Latest / Destination Unlimited with Victor Fuhrman / Dr. Kirk Schneider - Life Enhancing Anxiety
Transcript
- 0:04My name is Victor Ferman. Some call me the Voice. I've always been
- 0:10fascinated with human nature, spirituality, science and the crossroads at which they meet.
- 0:17Join me now and we will explore these topics and so much more with
- 0:22fascinating guests, authors and experts who will guide us to Destination Unlimited. Forty
- 0:34million adults nineteen point one percent of the population aged eighteen and older cope with
- 0:43anxiety disorders, According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, can anxiety
- 0:51be life enhancing and actually promote sanity and deeper understanding in our world? My
- 1:00this week on Destination Unlimited, Existential humanistic psychologist doctor Kirk Schneider asserts life enhancing
- 1:08anxiety foster's cross cultural bridge, building creative enrichment and social engagement. It can
- 1:15also bolster spiritual well being. Doctor Schneider is a leading spokesperson for existential humanistic
- 1:23and existential integrative psychology as an adjunct faculty member at Saybrook University and Teachers College,
- 1:32Columbia University, and a co founder and current president of the award winning
- 1:38Existential Humanistic Institute. His website is Kirk J. Schneider dot com and he
- 1:44joins me this week to share his path and the latest book, Life Enhancing
- 1:49Anxiety, Key to a Same World. Please join me in welcoming to Destination
- 1:56Unlimited, doctor Kirk Schneider. Welcome Kirk. Thank you very much. Victor,
- 2:01thank you for joining us and sharing your new book, Life Enhancing Anxiety.
- 2:07He to the Same World. Please share with our listeners your path and
- 2:10how it led to your calling. Well, it really began when I was
- 2:15a very young child. So much my book is focused on my personal struggle
- 2:23with anxiety and efforts to transform that anxiety into a more life enhancing path,
- 2:32if you will. So it really began when, at a very young age,
- 2:38I was about two and a half, my seven year old brother died
- 2:44of a series of diseases, and this was approximately a ten month process for
- 2:52him, as I understand it, and the upheaval and the the shiring really
- 3:00that that caused both for me and my parents, you know, very dramatically
- 3:12brought me into the world of anxiety of trauma, and much again of what
- 3:20I've written about comes out of that time where my parents, being very psychologically
- 3:28minded, actually referred me to a psychoanalyst when I was six years old,
- 3:35and I was still struggling mightily with the fallout from the death, struggling not
- 3:43only within myself, but to a notable degree with my parents, my mother
- 3:51in particular. I think it was particularly powerful, you know, for my
- 3:55mother, and she she struggled a great deal emotionally to just cope with that
- 4:05abyss in her life, and there were times where she was both emotionally and
- 4:12physically absent when I was very young, and that caused a lot of tension
- 4:17and challenges for both of us. I give her and my father the utmost
- 4:25credit on retrospect. I can't imagine losing a child and what that would bring,
- 4:31so I think they did their absolute best to support me through the process.
- 4:38But more to the point of life enhancing anxiety, which I define as
- 4:44the capacity to live with and make the best of the depth and mystery of
- 4:50existence. I went through that process, at least in a preliminary way with
- 5:02the psychoanalysts that I saw for about a year, and I was very fortunate
- 5:09in being able to obtain his notes actually on my experience with him about thirty
- 5:15years later, when I was writing a book about classic horror books and films,
- 5:19because I was very curious about what drew me to classic horror, or
- 5:27how my own psychology led to that interest, and so I visited him,
- 5:34and he happened to have an old notebook of his observations of me, and
- 5:42so anyway, he agreed to give me a summary of that, and I've
- 5:46actually published that in the book. But in those notes, it's very clear
- 5:54to me how pivotal he was in my life, both as a model somebody
- 6:00who seemed to have been through a lot himself, and I think I recognize
- 6:05that at a very young age and yet who had not only survived but thrived,
- 6:12you know, as a very accomplished professional and decent human being, but
- 6:19also in how he helped me to develop what you might call new internalizations toward
- 6:30life and toward myself. I had terrible fears of death and dying of illness,
- 6:40I had night terrors. I was afraid of monsters and witches in particular,
- 6:46and I had a lot of distrust of life and even to some degree
- 6:54my parents at the time, my mother in particular, because of the difficulty
- 7:00of you know, the the shift and in our worlds after my brother's death.
- 7:09And he really helped me to stay present more more present to myself and
- 7:18to ask questions about my situation, to be to learn to move from a
- 7:27place of you know, really abject terror and paralysis to gradual intrigue and even
- 7:36curiosity about my situation, and to learn that all was not a disaster,
- 7:45that I was surviving, and that there were some very good things in my
- 7:49life, and that I, as I was saying before, I could relate
- 7:58to myself and the world in a more trusting an open way. And that
- 8:07led to my own creativity actually kind of flowering of my own creativity and developing
- 8:16like a play a theater as a kid, you know, using little figures
- 8:28that I had, toy figures, and creating movie sets and plays and doing
- 8:33a lot of impromptu talking on my ape recorder that my father got me,
- 8:43and doing some some skits and things like that with him as well, and
- 8:48eventually an interest in philosophy and psychology and a fascination with the human journey.
- 9:00I also should mention it opened me to a great interest in science fiction,
- 9:05and there were some terrific television shows at the time which you probably remember absolutely
- 9:11the similar age of Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits that very much spoke to
- 9:16me, and you know, presenting these strange people and creatures and places that
- 9:22also raised fascinating questions about who we are, what this life is about,
- 9:31what really matters about our lives? So very fundamental questions that I was able
- 9:37to become more free to explore through this psychoanalytic process. Please tell us about
- 9:45your mentor Rollo May and the practice of existentialist humanistic psychology. Rollo May was
- 9:58a great figure on many levels for me. I had studied Rollah's work actually
- 10:05as early as probably my last year of high school and first year of college.
- 10:11I was fascinated. Especially, I think where Rollo and I really connected
- 10:18was around the whole theme of paradox of paradoxes of human experienced and I certainly
- 10:26felt those acutely from very early childhood, in that you know, we are
- 10:35at one level, extremely limited, gradual, small creatures, but at the
- 10:45same time, we have a powerful ability to create ourselves, to transcend,
- 10:54to experience participating in something much greater than ourselves, to connect with the cosmic
- 11:05spiritual background that I think we're all traveling through. So this paradox well,
- 11:13Frankly Ernest Becker, the great cultural anthropologist who wrote I think a seminal book
- 11:20that Rollo really resonated with called The Denial of Death. He said that we're
- 11:26gods. Who shit? I mean, you know, we are in a
- 11:33crazy condition. And I think Rolo and I really connected on that point of
- 11:39the paradoxes of our lives that were extremely limited on one hand, but we
- 11:43also are have a great capacity for freedom and of choice. And he was
- 11:52generous enough to write the preface to my first book, which is the Paradox
- 11:58of Self or an Understanding of our contradictory nature, and I participated in a
- 12:07number of seminars that he provided. He was also on my dissertation committee and
- 12:15eventually asked me to co write a book that became The Psychology of Existence,
- 12:22an integrative clinical perspective for a new generation of therapists who were interested in existential
- 12:28psychology. But as a as a person, he was very multidimensional, wonderfully
- 12:43warm and generous to many of his students and very much include myself, but
- 12:50also could be quite challenging, very straightforward, and you know, encountering you
- 13:03know, a student, I'll take myself encountering me around certain ideas that I
- 13:11held, and he would, you know, he would provide time to unpack
- 13:18those and and try to help me to get more clarity on just what it
- 13:28was that I was thinking about in terms of clients that I was seeing,
- 13:37in terms of theories I was developing. And he was a straight shooter,
- 13:45and he wrote, freedom and anxiety are two sides of the coin. There
- 13:52is never one without the other. You share that your studies and personal experiences
- 13:58confirmed this very much so, I mean Rollo. He actually wrote a book
- 14:07that was a forerunner to my book, Life Enhancing Anxiety. He wrote a
- 14:13book in nineteen fifty which was based on his dissertation called The Meaning of Anxiety,
- 14:20where he was trying to bring out the many dimensions of anxiety that the
- 14:24culture, even in nineteen fifty, he felt was drifting away from because of
- 14:31its increasing emphasis on a kind of mechanized lifestyle, routinized lifestyle, and that
- 14:39people were attempting to do all they can to get rid of anxiety instead of
- 14:43seeing that anxiety has many components. It certainly can be crippling and paralyzing and
- 14:52overwhelming, and I don't want to downplay that at all, but that's often
- 14:58because we don't address the underlying more fundamental anxieties of the fear of the unknown,
- 15:11and the fear of the unknown can also be a call to the unknown
- 15:16if if we're provided skills and tools to help us to work with that unknown,
- 15:22and that unknown is very primal. In my experience and through my research,
- 15:31I've really come around to resonating with autor ranks understanding of the bases of
- 15:39anxiety, and Rollo certainly resonated with that, which is that anxiety occurs from
- 15:46the moment of birth, basically when we're thrown into existence, that radical shift
- 15:54from relative non being and unity to the mother to the cosmos, if you
- 16:00will, to sudden abrupt being and pandemonia, where we're in a kind of
- 16:08a groundless and helpless state. We're floundering. And the whole question is how
- 16:14are we met at that point, both by our caretakers and the culture that
- 16:19receives us. Are we met with a more supportive and understanding approach, or
- 16:27are we met with many fears? And unfortunately, I think too often in
- 16:33our culture, especially cultures like ours, were met with great deal of fear,
- 16:41and that as a result cuts us off from the potentially life enhancing aspects
- 16:48of the anxiety again being able to experience that call to the unknown, not
- 16:57just the terror of the unknown. And I do believe children at birth experience
- 17:03both a trauma of birth, as Rock would put it, but also the
- 17:10wonder of birth. I think they're elements of wonder to it. So that's
- 17:14why I call it a drama of birth rather than trauma. And we're not
- 17:18very good generally at helping children to cultivate that those elements of wonder and discovery
- 17:32in their relationship to that which is unknown, that which is other and foreign.
- 17:38We're much more quick to hit them with rules and regulations and us and
- 17:45them mentalities. You stay away from those people in those places and those foreigners,
- 17:52etc. And stay on this sort of safe but very narrow track quote
- 17:59safe and or track. But as a result, we develop we often develop
- 18:07many, you know, problematic effects from that because we don't know how to
- 18:15handle anxiety very well. So we have a lot of defenses that distance us
- 18:26from it, you know, whether those are attempting to make us appear strong
- 18:40and intimidating or even tyrannical. And I see this individually as well as culturally,
- 18:48to avoid any hint of our fragility and our our life in the unknown,
- 19:00if you will, or we look for quick fixes and instant results through
- 19:07our devices, etc. And when Raoula talked about freedom being the other side
- 19:15of the coin of anxiety, he's talking about this. He's saying that because
- 19:22we don't embrace that invigorating dimension of anxiety that signals that were on the edge
- 19:30of wonder and discovery, we tend to live very limited and imprisoned lives to
- 19:40a great extent. What are the physiological and emotional mechanisms of anxiety and how's
- 19:48it triggered? Well, I was just speaking to you aspects of how it's
- 19:56triggered. I think it's triggered right from the beginning as soon as we're jarred
- 20:02out of that passive receptive mode of the fetal position into that which is different,
- 20:11that which is other, that which is this world of chaos that we're
- 20:18trying to cope with when we're thrown into it. That's the psychological part,
- 20:25and I do think that that forms the template really for virtually all future anxiety
- 20:32and trauma. And again the question is do we have the tools the equipment
- 20:38to work with it at a physiological level. There have been some very interesting
- 20:48experiments from for example, the highly reputable research center in Sweden called the Carolyns
- 21:00the Institute. They did studies of newborn's levels of stress stress hormones catecholamines that
- 21:10are released at the point of birth, and they found that those stress hormones
- 21:17are not only higher than normal adult stress, but they're higher than severe adult
- 21:25stress. So that gives us a pretty strong indication that something extremely powerful is
- 21:32going on at the point of birth that probably makes its impression on us forms
- 21:41the background or many of our fears and uncertainties for the rest of our lives,
- 21:52and again not not all a bad thing if we can learn how to
- 21:56work with it. And that's that's the whole idea of life enhancing, as
- 22:00it is being able to come into those fears of the unknown so that we
- 22:07can have a greater range of inner freedom to experience ourselves in the world.
- 22:15My guest is doctor Kirk Schneider his book Life Enhancing Anxiety, Key to a
- 22:21Sane World. Kirk, please tell our listeners where they can get your books
- 22:23and find out more about you and your work. Again yet ready access to
- 22:30my books at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or certainly with the publisher,
- 22:37which is University Professor's Press, and they can get to know more about my
- 22:41work at my website Kirk J. Schneider dot com. And we'll be back
- 22:47with more of Kirk and at Life Enhancing Anxiety Key to the Same World after
- 22:52these words on the Own Times Radio network. Free your Mind with Own Times
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- 23:26on Destination Unlimited. My guest this week, doctor Kirkschneider his book Life Enhancing
- 23:33Anxiety, Key to a Sane World. Kirk, how can Life Enhancing Anxiety
- 23:40lead to a more sane, sustainable and awe informed world. First, it
- 23:48can help us to live with each other in a more sane and sustainable way
- 23:57if you will, But it begins with being able to live with and even
- 24:07thrive with oneself. And that involves, you know, being able to experience
- 24:19other people, especially who can help us to work with our anxiety rather than
- 24:27to simply avoid it or erect defenses that give us the illusion, let's say,
- 24:38of power and control, but the really based on a lot of reactivity
- 24:48and often lead to destructiveness and evaluation, either of ourselves or of others.
- 24:56So I'm a very big supporter of in depth experiential psychotherapy, even a particularly
- 25:11longer term psychotherapy, to help us cultivate more what I would call emotionally restorative
- 25:22relationships, because we suffer so much in our society from what I call emotionally
- 25:29impoverished relationships, where we're we're dealing with you know, often absent parenting or
- 25:42very a sparse number of people in our culture who can help help us to
- 25:52to cultivate our anxiety and more fruitful ways, and and we're we're more reliant
- 26:00on our devices for our relationships, which don't usually help us to work with
- 26:07and make the best of the depth and mystery of our existence. If anything,
- 26:14they help us to kind of skim the surfaces. And we get this
- 26:21message from our politicians and from our media. Often there's so much emphasis on
- 26:26the quick fix and instant answer. And so I think we we really need
- 26:34to slow down. We need to have places and people who help us slow
- 26:38down and to again work with with our anxiety, so that we can come
- 26:47from a place of greater deliberateness in our actions, our creativity, ability to
- 27:00choose more of the direction of our lives, and an ability to focus on
- 27:04what deeply matters in our lives. And as I was saying, psychotherapy can
- 27:11be helpful there, especially in depth experiential psychotherapy where the therapist is really involved
- 27:17as a person and not only providing techniques. Meditation practices can be helpful,
- 27:25certain other non dogmatic, philosophical and spiritual practices, and all of these I
- 27:36think can help our society move more toward a creative, ethically sound culture where
- 27:55again we respond more to each other rather than react toward each other or react
- 28:03against each other. You share that awe I'm sorry sorry, go ahead,
- 28:08I say, and ourselves to come more from a place of responsivity rather than
- 28:14reactivity. You share that awe meaning the humility and wonder or sense of adventure
- 28:22toward living takes us beyond judgment. How may we learn to embrace awe build
- 28:27experiences well. The sense of awe, which I define as the humility and
- 28:33wonder or sense of adventure toward living, is one of the most important outgrowths
- 28:38of life enhancing anxiety, because the sense of awe is precisely about having that
- 28:52range within that capacity to experience. Both are fragile and vulnerable sides, which
- 29:10can be very illuminating and sensitizing toward toward life and toward our world and toward
- 29:18what deeply matters for ourselves. But it helps us attune to both that vulnerable
- 29:22and fragile side as well as that side that is attempting to yearns to venture
- 29:30out, to ask questions, to be creative, to experience participating in something
- 29:44much greater than ourselves, something that I call enchanted agnosticism, which is taking
- 29:51mystery seriously and being able to really fully feel the the power, the amazement,
- 30:04the uplift of our connection with the unknown. And it's that's very connected
- 30:14to again, a life of wonder, of discovery, of adventure. And
- 30:22when you think about adventure, um it's usually not just a narrow band of
- 30:30happiness or cheerfulness, if you will, It has depths to it. It's
- 30:37think about you know, venturing through the woods, you're not sure what's around
- 30:45the corner. It's certainly a degree of apprehension. There's a lot of unknowns.
- 30:53There may be you know, predators around, etc. You're not sure
- 30:59if you're route exactly. But that's part of the excitement of it, right,
- 31:04and part of the intensity and part of what really deeply moves us in
- 31:08those circumstances. And at the same time, there's an exuberance about coming into
- 31:15that unknown and expanding our consciousness and that unknown, and continually being open to
- 31:26the degree possible and practical to learning new things about ourselves, about the world,
- 31:36about other people. And yeah, so I think this is a very
- 31:41vital perspective, this all based consciousness, both on the individual and collective level.
- 31:48And we didn't even get into the whole movement toward supportive, structured dialogues
- 31:56between people of very different background especially liberals and conservatives, but it could be
- 32:05racial backgrounds, religious backgrounds, etc. We have so much divisiveness in our
- 32:09society now and this kind of all base consciousness is something I and others have
- 32:15been trying to bring into these structured, supportive dialogues. And as I was
- 32:21about to share we are living in one of the most politically divisive times that
- 32:24I can remember in my life. You have a six phase method, experiential
- 32:30democracy dialogue. Why do you believe that this can unite the polarized red and
- 32:35blue Americans? Well, because I've seen it and I've experienced it as a
- 32:42member of one of these groups. I was a member and trained moderator or
- 32:49the grassroots movement called Braver Angels, which has over ten thousand members in the
- 32:55US and all fifty states, and I participated in a local chapter here in
- 33:02the in the Bay Area, and I witness very much firsthand how people on
- 33:12very different sides of particular issues, especially conservative liberal sides, could not only
- 33:25sit down and begin to explore with each other their respective points of view in
- 33:32a civil way, but actually feel the possibility of being friendly or maybe even
- 33:43friends with that person. And I think one of the most important aspects that
- 33:50comes out of these dialogues that I have also developed. You had mentioned it
- 33:58before, what I call the experiential to democracy dialogue, which is a one
- 34:01on one, i'd say, more intimate approach to humanizing conversations between people on
- 34:12very contrasting sides. Probably the most important outcome of these dialogues is not necessarily
- 34:21that people end up agreeing about ideological stances per se, although I think it
- 34:32can create conditions whereby that's more likely to happen. But it's the ability to
- 34:38just simply sit with one another and appreciate one another as human beings, as
- 34:45opposed to just labels their stereotypes. And if we could promote more of that
- 34:53in our society, that would go a long way toward, if not feeling
- 35:01the divides in some total way, at least putting us on a footing that
- 35:13will increase the likelihood that we will be able to get along with each other
- 35:19better and frankly survives as a culture and world. I think that that much
- 35:32is on the line. We're talking about, you know, the potential for
- 35:38some kind of civil, civil war or such destructiveness that basically puts our our
- 35:51human species in the balance. When we talk about the you know, the
- 35:54bigger weaponry that could be involved in the divisiveness that we're facing. Has has
- 36:01listening and really hearing become a lost art. I wouldn't say it's a lost
- 36:08art, and a number of us are trying to you know, reawaken it
- 36:14as noted just a moment ago. But but it's certainly I would say that
- 36:20it's an imperiled it's a threatened art because of the seductiveness of the quick,
- 36:28fixed, instant result world that so many of us live in, and and
- 36:34the kind of haste that that promotes, you know, getting to the next
- 36:38appointment, um, you know, trying to earn the buck as quickly as
- 36:49we can. And certainly there are many people who are just in very dire
- 36:54circumstances and they have to get bread on the table. That's the problem in
- 37:00our society. We have very few safety nets for such people, and there's
- 37:05there's little support, or too little support, I would say, for too
- 37:08many people to be able to have the luxury to slow down, to reflect
- 37:15more deeply on what really matters in their lives, to be able to encounter
- 37:22and work with the anxieties that come up, for them to have the means
- 37:29to work with psychotherapists as I have and privilege to do. And so you
- 37:42know, this is this is a major major challenge for us is actually having
- 37:52more of these places that could support life enhancing anxiety accessible affordable to many more
- 38:01people, especially in underserved communities. So we have that whole problem of people
- 38:08being in a lot of stress and and and haste and grabbing for straws unfortunately
- 38:20too often, but quick fixes, you know, whether that's drugs or fast
- 38:25food, or you know, maybe a political champion that they're they're living through.
- 38:34But we also have the whole corporate structure that you know, emphasizes the
- 38:42bottom line thinking, profit margin thinking that does not allow a lot of room
- 38:52for again, deeper reflection on the meaning and implications of people's work and striving
- 39:05for the buck or for some certain material goods but may not in the long
- 39:12run really be fulfilling or personally, you know, gratifying in terms of how
- 39:22they want to live and how they want to contribute to our culture. Or
- 39:25are there tips or advice that you could offer for people to learn how to
- 39:30listen? Yes, I would. I would begin with listening to yourself.
- 39:43Taking some time often alone, time undistracted, even fifteen twenty minutes. Maybe
- 39:50go for a walk and just tune into what you're feeling, sensing, thinking,
- 40:00especially I think feeling sensing, imaging, and perhaps to the world around
- 40:08you, and develop a greater capacity to be with those feelings, body,
- 40:15sensations, imaginings and attempt to practice that slowing down, that reflective process when
- 40:28you're with your friends, your family associates, perhaps at work, and really
- 40:36develop the capacity to clear space or that kind of inner listening and outer listening.
- 40:45So, for example, when you're your friend or your family member is
- 40:52speaking to try not to interrupt, give them, give them some time,
- 40:58give them room to say their peace, and insist on having that that time
- 41:08and space for yourself to to convey what really matters. I mean, this
- 41:15is partly why it can be so helpful to look at, for example,
- 41:19that six phase model that you talked about before, these dialogue approaches, which
- 41:25are highly supportive and structured, and they have ground rules that really and strain
- 41:34people from coming at each other in conversations, you know, resuming to know
- 41:43what the other person is thinking or saying, rather than giving them a chance
- 41:49to elaborate what they're thinking or saying, not having answers in your questions.
- 41:58The people come trying to comfort place of genuine curiosity as opposed to presumption stereotype.
- 42:07But this, you know, this takes some time to as I say,
- 42:12develop that within yourself, that that tolerance for the anxiety that tolerance for
- 42:16ambiguity, a kind of a centeredness that allows you to be more deliberative in
- 42:30your approach to yourself and to others. His book is entitled Life Enhancing Anxiety
- 42:36Key to the Same World. Will be back with more of doctor Kirkschneider after
- 42:39these words on the Own Times Radio network. Humanity Healing International is a small
- 42:46nonprofit with a big drain. Since two thousand and seven, HHI has been
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- 43:04no one is alone and that someone cares to learn more. Please visit Humanity
- 43:08Healing dot org. Humanity Healing is where your heart is. Back on Destination
- 43:15Unlimited. My guest this week is doctor Kurt Schneider. His book is called
- 43:20Life Enhancing Anxiety et a Sane World. Kirk fear of the unknown may be
- 43:28paralyzing. Why should you nurture trust in the ultimately unknowable, because that is
- 43:35precisely what has spawned great human thought, creativity, artistry, discoveries in science,
- 43:50in the practical world of business organizations, and certainly in relationships, being
- 44:00able to you know, to stay with, to work with, to inquire
- 44:07into the unknown with lovers, with friends, family. I mean, these
- 44:20are part of the marvelous adventures of being human. And and again, I
- 44:29guess I would summarize it as so life affirming because that ability to be in
- 44:40a wonder and discovery mode enables us to to optimize our our ability to be
- 44:54ethical with each other, you know, to to live with our differences,
- 45:05our otherness, if you will, to build bridges between those differences and that
- 45:09otherness. And it also spawns spawn a great deal of creativity, of innovation
- 45:19because that, you know, that requires a capacity to tolerate some degree of
- 45:25anxiety, uncertainty, and failure at times to two come up with great ideas,
- 45:42great practices, great applications that improve our lives. You mentioned relationships.
- 45:53I've been blessed with wonderful life enhancing relationships. What are the key traits of
- 46:00relationships that lift you up and restore your mind, body and spirit. When
- 46:08we were talking about Rollo May before and being a straight shooter and you know,
- 46:13somebody who really wants to really encourage is an authentic connection and authentic encounter.
- 46:23And I think that's part of it is people being real with each other.
- 46:36But that also brings in a responsibility. I don't want to downplay the
- 46:44element of realness and authenticity about what that what that situation involves, what that
- 47:04person, let's say, can tolerate or can deal with in an encounter.
- 47:10It's an authenticity and a realness to the whole context, is my point,
- 47:16and not just one's own whim. But I think the more aware we are,
- 47:22the more conscious we are, the more capable we are of seeing the
- 47:29many dimensions of a given a conversation or relationship and being and being honest about
- 47:40what is, what is workable, what is reachable in those situations in those
- 47:52relationships. Are grief and anxiety related and if so, how may we turned
- 48:00grief into a life enhancing experience? Well, they're very much related. And
- 48:06I was speaking before to this, you know, this topic, when I
- 48:12was talking about my own grieving, my own gap in my life, both
- 48:20of my brother's death and the fallout that that caused with parenting. But the
- 48:25other side of that is at least for me and many of the patients that
- 48:31I've seen as well, and once they're able to stay with that grief,
- 48:37work with it and learn from it. Is that it opens up new worlds
- 48:44as well. I mean, it's it's like a rip in the fabric of
- 48:49the routine and familiar, and that rip opens us to all kinds of unknowns
- 48:57and bottomless pits and kind of a free fall that can be very scary.
- 49:02But again, the more we can work with it be supported in the process
- 49:10of learning and understanding about it. It's like our eyes adjusting to a very
- 49:16dark basement. The things that were so threatening and overwhelming before begin to be
- 49:23seen as potential, as do potential doorways or opportunities that we didn't see before,
- 49:34or areas of interest that we didn't see before. And so in that
- 49:39way, grieving, for example, consensitize us to the poignancy of life,
- 49:45to the significance of our lives, and lead the preciousness of our lives and
- 49:52the whole question of again, what deeply matters about this time and space we
- 49:59have. It's really a flash between two voids, and how are we going
- 50:04to use that? So grieving can bring our attention to that, recognizing how
- 50:12readily we can lose someone who's so close, and of course that we can
- 50:17lose ourselves or a part of ourselves, how passing time is and nature is
- 50:28also more ethically attuned as well. I really think that life enhancing anxiety is
- 50:32a basis, perhaps a renewed basis for a more ethical stance in the world,
- 50:40because we recognize our fragility and the need to be sensitive to it and
- 50:47supportive of it, as well as our great capacity to be bold and discovered.
- 50:53What would you like readers to take away from life enhancing Anxiety, Key
- 50:59who was saying world, Well, I'd say, first of all, to
- 51:05realize that we have such skyrocketing anxiety in our world, both individually and collectively,
- 51:14precisely because we have not We have not really faced the deeper and more
- 51:22fundamental anxiety that could help prevent or limit that skyrocketing destructive anxiety that we have
- 51:30in the world. So much of that is secondary or violence secondary to the
- 51:37anxiety that we really need to address prior to that secondary in the sense that
- 51:44that is caused by avoiding confronting the more fundamental anxiety, the fear of the
- 51:52primal fear of the unknown, which can be a call to the unknown if
- 51:58transformed through supportive understanding relationships. So our physical destructiveness are mental and emotional destructiveness,
- 52:15which is also about avoiding many of those earlier anxieties, our devaluations of
- 52:24ourselves which cause a lot of anxiety as well again our secondary That's a big
- 52:35point that I'm really trying to get through to people here, and so it's
- 52:39so important that we, you know, we really reassess and reform the child
- 52:47rearing practices so that caretakers are able to be more present to their newborns right
- 52:59from beginning to the degree possible to provide that kind of holding environment, but
- 53:04some of the psychoanalysts talk about as opposed to an environment where they're emotionally or
- 53:12physically absent and leave the kid floundering and as a result forming all kinds of
- 53:20defenses against that floundering, which promote illusions of power and control that usually don't
- 53:29hold up very well or become very destructive toward themselves or others. A reform
- 53:37of child rearing practices, reform of education where we're helping students to cope with
- 53:45to tolerate their anxieties more in exploring subjects. I've been a big fan of
- 53:57field trips because they are more experiential, they involve people's whole bodily experience as
- 54:02opposed to just kind of, you know, narrow intellectual learning, which is
- 54:13important. I'm not denying that, but I think holistic experiences in school can
- 54:19be very important, such as field trips, plays enactments of great historical events.
- 54:27For example, in science, being able to experience and experience the wonder
- 54:34of the scientific ideas and practices through experimentation oneself or thought experiments, or watching
- 54:47great films and sometimes science fiction can certainly promote that sense of awe and wonder
- 54:53about scientific discovery and application. Also involving students involving themselves in those experiential democracy
- 55:05dialogues I think could be very valuable to helping them come to terms with their
- 55:09own otherness and the other of the other person at they're stereotyping or labeling.
- 55:20My guest is doctor Kirk Schneider his book Life Enhancing Anxiety, Key to the
- 55:25Sane World. Kirk, one more time, please tell our listeners where they
- 55:30can get your book and find out more about you and your work. So
- 55:34again, they can readily go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or the
- 55:39publisher University University Professor's Press to obtain the book, or go to my website
- 55:46kirkja Schneider dot com and there's all kinds of information about the book and other
- 55:52books and videos about my work. Thank you so much for joining us and
- 56:00sharing this very important message. Well, thank you so much. Victor really
- 56:04appreciated the time and you're listening. Thank you, and thank you for joining
- 56:08us on Destination Unlimited. I'm a Victor, the voice Burman of a wonderful week