Speaker 1: In this modern world, with so much that we have,
Speaker 1: people are nevertheless not feeling like they have enough because
Speaker 1: they're not living their life purposes. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Eric Mazell, PhD. Eric is the author
Speaker 1: of more than forty books, and his titles include Why
Speaker 1: Smart People Hurt, Making Your Creative Mark, The Future of
Speaker 1: Mental Health, The Van Go Blues, Mastering Creative Anxiety, and
Speaker 1: Creativity for Life. In addition, Dr Mazel is in the
Speaker 1: Forefront of the movement to rethink mental health. He writes
Speaker 1: the Rethinking Psychology blog for Psychology Today, and among his
Speaker 1: books in this area are Rethinking Depression and Natural Psychology
Speaker 1: The New Psychology of Meaning. His latest book is called
Speaker 1: Overcoming Your Difficult Family. Eight Skills for Thriving in any
Speaker 1: family situation. If you're getting value out of this show,
Speaker 1: please go to one you feed dot Net slash Support
Speaker 1: and make a donation. This will ensure that all five
Speaker 1: episodes that are in the archive will remain free and
Speaker 1: that the show is here for other people who need it.
Speaker 1: Some other ways that you can support us is if
Speaker 1: you're interested in the book that we're discussing on today's episode,
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot net and find the
Speaker 1: episode that we're talking about. There will be links to
Speaker 1: all of the author's books, and if you buy them
Speaker 1: through there, it's the same price to you, but we
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Speaker 1: and you can buy t shirts, mugs and other things.
Speaker 1: And finally, one you feed dot net slash Facebook, which
Speaker 1: is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact
Speaker 1: with other listeners of the show and get support in
Speaker 1: feeding your good Wolf. Thanks again for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: the interview with Dr Eric Mazel. Hi Eric, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Hi Eric, you have a name I'll remember exactly.
Speaker 1: This should be pretty straightforward in that regard. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to have you on. We're going to discuss two of
Speaker 1: your books today. One of them is called Overcoming Your
Speaker 1: Difficult Family. Eight Skills for Thriving in any family situation
Speaker 1: or other thing we'll talk about as a book you
Speaker 1: wrote called The Future of Mental Health. So thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on. Let's start like we normally do with
Speaker 1: the parable though. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed,
Speaker 1: So i'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I'm not sure what it means,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you 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. I'm not sure what the right language
Speaker 1: would be. Befriend or honor or understand or deal with
Speaker 1: 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 you. So let's start off with your
Speaker 1: book called Overcoming Your Difficult Family. Eight skills for Thriving
Speaker 1: in any family situation. Let's talk about what a couple
Speaker 1: of those skills are. I think we could talk about
Speaker 1: what a difficult family is, but I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: that's even necessary. Uh. I mean, I think we all
Speaker 1: have an intuitive sense of what that's like. Some people
Speaker 1: out there may be blessed enough that their family doesn't
Speaker 1: feel difficult. But I bet a big part of the
Speaker 1: audience immediately goes, yeah, I need to read that book.
Speaker 1: So let's jump right into the content of it. What
Speaker 1: are these skills that we need? Well, I identify eight skills,
Speaker 1: and I think they're all valuable. I want to say
Speaker 1: as a headline, I don't expect anybody to learn eight skills.
Speaker 1: I think we have trouble learning one new thing. So
Speaker 1: I think it's more to hear about them than to
Speaker 1: actually learn and be wonderful if you acquired these skills.
Speaker 1: But I'm more thinking that it's good to know about
Speaker 1: them even if we do acquire them or not. The
Speaker 1: skills are smarts, and that's just the smartness to understand
Speaker 1: what's going on in your family. The strength to make
Speaker 1: the changes that you need to make. Takes a lot
Speaker 1: of strength to even hold an important conversation. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: have to work ourselves up for a week or a
Speaker 1: month to say the thing that's on our mind. Another
Speaker 1: strength is calmness. Hard to make any chance ages in
Speaker 1: life or in our family if we're too anxious or
Speaker 1: too agitated, or just running around with our head cut off.
Speaker 1: So there's a certain kind of calmness that we need
Speaker 1: to generate in ourselves, require for ourselves so that we
Speaker 1: can deal with difficulties in our family. Fourth skills clarity,
Speaker 1: and that's similar to smart. It's just really being clear
Speaker 1: eyed about what's going on. Freud was smart about defenses,
Speaker 1: and Young was smart about the idea of a blind
Speaker 1: eye or blind spots. We can live in a family
Speaker 1: forever and not really ever quite get that our mother
Speaker 1: is completely depressed or that our father is an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: We know something's going on, we may not have the
Speaker 1: clarity 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 incuraged 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
Speaker 1: matters because these are people we keep seeing. It's not
Speaker 1: like a coworker that maybe after three years will no
Speaker 1: longer have to deal with because we've down 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 a 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 one.
Speaker 1: Because we all are susceptible to high anxiety, so learning
Speaker 1: one anxiety management tool is a big deal thing to
Speaker 1: try to attempt. The simplest one is deep breathing. As
Speaker 1: I say, there are cognitive tools, they are all kinds
Speaker 1: of tools. The one you mentioned, I think is really,
Speaker 1: in a way the best if you can pull it off.
Speaker 1: It's essentially a visualization, and your listeners may know the
Speaker 1: 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 or
Speaker 1: depression or different things. We try something and when that's
Speaker 1: something doesn't work, we say, well, this is just the
Speaker 1: way I am. I was that way with my alcoholism
Speaker 1: and addiction, and I gave it a shot. I went
Speaker 1: into treatment and I came out and I used again.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, that's that right. Like I went in,
Speaker 1: I did it. I did treatment, and you know, the
Speaker 1: idea that I might need to keep trying it, or
Speaker 1: that I might need to try it different ways. Thank
Speaker 1: god I got that idea. I think it kind of
Speaker 1: got beaten into me, but it was still. I just
Speaker 1: think it's so helpful because some things work for some
Speaker 1: of us and some things work for others. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: work as a creativity coach and I trained creativity coaches,
Speaker 1: and when they're in training, they always want to ask me,
Speaker 1: what what should I have done here? As if there
Speaker 1: was one thing to do? And I always tell them
Speaker 1: to think of the phrase one of many, that there
Speaker 1: isn't a thing to do in life. There are many
Speaker 1: things to try, and you have to try one of them.
Speaker 1: You can get paralyzed if you go down the other
Speaker 1: road of thinking, oh, there are so many things to
Speaker 1: try therefore I don't know what to do. Therefore I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do anything. We don't want to go
Speaker 1: in that direction. We don't want to be paralyzed by possibility.
Speaker 1: But it's wonderful to realize that they're that they were.
Speaker 1: Virtually I would say an infinite number of possibilities for
Speaker 1: any kind of challenge, because every kind of thing that
Speaker 1: you might try has all kinds of gradations and modulations.
Speaker 1: So that's a long window way of agreeing with you
Speaker 1: that there are lots of things to try. I have
Speaker 1: a book out there called Mastering Creative Anxiety, and in
Speaker 1: that book I have the whole twenty toolkit twenty kinds
Speaker 1: of anxiety management strategies. So folks are interested in seeing
Speaker 1: that whole menu, that's the book of mine to turn to.
Speaker 1: I love what you said about that idea of one
Speaker 1: of many, because a lot of times I think people
Speaker 1: get into like what should I do? You know, as
Speaker 1: if there's one right answer to things, like this is
Speaker 1: the way out or this is the way through, and
Speaker 1: and we're so focused on finding the one right answer
Speaker 1: that we don't just get out there and try different things.
Speaker 1: And I agree, I actually don't think there's a right
Speaker 1: answer to nearly anything. I think there are answers, And
Speaker 1: to maybe said a little to the other conversation, we
Speaker 1: wanted to have The mental disorder labels that are out
Speaker 1: there cause people to think that there is only one
Speaker 1: kind of answer. If you believe that you have a
Speaker 1: thing called depression, then it's logical to believe that you
Speaker 1: ought to do the number one thing that everyone says
Speaker 1: you should do, which is take chemicals for that. If
Speaker 1: you were to say instead that I'm sad or I'm despairing,
Speaker 1: or some other kind of old fashioned word that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound pseudo medical or pseudo biological, then you would kind
Speaker 1: of automatically think, Wow, there are probably lots of things
Speaker 1: that might help with despair. Could be relationship stuff, could
Speaker 1: be job stuff, could be I decided that life was
Speaker 1: a cheat and I'm just down on life. I can
Speaker 1: imagine all kinds of things that might be causing my despair.
Speaker 1: So language is so important here. If we go with
Speaker 1: the current labeling system, then we reduce so our options
Speaker 1: for self care. That's a fascinating idea. Talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about depression as a potential condition, and
Speaker 1: do you believe that depression exists as a condition. Do
Speaker 1: you believe it's a variety of different symptoms that get
Speaker 1: labeled under one word. Talk to me about that. I
Speaker 1: think that's fascinating. Obviously a big subject. And let me
Speaker 1: start by saying that. Maybe two or three years ago,
Speaker 1: the director of the National Institute of Mental Health came
Speaker 1: out and said nobody heard him because the pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 1: are too powerful. There is no such thing as depression,
Speaker 1: said the director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Speaker 1: What he meant was, it isn't useful to add the
Speaker 1: labeled depression to what a person is experiencing unless we
Speaker 1: mean something by it, like we understand what's going on
Speaker 1: biologically or anatomically or physiologically. Just adding the word to
Speaker 1: a symptom picture is not how medicine works. Medicine doesn't
Speaker 1: diagnose by symptom pictures. It uses symptom pictures to find
Speaker 1: the causes of things, and then bases its treatment not
Speaker 1: on the symptom picture, but on what will treat the cause.
Speaker 1: In psychiatry, there's no interest in causation. Sounds like a mouthful,
Speaker 1: but there are no tests for depression. There's no interest
Speaker 1: in testing the amount of time that a psychiatrist spends
Speaker 1: with a new patient nowadays is fifteen minutes. That means
Speaker 1: that only a certain transaction can go on in those
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. That there's only time for me saying I'm
Speaker 1: depressed and you agreeing that I'm depressed and writing a script.
Speaker 1: That's all that can go on in a few minutes.
Speaker 1: So I'm saying a lot all at once. A the
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings are abundantly there. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: people don't feel despairing or don't manifest the symptoms that
Speaker 1: get you that label. The symptoms might be under eating,
Speaker 1: overrea eating, oversleeping, under sleeping. So there's an array of symptoms,
Speaker 1: and some number of them get you the label depression.
Speaker 1: But it's really not a legitimate enterprise. If I were
Speaker 1: to take it out of this context, and if I
Speaker 1: were to say to you, I'm eating a lot and
Speaker 1: sleeping a lot, and you would have said to me, oh,
Speaker 1: you're depressed, I think you would realize that it's not
Speaker 1: fair of view to just jump to that conclusion. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm hungry and et cetera. You would need to know
Speaker 1: why I'm overreating or underreating or oversleeping, or you want
Speaker 1: to know the why of it. Modern psychiatry is not
Speaker 1: interested in the why of it. The document that psychiatrists use,
Speaker 1: that all therapists used, the d s M, the Diagnostic
Speaker 1: and Statistical Manual, is silent on causation. Nothing in it
Speaker 1: about causes, and silent on treatment. It just has these
Speaker 1: symptom pictures. It's really a shopping catalog for professionals. A
Speaker 1: document like this should not be silent on what causes things.
Speaker 1: The books that doctors use are not silent on what
Speaker 1: causes things. This book is silent on what causes things
Speaker 1: that should immediately raise suspicions. Now you might say, well,
Speaker 1: but don't antidepressants work. That's a big subject. But let
Speaker 1: me just give a headline or two A lots of
Speaker 1: studies that suggest that a large percentage of what's happening
Speaker 1: there that makes it look like antidepressants work is what's
Speaker 1: called the placebo effect. It was a big study not
Speaker 1: so long ago that maybe fifty of the success of
Speaker 1: antidepressants is somebody believing that they feel better because they're
Speaker 1: now taking something. So that's a piece of it. But
Speaker 1: the bigger pieces that these are chemicals with powerful effects.
Speaker 1: They have effects. I am not saying that an antidepressant
Speaker 1: doesn't have an effect, nor am I saying that you
Speaker 1: might not want that effect. I want to be very
Speaker 1: clear here. If you're in a deep hole of your
Speaker 1: suicidal if you're in a really dark, gray place, you
Speaker 1: may want the effect that an antidepressant can produce. That's
Speaker 1: different from one saying that it's a medication for a disease.
Speaker 1: For it to be a medication, there has to be
Speaker 1: a disease, and I hope I was making it a
Speaker 1: little bit clear that there's no known disease there. There's
Speaker 1: just a symptom, picture and a label. So if I
Speaker 1: can say that all one more time, antidepressants are not medication.
Speaker 1: They're chemicals with powerful effects, and yes, you might want
Speaker 1: those powerful effects, but you also might not want to
Speaker 1: be taking chemicals that are not treating anything in particular.
Speaker 1: I think there's so much truth in what you said,
Speaker 1: because I think there's one extreme is to look at
Speaker 1: the medical psychiatric profession. As you walk in, you say
Speaker 1: you're depressed, you're handed a pill, you walk out, and
Speaker 1: that seems to happen in an awful lot. Your family
Speaker 1: doctor does it, your psychiatrist does it, and I think
Speaker 1: that's one extreme. My approach to my depression has been
Speaker 1: to kind of throw the kitchen sink at it. From
Speaker 1: my experience, it has taken medicine, it has taken therapy,
Speaker 1: it has taken exercise, it has taken eating well, it
Speaker 1: has taken a spiritual approach. It takes all of that
Speaker 1: for me to avoid. Let's call it a symptom picture,
Speaker 1: because that is kind of what it is right for
Speaker 1: me to avoid. My symptom picture is mainly I feel
Speaker 1: completely dead inside right, I can't concentrate, I can't think,
Speaker 1: So that's my symptom picture. And I found a way
Speaker 1: that works for me to mostly deal with it. But
Speaker 1: it has certainly been very much a holistic thing. And
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think a depression a little
Speaker 1: bit like I think about alcoholism. And I used to
Speaker 1: think of alcoholism. I came up in a twelve step program,
Speaker 1: as you know, we talked about it as a disease,
Speaker 1: and I've always been like, that doesn't really make sense
Speaker 1: to me, Like there's so much complexity going on here.
Speaker 1: There are so many causes, so many conditions, so many
Speaker 1: factors that to call it a disease sounds like a
Speaker 1: vast oversimplification, and I think depression, at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: feels similar. That to say all these different things that
Speaker 1: we lump under depression are one thing doesn't really make
Speaker 1: any sense. It sounds to me. I think of calling
Speaker 1: it like a syndrome or or a you know, a
Speaker 1: collection of what you called symptoms. Here's a very big
Speaker 1: part of it. And you probably know this the you
Speaker 1: may not use my language, and that is you having
Speaker 1: this show means that you're attempting to live your life purposes,
Speaker 1: that you're trying to live intentionally and with purpose. The
Speaker 1: whole idea of life purposes and living intentionally is left
Speaker 1: out of psychiatry, and so much of what is called
Speaker 1: depression is probably what one might think of as existential depression,
Speaker 1: namely people just doing stuff all day long and never
Speaker 1: having the opportunity or never making the opportunity to live
Speaker 1: their life purposes or to make meaning in their lives.
Speaker 1: For me, that's awfully important if you're not living your
Speaker 1: life purposes. And you can tell by the way I'm
Speaker 1: saying it that I don't believe there is a singular
Speaker 1: purpose to life. I just believe there are our life
Speaker 1: purpose choices, the things we hold is important, and that
Speaker 1: can't be singular because we hold lots of things as important.
Speaker 1: So from my point of view, one of the stepping
Speaker 1: stones to feeling better I wouldn't say happier, but rather
Speaker 1: they're more proud of ourselves and less sad less despairing,
Speaker 1: is to identify what's important to us, identify our life
Speaker 1: purpose choices, have a life purpose check in each morning,
Speaker 1: maybe for half a minute, and see to what extent
Speaker 1: we can actually get to our life purposes on a
Speaker 1: given day. This is very high order work because most people,
Speaker 1: even if they can identify what's important to them, whether
Speaker 1: it's activism or service or writing their novel or their
Speaker 1: relationship or whatever it might be. Even if they can
Speaker 1: identify what's important to them, they're just as likely as
Speaker 1: to not be able to get to it on that
Speaker 1: day because they have to spend their ten hours at
Speaker 1: their day job, in an hour in traffic each way,
Speaker 1: and etcetera, etcetera. So most people are not living their
Speaker 1: life purposes. And I think that's the root cause of
Speaker 1: so much of this despair, and I want to use
Speaker 1: the depression word. So much of this despair that people
Speaker 1: who experiences in this modern world with so much that
Speaker 1: we have, people are nevertheless not feeling like they have
Speaker 1: enough because they not living their life purposes. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the symptom picture that presents for me, which
Speaker 1: is this emptiness, this lack of ability to concentrate, this
Speaker 1: deep antedonia where if you ask me about my life purpose,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing sounds like a good life purpose. Do
Speaker 1: you believe that that's the result of a long period
Speaker 1: of time of not living a life And I'm oversimplifying here,
Speaker 1: but do you believe that that state is a response
Speaker 1: because I don't know that. I guess you'd call it despair,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't feel like despair in the typical sense
Speaker 1: of the word despair, where it's it's you know, an
Speaker 1: active fretting. It is more just like nothingness. And so
Speaker 1: from that perspective, how do you work with people that
Speaker 1: are kind of in a spot like that where life
Speaker 1: purpose seems an awful long way away because I can't
Speaker 1: even think about what I might want for breakfast. Well,
Speaker 1: part of it is the way we're trained not to
Speaker 1: think about life purposes. There's an place in our education,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, at the breakfast table or in
Speaker 1: school where this idea, ideas of making meaning and life
Speaker 1: purposes are brought up. So this would have to be
Speaker 1: actually a new education. I have a book on this
Speaker 1: called Life Purpose boot Camp, and um it's it's the
Speaker 1: work of this Life Purpose boot Camp to begin to
Speaker 1: identify what feels important, to identify what has been experienced
Speaker 1: as meaningful in the past, because we can a little
Speaker 1: bit predict that what might feel meaningful in the future
Speaker 1: might connect to what's felt meaningful in the past. That
Speaker 1: is that there's some work to do that most people
Speaker 1: have never tried to do. Now, I think you're saying
Speaker 1: that you have tried to identify your life purposes and
Speaker 1: have trouble doing it. But actually I would guess that
Speaker 1: that's not It's not work that most people have actually
Speaker 1: tried to do. Is create this menu or list or
Speaker 1: what have you of life purposes, to see a kind
Speaker 1: of master list of life purposes that might include activism
Speaker 1: and service or however one would want to say it
Speaker 1: for oneself, and then go, oh, I do think that's important.
Speaker 1: I do think that that I would be made proud
Speaker 1: by my efforts if I did those things on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, because as I said before, I think we're
Speaker 1: in this game not to be happy, but to make
Speaker 1: ourselves proud by our efforts. This is the old existential
Speaker 1: ideas of personal responsibility, that while we're here, our life
Speaker 1: is a certain kind of project. We have to step
Speaker 1: to the plate and live that project. So I'm selling
Speaker 1: a whole existential picture all at once, a personal responsibility
Speaker 1: of stepping to the plate, et cetera. So I may
Speaker 1: not be able to get at exactly the thing that
Speaker 1: you were saying. If I were working with a client,
Speaker 1: I would I would want to know if somewhere along
Speaker 1: the line he made the decision that life was a cheat.
Speaker 1: Because most postmoderl and people have without knowing it, because
Speaker 1: we grew we've all grown up in an age of science.
Speaker 1: We kind of know that we're just excited matter. We
Speaker 1: don't really think we matter. Somewhere along the line, we've
Speaker 1: gotten the idea from science rightly, so in a certain
Speaker 1: sense that we don't count, that we don't matter. So
Speaker 1: each person has to make the decision to opt to
Speaker 1: matter in the face of only being excited matter in
Speaker 1: the universe. The universe doesn't care about our decisions I
Speaker 1: do not believe. But we have to care about our decisions.
Speaker 1: We have to opt to matter. So I think you
Speaker 1: can see that there's a certain kind of discussion, dash
Speaker 1: persuasion that I would go into with a given client
Speaker 1: to help move that client towards the idea that you've
Speaker 1: probably been call it brainwashed. It's just just what everybody
Speaker 1: has learned, brainwashed to believe that you don't particularly matter.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's been your experience that that's been your experience
Speaker 1: that you don't feel like you particularly matter. Well, now
Speaker 1: you have to change your mind about that, change your
Speaker 1: mind about that, and decide that you're going to matter
Speaker 1: in your own ways, in your own light, and make
Speaker 1: certain decisions as to how to live your life based
Speaker 1: on that realization that you must opt to matter. Pill
Speaker 1: sounds a little bit easier, Eric, that I'm kidding. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sort of. I mean, I'm making a dark joke.
Speaker 1: You know. That's why the D S M way, that's
Speaker 1: the number one paradigm, That's why it's spreading worldwide. The
Speaker 1: that way of dealing with depression is spreading to every
Speaker 1: corner of the globe. We use this book in America,
Speaker 1: we use this book called the d s M that
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American
Speaker 1: Psychiatric Association. The rest of the world uses another book,
Speaker 1: the i c D International Classification of Diseases. But both
Speaker 1: do the same thing, push you towards pills. Both do
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing. And new things are happening, which
Speaker 1: to my mind are awful, name lip giving kids prophylactically antidepressant,
Speaker 1: namely predicting which trying to predict which kids are going
Speaker 1: to be depressed even if they show no symptoms. Now,
Speaker 1: that's horrific to me. To start putting kids on powerful
Speaker 1: meds and then to wonder why there are there are
Speaker 1: addiction epidemics. Putting all these a d h D kids
Speaker 1: so supposed A d h D kids on speed and
Speaker 1: then wondering why there's problems with speed when they're older
Speaker 1: strikes me as just horrible. But at any rate, that
Speaker 1: was along with the response to what you mentioned. The
Speaker 1: pills are easier. Not only are pills easier, more and
Speaker 1: more of them are being promulgated all the time, right,
Speaker 1: and you can make money on them. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: certainly I have. I feel like in certain respects that medication. Probably,
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd say it saved my life,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly helped me in a in a tremendous way.
Speaker 1: And I have a feeling that exactly like you do,
Speaker 1: that there's a profit motive that we are going after
Speaker 1: the symptom, not after the cause. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: there's I believe in in all of that stuff. As
Speaker 1: I said, I kind of have a very holistic approach
Speaker 1: to depression that you know, I listed some of the things,
Speaker 1: but 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. Brow 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 it might be interesting to folks. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that resource. 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 pseudomedical cause
Speaker 1: and effect mental disorder symptom picture paradigm. Then there's the
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: relationship than in some kind of expert relationship. That's a
Speaker 1: long winded way of saying I'm not so interested in
Speaker 1: the stigmatization conversation because I think that actually it promotes
Speaker 1: the first paradigm of chemicals ultimately, because you can obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're a pharmaceutical company, you want more and more
Speaker 1: people 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: I understand that the person who wants to not be
Speaker 1: stigmatized is not attempting to help the paradigm. That's not
Speaker 1: his or her motive. But I think that's the ultimate
Speaker 1: result of this conversation, is that it helps pharmaceutical companies. Right,
Speaker 1: But you would certain least say that if you are
Speaker 1: suffering from sadness to spair, you know, let's use your
Speaker 1: your description of the emotion, the old fashioned emotion is
Speaker 1: I 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: agrebolutely 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 experiences to mentoring,
Speaker 1: to to certain kinds of etcetera, etcetera goes on and on.
Speaker 1: I have a number of books on this subject out
Speaker 1: One is called The Future of Mental Health. One is
Speaker 1: called Humane Helping, which tries to paint a picture of
Speaker 1: the multiple kinds of resources that are out there and
Speaker 1: how maybe you know, might want to go to one
Speaker 1: of them first. To repeat what we said earlier, if
Speaker 1: you're in a deep hole, if you're suicidal, obviously you
Speaker 1: might you might want to go to the chemical fix
Speaker 1: first because that gives you the window of opportunity to
Speaker 1: stay alive and then look at the other resources. But
Speaker 1: if you're not in such a deep hole, then maybe
Speaker 1: you might want to go to some other kind of
Speaker 1: resource before you started down the road of chemicals. Before
Speaker 1: I went on medicine, I you know, I really wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure, like was I doing what I should
Speaker 1: be doing? You know, in my case at that time
Speaker 1: in my life meetings, you know, where was I going
Speaker 1: to meetings? Was I exercising? Was I eating well? I
Speaker 1: believe meditation is important. Was I meditating? And when I
Speaker 1: was kind of doing all those things and still really suffering,
Speaker 1: I went, okay, I give for right now. Um. But
Speaker 1: I hope that's part of what this show does, is
Speaker 1: I'm trying to expose people. Are lots of different ideas
Speaker 1: and to say, if you still feel lousy, don't give up,
Speaker 1: try something us look a different way, you know, but
Speaker 1: just keep to keep going. And I want to throw
Speaker 1: in another idea. It's going to be hard for folks
Speaker 1: to hear it in the midst of the conversation we're
Speaker 1: having because we're covering a lot of ground, which is great.
Speaker 1: But it's the idea of personality being made up of
Speaker 1: three parts in my model, and the first part of
Speaker 1: it is what I call original personality. That's who we
Speaker 1: are when we come into the world. Our original endowments
Speaker 1: are original proclivities. Psychiatry and psychology pays no attention to that.
Speaker 1: Acts like everybody comes into the world the same. If
Speaker 1: you've had kids, or puppies or kittens or any kind
Speaker 1: of creature, you know that every creature is itself from
Speaker 1: the get go. What this means is And in the
Speaker 1: medieval times, folks thought that people came in one of
Speaker 1: four flavors for humors, one of which was melancholia. That is,
Speaker 1: ancient folks thought that maybe a full quarter of the
Speaker 1: world where was born sadder than the rest. It may
Speaker 1: be the case that any given person's origin of personality
Speaker 1: contains extra sadness. That doesn't make that sadness of mental disorder.
Speaker 1: It makes it a lifelong challenge, but it should not
Speaker 1: be considered a mental disorder. And this idea that we
Speaker 1: may be born a certain way, sadder than the next person,
Speaker 1: more anxious than the next person, more intelligent than the
Speaker 1: next person, more sensitive than the next person, more of
Speaker 1: this less that is completely ignored by both psychiatry and psychology,
Speaker 1: and that that's just wrong, that it's completely ignored. I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree with you more. I think that is such
Speaker 1: a true statement and that it is ignored. And I
Speaker 1: do think that one of the challenges of labeling things
Speaker 1: as disorders does make feeling bad in any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form almost a crime, right, And I totally do
Speaker 1: not agree with that. And I think the lens I
Speaker 1: put it on it is my alcoholism, right, is that that,
Speaker 1: on one hand, was a significant problem, right. I mean
Speaker 1: I ended up homeless, I ended up nearly going to jail,
Speaker 1: I was dying, you know. I mean there were a
Speaker 1: lot of problems there, right. At the same time, that
Speaker 1: is such a core component of what has made me
Speaker 1: who I am and reflects the strength that I have.
Speaker 1: And and so I always talk on this show, we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about this idea that any character trait
Speaker 1: taken too far in either direction becomes maladaptive. And so
Speaker 1: that that idea of melancholy. Yes, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's the way I was born, but I think that
Speaker 1: there are strengths to that also, and also in talking
Speaker 1: about addictions, UM, I think that one of the things
Speaker 1: we're actually pretty sure about is that high tolerance is
Speaker 1: a birthright or a birth problem. That is, some people
Speaker 1: can drink twenty three beers and and still be somehow
Speaker 1: moving around, and another person has one or two and
Speaker 1: and they're knocked out from it. That's a biological difference.
Speaker 1: And I worked as a I worked in this field,
Speaker 1: in the diction field, and I have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: look under a microscope at cells of alcoholics and non
Speaker 1: alcoholics and how the cells had adapted to alcohol and
Speaker 1: the genuine difference inside. There's biological stuff there that was real,
Speaker 1: and that forced the psychological dependency. If your cells are
Speaker 1: crying out for stuff, that makes it very hard to
Speaker 1: not do that thing. So if that's a if that's
Speaker 1: a feature of original personality, something like high tolerance for
Speaker 1: a given substance, that's something one should be aware of
Speaker 1: one's whole life and and take special precautions to deal with,
Speaker 1: because that's that is part of your biology. It's not
Speaker 1: that it's a disease. It's a part of your original
Speaker 1: endowment for better or worse, maybe in some cases worse,
Speaker 1: but as part of your original endowment and should not
Speaker 1: be called a disease. We're running out of time here.
Speaker 1: I want to just follow your your last train of
Speaker 1: thought through to the end, and then we'll wrap up.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the original personality, so now I got to
Speaker 1: know the other two. The second I call formed personality,
Speaker 1: which is which is the us that accreates over time,
Speaker 1: kind of the way we are cemented over time. And
Speaker 1: the third I call our available personality. That's our remaining
Speaker 1: freedom to be the person that we want to be
Speaker 1: or ought to be. And I see that available personality
Speaker 1: almost as an amount. If you're actively addicted and you're
Speaker 1: running around town looking for a fix or a drink,
Speaker 1: you have much less available personality than when you enter
Speaker 1: into recovery. It's like that amount increases of available personality.
Speaker 1: So that's my kind of simple model, but it works
Speaker 1: for me. Of original personality, formed personality, and available personality.
Speaker 1: I love that idea. It 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'd 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 communication.
Speaker 1: That there's a lot of ways we can be more
Speaker 1: skillful and how we communicate with our family, and we
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed
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