and
Speaker 1: I don't think it does us any good to act
Speaker 1: like we don't share that darkness with other people. I
Speaker 1: agree completely. My experience has been that wolf, at least
Speaker 1: in my case, seems to know how to feed itself
Speaker 1: fairly well. Um, but I agree with you about and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I like about the parable
Speaker 1: and listeners have heard me say this probably fifty times now,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really talk about caging the bad wolf
Speaker 1: in anyway. It doesn't talk about you know, lock him
Speaker 1: in a cage or beating him down or starving him.
Speaker 1: It just sort of indicates, hey, like you probably want
Speaker 1: to give a little bit more attention to this one. So, um,
Speaker 1: I agree with. So let's start off with your book
Speaker 1: called Overcoming Your Difficult Family. Eight skills for thriving in
Speaker 1: any family situation. Let's talk about what a couple of
Speaker 1: those skills are. I think we could talk about what
Speaker 1: a difficult family is, but I'm not sure that that's
Speaker 1: even necessary. Um. I mean, I think we all have
Speaker 1: an intuitive sense of what that's like. Some people out
Speaker 1: there may be blessed enough that their family doesn't feel difficult.
Speaker 1: But I bet a big part of the audience immediately goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to read that book. So let's jump right
Speaker 1: into the content of it. What are these skills that
Speaker 1: we need? Well, I identify eight skills, and I think
Speaker 1: they're all valuable. I want to say as a headline,
Speaker 1: I don't expect anybody to learn eight skills. I think
Speaker 1: we have trouble learning one new thing. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think it's more to hear about them than to actually
Speaker 1: learn and be wonderful if you acquired these skills. But
Speaker 1: I'm more thinking that it's good to know about them,
Speaker 1: even if we do acquire them or not. The skill
Speaker 1: are smarts, and that's just the smartness to understand what's
Speaker 1: going on in your family. The strength to make the
Speaker 1: changes that you need to make. Takes a lot of
Speaker 1: strength to even hold an important conversation. Sometimes we have
Speaker 1: to work ourselves up for a week or a month
Speaker 1: to say the thing that's on our mind. Another strength
Speaker 1: is calmness. It's hard to make any changes in life
Speaker 1: or in our family if we're too anxious or too agitated,
Speaker 1: or just running around with our head cut off. So
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of calmness that we need to
Speaker 1: generate in ourselves, rechoir for ourselves so that we can
Speaker 1: deal with difficulties in our family. Fourth skills clarity, and
Speaker 1: that's similar to smarts. It's just really being clear eyed
Speaker 1: about what's going on. Freud was smart about defenses, and
Speaker 1: Young was smart about the idea of a blind eye
Speaker 1: or blind spots. We can live in a family forever
Speaker 1: and not really ever quite get that our mother is
Speaker 1: completely depressed or that our father is an alcoholic. We
Speaker 1: know something's going on. We may not have the clarity
Speaker 1: to really name it or face it. Fifth skills awareness,
Speaker 1: which is a cousin to clarity. The sixth is courage,
Speaker 1: and it takes courage to do the things we need
Speaker 1: to do to make change, because change incurs consequences. You know,
Speaker 1: you say something, maybe it's just one sentence, but suddenly
Speaker 1: you're on the road to a divorce because you finally
Speaker 1: said that difficult thing that you needed to say, and
Speaker 1: now you and your mate understand that you're heading for
Speaker 1: a divorce. So it takes courage to say that one
Speaker 1: sentence because we know that they're going to be consequences
Speaker 1: to our words and our actions. The seven skills the
Speaker 1: skill of presence, and that's the idea that if we
Speaker 1: are always running around or running away, or running towards
Speaker 1: or running and it's very hard for us to either
Speaker 1: know what's going on or to make the changes we
Speaker 1: need to make. So the idea of presence is settling
Speaker 1: into the moment, not rushing away from what's going on,
Speaker 1: being sort of a rock in the middle of the
Speaker 1: living room, and really knowing what's going on. And the
Speaker 1: last skill is resilience. And everyone knows we need resilience
Speaker 1: in life, but we needed, especially in dealing with family matters,
Speaker 1: because these are people we keep seeing. It's not like
Speaker 1: a coworker that maybe after three years will no longer
Speaker 1: have to deal with because we've moved on or he's
Speaker 1: moved on. Family members, especially siblings, typically will go through
Speaker 1: our whole life sort of bound together with siblings. So
Speaker 1: we need resilience to deal with the nonsense or crazy
Speaker 1: making things or difficulties that go on in our family
Speaker 1: because they're going to keep going on essentially till the
Speaker 1: end of our time. Yeah, for sure, let's talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of those in a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1: You talk about something called the calmness switch. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a wonderful thing to have. How do I develop
Speaker 1: a calmness switch? Though? If I don't have one for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, right, it doesn't seem like an option.
Speaker 1: Just flip it on. They're probably twenty kinds of anxiety
Speaker 1: management tools that folks could learn. I say that not
Speaker 1: to scare people by a large number, but rather to
Speaker 1: impress people with the idea that whatever your style is,
Speaker 1: if it's more somatic, if it's more cognitive, if it's
Speaker 1: more meditative, if it's more breathing. There's probably an anxiety
Speaker 1: management tool for you, and you probably want to learn
Speaker 1: one because we all are susceptible to high anxiety, so
Speaker 1: learning one anxiety management tool is a big deal thing
Speaker 1: to try to attempt. The simplest one is deep breathing.
Speaker 1: As I say, there are cognitive tools. There are all
Speaker 1: kinds of tools. The one you mentioned, I think is
Speaker 1: really in a way the best if you can pull
Speaker 1: it off. It's essentially a visualization, and your listeners may know.
Speaker 1: The idea of visualization is just getting an image of something,
Speaker 1: often with verbal cues. It started in Northern California, where
Speaker 1: so many things start, at a hospital where cancer patients
Speaker 1: were given the opportunity to visualize their healthy cells fighting
Speaker 1: off their disease cells. That's sort of the short history
Speaker 1: of visualization, and that turned out to be a very
Speaker 1: powerful device. This visualization is you visualizing a switch inside
Speaker 1: of you where when you flip it, you just suddenly,
Speaker 1: instantly and maybe even permanently, become calmer. Now, if this
Speaker 1: makes no sense to you, or if you can't see it,
Speaker 1: then this isn't your best anxiety management tool. But if
Speaker 1: something about it is resonant, then you might want to
Speaker 1: try it. Even though it's just flipping a switch, you're
Speaker 1: really having a whole conversation with yourself about I think
Speaker 1: I'd like to be calmer, more calmness, fewer histrionics, fewer dramatics.
Speaker 1: It's really you talking to yourself and telling yourself that
Speaker 1: you want to be a new way, and the flipping
Speaker 1: the switch is just a metaphor for that conversation that
Speaker 1: you hold with yourself. What I really like about what
Speaker 1: you said there is that there's about twenty different tools.
Speaker 1: And I love that idea of exploring until you find
Speaker 1: the tool that is right for you, because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us, with things like anxiety or depression
Speaker 1: or different things, we try something and when that's something
Speaker 1: doesn't work, we say, well, this is just the way
Speaker 1: I am. I was that way with my alcoholism and addiction.
Speaker 1: I gave it a shot. I went into treatment, and
Speaker 1: I came out and I used again. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's that right. Like I went in, I did it,
Speaker 1: I did treatment, and you know, the idea that I
Speaker 1: might need to keep trying it, or that I might
Speaker 1: need to try it different ways. Thank god I got
Speaker 1: that idea. I think it kind of got beaten into me,
Speaker 1: but it was still. I just think it's so helpful
Speaker 1: because some things work for some of us and some
Speaker 1: things work for others. Yeah. I work as a creativity coach,
Speaker 1: and I trained creativity coaches, and when they're in training,
Speaker 1: they always you want to ask me, what what should
Speaker 1: I have done here? As if there was one thing
Speaker 1: to do? And I always tell them to think of
Speaker 1: the phrase one of many, that there isn't a thing
Speaker 1: to do in life. There are many things to try,
Speaker 1: and you have to try one of them. You can
Speaker 1: get paralyzed if you go down the other road of thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: there are so many things to try, therefore I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do. Therefore I'm not going to do anything.
Speaker 1: We don't want to go in that direction. We don't
Speaker 1: want to be paralyzed by possibility. But it's wonderful to
Speaker 1: realize that they're that they're virtually I would say an
Speaker 1: infinite number of possibilities for any kind of challenge, because
Speaker 1: every kind of thing that you might try has all
Speaker 1: kinds of gradations and modulations. So that's a long window
Speaker 1: way of agreeing with you that there are lots of
Speaker 1: things to try. I have a book out there called
Speaker 1: Mastering Creative Anxiety. And in that book, I have the
Speaker 1: whole twenty toolkit, twenty kinds of anxiety management strategies. So
Speaker 1: folks are interested in seeing that whole menu, that's the
Speaker 1: book of mine to turn to. I love what you
Speaker 1: said about that idea of one of many, because a
Speaker 1: lot of times I think people get into like what
Speaker 1: should I do? You know, as if there's one right
Speaker 1: answer to things like this is the way out or
Speaker 1: this is the way through, and and we're so focused
Speaker 1: on finding the one right answer that we don't just
Speaker 1: get out there and try different things. And I agree,
Speaker 1: I actually don't think there's a right answer to nearly anything.
Speaker 1: I think there are answers. And to maybe segue a
Speaker 1: little to the other conversation, we wanted to have. The
Speaker 1: mental disorder labels that are out there cause people to
Speaker 1: think that there is only one kind of answer. If
Speaker 1: you believe that you have a thing called depression, then
Speaker 1: it's logical to believe that you ought to do the
Speaker 1: number one thing that everyone says you should do, which
Speaker 1: just take chemicals for that. If you were to say
Speaker 1: instead that I'm sad, or I'm despairing or some other
Speaker 1: kind of old fashioned word that doesn't sound pseudo medical
Speaker 1: or pseudo biological. Then you would kind of automatically think, wow,
Speaker 1: there are probably lots of things that might help with despair.
Speaker 1: Could be relationship stuff, could be job stuff, could be
Speaker 1: I decided that life was a cheat and I'm just
Speaker 1: down on life. I can imagine all kinds of things
Speaker 1: that might be causing my despair. So language is so
Speaker 1: important here. If we go with the current labeling system,
Speaker 1: then we reduce our options for self care. That's a
Speaker 1: fascinating idea. Talk to me a little bit about depression
Speaker 1: as a potential condition, and do you believe that depression
Speaker 1: exists as a condition. Do you believe it's a variety
Speaker 1: of different symptoms that get labeled under one word. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about that. I think that's fascinating. Obviously a
Speaker 1: big subject. And let me start by saying that maybe
Speaker 1: two or three years ago, the director of the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Mental Health came out and said nobody heard
Speaker 1: him because pharmaceutical companies are too powerful. There is no
Speaker 1: such thing as depression, said the Director of the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Mental Health. What he meant was, it isn't
Speaker 1: useful to add the labeled depression to what a person
Speaker 1: is experiencing, unless we mean something by it, like we
Speaker 1: understand what's going on biologically or anatomically or physiologically. Just
Speaker 1: adding the word to a symptom picture is not how
Speaker 1: medicine works. Medicine doesn't diagnose by symptom pictures. It uses
Speaker 1: symptom pictures to find the causes of things, and then
Speaker 1: bases its treatment not on the symptom picture, but on
Speaker 1: what will treat the cause. In psychiatry, there's no interest
Speaker 1: in causation. Sounds like a mouthful, but there are no
Speaker 1: tests for depression. There's no interest in testing. The amount
Speaker 1: of time that a psychiatrist spends with a new patient
Speaker 1: nowadays is fifteen minutes. That means that only a certain
Speaker 1: transaction can go on in those fifteen minutes. That there's
Speaker 1: only time for me saying I'm depressed, and you agreeing
Speaker 1: that I'm depressed, and writing a script. That's all that
Speaker 1: can go on in a few minutes. So I'm saying
Speaker 1: a lot all at once. A the thoughts and feelings
Speaker 1: are abundantly there. I'm not saying that people don't feel
Speaker 1: despairing or don't manifest the symptoms that get you that label.
Speaker 1: The symptoms might be under eating, over eating, oversleeping, under sleeping.
Speaker 1: So there's an array of symptoms and some number of
Speaker 1: them get you the label depression. But it's really not
Speaker 1: a legitimate enterprise. If I were to take it out
Speaker 1: of this context, and if I were to say to you,
Speaker 1: I'm eating a lot and sleeping a lot, and you
Speaker 1: were just said to me, oh, you're depressed, I think
Speaker 1: you would realize that it's not fair of view to
Speaker 1: just jump to that conclusion. Maybe I'm hungry and et cetera.
Speaker 1: You would need to know why I'm overreading or underreading
Speaker 1: or oversleeping, or you want to know the why of it.
Speaker 1: Modern psychiatry is not interested in the why of it.
Speaker 1: The document that psychiatrists use, that all therapists use, the
Speaker 1: d s M, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is silent
Speaker 1: on causation. Nothing in it about causes, and silent on treatment.
Speaker 1: It just has these symptom pictures. It's really a shopping
Speaker 1: catalog for professionals. A document like this should not be
Speaker 1: silent on what causes things. The books that doctors use
Speaker 1: are not silent on what causes things. This book is
Speaker 1: silent on what causes things that should immediately raise suspicions.
Speaker 1: Now you might say, well, but don't antidepressants work. That's
Speaker 1: a big subject. But let me just give a headline
Speaker 1: or two A lots of studies that suggest that a
Speaker 1: large percentage of what's happening there that makes it look
Speaker 1: like antidepressants work is what's called the placebo effect. It
Speaker 1: was a big study not so long ago that maybe
Speaker 1: fifty of the success of antidepressants is somebody believing that
Speaker 1: they feel better because they're now taking something. So that's
Speaker 1: a piece of it, but the bigger pieces that these
Speaker 1: are chemicals with powerful effects. They have effects. I am
Speaker 1: not saying that an antidepressant doesn't have an effect, nor
Speaker 1: am I saying that you might not want that effect.
Speaker 1: I want to be very clear here. If you're in
Speaker 1: a deep hole of your suicidal if you're in a
Speaker 1: really dark, gray place, you may want the effect that
Speaker 1: an antidepressant can produce. That's different from one saying that
Speaker 1: it's a medication for a disease. For it to be
Speaker 1: a medication, there has to be a disease. And I
Speaker 1: hope I was making it a little bit clear that
Speaker 1: there's no known disease there, There's just a symptom picture
Speaker 1: and a label. So if I can say that all
Speaker 1: one more time, antidepressants are not medication. They're chemicals with
Speaker 1: powerful effects, and yes, you might want those powerful effects,
Speaker 1: but you also might not want to be taking chemicals
Speaker 1: that are not treating anything. In particular. I think there's
Speaker 1: so much truth in what you said, because I think
Speaker 1: there's one extreme is to look at the medical psychiatric profession.
Speaker 1: As you walk in, you say you're depressed, you're handed
Speaker 1: a pill, you walk out, and that seems to happen
Speaker 1: in an awful lot. Your family doctor does it, your
Speaker 1: psychiatrist does it, and I think that's one extreme. My
Speaker 1: approach to my depression has been to kind of throw
Speaker 1: the kitchen sink at it. From my experience, it has
Speaker 1: taken medicine, it has taken arapy, it has taken exercise,
Speaker 1: it has taken eating well, it has taken a spiritual approach.
Speaker 1: It takes all of that for me to avoid. Let's
Speaker 1: call it a symptom picture, because that is kind of
Speaker 1: what it is right for me to avoid. My symptom
Speaker 1: picture is mainly I feel completely dead inside right, I
Speaker 1: can't concentrate, I can't think. So that's my symptom picture,
Speaker 1: and I found a way that works for me to
Speaker 1: mostly deal with it. But it has certainly been very
Speaker 1: much a holistic thing, and I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think of depression a little bit like I think about alcoholism.
Speaker 1: And I used to think of alcoholism. I came up
Speaker 1: in a twelve step program, as you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about it as a disease, and I've always been like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really make sense to me, Like there's so
Speaker 1: much complexity going on here. There are so many causes,
Speaker 1: so many conditions, so many factors that to call it
Speaker 1: a disease sounds like a vast oversimplification. And I think depression,
Speaker 1: at least in my mind, feels similar that to say
Speaker 1: all these different things that we lump under depression are
Speaker 1: one thing doesn't really make any sense. It sounds to me.
Speaker 1: I think of calling it like a syndrome or a
Speaker 1: you know, a collection of what you called symptoms. Here's
Speaker 1: a very big part of it. And you probably know this,
Speaker 1: though you may not use my language, and that is
Speaker 1: you having this show means that you're attempting to live
Speaker 1: your life purposes. Yes, that you're trying to live intentionally
Speaker 1: and with purpose. The whole idea of life purposes and
Speaker 1: living intentionally is left out of psychiatry, and so much
Speaker 1: of what is called depression is probably what one might
Speaker 1: think of as existential depression, namely people just doing stuff
Speaker 1: all day long and never having the opportunity or never
Speaker 1: making the opportunity to live their life purposes or to
Speaker 1: make meaning in their lives. For me, that's awfully important
Speaker 1: if you're not living your life purposes. And you can
Speaker 1: tell by the way I'm saying it that I don't
Speaker 1: believe there is a singular purpose to life. I just
Speaker 1: believe there are our life purpose choices. The things we
Speaker 1: hold is important, and that can't be singular because we
Speaker 1: hold lots of things as important. So from my point
Speaker 1: of view, one of the stepping stones to feeling better
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say happier, but rather more proud of ourselves
Speaker 1: and less sad, less despairing, is to identify what's important
Speaker 1: to us, Identify our life purpose choices, have a life purpose,
Speaker 1: check in each morning, maybe for half a minute, and
Speaker 1: see to what extent we can actually get to our
Speaker 1: life purposes on a given day. This is very high
Speaker 1: order work, because most people, even if they can identify
Speaker 1: what's important to them, whether it's activism or service or
Speaker 1: writing their novel or their relationship or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: Even if they can identify what's important to them, they're
Speaker 1: just as likely as to not be able to get
Speaker 1: to it on that day because they have to spend
Speaker 1: their ten hours at their day job at an hour
Speaker 1: and traffic each way and etcetera, etcetera. So most people
Speaker 1: are not living their life purposes. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the root cause of so much of this despair, and
Speaker 1: I want to use the depression word, so much of
Speaker 1: this despair that people who experiences in this modern world
Speaker 1: with so much that we have, people are nevertheless not
Speaker 1: feeling like they have enough because they're not living their
Speaker 1: life purposes. So let's talk about the symptom picture that
Speaker 1: presents for me, which is this emptiness, this lack of
Speaker 1: ability to concentrate, this deep antedonia where if you ask
Speaker 1: me about my life purpose, you know, nothing sounds like
Speaker 1: a good life purpose. Do you believe that that's the
Speaker 1: result of a long period of time of not living
Speaker 1: a life And I'm oversimplifying here, but do you believe
Speaker 1: that that state is a response because I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I guess you'd call it despair, but it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like despair in the typical sense of the word despair,
Speaker 1: where it's it's you know, an active fretting. It is
Speaker 1: more just like nothingness. And so from that perspective, how
Speaker 1: do you work with people that are kind of in
Speaker 1: a spot like that where life purpose seems an awful
Speaker 1: long way away because I can't even think about what
Speaker 1: I might want for breakfast. Well, part of it is
Speaker 1: the way we're trained not to think about life purposes.
Speaker 1: There's no place in our education, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: at the breakfast table or in school, where this idea,
Speaker 1: ideas of making meaning and life purposes are brought up.
Speaker 1: So this would have to be actually a new education.
Speaker 1: I have a book on this called Life Purpose boot Camp,
Speaker 1: and um it's it's the work of this Life Purpose
Speaker 1: boot Camp to begin to identify what feels important, to
Speaker 1: identify what has been experienced as meaningful in the past,
Speaker 1: because we can a little bit predict that what might
Speaker 1: feel meaningful in the future might connect to what's felt
Speaker 1: meaningful in the past. That is that there's some work
Speaker 1: to do that most people have never tried to do. Now,
Speaker 1: I think you're saying that you have tried to identify
Speaker 1: your life purposes and have trouble doing it. But actually
Speaker 1: I would guess that that's not It's not work that
Speaker 1: most people have actually tried to do. Is create this
Speaker 1: menu or list or what have you of life purposes,
Speaker 1: to see a kind of master list of life purposes
Speaker 1: that might include activism and service or however one would
Speaker 1: want to say it for oneself and then go, oh,
Speaker 1: I do think that's important. I do think that that
Speaker 1: I would be made proud by my efforts if I
Speaker 1: did those things on a daily basis, Because, as I
Speaker 1: said before, I think we're in this game not to
Speaker 1: be happy, but to make ourselves proud by our efforts.
Speaker 1: This is the old existential ideas of personal responsibility, that
Speaker 1: while we're here, our life is a certain kind of project.
Speaker 1: We have to step to the plate and live that project.
Speaker 1: So I'm selling a whole existential picture all at once,
Speaker 1: a personal response ability of stepping to the plate, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I may not be able to get at exactly
Speaker 1: the thing that you were saying. If I were working
Speaker 1: with a client, I would I would want to know
Speaker 1: if somewhere along the line he made the decision that
Speaker 1: life was a cheat, because most postmodern people have without
Speaker 1: knowing it, because we grew we've all grown up in
Speaker 1: an age of science. We kind of know that we're
Speaker 1: just excited matter. We don't really think we matter. Somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line, we've gotten the idea from science rightly
Speaker 1: so in a certain sense that we don't count, that
Speaker 1: we don't matter. So each person has to make the
Speaker 1: decision to opt to matter in the face of only
Speaker 1: being excited matter in the universe. The universe doesn't care
Speaker 1: about our decisions, I do not believe, but we have
Speaker 1: to care about our decisions. We have to opt to matter.
Speaker 1: So I think you can see that there's a certain
Speaker 1: kind of discussion dash persuasion that I it go into
Speaker 1: with a given client to help move that client towards
Speaker 1: the idea that you've probably been call it brainwashed. It's
Speaker 1: just just what everybody has learned, brainwashed to believe that
Speaker 1: you don't particularly matter. Maybe that's been your experience, but
Speaker 1: that's been your experience that you don't feel like you
Speaker 1: particularly matter. Well, now you have to change your mind
Speaker 1: about that. Change your mind about that and decide that
Speaker 1: you're going to matter in your own ways, in your
Speaker 1: own light, and make certain decisions as to how to
Speaker 1: live your life based on that realization that you must
Speaker 1: opt to matter. Pill sounds a little bit easier, Eric
Speaker 1: that I'm kidding. I mean, I'm sort of. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm making a dark joke. You know. That's why the
Speaker 1: d s M way, that's the number one paradigm. That's
Speaker 1: why it's spreading worldwide. The that way of dealing with
Speaker 1: depression is spreading to every corner of the globe. We
Speaker 1: use this book. In America, we use this book called
Speaker 1: the d s M that I mentioned, the Diagnostic and
Speaker 1: Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The rest of
Speaker 1: the world uses another book, the i c D International
Speaker 1: Classification of Diseases. But both do the same thing, push
Speaker 1: you towards pills. Both do exactly the same thing. And
Speaker 1: new things are happening, which to my mind, are awful,
Speaker 1: name lip giving kids prophylactically antidepressants, namely, predicting which trying
Speaker 1: to predict which kids are going to be depressed even
Speaker 1: if they show no symptoms. Now that's horrific to me.
Speaker 1: To start putting kids on powerful meds and then to
Speaker 1: wonder why there are there are addiction epidemics. Putting all
Speaker 1: these a d h D kids so supposed A d
Speaker 1: h D kids on speed and then wondering why there's
Speaker 1: problems with speed when they're older strikes me as just horrible.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, that was along within the response
Speaker 1: to what you mentioned. The pills are easier. Not only
Speaker 1: are pills easier, more and more of them are being
Speaker 1: promulgated all the time, right, and you can make money
Speaker 1: on them. I mean, I'm certainly I have I feel
Speaker 1: like in certain respects that medication probably I don't know
Speaker 1: if i'd say it saved my life, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: helped me in a in a tremendous way. And I
Speaker 1: have a feeling that exactly like you do, that there's
Speaker 1: a profit motive that we are going after the symptom,
Speaker 1: not after the cause. I mean, I think there's I
Speaker 1: believe in in all of that stuff. As I said,
Speaker 1: I kind of have a very holistic approach to depression
Speaker 1: that you know, I listed some of the things, but
Speaker 1: you know, even further, like you said, looking for life, purpose,
Speaker 1: looking for meaning, staying away from our culture to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, Like I don't watch much TV because for me,
Speaker 1: it damages me. Now, I'm not saying that happens to everybody,
Speaker 1: but for me, I'm very susceptible to it. Yea. And
Speaker 1: it promotes a certain kind of cultural trance where we
Speaker 1: can't sort of do our own work or live our
Speaker 1: own life because we just get caught up in this trance.
Speaker 1: Even if it's not necessarily negative news, we just caught
Speaker 1: up in it and can't do our own thinking. I
Speaker 1: want to say one thing which I don't want to
Speaker 1: forget to say, and that is there's an excellent website
Speaker 1: called mad in America dot com run by a guy
Speaker 1: named Robert Whittaker who did a book called Anatomy of
Speaker 1: an Epidemic. I'm their editor for Parent Resources. I know
Speaker 1: them well, and I don't know when our conversation is airing,
Speaker 1: but they're doing a many month long webinar series on
Speaker 1: getting off psychiatric medications, because that's its own very tricky business.
Speaker 1: You know, if someone were to hear me and go, wow,
Speaker 1: I want to get off my meds, you can't just
Speaker 1: stop from today, borrow. That's very These are powerful chemicals.
Speaker 1: So if anyone who is listening is thinking, well, I'd
Speaker 1: like to investigate getting off my meds a little bit,
Speaker 1: I would really suggest this webinar series. Go to mad
Speaker 1: in America dot com. Look up, but they're continuing education
Speaker 1: offerings and might be interesting to folks. That's wonderful. Thank
Speaker 1: you for that source. I think that's a great one.
Speaker 1: Staying on this topic a little bit. It sounds looks
Speaker 1: like we're gonna spend most of the conversation here, But
Speaker 1: staying on this topic. You know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of conversation about lately is stigmatization
Speaker 1: of mental health. So you have these people who say
Speaker 1: I'm depressed and it's good to come out and say that,
Speaker 1: because we stigmatize feeling this way and people don't ask
Speaker 1: for help, and people don't get help. So there's this
Speaker 1: sense of, hey, we should be talking more about this
Speaker 1: um and trying to break the stigmatization, trying to to
Speaker 1: break the well, just you know, pick yourself up by
Speaker 1: the bootstraps and feel better. Where does your thought on
Speaker 1: depression not being a actual thing in the same way
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about, how does that play into
Speaker 1: this whole discussion, that whole stigmatization conversation is still inside
Speaker 1: the paradigm people who whatever side you're on with respect
Speaker 1: to that, the end result of that is still chemical
Speaker 1: fix or the expert talk of psychotherapy. That is, it's
Speaker 1: still in the paradigm or in the second. There are,
Speaker 1: by the way to paradigms. One is the pseudo medical
Speaker 1: cause and effect mental disorder symptom picture paradigm. Then there's
Speaker 1: the second paradigm of psychotherapy, which is the expert talk paradigm.
Speaker 1: That is that there are folks who actually know things
Speaker 1: and they are the experts, and you go to them, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I've been writing about and trying to promote a third
Speaker 1: paradigm called humane helping, where the person you go to
Speaker 1: doesn't act like an expert, but acts like a co investigator,
Speaker 1: co conspirator if you like, trying to actually figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on without any special expertise, doesn't need any
Speaker 1: fancy degree really, but just needs the ability to stay
Speaker 1: with you, listen to you, maybe have some suggestions, maybe
Speaker 1: know how to offer some exercises or provide some resources,
Speaker 1: but basically, as in a more peer or mentor in relationship,
Speaker 1: then in some kind of expert relationship. That's a long
Speaker 1: winded way of saying I'm not so interested in the
Speaker 1: stigmatization conversation because I think that actually it promotes the
Speaker 1: first paradigm of chemicals ultimately, because you can, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you're a pharmaceutical company, you want more and more people
Speaker 1: to bravely come out and say they have a thing,
Speaker 1: so that you can provide them with a thing that
Speaker 1: will help them. So I think that ultimately it serves
Speaker 1: what I think is an illegitimate paradigm. Unfortunately, because I
Speaker 1: understand that the person who wants to not be stigmatized
Speaker 1: is not attempting to help the paradigm. That's not his
Speaker 1: or her motive. But I think that's the ultimate result
Speaker 1: of this conversation, is that it helps pharmaceutical companies. Right.
Speaker 1: But you would certainly say that if you are suffering
Speaker 1: from sadness to spair, you know, let's use your your
Speaker 1: description of the emotion, the old fashioned emotion is I
Speaker 1: think i've heard you call it. If you are suffering,
Speaker 1: you should still get help, absolutely, and then there's a
Speaker 1: question as to what helped to get of course, but
Speaker 1: agreolutely you should get help and um, it would be
Speaker 1: nice if you realize that there's more help than the
Speaker 1: two kinds of help that I've mentioned, which is psychiatry
Speaker 1: and pills and psychotherapy and expert talk. There are lots
Speaker 1: of other things, from you know, therapeutic wilderness exp oriences,
Speaker 1: to mentoring, to to certain kinds of etcetera, etcetera goes
Speaker 1: on and on. I have a number of books on
Speaker 1: this subject out One is called The Future of Mental Health.
Speaker 1: One is called Humane Helping, which tries to paint a
Speaker 1: picture of the multiple kinds of resources that are out
Speaker 1: there and how maybe you know, you might want to
Speaker 1: go to one of them first. To repeat what we
Speaker 1: said earlier, if you're in a deep hole, if you're suicidal,
Speaker 1: obviously you might you might want to go to the
Speaker 1: chemical fix first because that gives you the window of
Speaker 1: opportunity to stay alive and then look at the other resources.
Speaker 1: But if you're not in such a deep hole, then
Speaker 1: maybe you might want to go to some other kind
Speaker 1: of resource before you started down the road of chemicals.
Speaker 1: Before I went on medicine, I you know, I really
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure, like was I doing what I
Speaker 1: should be doing? You know, in my case, at that
Speaker 1: time in my life, meetings, you know, where was I
Speaker 1: going to meetings? Was I exercising? Was I eating well?
Speaker 1: I believe metation is important. Was I meditating? And when
Speaker 1: I was kind of doing all those things and still
Speaker 1: really suffering, I went, Okay, I give for right now. Um.
Speaker 1: But I hope that's part of what this show does
Speaker 1: is I'm trying to expose people are lots of different
Speaker 1: ideas and to say, if you still feel lousy, don't
Speaker 1: give up, try something else, look a different way, you know,
Speaker 1: but just keep to keep going. And I want to
Speaker 1: throw in another idea. It's going to be hard for
Speaker 1: folks to hear it in the midst of the conversation
Speaker 1: we're having because we're covering a lot of ground, which
Speaker 1: is great. But it's the idea of personality being made
Speaker 1: up of three parts in my model, and the first
Speaker 1: part of it is what I call original personality. That's
Speaker 1: who we are when we're come into the world. Our
Speaker 1: original endowments are original proclivities. Psychiatry and psychology pays no
Speaker 1: attention to that. Acts like everybody comes into the world
Speaker 1: the same. If you've had kids or puppies or kids
Speaker 1: or any kind of creature. You know that every creature
Speaker 1: is itself from the get go. What this means is
Speaker 1: And in the medieval times, folks thought that people came
Speaker 1: in one of four flavors for humors, one of which
Speaker 1: was melancholia. That is, ancient folks thought that maybe a
Speaker 1: full quarter of the world was born sadder than the rest.
Speaker 1: It may be the case that any given person's original
Speaker 1: personality contains extra sadness. That doesn't make that sadness of
Speaker 1: mental disorder. It makes it a lifelong challenge, but it
Speaker 1: should not be considered a mental disorder. And this idea
Speaker 1: that we may be born a certain way sadder than
Speaker 1: the next person, more anxious than the next person, more
Speaker 1: intelligent than the next person, more sensitive than the next person,
Speaker 1: more of this less that is completely ignored by both
Speaker 1: psychiatry and psychology, and that that's just wrong, that it's
Speaker 1: completely ignored. I couldn't agree with you more. I think
Speaker 1: that is such a true statement, and that it is ignored.
Speaker 1: And I do think that one of the allinges of
Speaker 1: labeling things as disorders does make feeling bad in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form almost a crime, right, And I totally
Speaker 1: do not agree with that, And I think the lens
Speaker 1: I put it on it as my alcoholism, right, is
Speaker 1: that that, on one hand, was a significant problem, right,
Speaker 1: I mean I ended up homeless, I ended up nearly
Speaker 1: going to jail, I was dying, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: there were a lot of problems there. Right. At the
Speaker 1: same time, that is such a core component of what
Speaker 1: has made me who I am and reflects the strength
Speaker 1: that I have. And and so I always talk on
Speaker 1: this show, we talk a lot about this idea that
Speaker 1: any character trait taken too far in either direction becomes maladaptive,
Speaker 1: and so that that idea of melancholy. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's the way I was born, but I
Speaker 1: think that there are strengths to that also. And also
Speaker 1: in talking about addictions, um, I think that one of
Speaker 1: the things we're actually pretty sure about is that high
Speaker 1: tolerance is a birthright or a birth problem. That is,
Speaker 1: some people can drink twenty three beers and and still
Speaker 1: be somehow moving around, and another person has one or
Speaker 1: two and and they're knocked out from it. That's a
Speaker 1: biological difference. And I worked as a I worked in
Speaker 1: this field, in the adiction field, and I have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to look under a microscope at the cells of
Speaker 1: alcoholics and non alcoholics and how the cells had adapted
Speaker 1: to alcohol, and the genuine difference inside. There's biological stuff
Speaker 1: there that was real and that forced the psychological dependency.
Speaker 1: If your cells are crying out for stuff, that makes
Speaker 1: it very hard to not do that thing. So if
Speaker 1: that's a if that's a feature of original personality, something
Speaker 1: like high tolerance for a given substance, that's something one
Speaker 1: should be aware of one's whole life and take special
Speaker 1: precautions to deal with, because that's that is part of
Speaker 1: your biology. It's not that it's a disease. It's a
Speaker 1: part of your original endowment for better or worse, maybe
Speaker 1: in some cases worse, but as part of your original
Speaker 1: endowment and should not be called a disease. We're running
Speaker 1: out of time here. I want to just follow your
Speaker 1: your last train of thought through to the end and
Speaker 1: then we'll wrap up. You mentioned the original personality, so
Speaker 1: now I got to know the other two. The second
Speaker 1: I call formed personality, which is which is the us
Speaker 1: that accreates over time kind of the way we are
Speaker 1: cemented over time. And the third I call our available personality,
Speaker 1: that's our remaining freedom to be the person that we
Speaker 1: want to be or ought to be. And I see
Speaker 1: that available personality almost as an amount. If you're actively
Speaker 1: addicted and you're running around town looking for a fix
Speaker 1: or drink, you have much less available personality than when
Speaker 1: you enter into recovery. It's like that amount increases of
Speaker 1: available personality. So that's my kind of simple model, but
Speaker 1: it works for me. Of original personality, formed personality, and
Speaker 1: available personality. I love that idea. It echoes a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's not get into this discussion we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: have you back on. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: came out of positive psychology that really made sense to
Speaker 1: me was this sense of exactly like you said, some
Speaker 1: portion of my happiness level is determined by my biological setting.
Speaker 1: Some portion of my happiness level is determined by the
Speaker 1: experiences I've had in my life and the ways that
Speaker 1: I have been conditioned. And then there's the remaining part
Speaker 1: that I can work with. And that part is not insignificant.
Speaker 1: It's not everything, but it is not insignificant either, And
Speaker 1: that was really helpful to me to a normalize how
Speaker 1: I was feeling, to to recognize like, Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna go from being the kind of person I am
Speaker 1: to you know, Ronald McDonald, That's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: But I've got lots of room to move still, and
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of ability to control and impact
Speaker 1: the direction of my life and the direction of my
Speaker 1: overall state of mind. And in my language, I say
Speaker 1: that everybody can use a personality upgrade, and I think
Speaker 1: that's true that we can. Everybody would be well advised
Speaker 1: to use their very available personality to deal with those
Speaker 1: things they know they ought to deal with. We all
Speaker 1: have stuff to deal with. We have available personality available
Speaker 1: and we should use it. Excellent. Well, Eric, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to come on. I
Speaker 1: think we will probably there's a lot to dive into here,
Speaker 1: and you've got more books than the Bible almost and
Speaker 1: um so I don't think there'll be any shortage of
Speaker 1: things to talk about. I do want to point people
Speaker 1: back to Overcoming your Difficult Family Eight Skills for Thriving
Speaker 1: in any family situation. One of the things that I
Speaker 1: thought was really useful in the book that I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about and we didn't was the approaches to
Speaker 1: communication that there's a lot of ways we can be
Speaker 1: more skillful and how we communicate with our family, and
Speaker 1: we can go from either no communication or you know, fighting,
Speaker 1: to finding a place where we're able to say what
Speaker 1: we want to say and we're able to do it
Speaker 1: in a more skillful way. And so there's lots of
Speaker 1: great stuff in the book about that. Thank you. We'll
Speaker 1: do that another time, another time. Thanks so much, Eric,
Speaker 1: Thank you, bye bye. If what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the
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