Latest / The You Project / #2074 I Hate Myself - Dr. Blaise Aguirre

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#2074 I Hate Myself - Dr. Blaise Aguirre · The You Project

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Speaker 1: I'll get a team. Welcome to another installment of the
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Speaker 1: Youth Project. It's Harps, it's doctor Blaze, who we're going
0:05
Speaker 1: to meet in a moment, but Firs Tiffany and Cuck,
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Speaker 1: who is of course the life force, the blood that
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Speaker 1: flows through the typ veins and keeps us all in check.
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Speaker 1: Because like Melissa, who's the other boss, she's a little
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Speaker 1: bit terrifying. How are you this morning, Queen of the world.
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Speaker 2: It is a big, exhausting job, Harps, And as we
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Speaker 2: near the end of the year, I'll be ready to
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Speaker 2: take a breather from that big job you give me.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, how good will it be for you? It'd
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Speaker 1: be like somebody pulling a thorn out of your side
0:35
Speaker 1: for you not to have to talk to me, for like,
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Speaker 1: do you fantasize about having time away from me?
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Speaker 2: That is not true, That is not true. You are
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Speaker 2: a breath of fresh air. And I do love to laugh,
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Speaker 2: which happens one hundred percent of the time.
0:53
Speaker 1: So do you know what's great is that you love
0:56
Speaker 1: to laugh? Melissa loves to laugh, and I think I'm
0:58
Speaker 1: mildly amusing, which is my mostly not true. But you
1:01
Speaker 1: two are so fucking easy to make laugh that you
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Speaker 1: build my self esteem in a way that you probably shouldn't,
1:07
Speaker 1: and I get a little bit ahead of myself. Then
1:09
Speaker 1: I get out with real humans realize how unfunny I am. Right, Ah,
1:16
Speaker 1: doctor blaize a Geary, Sorry for mangling that. Hi buddy,
1:22
Speaker 1: how are you good?
1:24
Speaker 3: How's it going? We're in the middle of We're in
1:28
Speaker 3: the middle of winter or just starting winter. You're going
1:31
Speaker 3: to you're starting your summer now?
1:33
Speaker 1: Well, dude, it was in Melbourne yesterday. It was thirty
1:36
Speaker 1: eight degrees which is fahrenheit somewhere around one oh five
1:41
Speaker 1: or something. So it's gone. But the thing about Melbourne
1:45
Speaker 1: is Melbourne could be can be in Celsius. It can
1:49
Speaker 1: be literally sixteen or seventeen one day and then thirty
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Speaker 1: five the next. It's just a city of extremes. But
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Speaker 1: nonetheless it's a beautiful place live. And you've been here,
2:01
Speaker 1: You've been here a few times I have.
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Speaker 3: I loved it. There was a I first went in
2:07
Speaker 3: twenty eleven when I went to actually I went to
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Speaker 3: the Sydney Olympics and then I shot over to Melbourne,
2:14
Speaker 3: and that was in two thousand and then twenty eleven
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Speaker 3: I went to the National Associate International Association for the
2:21
Speaker 3: Study of Personality Disorders. That was in Melbourne, and then
2:25
Speaker 3: and then I don't know why I went a third time,
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Speaker 3: but I loved it. I loved the botanical gardens, and
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Speaker 3: I loved the restaurants. Of food was just crazy. And
2:36
Speaker 3: then the wine was was criminal.
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Speaker 1: Really Yeah, Melbourne prides itself on being the best place
2:45
Speaker 1: in Australia for restaurants and bars and coffee and wine
2:48
Speaker 1: and food and fine dining and ti as Tiff will
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Speaker 1: tell you the best cookies in the world. Is that right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you are. Tiff is the best cook No, she's the
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Speaker 1: best cookies as in the best you know, like.
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Speaker 2: Tell cookies, you know, cookies like biscuits.
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Speaker 3: I love pistachios.
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Speaker 2: Oh my god, they'll change your life next time here. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: No, for somebody who allegedly works in the space of health, wellness,
3:18
Speaker 1: fitness and high performance, she's a very bad influence on
3:21
Speaker 1: a lot of people. A lot of people with with
3:24
Speaker 1: with pre diabetes are being fed cookies bytes if so,
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Speaker 1: I don't know, do you try to get people sick
3:31
Speaker 1: so you can then charge to get them? Well, Tiff,
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Speaker 1: it's not.
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Speaker 2: It's not a bad business.
3:36
Speaker 1: Plan is it. It's not. It's probably a moral one,
3:40
Speaker 1: but could be profitable. There's a lot of issues going
3:44
Speaker 1: on here. Prof. Now, I was listening to you on
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Speaker 1: dak Shephard. What a great conversation that was, and I
3:52
Speaker 1: went down by the way two hours. You're killing me,
3:57
Speaker 1: but it was amazing. So I went down the rabbit hole.
4:00
Speaker 1: I went on. I'm just going to listen to twenty
4:01
Speaker 1: minutes of the prof talk to these guys, and it
4:05
Speaker 1: was a great conversation. And give us, give my audience
4:10
Speaker 1: a little bit of a snapshot of your background, because
4:13
Speaker 1: it's like you grew up in thirty two different countries
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Speaker 1: and I think your mom was Spanish and your dad
4:20
Speaker 1: was Irish, but you grew up for a while in
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Speaker 1: South Africa, and yeah, give us some insight into childhood.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, oldest of eight children. I was actually born in
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Speaker 3: the States. I left when I was tiny, I am.
4:38
Speaker 3: We then moved to London. My brother was born there.
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Speaker 3: I moved to Spain, four siblings born there, and then
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Speaker 3: South Africa where I grew up and I went to
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Speaker 3: medical school in South Africa, and then after that I
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Speaker 3: came to the States and I actually played rugby and
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Speaker 3: so I played rugby from my high school, a Catholic boys' school,
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Speaker 3: and I was tight head prop So then I came
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Speaker 3: to the States in nineteen ninety and I've joined the
5:11
Speaker 3: Harvard faculty in two thousand and I've been with Harvard
5:17
Speaker 3: ever since, and you know, and I've lived in the
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Speaker 3: Boston area for the last yeah, since then, so thirty
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Speaker 3: five years.
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Speaker 1: We always fascinated with human behavior in the mind and
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Speaker 1: the brain, and like that was that I was always
5:34
Speaker 1: fascinated with that. I didn't necessarily, I didn't start researching
5:39
Speaker 1: until much lighter, but you.
5:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I always was. And I think that maybe
5:44
Speaker 3: because I traveled so much, I just saw different people
5:50
Speaker 3: in very similar circumstances, doing very very different things. I
5:53
Speaker 3: just sort of like, what is going on? And I
5:55
Speaker 3: was also very interesting in philosophy, and you know, so
6:01
Speaker 3: I just I loved questions of the human mind and
6:04
Speaker 3: how the world sees things. And I think it's just
6:10
Speaker 3: been remarkable, you know, living in Spain, living in South Africa,
6:16
Speaker 3: living in the United States, living in England, different places,
6:19
Speaker 3: just how how people interact with each other and react
6:22
Speaker 3: to each other, and in some situations, uh, the very
6:27
Speaker 3: same behavior that we pathologize in one country is just
6:30
Speaker 3: normal in another country. For instance, on my mother's side,
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Speaker 3: all my cousins are Spanish, and I was trying to
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Speaker 3: explain borderline personality disorder to them as like a disorder
6:42
Speaker 3: of like high emotions and high reactivity and a lot
6:45
Speaker 3: of like intensity and everything that sounds like that sounds
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Speaker 3: like every single Spaniard on the planet, you know, and
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Speaker 3: so like in the one situation, it's you know, but
6:57
Speaker 3: in in countries where you expected to have like super
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Speaker 3: control of yourself, you know, high expressions of emotions, especially
7:05
Speaker 3: if they're paired with self destructive behaviors obviously problematic. So yeah,
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Speaker 3: So I was always interested in in human nature and
7:13
Speaker 3: human behavior.
7:15
Speaker 1: Do we know a lot more now than we did
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Speaker 1: fifty years ago? Do we know a lot more than
7:21
Speaker 1: two thousand years ago when the Stoics were talking about,
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Speaker 1: you know, to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom?
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Speaker 3: Probably not.
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Speaker 4: I mean, I think you know, we've we've evolved technologically,
7:33
Speaker 4: you know, but a lot of our basic instincts and
7:37
Speaker 4: a lot of our prime fears and all of that.
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Speaker 3: I'm still the same. You know. We still get jealous,
7:42
Speaker 3: we still get angry, we still get scared. You know,
7:46
Speaker 3: we're still very very non reflective. We still don't look
7:51
Speaker 3: inwardly to understand ourselves very much. So a lot of
7:55
Speaker 3: that stuff. But yeah, on the other hand, you know,
7:59
Speaker 3: and understayd aage we don't even need to because we
8:01
Speaker 3: can ask chat GPT who we are and it'll tell us. Yeah,
8:04
Speaker 3: So that.
8:07
Speaker 1: Is terrifying, and I wish that that was a joke,
8:10
Speaker 1: but I think that is more true than we want
8:14
Speaker 1: to believe. I remember about before I started my PhD,
8:20
Speaker 1: which is in psych but about seven years ago or something,
8:24
Speaker 1: I did a presentation and it just happened to be
8:27
Speaker 1: to a room full of psychologists, which was hilarious because
8:30
Speaker 1: I was I was talking. So a friend of mine
8:33
Speaker 1: is a psychologist, who organized for me to do this
8:36
Speaker 1: talk to this group. And so I spent you know,
8:40
Speaker 1: the first kind of thirty years of my working life
8:43
Speaker 1: helping people get in shape, whatever that means. But getting
8:46
Speaker 1: in shape physically is a psychological, emotional, sociological, behavioral, practical,
8:52
Speaker 1: multi dimensional process. It's almost like it's not even about
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Speaker 1: your body. It's like your body is the consequence. It's like,
9:00
Speaker 1: you know, and so I often talked to her about
9:03
Speaker 1: how I would help people change, because everyone that comes
9:06
Speaker 1: to a trainer, personal trainer, or a gym owner, like
9:09
Speaker 1: I owned multiple gyms and I worked with I was
9:11
Speaker 1: an excise physiologist all that, but everyone came for the
9:14
Speaker 1: same reason, and that is they wanted to be different.
9:17
Speaker 1: They wanted to look different, or feel different, or function differently,
9:21
Speaker 1: or see the world or see themselves differently. And so
9:25
Speaker 1: I got to a point where I realized how much
9:27
Speaker 1: I knew about anatomy and physiology and energy systems and
9:30
Speaker 1: nutrition was almost irrelevant unless I understood the human living
9:35
Speaker 1: in the body so much of like and so anyway,
9:41
Speaker 1: I did this talk to all of these syches, and
9:43
Speaker 1: they're like, how do you know all this stuff? You
9:45
Speaker 1: haven't studied psychology. I go, but I've been having conversations
9:49
Speaker 1: with humans for thirty years about the same stuff, and
9:52
Speaker 1: so you end up you know. So there's this academic process,
9:56
Speaker 1: but there's also there's this experiential classroom where for me
10:00
Speaker 1: and I've been in both a fair bid. It's like,
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Speaker 1: I think I almost learned more out in the world
10:05
Speaker 1: at the coal face of change.
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Speaker 3: I mean, some of the most brilliant psychologists I've ever
10:14
Speaker 3: met are car mechanics, physical trainers, musicians, artists, because they
10:26
Speaker 3: they pay very very careful attention to human nature and
10:32
Speaker 3: to and to how things interact with each other and
10:39
Speaker 3: how they impact each other. And actually I think that
10:41
Speaker 3: in some ways, I mean I remember a lot of
10:43
Speaker 3: my psych training early on was you know, when did
10:47
Speaker 3: Pierre J develop his stages of data? Okay, so you
10:52
Speaker 3: know I could recite all those things, but it didn't
10:54
Speaker 3: teach you anything about like human nature and psychology. So
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Speaker 3: I mean anybody who is psychologically minded emostly intelligent as
11:03
Speaker 3: a person who can can see the way that there
11:07
Speaker 3: that the circumstances and biology interact with each other to
11:15
Speaker 3: two to cause something, so that there's there's there's a cause,
11:21
Speaker 3: and that there's effect to that course, and if you
11:24
Speaker 3: pay careful attention, you don't need a degree in psychology
11:27
Speaker 3: to be able to do that. You just need to
11:29
Speaker 3: be someone who pays attention. And you know, and I
11:32
Speaker 3: think that most of us don't want to do that,
11:34
Speaker 3: or we're not trained to do that, or we try
11:36
Speaker 3: to to to just follow you know.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I guess is that a challenge because
11:44
Speaker 1: when you when you went to through your training, And
11:48
Speaker 1: I think you said, Dax something like you were just
11:51
Speaker 1: talking about how one of the one of the lenses
11:55
Speaker 1: through which you were viewing human behavioral, one of the
11:59
Speaker 1: fields or one of the areas you've got training was
12:01
Speaker 1: I think it was fraudy and psychology, right, or whatever
12:04
Speaker 1: it is. You know, It's like then, which is great,
12:08
Speaker 1: and you're trying to understand Freud or Jung or Whoever's
12:11
Speaker 1: theories or but then at the same time, you don't
12:16
Speaker 1: want to live in that echo chamber of ideology or philosophy,
12:20
Speaker 1: like you want to know that, but also you want
12:21
Speaker 1: to be able to think critically outside of somebody else's ideas,
12:25
Speaker 1: right you as you know you as Blaze, I'm like cool.
12:29
Speaker 1: I want to know what they think and what they taught.
12:31
Speaker 1: I want to understand this approach to borderline personality disorder
12:35
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. But I also want to know
12:38
Speaker 1: just what you instinctively and intuitively think, because I know
12:42
Speaker 1: one of the things I heard you saying you've treated
12:44
Speaker 1: over five thousand people with bb bp D and a
12:51
Speaker 1: lot of those are suicidal. And but I would I'm
12:53
Speaker 1: more interested in just what you've learned than what the
12:56
Speaker 1: textbooks sell me.
12:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think you know, if you think about, like,
13:03
Speaker 3: you know, whatever car you're driving that you drove to work,
13:07
Speaker 3: and you could say, you know, it'd be interesting to
13:10
Speaker 3: know what Ford did when he made the model T
13:14
Speaker 3: forward and you know what a car looked like then,
13:16
Speaker 3: and all of that sort of stuff. It's sort of
13:18
Speaker 3: interesting stuff. And obviously things built on each other to
13:23
Speaker 3: get to where you are now. And so so some
13:27
Speaker 3: of these ideas and some of these theories are you know,
13:30
Speaker 3: you don't want to throw everything out and sort of interesting.
13:33
Speaker 3: But at the same time, you know that that as
13:37
Speaker 3: we understand the brain a little bit better, as we
13:40
Speaker 3: understand the nature of you know, neurons that fire together,
13:47
Speaker 3: wire together, as we understand the nature of transmitters, but
13:51
Speaker 3: also as we understand behavior isn't better. As we understand
13:57
Speaker 3: interconnectedness better, as we understand and you know, the way
14:02
Speaker 3: that the mind works better, we have to continue to
14:05
Speaker 3: adapt our technology and behavioral technology and therapy technology to
14:10
Speaker 3: what's going on. But you know, so that on the
14:16
Speaker 3: one hand, which which talk me about critical thinking, on
14:18
Speaker 3: the one hand, is offset with that that you know,
14:24
Speaker 3: when I was young, there was a thing and you know,
14:26
Speaker 3: you're a young man yourself, but so you wouldn't know
14:29
Speaker 3: about these things. But there's a thing, a thing called
14:32
Speaker 3: a map. A map was a thing for the young listeners.
14:36
Speaker 3: It was a paper. You would like look at it
14:40
Speaker 3: and then you would calculate how far it took, you know,
14:43
Speaker 3: to go from point A two point b, and how
14:45
Speaker 3: long it would take and all sorts of things. And
14:49
Speaker 3: you know, you had to use that part of your brain.
14:51
Speaker 3: Now you just put on your you know, Google Maps
14:53
Speaker 3: and it says, you know, in three one hundred meters
14:57
Speaker 3: at your next McDonald's, take a ride. And yeah, so
15:00
Speaker 3: you don't have to think critically in some ways. But
15:06
Speaker 3: then at the same time, human beings are suffering and
15:09
Speaker 3: we don't have a roadmap for every single brain to
15:13
Speaker 3: tell us when to turn right and when to turn left.
15:15
Speaker 3: So you know, you have to understand the very nature
15:19
Speaker 3: of the person. And then how you know that you
15:23
Speaker 3: don't have that much time to get them on the
15:26
Speaker 3: right track. You know, Freudian psychoanalysis was like twenty years
15:29
Speaker 3: of sitting there, you know, four times a week in
15:32
Speaker 3: therapy talking about yourself. No one has that kind of
15:36
Speaker 3: time anymore. And and but yeah, somebody's suffering. Somebody's suffering
15:43
Speaker 3: right now. And by suffering, I mean there's psychological suffering,
15:47
Speaker 3: but there's this kind of suffering that you're talking about.
15:50
Speaker 3: Let's just say that somebody's overweight and they come to
15:54
Speaker 3: you and they say, I want to change my body.
15:56
Speaker 3: I want to change my aerobic capacity. I start working
16:00
Speaker 3: out a lot. Yes, you know, they're suffering in a
16:03
Speaker 3: different kind of way, but they're presenting the problem of
16:07
Speaker 3: what it is that they want to change. So maybe
16:09
Speaker 3: it's how they interact with with lovers, how they interact
16:14
Speaker 3: with food, how they interact with their physical body, how
16:17
Speaker 3: they interact with government, how they interact with the environment,
16:20
Speaker 3: how they interact with you know, stingrays. I mean, I
16:24
Speaker 3: don't know whatever it is that they want to change.
16:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, And I guess also, like I
16:32
Speaker 1: would have five people come and they would want let's
16:36
Speaker 1: just say, in this hypothetical, they'd want the same outcome.
16:38
Speaker 1: They want to build muscle, they want to lower body fat,
16:41
Speaker 1: they want to be stronger, they want to change their shape.
16:43
Speaker 1: Very common. Well, even those five people with almost identical
16:49
Speaker 1: desired outcomes goals, well, it depends on a bunch of
16:52
Speaker 1: variables as to how I would train them and how
16:55
Speaker 1: I would treat and manage and guide and educate and
16:57
Speaker 1: inform them, because the producers say, outcome might require five
17:02
Speaker 1: different paths even though they want to achieve the same thing,
17:05
Speaker 1: because everybody's genetically different. So exactly, I'm wondering with mental
17:12
Speaker 1: health challenges and conditions and disorders, even if somebody shows
17:16
Speaker 1: up with the exact same what seems to be the
17:18
Speaker 1: exact same challenge or disorder, might it be true that
17:23
Speaker 1: there are a myriad of different paths to achieve a
17:26
Speaker 1: good outcome with that person beyond just the straight diagnosis
17:31
Speaker 1: of the condition.
17:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Because you know, you can say there's a
17:36
Speaker 3: person who is suffering with a lot of suissidality and
17:44
Speaker 3: they have said borderland personality or call it whatever, depression,
17:47
Speaker 3: they're suicidal. But okay, so then you said, what I'm
17:52
Speaker 3: going to do is this is the treatment approach that
17:54
Speaker 3: that I'm going to recommend. Now, let's just say you
17:57
Speaker 3: had ten people in the same way that you have
18:00
Speaker 3: showing up to your gym wanting similar outcomes, but without
18:06
Speaker 3: exploring the context under which those people are living in.
18:10
Speaker 3: You know, you don't have a fighting chance because one
18:12
Speaker 3: of them is in an abusive relationship, the other one
18:15
Speaker 3: has five children who are all struggling. The other one
18:19
Speaker 3: has alcoholism in the family. The other one is just
18:22
Speaker 3: about to lose their job. The other one has had
18:25
Speaker 3: horrible side effects to antidepressant medication. And so, you know,
18:30
Speaker 3: I think that we can become very, very formulaic, and
18:33
Speaker 3: many of those cases formulas do work. But you know,
18:38
Speaker 3: I think that when we're talking about life and death
18:40
Speaker 3: without really deeply understanding where a person is coming from
18:44
Speaker 3: and what the true want is, I don't think you
18:47
Speaker 3: have a fighting chance of helping them.
18:50
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true, but it seems
18:52
Speaker 1: to me that somebody in your position, like I know
18:55
Speaker 1: that you're academically brilliant and very qualified and your knowledge
18:58
Speaker 1: is vast. I listened to you for two hours. It's
19:00
Speaker 1: fucking amazing. By the way, everyone have a listen to
19:03
Speaker 1: that conversation. It's so good. It's on the armchair expert
19:06
Speaker 1: with Blaze. But clearly you are a gifted human, like
19:11
Speaker 1: you have high emotional intelligence, social intelligence, situational awareness. Like
19:16
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, you're good, your world class amazing good.
19:22
Speaker 1: But I also think you're pretty gifted as well, right.
19:27
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I so I have a second degree
19:32
Speaker 3: black belt in judo, and I trained with until I
19:35
Speaker 3: was fifty seven with a lot of members who were
19:40
Speaker 3: training for the Olympic judo team. I was a little
19:43
Speaker 3: bit too old, because you know, when you're fifty seven
19:46
Speaker 3: and these guys are twenty five. But why did I
19:48
Speaker 3: do that? I did that because my coach, Jimmy Petro,
19:52
Speaker 3: who actually won a bronze medal in the Sydney Olympics,
19:56
Speaker 3: is a very talented, gifted, in so full intuitive person.
20:02
Speaker 3: And I've had many, many, many coaches in different sports
20:06
Speaker 3: who who you know, who go through the formulas, but
20:10
Speaker 3: they don't have that wisdom that sort of allows them
20:14
Speaker 3: to differentiate, differentiate you from another judoka or you know,
20:20
Speaker 3: or run you know, fifty seven marathons and including one
20:25
Speaker 3: in Melbourne where I did a six hour track race.
20:28
Speaker 3: We ran three hours one way and then three hours
20:30
Speaker 3: the other way. But the thing is in all of
20:33
Speaker 3: those conditions were very, very different. And the thing about
20:36
Speaker 3: you know, what you want is you want somebody who
20:39
Speaker 3: knows how to follow the book and understands the physiology
20:43
Speaker 3: and the anatomy in the way that you do. If
20:45
Speaker 3: you're working the rear delts, that's one thing. If you're
20:47
Speaker 3: working the the abs, that's another thing. And who can say, okay,
20:51
Speaker 3: this is how we go into work the you know,
20:53
Speaker 3: the different this head of the delta and then versus
20:57
Speaker 3: this or whatever it is. You want to have someone
20:59
Speaker 3: who has but at the same time, somebody might have
21:02
Speaker 3: rheumatorial arthritis, somebody might have fibromiologist, somebody might have the
21:07
Speaker 3: eating TIFFs cookies, the one that she's poising everybody with,
21:12
Speaker 3: and you know, and have different kinds of problems. So
21:16
Speaker 3: the so I think that understanding those kinds of things
21:20
Speaker 3: in context and then and that the person that you're
21:24
Speaker 3: looking for is somebody who does know the techniques but
21:27
Speaker 3: also can see you in the context. And I think
21:30
Speaker 3: that's the blend. And I've tried to shape my understanding
21:33
Speaker 3: of people to sort of say, Okay, I get it,
21:36
Speaker 3: you're depressed, you're anxious, you bipolar, your substance using, but
21:40
Speaker 3: this is also the context under which you live. And
21:43
Speaker 3: it seems to me, Craig that that that's one of
21:46
Speaker 3: the things that you do. You know, when you're talking
21:49
Speaker 3: about you know, the people that you would meet in
21:51
Speaker 3: your gym's just like there aren't just five people who
21:54
Speaker 3: want the exact same outcome, is that you're you're understanding
21:57
Speaker 3: them in context. And I think that that's what the
21:59
Speaker 3: difference is.
22:01
Speaker 1: To what extent I'm just opening the theory of mind
22:04
Speaker 1: or to what extent do you think people can understand
22:08
Speaker 1: someone else's reality? And I know that's a very messy
22:12
Speaker 1: broad but I feel like it's something most people don't
22:16
Speaker 1: even really think about, like what is Blaze's experience right
22:19
Speaker 1: now in this conversation on this podcast with this Australian
22:22
Speaker 1: guy and this Australian girl. You know, I try to
22:25
Speaker 1: be at least aware of that. To what extent do
22:28
Speaker 1: people have that capacity? Do you think?
22:32
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I think, like with almost any talent
22:36
Speaker 3: and ability, there are things that can be trained. You
22:39
Speaker 3: know that there's ways in it which we can pay
22:41
Speaker 3: attention to each other and sort of you know, in
22:46
Speaker 3: terms of theory of mind saying oh, I wonder why
22:49
Speaker 3: he did this, or I wonder why that joke, or
22:51
Speaker 3: I wonder why the sort of engagement. I think that
22:54
Speaker 3: we all have to a certain degree some capacity to
22:58
Speaker 3: do it. I think that there are certain conditions you know, so,
23:00
Speaker 3: for instance, in people with autism, it seems that that
23:05
Speaker 3: that ability to understand somebody else's mind is can be
23:08
Speaker 3: somewhat compromised. But I'll, you know, look, in as much
23:13
Speaker 3: as I've done some really great work, I have a
23:15
Speaker 3: friend who's got significant obsessive compulsive personality disorder o CPD,
23:20
Speaker 3: who are very very rigid, and we were going to
23:23
Speaker 3: go to a restaurant and you know, and on the
23:29
Speaker 3: way there, I said, oh, they said, like, I'm really
23:32
Speaker 3: really hungry. And I said, oh, what about this restaurant
23:34
Speaker 3: that was over there, just thinking, okay, if you're that hungry,
23:36
Speaker 3: maybe we could stop somewhere else. And they got really
23:38
Speaker 3: angry at me, and then I got pissed off at them,
23:41
Speaker 3: like why are you getting so angry at me? You know,
23:43
Speaker 3: I thought you said you were hungry, and I was
23:44
Speaker 3: making this other recommendation. So even somebody who understands the mind,
23:50
Speaker 3: you know, I have my own reactions and then, you know,
23:53
Speaker 3: and then I have to then stop and see that
23:55
Speaker 3: I've reacted in a certain kind of way, step back
23:58
Speaker 3: from it, and then say, okay, you I understand that
24:00
Speaker 3: this person has got this rigid way of thinking. And
24:03
Speaker 3: then I you know, I reacted to their react reactivity.
24:07
Speaker 3: But that's because as human beings, we're emotional beings before
24:11
Speaker 3: we're cognitive beings, and we react to other people's reactions.
24:15
Speaker 3: And and how often do people have discussions with each
24:19
Speaker 3: other and then just piss each other off? You know,
24:24
Speaker 3: So even if you if you're talented and a certain thing.
24:28
Speaker 3: You know, when I've run marathons, my last smile is
24:32
Speaker 3: often but slower than my first one because I'm more
24:35
Speaker 3: exhausted to my conditions have changed in that moment. So
24:38
Speaker 3: when I'm reacting to people, and when I'm reacting to
24:41
Speaker 3: patients and friends and stuff like that, you know, at
24:44
Speaker 3: times I'm at my best and at times, you know,
24:47
Speaker 3: even an expert is going to fall apart.
24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big gap between what you know and
24:52
Speaker 1: how you respond. I think it's like I talk about
24:56
Speaker 1: things all the time to groups. You know, the medical constructs.
25:01
Speaker 1: I could talk about it, you know, overthinking and internal
25:04
Speaker 1: myhem and imposter syndrome and you know, obsessing and rumination
25:09
Speaker 1: and all of these things that aren't super healthy for us.
25:13
Speaker 1: While putting up my hand going I still do most
25:16
Speaker 1: of them exactly. By the way, I'm pretty fucking good
25:20
Speaker 1: at all of that, so.
25:21
Speaker 3: Exactly, you know.
25:23
Speaker 1: And I also say, if I wait till I've got
25:25
Speaker 1: all my shit together before I tell you, or teach
25:27
Speaker 1: you or support you, I'm never fucking leaving the house.
25:31
Speaker 3: Exactly now that you're exact, You're exactly right, I mean,
25:34
Speaker 3: I see, you know, it's interesting that I was. I
25:37
Speaker 3: was reflecting on the on the diagnostic criteria of Borline
25:41
Speaker 3: personality disorder, and the second criterion is intense interpersonal relationships
25:46
Speaker 3: characterized by extremes of idealization devaluation. I am an intense dude,
25:51
Speaker 3: you know, Like I identify with that criteria, Like I
25:55
Speaker 3: get into it with people. I love it. I get,
25:57
Speaker 3: you know, and and it can get you know, that
26:01
Speaker 3: intensity can be a bit too much for people. And
26:05
Speaker 3: so it's great because you know, I can use it
26:08
Speaker 3: in uh in therapy, but it's you know, in your
26:14
Speaker 3: you know, ordery garden variety relationships, it's just too much.
26:17
Speaker 3: You know, the fire that cooks your food is also
26:20
Speaker 3: the fire that burns your house down. So there's quality
26:23
Speaker 3: of intensity which could be like you know, delicious, and
26:27
Speaker 3: under some circumstances, it's just overbearing in others. So, you know,
26:32
Speaker 3: I also think that the context under which who you
26:35
Speaker 3: are shows up. You know, you going to teach, you know,
26:41
Speaker 3: physical education to a group of I don't know, maybe
26:51
Speaker 3: the accountants here are going to be insulted, you know
26:53
Speaker 3: who want to just like learn about balance sheets. You know,
26:58
Speaker 3: they'd say, what are you doing here? That's all we want?
27:00
Speaker 3: Did you hear for you're in the face? You know?
27:03
Speaker 1: Yeah? I asked not everybody, but a lot of guests
27:09
Speaker 1: this similar question, just because it's for my own curiosity.
27:13
Speaker 1: So my my research is around metapception, which is, you know,
27:17
Speaker 1: understanding how people see us and perceive and experience us
27:20
Speaker 1: like almost like the question at the center of the
27:23
Speaker 1: research is what's it like being around me for others?
27:27
Speaker 1: What do you think? How do you do you ever
27:29
Speaker 1: think about that? Do you ever think about and not
27:32
Speaker 1: in a self loathing way, but a self awareness curiosity way.
27:36
Speaker 1: I probably think about it too much because I've spent
27:38
Speaker 1: six years studying it. But do you ever think about
27:42
Speaker 1: what's it like being around me for them? And do
27:45
Speaker 1: you have an insight?
27:47
Speaker 3: Yeah? So there's a couple of ways, you know, and
27:51
Speaker 3: I'm going to have a very broad answer. So I
27:54
Speaker 3: remember Bob Marley was asked what's it like to be famous?
27:58
Speaker 3: And he sort of thought about as he says, I
28:00
Speaker 3: don't know, I'm not famous to me and and you know,
28:04
Speaker 3: so so so the only way in which I know,
28:09
Speaker 3: you know, that people have a certain experience with me
28:11
Speaker 3: is that a they tell me. But but then I
28:15
Speaker 3: also get like letters, you know, and emails saying, you know,
28:18
Speaker 3: my child was very suicidal and just like so grateful
28:21
Speaker 3: for you, and you know, so you get that kind
28:23
Speaker 3: of feedback. I think I would drive myself nuts if
28:28
Speaker 3: I had somebody like myself around, because I'm so constantly
28:33
Speaker 3: you know, kind of into the mind and into questioning
28:37
Speaker 3: and that you know, metacognition that I think I can
28:40
Speaker 3: get to be a little bit too much. But at
28:42
Speaker 3: the same time that you know, you know, like being
28:45
Speaker 3: on Dacshapard, being on your show, you know that there's
28:49
Speaker 3: there's a certain dose of who I am that people
28:53
Speaker 3: can tolerate and find interesting, and you know, so so
28:57
Speaker 3: I get it to a certain point. But you know,
28:59
Speaker 3: on the other hand, you know, I travel all around
29:02
Speaker 3: the world, I teach all over the world. I don't
29:04
Speaker 3: have that many friends, you know, and I understand why,
29:08
Speaker 3: you know, I think I'm a bit much and so
29:11
Speaker 3: so there's also this concept of sollipsism, you know that
29:14
Speaker 3: the ancient Greek philosophy that you know, the only thing
29:18
Speaker 3: that you can ever really know is your own mind,
29:21
Speaker 3: and so anything that you can know to be, you know,
29:24
Speaker 3: perhaps true. You know, you can get into that kind
29:28
Speaker 3: of philosophy that even you and for all just projections
29:32
Speaker 3: of my mind, you know.
29:33
Speaker 1: And everything like that.
29:34
Speaker 3: You can get caught up in that kind of thinking,
29:38
Speaker 3: solecistic thinking. But you know, I I think that in
29:45
Speaker 3: the context of the work that I do. I think that,
29:47
Speaker 3: you know, like people that sort of appreciate me, in
29:50
Speaker 3: the context of of ordinary life, I turn everything into
29:56
Speaker 3: a philosophical question, and I think it's you know, it
29:59
Speaker 3: can be a that much. I mean, you know, it
30:01
Speaker 3: would be I remember speaking about accountants. I once went
30:05
Speaker 3: to a fundraiser that was being held by an accounting firm,
30:09
Speaker 3: and I don't think I've ever been suicidal except that
30:12
Speaker 3: one time, because we were talking about were the latest
30:16
Speaker 3: uh you know, internal revenue service software, uh you know
30:22
Speaker 3: software and regulations and stuff like that, and they were
30:26
Speaker 3: so into it, and I just not only did I
30:28
Speaker 3: not understand it. I wasn't actually that interested, but I
30:31
Speaker 3: can under see. I can see that. You know, if
30:34
Speaker 3: if crickets your game, you know, that's what you're going
30:37
Speaker 3: to follow. But in the States they'll play basketball or baseball,
30:41
Speaker 3: you know. So it's it's that's where theory of mind
30:44
Speaker 3: actually sort of comes in. But yeah, so how I'm experienced, Uh,
30:50
Speaker 3: I think like a curiosity really, you know, it's like
30:53
Speaker 3: it's kind of an odd guy.
30:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a bunch of mates who, like most
30:59
Speaker 1: most drink, smoke, party, do all the things and not
31:03
Speaker 1: so much smoking but drinking. And I've never been drunk.
31:06
Speaker 1: I've never had alcohol. I don't drink, and not that
31:08
Speaker 1: I'm suggesting that's a recommendation for anyone. And like, I've
31:13
Speaker 1: always just been fascinated with training and the mind and
31:16
Speaker 1: human performance and potential. And sometimes I sit and talk
31:20
Speaker 1: to some of my mates and I just see their
31:22
Speaker 1: eyes glaze over. Oh shut the fuck up.
31:26
Speaker 3: There you go exactly.
31:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was.
31:30
Speaker 3: In Iceland, and I did. I spent twenty minutes in
31:34
Speaker 3: a in a ice bath that was it was a
31:38
Speaker 3: two degree celsius wow, and it was cold. It was cold,
31:44
Speaker 3: and you know, it's just through you know, them of
31:47
Speaker 3: methodology and just like breathing technique and stuff like that,
31:51
Speaker 3: and you know, and I look at the science of
31:54
Speaker 3: aging and the science of cellular health and stuff like that,
31:57
Speaker 3: and you know, so the thing is, I'm speaking about
32:01
Speaker 3: it in a very earnest way about not only not
32:03
Speaker 3: necessarily longevity, but healthy healthy living. You know that what
32:08
Speaker 3: we put into our body, what we how we what
32:10
Speaker 3: we surround our body with. I'm thinking about that, and
32:13
Speaker 3: they just thinking like, wow, that was crazy, man, Like
32:15
Speaker 3: what'd you do? You know, like, no, it's not about that.
32:18
Speaker 3: And then you know, it's not about that. It's about like,
32:21
Speaker 3: how do you take care of the mitochondria in yourselves?
32:24
Speaker 2: Uh?
32:24
Speaker 3: You know, your the ability of the mind to regulate itself,
32:27
Speaker 3: to sort of treat itself with kindness and compassion. You
32:31
Speaker 3: know that you can do techniques and it's sort of
32:34
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, when I do five days silent meditations,
32:36
Speaker 3: it's like what you can't stop talking? What are you
32:39
Speaker 3: talking about? You know, it's it's but these are like
32:43
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it for saying it. I'm saying it
32:45
Speaker 3: because these are like the things that drive the best
32:50
Speaker 3: version of yourself, you know, and you know I get
32:53
Speaker 3: a bit extreme at times, you know, but but it's
32:55
Speaker 3: not about that. But you know, to your point you
32:57
Speaker 3: start talking about there's either like okay, you're or that
33:00
Speaker 3: gleazing over that you described.
33:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's funny. And then they will sometimes, like
33:07
Speaker 1: my training partner, who I love, he will start talking
33:10
Speaker 1: about an engine in a car, and I'm like, oh,
33:15
Speaker 1: get me out of here, Like I like cars, but
33:18
Speaker 1: I don't talk to you about the manifold or the
33:20
Speaker 1: gasket or whatever.
33:21
Speaker 3: The fuck you.
33:22
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, help, help anyone. So tell us about
33:28
Speaker 1: your work, tell us about and I know you do
33:31
Speaker 1: a lot of different things, but you know, the bulk
33:33
Speaker 1: of your work over the last decade, or to tell
33:36
Speaker 1: us what that is if you would.
33:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I've I've been profoundly impacted, you know, by
33:48
Speaker 3: a human suffering and impacted in the sense of like
33:51
Speaker 3: it's impacted me. But I've also seen the impact on
33:54
Speaker 3: other people psychological and emotional pains so severe that people
34:01
Speaker 3: want to die, that people want to know kill themselves.
34:04
Speaker 3: I am. I think I'm a bit naive and sort
34:09
Speaker 3: of I live in a not quite wicked like fairy
34:13
Speaker 3: tale but just like I tend to, I see so
34:16
Speaker 3: much ore and so much potential in life and I
34:20
Speaker 3: and I want people to have that same experience, but
34:23
Speaker 3: I know that they don't, and I know that they
34:26
Speaker 3: suffer tremendously because of emotional pain. And any single one
34:31
Speaker 3: of us who's had severe emotional pain, maybe you lost
34:37
Speaker 3: your loved one, and you can remember just how much
34:40
Speaker 3: pain you were in, and if you were to think
34:43
Speaker 3: about that pain for eternity, for the rest of your life,
34:47
Speaker 3: you could think about, like, I don't want to do
34:49
Speaker 3: this anymore, that I would want to die rather than
34:52
Speaker 3: have to suffer with so much emotional pain. And in
34:54
Speaker 3: the people that I treat as a very high suicide rate,
34:57
Speaker 3: and you know, you can you know, we have a
34:59
Speaker 3: lot of empathy with people who have, say pain because
35:02
Speaker 3: of cancer or something like that. Yes, and you see
35:06
Speaker 3: the cancer, you say, Okay, yeah, I can see how
35:08
Speaker 3: much you're suffering. But emotional pain can be maybe worse
35:11
Speaker 3: than that kind of physical pain. And then all the
35:17
Speaker 3: techniques that I tried to help people emotional pain, none
35:20
Speaker 3: of them seem to work as well as Dialectical behavior
35:23
Speaker 3: therapy also known as DBT that incorporates some of the
35:28
Speaker 3: things that we were talking about, you know, healthier living
35:33
Speaker 3: through emotion regulation, mindfulness strategies, being more effective inter personally,
35:40
Speaker 3: being able to tolerate difficult moments more effectively, and using
35:45
Speaker 3: that technology with this group of patients and seeing tremendous benefit.
35:50
Speaker 3: But most recently, the thing that I was observing was
35:58
Speaker 3: that a lot of suffering came because we were dissatisfied
36:03
Speaker 3: with who we were. And that could just be something like, oh,
36:07
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit overweight, you know, I'm not intelligent enough,
36:12
Speaker 3: and that sort of stuff. So some sort of minor
36:14
Speaker 3: self criticism all the way to extreme self hatred, and
36:21
Speaker 3: often the experience of just never having felt good enough
36:27
Speaker 3: from early childhood and just being told that you weren't
36:31
Speaker 3: good enough and then beginning to believe it yourself then
36:35
Speaker 3: led to a point where self hatred consumed the person,
36:41
Speaker 3: and it was beyond self criticism, beyond self blame, beyond
36:46
Speaker 3: self judgment. It sort of encompassed the whole and people
36:51
Speaker 3: felt that the world would be better off without them,
36:53
Speaker 3: And so tragically, some of the people who took their
36:56
Speaker 3: lives had a lot of self hatred. And so I
36:59
Speaker 3: decided to start, you know, to write a book on
37:01
Speaker 3: self hatred, which is I Hate Myself, which was the
37:04
Speaker 3: reason I was on the Dak Shepherd show. Yeah, and
37:09
Speaker 3: you know, and now in a few months my book
37:13
Speaker 3: I Hate Myself? Now why it is a workbook to
37:15
Speaker 3: accompany that that book so amazing.
37:19
Speaker 1: So the book everyone is called I Hate Myself. Overcome
37:22
Speaker 1: self loathing and realize why you're wrong about you? Tif
37:26
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk? Do you want to talk
37:28
Speaker 1: about what you have to talk about or do you
37:30
Speaker 1: just want to sit and listen? I want to be sensitive?
37:34
Speaker 2: Go ahead, go ahead, and well, what don't.
37:37
Speaker 1: You tell Blaze or Okay, So Tiff coaches a few people,
37:43
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, and last week one of the
37:46
Speaker 1: people that you coached committed suicide, like literally four or
37:51
Speaker 1: five days ago. And this has been you know, we
37:56
Speaker 1: muck around him. We're silly here. But that's why when
37:58
Speaker 1: I listened to Blaze a small and I spoke to
38:01
Speaker 1: you before I went, I think this is going to
38:04
Speaker 1: be an interesting and relevant and perhaps powerful conversation for you.
38:08
Speaker 1: So I'm going to ask you a question. Then I'm
38:10
Speaker 1: going to get out of the way for the professional
38:12
Speaker 1: who all of a sudden is becoming the interviewer not
38:15
Speaker 1: the interviewee. How are you going with it?
38:21
Speaker 2: As expected? I think so it's today, will be one week,
38:25
Speaker 2: it was last Friday, and it's Friday Friday morning now. Yeah,
38:30
Speaker 2: And it's been a ride. It's been very different every day,
38:34
Speaker 2: and I feel like it's some days it's real and
38:37
Speaker 2: some days it's not. And it's yeah, I don't know,
38:41
Speaker 2: it's hard, and it's different every day.
38:44
Speaker 1: And to put this in context, you and this guy, ye,
38:49
Speaker 1: can we say his name.
38:50
Speaker 2: Or no, just let's go first name.
38:52
Speaker 1: Perhaps, So you and Ben were in contact every day. Yes,
38:57
Speaker 1: so you spoke to him regularly, but at the very
38:59
Speaker 1: least there was me sing every day because you were
39:01
Speaker 1: kind of working with him.
39:03
Speaker 2: Yes.
39:03
Speaker 1: So I've worked with him for a year.
39:05
Speaker 2: We did sessions every two weeks and checked in every
39:09
Speaker 2: single day for interactions to yeah, stay accountable and stay
39:13
Speaker 2: in touch.
39:14
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I guess this is not uncommon what you're hearing, bis, Yeah.
39:20
Speaker 3: I mean this is this is you know, I started
39:23
Speaker 3: my program in two thousand and seven and there hasn't
39:27
Speaker 3: been a single day where I haven't worked with a
39:29
Speaker 3: suicidal individual or maybe multiple suicidal people, and and sort
39:35
Speaker 3: of just like sending you compassion so much love, it's
39:41
Speaker 3: to lose somebody that you cared about so much. I
39:44
Speaker 3: think it's sort of it. You know, you you question,
39:48
Speaker 3: you know, did I do something wrong? Could I have
39:50
Speaker 3: done something differently? What was going on? What did I miss?
39:55
Speaker 3: And all of that stuff, and you know, and we
39:59
Speaker 3: never know that li of others. We never know the
40:01
Speaker 3: minds of others. You know, we can know some as
40:03
Speaker 3: aspects of it, but you know, they're you know, they're
40:07
Speaker 3: probably suffering tremendously. And and you know, like I always
40:13
Speaker 3: think that a person's always doing the best that they
40:15
Speaker 3: can do at any given moment, and and you know,
40:21
Speaker 3: they tried their best, you know, until they couldn't try anymore.
40:23
Speaker 3: And and you know maybe you know, I mean, we
40:27
Speaker 3: can always second guess ourselves, but you know, we always
40:30
Speaker 3: second guess ourselves why when people die, But we never
40:33
Speaker 3: second guess ourselves when people live. You know, we don't say,
40:37
Speaker 3: you know, like, oh, this person you know tragically took
40:40
Speaker 3: their life. Could I have done something different? But when
40:42
Speaker 3: we say, wow, this person's living, they're living their best life,
40:45
Speaker 3: Like what could I have done differently? Or what should
40:48
Speaker 3: I do? Or you know, it's it's it's it's only
40:50
Speaker 3: in this kind of context, so you know, so anyways,
40:54
Speaker 3: just sending you, you know, love, compassion, and just like
40:58
Speaker 3: you know, just recognizing how absolutely devastating and painful that
41:04
Speaker 3: is to lose somebody that you care about and somebody
41:06
Speaker 3: that you work with.
41:08
Speaker 1: What is the relationship to feel free to jump in blaze?
41:12
Speaker 1: What is the correlational relationship between borderline personality disorder and
41:18
Speaker 1: suicidal ideation?
41:20
Speaker 3: Well, I don't remember having a patient with bortline percentage
41:25
Speaker 3: disorder who hasn't had suicidal ideation. I think, I mean,
41:29
Speaker 3: I think, I think that the statistics are that almost
41:32
Speaker 3: anyone who's got bortline percent he disorder has had either
41:35
Speaker 3: passive or active suicidal ideation. Passive suicidal ideation is more
41:39
Speaker 3: the idea that you know, I just wish I wasn't around.
41:43
Speaker 3: I wish I would die, you know, if an accident happened,
41:47
Speaker 3: I wouldn't care. Active suicidal ideation is the idea that
41:50
Speaker 3: you're going to take active measures to make that happen,
41:53
Speaker 3: and then there's suicidal behavior. But I'd say ninety five
41:57
Speaker 3: percent of not more certainly of the patients that I've
41:59
Speaker 3: treated have had either active or or either active or
42:05
Speaker 3: passive suicidal ideation, and many of them have had suicide attempts.
42:13
Speaker 1: And I remember, I can't remember the exact number, but
42:16
Speaker 1: I remember you sharing the statistics, the comparative statistics between
42:21
Speaker 1: what the normal outcomes are versus the five thousand patients
42:26
Speaker 1: that you've worked with, and you know, it's quite a contrast.
42:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, So what the research had said is
42:37
Speaker 3: that if you look up, you know, what's the suicide
42:40
Speaker 3: rate and boradline personality disorder, they'll say, you know, for
42:44
Speaker 3: people who are hospitalized, it's about ten percent. That's you know,
42:49
Speaker 3: there's some debate about that number, but that's the number
42:53
Speaker 3: that's most often thrown out, you know. And so we've
42:57
Speaker 3: had more than five thousand people come through our program.
42:59
Speaker 3: So if you're to say you're going to lose ten
43:01
Speaker 3: percent of them, like we should have had ten percent
43:04
Speaker 3: or five hundred day by suicide, you know, as far
43:08
Speaker 3: as we know, we've lost fewer than thirty. So thirty people.
43:15
Speaker 3: So I mean, any death by suicide is a tragedy,
43:19
Speaker 3: of course, but you know that means that there's at
43:22
Speaker 3: least four hundred people who might have died, who haven't you.
43:26
Speaker 1: Know, I know this is very big and very complicated,
43:30
Speaker 1: but for somebody who has got somebody in there, or
43:33
Speaker 1: but who who is in that state? And I know
43:39
Speaker 1: there's no three step plan, but is there anything that
43:42
Speaker 1: you can help us with too, even to how do
43:46
Speaker 1: we approach it or them? How do we have a conversation?
43:49
Speaker 1: Is there something that we should do or shouldn't do?
43:52
Speaker 1: Like for a lot of people, this is overwhelming and
43:56
Speaker 1: it's almost like too hard basket, I'm just not going
43:58
Speaker 1: to do anything about it.
44:00
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, one thing is, first of all, never ever
44:06
Speaker 3: ever think that it's attention seeking. So sometimes you know,
44:10
Speaker 3: they say, oh, you know, they're saying they're suicidal, they're not. Really,
44:14
Speaker 3: it's it's it's you know, it's it's attention seeking behavior.
44:20
Speaker 3: If if you were to say to me that you
44:22
Speaker 3: were going to get a Kiwi tattooed in your forehead,
44:26
Speaker 3: I could say, well, it's it's attention seeking behavior. But
44:29
Speaker 3: I say, okay, well maybe you go and you do
44:31
Speaker 3: that and then you look ridiculous, And then I say, okay,
44:34
Speaker 3: well you did that, But so what you know, you're
44:37
Speaker 3: going to have to deal with it. And I might
44:39
Speaker 3: say that it's attention seeking or not attention seeking. But
44:41
Speaker 3: whenever somebody says to me that they're going to kill themselves,
44:44
Speaker 3: I never even if it is attention seeking, I always
44:48
Speaker 3: take it seriously. That's the first thing. The second thing
44:51
Speaker 3: is that talking about suicide does not make somebody more suicidal.
44:56
Speaker 3: You know, if you say you don't drink alcohol, if
45:00
Speaker 3: I start talking about wine and vodka, that you're not
45:03
Speaker 3: likely to go and drink wine and vodka just because
45:06
Speaker 3: I'm talking about it, you know, So just be Sometimes
45:09
Speaker 3: people say, oh, if you start talking about it, then
45:11
Speaker 3: people are going to think about it. I talk about
45:14
Speaker 3: suicide all the time. I've never been suicidal. I don't
45:16
Speaker 3: think about it as entertainer. It's not my you know,
45:18
Speaker 3: the thing that I think about. But so if somebody
45:22
Speaker 3: is struggling, and I think especially if somebody is struggling
45:26
Speaker 3: with darkness, with depression, with anxiety, with substance use, I
45:31
Speaker 3: think it's a very fair question to say, hey, you know,
45:34
Speaker 3: do you ever does it ever get really bad? Do
45:36
Speaker 3: you think that you want to end it all? And
45:38
Speaker 3: many people will, but just because you've asked the question
45:41
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that they're going to do that. It just
45:43
Speaker 3: tells you that they're like, hey, we can talk about this,
45:46
Speaker 3: you know, we can talk about this stuff, and it's
45:50
Speaker 3: not the end of the world until you actually kill yourself,
45:54
Speaker 3: and then that is the end of the world. So
45:56
Speaker 3: it's like, let's like, let's you know, you actually not
46:01
Speaker 3: talking about it puts people much more risk than talking
46:04
Speaker 3: about it. So I'm just saying, you know, like bringing
46:06
Speaker 3: up suicide and public awareness campaigns, speaking to friends who
46:11
Speaker 3: are very depressed, you know, who've or who maybe are
46:16
Speaker 3: shutting down. But sometimes, I mean there are people who
46:20
Speaker 3: you had absolutely no idea that that's what was on
46:22
Speaker 3: their mind. They seem to be having perfectly happy lives.
46:26
Speaker 3: But for many people that you can see that there's
46:28
Speaker 3: a darkness that's come over them, that there's a withdrawal,
46:31
Speaker 3: there's there's a there's a change in how they interact
46:35
Speaker 3: with you that you know, you might start saying, you know,
46:38
Speaker 3: I see you're isolating more, you're withdrawing more, You're you know,
46:42
Speaker 3: more depressed, you're having a harder time. Maybe they've lost
46:45
Speaker 3: their job or something like that. I think it's you know,
46:48
Speaker 3: it's not like every time say hey, are you suicidal,
46:51
Speaker 3: but it's it's in those in those contexts, you know,
46:55
Speaker 3: to sort of to sort of quest wonder about that sometimes, could.
46:59
Speaker 1: You just quick define, just for some of our listeners
47:02
Speaker 1: who are going, what exactly is borderline personality disorder? Could
47:06
Speaker 1: you give us a layman's kind of explanation of what
47:08
Speaker 1: that is?
47:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bordline personity disorder is a condition where a person
47:16
Speaker 3: has a difficult time regulating or controlling their emotional responses,
47:23
Speaker 3: and that when their emotions are very all over the place,
47:28
Speaker 3: like excessive happiness, excessive anger, jealousy, sadness, they then turn
47:35
Speaker 3: to what we would call us maladapted or self destructive
47:39
Speaker 3: waste in order to regulate them. So people might turn
47:43
Speaker 3: to cutting, They might turn to cutting themselves. They might
47:45
Speaker 3: turn to alcohol, They might tend to spending. Now that
47:50
Speaker 3: can you know? People might say, well, that sounds like
47:52
Speaker 3: bipolar disorder. The difference is that the kind of mood
47:56
Speaker 3: states that people with borderline personality to get into are
48:00
Speaker 3: or don't last very long. They last for sometimes minutes,
48:04
Speaker 3: sometimes hours, sometimes a day or so, but they don't
48:09
Speaker 3: last weeks so and often often that reactivity of mood,
48:14
Speaker 3: that disregulation, that inability to control their emotions has to
48:19
Speaker 3: do with how they interact with other people. So, you know,
48:23
Speaker 3: you say something to me, I react to what you say,
48:27
Speaker 3: and then it escalates. You know, people feel judged, people
48:31
Speaker 3: feel criticized, and and you know, I might say something
48:36
Speaker 3: you know, critical of you, Craig, and then and then
48:38
Speaker 3: you might say, well, f you. And but you know what,
48:41
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going
48:42
Speaker 3: to work it out and then I'm going to hang
48:44
Speaker 3: out with some friends. But if you were then to
48:46
Speaker 3: take it so personally that you you know, uh, restruggling
48:51
Speaker 3: with it. So they have struggled in regulating their emotional experience.
48:55
Speaker 3: They have struggled in regulating their friendships. So they can
48:58
Speaker 3: get very reconnected very quickly to people. They can then
49:02
Speaker 3: suddenly fall out of connection with people. They can then
49:05
Speaker 3: idealize that person by you know, just thinking they're the
49:08
Speaker 3: best person in the world, and then they can devalue
49:11
Speaker 3: them the next day. They have trouble regulating their thinking,
49:16
Speaker 3: so they can get very paranoid. They can make a
49:19
Speaker 3: lot of bad interpretations of, you know, of what a
49:25
Speaker 3: person's thinking. So I don't know, is that a pen
49:27
Speaker 3: that you've got to your lips? I might say, I
49:30
Speaker 3: might say to myself, oh, you know, he's actually not
49:34
Speaker 3: that interested in what I'm saying. The reason he's holding
49:38
Speaker 3: his pen is because he wants to, you know, write
49:41
Speaker 3: something and doodle. You know. So what happens in people
49:43
Speaker 3: with boreline person you or they'll see some sort of
49:46
Speaker 3: action that another person is doing it, they'll misinterpret or
49:50
Speaker 3: they'll make wrong assumptions. And partly they do that because
49:53
Speaker 3: they've been right in the past, so sometimes you know
49:56
Speaker 3: that that's what's happened. You know, they have trouble regulating
49:59
Speaker 3: their sense of self. So there's and these inabilities to
50:03
Speaker 3: regulate cause a lot of emotional pain. So when a
50:08
Speaker 3: person has a cluster of engagement with the world where
50:13
Speaker 3: they can control their emotions very well, where they have
50:17
Speaker 3: very chaotic relationships, where they have an unstable sense of
50:21
Speaker 3: who they are, and when they can get very paranoid
50:24
Speaker 3: about other people's intentions, you know, you'd want to think
50:27
Speaker 3: about borderline personality disorder.
50:31
Speaker 1: Does everybody who has they pay a hide themselves?
50:38
Speaker 3: No? No, And that's an interesting an important question, you know,
50:45
Speaker 3: it's you know, one of the criteria is that the
50:48
Speaker 3: fourth criterion might include eating disorder behaviors and BPD, but
50:53
Speaker 3: you only need five out of nine criteria in order
50:56
Speaker 3: to meet the diagnostic criteria for bortline personality disorder. So
51:00
Speaker 3: a person could have normal eating habits and not have BPD,
51:04
Speaker 3: or they could have you know, disordered eating, or they
51:07
Speaker 3: could have disordered eating and not have BPD. So you
51:11
Speaker 3: don't have to have self hatred to have BPD. But
51:15
Speaker 3: I have found that many people with born on personality
51:17
Speaker 3: you just sort of do, have self hatred. I've also
51:20
Speaker 3: found a group of very very high functioning people athletes, artists, musicians,
51:28
Speaker 3: CEOs of company who are very very self critical, very
51:34
Speaker 3: self judgmental, very self blaming, very self hating. But they've
51:40
Speaker 3: used that as the rocket fudal to get themselves to
51:43
Speaker 3: the top of their profession, you know, by saying like
51:46
Speaker 3: I am going to prove like I'm so worthless, I'm
51:49
Speaker 3: going to prove to the world that I'm not worthless.
51:51
Speaker 3: So that's a cohort that has come out of the
51:55
Speaker 3: work that I've done, because initially I was thinking about
51:57
Speaker 3: it just in the context of BB but all of
52:00
Speaker 3: a sudden I had doctors and musicians and artists and
52:04
Speaker 3: CEOs reaching out to me and saying, hey, I don't
52:07
Speaker 3: have born on percentives for but I also don't like
52:10
Speaker 3: myself very much.
52:12
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a or there can be a
52:16
Speaker 1: relationship between, you know, self loathing and self awareness, like
52:21
Speaker 1: self loathing as I'm a fucking idiot every time I
52:23
Speaker 1: get in this situation, I do that I am. I'm
52:26
Speaker 1: such a more for me, that's versus you know, so
52:34
Speaker 1: I didn't do a great job there? What did I
52:36
Speaker 1: get wrong? What could I do better? How did I
52:38
Speaker 1: plan if I was going to do that tomorrow? What
52:40
Speaker 1: might I do different? You know? It seems like me
52:43
Speaker 1: one's destructive ones potentially you know, hopefully productive. Can they
52:49
Speaker 1: Can one become the other? Can we kind of morph
52:52
Speaker 1: the self loathing if we try to pull the emotion
52:56
Speaker 1: out of its good point?
53:00
Speaker 3: And thought about that, and I steal it as an
53:04
Speaker 3: idea for my next book, Welcome but Welcome. But it's
53:10
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's if if you know, if you
53:13
Speaker 3: keep walking into a door and then you keep like
53:17
Speaker 3: wondering what that is, and if you can just stand
53:18
Speaker 3: back from it and just say, I'm doing this thing
53:21
Speaker 3: called walking, and there's something called a door there, and
53:25
Speaker 3: every single time I do this, I get you know,
53:28
Speaker 3: like I bump into it and my head hurts. So
53:31
Speaker 3: when a second, okay, I see what's going on here. Wait,
53:35
Speaker 3: there's this thing called a handle. What about that thing?
53:37
Speaker 3: You know? So that so I think, like being able
53:39
Speaker 3: to stand back from the automaticity of behavior, the automaticity
53:44
Speaker 3: of thinking allows for the kind of self reflection that
53:47
Speaker 3: you're describing.
53:50
Speaker 1: It's very hard to when you're trying to have any
53:54
Speaker 1: any level of self awareness and self regulation. Like, obviously,
53:59
Speaker 1: I can't be objective about me because I'm me, right,
54:02
Speaker 1: I'm always looking at me through the me lens and
54:04
Speaker 1: everything that I you know, the whole. But trying to
54:07
Speaker 1: move at least to move towards some consciousness of that,
54:11
Speaker 1: you know. So when I like, I was a morbidly
54:13
Speaker 1: obese kid, and I talk about being the fattest kid
54:18
Speaker 1: in the school, and people say to me, don't say
54:21
Speaker 1: that about yourself, I go, but I literally was the
54:24
Speaker 1: fattest kid in the school. That's an objective reality. That's
54:28
Speaker 1: not me throwing myself under the bus, you know. That's like, well,
54:32
Speaker 1: I was morbidly obese, I was over two hundred pounds
54:35
Speaker 1: in your language, when I was fourteen, So I was
54:39
Speaker 1: a big kid. Now that doesn't mean I hate me.
54:42
Speaker 1: That means that was part of my journey. And I
54:45
Speaker 1: understand how I ended up in that state. And what
54:48
Speaker 1: I did was I got better. I learned, I asked
54:51
Speaker 1: better questions. I recognize self destructive behaviors, you know, which
54:56
Speaker 1: is not say I created this perfect version of myself.
54:59
Speaker 1: I definitely didn't. But yeah, the amount of people who
55:02
Speaker 1: hide it when I when I tell stories about myself,
55:06
Speaker 1: historical stories, because they think I'm hiding myself, whereas I'm
55:10
Speaker 1: not at all. I'm just glading insights from where I
55:14
Speaker 1: was and where I went.
55:16
Speaker 3: Well, so this is another interesting point. So so Jimmy Pedro,
55:21
Speaker 3: my judo coach, was my my judo trainer. I've got
55:25
Speaker 3: this marine. His name is Billy, and he's my personal
55:29
Speaker 3: trainer and I just work out with him all the
55:31
Speaker 3: time and he is, you know, he's as marine as
55:34
Speaker 3: they get. And one of the things that he told
55:40
Speaker 3: me recently is that when he was a kid, he
55:43
Speaker 3: was very, very overweight. I mean, you look at him now,
55:45
Speaker 3: he's just like this lean, shredded guy. And to this day,
55:51
Speaker 3: if if you call him fat, if unravels him because
55:56
Speaker 3: because what happened is is that you know, that was
55:59
Speaker 3: paired with a very very painful time in his life,
56:03
Speaker 3: and and and you know, and so you know, I said, listen,
56:07
Speaker 3: you do you do you train me physically, I'll train
56:09
Speaker 3: you mentally. But it's it's you know, because I think
56:12
Speaker 3: that there's a difference between an objective truth that you
56:14
Speaker 3: were morbidly obese and that you were overweight, but it
56:18
Speaker 3: was paired with a ridicule. If that was paired with
56:21
Speaker 3: teasing and tormenting and all of those sorts of things
56:25
Speaker 3: and some of the you know, rejection by you know,
56:27
Speaker 3: girls and whatever it was, that then could become painful
56:33
Speaker 3: for you. And if you had an identical twin brother
56:36
Speaker 3: raised in a completely different school system where they were
56:39
Speaker 3: compassionate to you and they said, you know, don't treat
56:41
Speaker 3: yourself that way, don't say those things about you, you know,
56:45
Speaker 3: the outcome is going to be different because of the
56:47
Speaker 3: pairing of narrative to that physical state. And you know,
56:53
Speaker 3: if you know, people like you say hey, you know,
56:56
Speaker 3: hey that guy, you know, you might react differently than
56:59
Speaker 3: if if somebody just you know, like if you never
57:04
Speaker 3: had weight problems in Spanish, my mother. There's Spanish, and
57:08
Speaker 3: there's a, there's a there's a So the word gordodal
57:13
Speaker 3: geo r d o means fat one and if if
57:17
Speaker 3: if you say it's it's it's a it's a term
57:20
Speaker 3: of endearment, like hey dude, hey bro, hey guy, it's
57:24
Speaker 3: hey in Spanish, it's hey fat one to them, and
57:27
Speaker 3: so it's like but if you were really fat, then
57:29
Speaker 3: you know you might sort of take take it personally. Yeah,
57:34
Speaker 3: I love it.
57:35
Speaker 1: My name all through school, by the way, was Jumbo.
57:38
Speaker 1: So that'll give you an insight. Yeah, okay, so we
57:42
Speaker 1: need to wind up, but let's let's give us a
57:45
Speaker 1: quick snapshot of the book. You know what amazed me
57:47
Speaker 1: when you were talking uh to Dax was that you
57:51
Speaker 1: said when you when you started to think about how
57:54
Speaker 1: many people hate themselves and all of the intersecting kind
57:57
Speaker 1: of variables around that you went, oh, I wonder what
58:00
Speaker 1: the research and I wonder what the research says, and
58:02
Speaker 1: I'll go and find those ten thousand papers. And I
58:05
Speaker 1: think you said something like you found three and I
58:07
Speaker 1: basically said fuck all, Like it seems like a really
58:13
Speaker 1: common phenomenon that is very under researched.
58:18
Speaker 3: Exactly and so that was exactly it. You know, when
58:23
Speaker 3: I was starting to see the correlation between suicidality and
58:27
Speaker 3: and self hatred, I thought, you know, people study the
58:32
Speaker 3: correlation between substance use and suicidality or depression in sucidiality,
58:37
Speaker 3: its schizophrenian suicidality. But why was this construct, this idea
58:42
Speaker 3: that was so powerful not being studied. And so I thought, okay,
58:49
Speaker 3: well there must be studies out there, and there was nothing.
58:52
Speaker 3: And you know, it was shocking to me. You know
58:59
Speaker 3: that the that that we are you know, earlier on
59:04
Speaker 3: you talked about have we advanced since over the last
59:07
Speaker 3: two thousand years. I mean, these are fundamental questions about
59:10
Speaker 3: a sense of self that includes this kind of thing.
59:13
Speaker 3: It just isn't that much research on it. And yet
59:16
Speaker 3: it is an experience that so many people experience, many
59:21
Speaker 3: many more than I imagined. And again it doesn't have
59:24
Speaker 3: to be fundamental core self hatred, but just a self dissatisfaction.
59:29
Speaker 3: I mean, many listeners are going to be not so
59:31
Speaker 3: happy with themselves because you know, of self judgment or
59:35
Speaker 3: self criticism of self dissatisfaction. But if left unchecked, that
59:41
Speaker 3: can become you know, self hatred, and what happens is
59:44
Speaker 3: if you're a self hating person and you have children,
59:49
Speaker 3: you're transmitting an okayness, not in an explicit way, but
59:55
Speaker 3: an implicit way that you know, like that that self
59:58
Speaker 3: dissatisfaction that there's something okay about it.
1:00:01
Speaker 1: So wow, I'm excited to get that book and read it.
1:00:06
Speaker 1: It's so good to talk to you. I know how
1:00:07
Speaker 1: those those two spoke to you for two hours? Now,
1:00:13
Speaker 1: how can people find you, doc? How can they follow you?
1:00:16
Speaker 1: Connect with you? Once again? Just quickly, I'll do the
1:00:20
Speaker 1: prim i for you. The book is called I Hate Myself,
1:00:23
Speaker 1: Overcome Self Loathing and Realize why You're wrong about you,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: Doctor BLASEE Guare. Yeah, how can people connect with you
1:00:35
Speaker 1: and follow you?
1:00:36
Speaker 2: Yeah?
1:00:36
Speaker 3: So, I mean I used to be a very big
1:00:41
Speaker 3: it wasn't social media, and then I started getting rid
1:00:43
Speaker 3: of everything except that I didn't need it for us,
1:00:47
Speaker 3: you know, sort of promotional material and everything. So I'm
1:00:49
Speaker 3: on Instagram, you know, at blaze, m D b l
1:00:52
Speaker 3: A I S E M D. And I have a
1:00:54
Speaker 3: friend who's just told me I have to start doing
1:00:57
Speaker 3: TikTok because that's the way I'm going to get the
1:00:59
Speaker 3: message across and so I guess you know. So I
1:01:04
Speaker 3: started a TikTok, but I haven't that posted anything just yet.
1:01:08
Speaker 3: And my program here at Harvard is the number three
1:01:12
Speaker 3: the worst East so three east dot org.
1:01:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, cool. Well, we appreciate you so much, thank
1:01:20
Speaker 1: you for being so generous with your time and wisdom
1:01:23
Speaker 1: and energy. We'll say goodbye off air, but TIF did
1:01:27
Speaker 1: you enjoy that, Tiff?
1:01:28
Speaker 3: I did very much?
1:01:29
Speaker 2: Thank you?
1:01:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
1:01:31
Speaker 3: Thanks again. I'm sorry for everything that you've you've gone through,
1:01:35
Speaker 3: and no, I appreciate you and your listeners for tuning
1:01:39
Speaker 3: in and putting up with you. Craig, so that's a
1:01:42
Speaker 3: good thing.
1:01:43
Speaker 1: I'm a lot. You've already diagnized me. I'm a fucking even.
1:01:47
Speaker 1: I don't like me, and I am me. Maybe I
1:01:49
Speaker 1: should get your book exactly
1:01:51
Speaker 3: Good two coffee so it'll make you better