Latest / Drawn of History / Dr. Gabor Maté _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _538(M4A_128K)

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Dr. Gabor Maté _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _538(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We have some upcoming tour dates there in Colorado Springs
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  Speaker 1: in Colorado, Casper, Wyoming, Billings, Montana, and Missoula, Montana, Bloomington, Indiana, Columbus, Ohio, Champaign, Illinois,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: over there in the Fighting Illini area, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Lafayette, Louisiana,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and Beaumont, Texas. You can get all your tickets at theovon.com
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: slash T-O-U-R And thank you so much for the support.
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  Speaker 1: Today's guest is a physician and an author. His works
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  Speaker 1: explore such topics like stress, trauma, addiction, developmental psychology, and more.
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  Speaker 1: He has a new book called The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness,
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  Speaker 1: and Healing in a Toxic Culture. I'm grateful today to
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  Speaker 1: spend time with Dr. Gabor Mate.
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  Speaker 2: I saw you on TV with Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, you did?
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  Speaker 2: And... I was actually quite struck, I saw the segment
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  Speaker 2: on his brother's alcoholism. And I found him unusually, without bombast,
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  Speaker 2: and almost tender, and very vulnerable, and just kinda humble,
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  Speaker 2: you know? Which is not how usually he comes across.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was trying to just talk to him about
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  Speaker 1: something that felt pretty normal, you know?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's also expressed interest in you and your brother.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was sweet of him. Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: As sweet as he could be.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I think I.
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  Speaker 2: Well, look, when you read further in the book, I
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  Speaker 2: actually talk about him.
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  Speaker 1: Really?
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  Speaker 2: His childhood trauma, yeah. Oh, you do? Him and Hillary
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  Speaker 2: Clinton's both.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. I didn't know that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I just, yeah. It's like, especially like just as a
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  Speaker 1: regular person in the world, you kind of, you want
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  Speaker 1: to try to get a feel for somebody.
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  Speaker 2: I use a poster boy for trauma. Yeah. In my view.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if they have
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  Speaker 1: a lot, if there's a lot of it there. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: his brother had addiction and like, and even him, I
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  Speaker 1: think trying to learn about addiction. I wish I could,
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  Speaker 1: I wish I would have stayed in that conversation a
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  Speaker 1: little bit more with Donald and, and tried to share
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  Speaker 1: some thoughts and things that I had not thoughts, but
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  Speaker 1: a little bit more explanation about addiction from my own perspective.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that would have been an interesting conversation. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Just to let him know that it wasn't something his brother,
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  Speaker 1: like it wasn't like his brother just couldn't stop drinking,
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  Speaker 1: you know, that he had other things inside of him
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  Speaker 1: that prevented him from doing that.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And I really wish that if I could go back
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  Speaker 1: But one of the things that's been tough for me
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  Speaker 1: is just you get into certain conversations and I'm still
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  Speaker 1: learning how to be in conversations sometimes. So sometimes it's,
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  Speaker 1: you know, you're learning on the stove.
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  Speaker 2: We're always learning. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're always learning. Gabor, that's how you say it?
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  Speaker 2: Gabor.
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  Speaker 1: Gabor.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Theo. Nice to meet you today, Mr. Mate. And thanks
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  Speaker 1: for coming.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you. My pleasure. Yep.
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  Speaker 1: And thanks for sharing this book, man. This is your book,
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  Speaker 1: The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness... and healing in a
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  Speaker 1: toxic culture. You believe that we are kind of a
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  Speaker 1: sick culture. What makes you believe that? Or like what
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  Speaker 1: proof do you have of that?
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  Speaker 2: Well, so 70% of American adults are at least on
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  Speaker 2: one medication. 70%. 40% are on two medications or more.
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  Speaker 2: The number of children being diagnosed with all manner of... Dysfunctions, disorders,
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  Speaker 2: mental health challenges like ADHD, self-cutting, addictions, anxiety, depression, childhood
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  Speaker 2: suicide keeps going up. In the United States, annually, twice
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  Speaker 2: as many people die of overdoses as died in the Iraq, Vietnam,
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  Speaker 2: and Afghan wars put together. This is every year.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: The life expectancy, particularly of white men, has gone down
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  Speaker 2: due to suicide and drug overdoses. I mean, I could go,
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  Speaker 2: the number of autoimmune, I could go on and on forever,
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  Speaker 2: but just statistically, there's more and more evidence of illness
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  Speaker 2: and dysfunction.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the overdosing alone is unbelievable. You know,
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  Speaker 1: the fact that that's even just become a common thing
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  Speaker 1: in our society is... It's heartbreaking for so many. It's
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  Speaker 1: heartbreaking for so many and so many people's families, just
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  Speaker 1: the residual effect of suicide or overdose. It's like we
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  Speaker 1: don't even think about, those numbers don't even take into
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  Speaker 1: the ripple effect of people losing a loved one.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, the families that are being devastated. And
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I used to work with what is North
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  Speaker 2: America's most concentrated area of drug use in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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  Speaker 2: And I know you were there a month ago.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we went down on Catchings, is that right? Hastings.
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  Speaker 2: Hastings, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: We went down on Hastings just to take a drive
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  Speaker 1: and see.
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  Speaker 2: Well, so that's where I used to work. Wow. For
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: 12 years as a physician. And everybody down there was
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  Speaker 2: severely traumatized in childhood. And their addictions were all a
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  Speaker 2: response to immense emotional pain that they didn't know how
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  Speaker 2: else to handle. Not to mention... The racial aspect, like
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  Speaker 2: 30% of my clients were indigenous, whereas they only make
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  Speaker 2: up 5% of the Canadian population. So the more you
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  Speaker 2: suffer either socially or individually, the more likely you are
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  Speaker 2: to escape in the soothing and the relief that drugs
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  Speaker 2: or other addictions offer. So if you look at American society,
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  Speaker 2: you've got to be asking, why are so many people
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  Speaker 2: having to escape from reality? Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And we're going to get into good stuff. I have
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  Speaker 1: a good plan today.
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  Speaker 2: I'm prepared.
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  Speaker 1: Some stuff I have some questions that I even wrote
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  Speaker 1: down that are on cards just because I want to
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  Speaker 1: make sure that we get the best information that we
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  Speaker 1: can for our guests today. I think it's really important.
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  Speaker 1: One of the things that you talk about in the
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  Speaker 1: book that's causing a lot of sickness is trauma. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And then more specifically, unprocessed trauma.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Help me define those a little bit for our audience.
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  Speaker 2: Sure. So trauma is one of these words that everybody
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  Speaker 2: throws around.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a buzzword.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So let's just define it. So trauma literally comes
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  Speaker 2: from the Greek word for wound or wounding. So trauma
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  Speaker 2: is a wound, whether it's a physical wound or a
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  Speaker 2: psychological wound. In this case, we're talking about emotional wounds
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  Speaker 2: that haven't healed. So trauma is an unhealed wound that
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  Speaker 2: you sustain in childhood, but then it stays with you.
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  Speaker 2: And it directly... causes inflammation in the body, it affects
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  Speaker 2: how your genes function, how your chromosomes function, it stresses
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  Speaker 2: your organs, it creates all kinds of physiological problems. On
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  Speaker 2: the emotional level, it instills a lot of pain in
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  Speaker 2: you that you try to escape from. And one of
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  Speaker 2: the ways you try to escape, for example, is through
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  Speaker 2: drug use or to other kinds of addictions or through
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  Speaker 2: self-cutting or bulimia or pornography or whatever. It also makes
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  Speaker 2: you suppress, disconnects you from your own emotions because when
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  Speaker 2: a child is being traumatized, it's too painful to connect
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  Speaker 2: to themselves. So they disconnect. And that disconnecting causes all
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  Speaker 2: kinds of problems in terms of illness, mental and physical.
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  Speaker 2: So the impacts of trauma are vast and quite under-recognized.
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  Speaker 1: Indeed. And you talk about trauma also as not being
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  Speaker 1: seen and known.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So... Here we have to understand what are the
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  Speaker 2: needs of the human child. So everybody understands that the
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  Speaker 2: child needs to be physically cared for, cleaned up, fed,
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  Speaker 2: and sheltered, and so on. Children, according to evolution, also
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  Speaker 2: have emotional needs that they're born with. One of them
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  Speaker 2: is being just accepted and valued for exactly who they are,
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  Speaker 2: and being seen rather than being forced to be something
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  Speaker 2: that the parents want them to be. A lot of
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  Speaker 2: parents in this society, not because they don't love their kids,
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  Speaker 2: but because they're so stressed, have just a hard time
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  Speaker 2: seeing their kids. I had trouble seeing my kids.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And that had an impact on them. And not because
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  Speaker 2: I wasn't devoted, because I didn't love them, just because
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  Speaker 2: of my own trauma, I couldn't even see myself.
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  Speaker 1: Oh. Man, I can relate so much to that. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's like, it's funny, because I work as a comedian,
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  Speaker 1: and for years, I grew up in a kind of
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  Speaker 1: a traumatic home. Like my, my mom was very busy.
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  Speaker 1: We had, she had four children and yeah, I feel
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  Speaker 1: like she never looked at me. I feel like she
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  Speaker 1: never kind of put her hands on me. I feel
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  Speaker 1: like she just, and she didn't know how, I guess,
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's okay.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I just always felt like I wasn't seen.
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  Speaker 2: And how do you suppose that affected you?
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  Speaker 1: Well, I ended up being, becoming a comedian. I felt
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  Speaker 1: like I started, I had to find some way to
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  Speaker 1: be seen. I had to do, something, you know, to
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  Speaker 1: get someone to see me because I needed to survive,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I needed to feel alive, you know.
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's funny about comedians. May I say something
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  Speaker 2: about them?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I looked at the biographies of a number of comedians.
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  Speaker 2: What you're talking about is like a common theme. I
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  Speaker 2: looked at Robin Williams, who's this brilliant, brilliant comic. And
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  Speaker 2: one of the reasons he developed his humor was to
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  Speaker 2: make his mother laugh as a way of having his
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  Speaker 2: mother pay attention to him. Gilda Radner, who died of
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  Speaker 2: ovarian cancer, the same thing. Wow. So that they had
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  Speaker 2: the innate talent, but then they used that talent to
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  Speaker 2: be seen and valued where they should have been valued
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  Speaker 2: with or without talent.
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  Speaker 1: No matter what.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: It's funny. A few years ago, I thought it's like,
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  Speaker 1: I'm kind of a late bloomer. Like I only realized
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  Speaker 1: that like I go to recovery meetings and stuff like that.
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  Speaker 1: I'm in AA and I only realized a few years ago,
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  Speaker 1: it started to hit me like, did I even want
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  Speaker 1: to be a comedian or did I just at some
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  Speaker 1: early point, develop having to get attention because I need,
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  Speaker 1: you know, and then, so if that's the case, then
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  Speaker 1: who did I really want it? What, you know, who would,
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  Speaker 1: what would I have been if I didn't do that?
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  Speaker 1: And not saying that, not saying that I'm not grateful
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  Speaker 1: and I don't love being a comedian. It's been, it's
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  Speaker 1: been a blessing, but, but it's like, if I created that, okay,
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  Speaker 1: I have to be this thing to, for you to
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  Speaker 1: see me. then who created that, you know? Like was
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  Speaker 1: there a different me that was supposed to be there,
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  Speaker 1: but then I created this new me?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's the dilemma for so many of us is
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  Speaker 2: that as a result of childhood wounding, we have to
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  Speaker 2: make ourselves into something that the world will accept and value.
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  Speaker 2: Like look, in my case, I love having been a
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  Speaker 2: physician and that's my calling. But the big part of
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't just that I wanted to help humanity or
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  Speaker 2: heal people. It's also I needed to be important. Now,
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  Speaker 2: why did I need to be important? Because as an infant,
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  Speaker 2: I got the message that I wasn't. And so now then,
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  Speaker 2: and that creates a kind of an addiction because you
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  Speaker 2: have to keep proving to yourself how important you are
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  Speaker 2: and how valuable you are. But nobody should have to
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  Speaker 2: prove how valuable they are. That's just our birthright, that
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  Speaker 2: we exist. We have the right to be here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that God chose us or that, the energies the
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  Speaker 1: world chose us and said, I'm going to put you
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  Speaker 1: here with a fine pen. I'm going to put you
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  Speaker 1: in the world. And I did it on purpose. And
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  Speaker 1: the world was built to take care of you and
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  Speaker 1: to nurture you and to make you feel welcome as
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  Speaker 1: you are.
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  Speaker 2: And if you actually look at, and this has been
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  Speaker 2: studied quite extensively, how indigenous people or tribal peoples close
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  Speaker 2: to the land rear their kids, that's exactly how they
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  Speaker 2: rear their kids. They give their children a deep sense
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  Speaker 2: of acceptance. They hold them, they carry them everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all the paintings you see of Native Americans,
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  Speaker 1: somebody's got a kid on them. They got them in
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  Speaker 1: a knapsack, they got them.
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  Speaker 2: And they tend not to hit their kids.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've never seen a movie about a Native American beating.
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  Speaker 2: His children, I don't think. So what you're describing is
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  Speaker 2: actually how we evolved And part of the toxicity, in
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  Speaker 2: my view, of our culture is we've gone so far
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  Speaker 2: away from our nature when it comes to how we
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  Speaker 2: rear children. And again, not because of lack of parental devotion,
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  Speaker 2: but because of so much parental stress. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I think that was it. My mom couldn't
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  Speaker 1: see us because she had other things she had to
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  Speaker 1: see first.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And, you know, and not just me, but so many people.
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  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, we've created a society or our society
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  Speaker 1: has created a way of life where Um, now it's
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  Speaker 1: like both parents work in so many cases.
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  Speaker 2: So, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And that alone just feels like it just shouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: that way. It's like, well, if.
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  Speaker 2: You look at throughout evolution to millions of years and
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  Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, children were
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  Speaker 2: always with their parents. That's how nature designed it. Now,
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  Speaker 2: if that's not possible in today's society, at least then
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  Speaker 2: we have to compensate for it. But we've forgotten that
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  Speaker 2: children need that. So now when they're sent to daycares
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  Speaker 2: and schools, it's all about behavior and it's all about
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  Speaker 2: fitting in, not about accepting the child and nurturing the
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  Speaker 2: child in a sense of who they are. So we
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  Speaker 2: all end up, disconnected from ourselves. Then we get to
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  Speaker 2: a certain stage in life. We're wondering whose life am
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  Speaker 2: I leading anyway? Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And it's funny you say like fitting in, it's like, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: like where you're like, your child's not fitting in because the,
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  Speaker 1: the it's two puzzle pieces or the parents, you know,
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  Speaker 1: or the family that's, and not to say it shouldn't
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  Speaker 1: be able to spend time with other children and, and being,
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  Speaker 1: and that, that our schools are bad or anything, but
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  Speaker 1: it's the fact that, um, they need to fit in
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  Speaker 1: there first. And then I think it's probably easier for
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  Speaker 1: children to fit in in other places in the world.
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  Speaker 2: But that's, but the fitting in happens naturally when you're accepted.
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  Speaker 2: You know, listen, the schools, I'll tell you something. One
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  Speaker 2: of the, I'm talking science here. One of the essential
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  Speaker 2: needs of all mammals is play. In our brain, there's
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: circuitry for play. You can see it. Dolphins play, little
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: elephants play, birds. bear cobs, lion cobs, puppies, kittens, they
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  Speaker 2: all play. Why? Play is essential for brain development. It's
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: far more important than academic learning. So then the schools,
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  Speaker 2: there ought to be a lot more play, a lot
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  Speaker 2: more freedom for the kids to be themselves, a lot
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  Speaker 2: more freedom to move around. And then those kids will
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  Speaker 2: be naturally curious and interested in learning. But here we
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: try to put the cart before the horse. We try
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  Speaker 2: and stuff them full of knowledge, skills, and behavior or
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  Speaker 2: control rather than again promoting the conditions for healthy brain
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  Speaker 2: development so the schools actually they intend well but they
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: really don't get it when it comes to what do
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  Speaker 2: children actually need.
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  Speaker 1: Well I think it's just an oh and that's just
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  Speaker 1: part of it's like our whole society is it's you
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: know I wonder sometimes where we did we go all
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: completely off the rails in a direction and and or
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a series of directions you know um that have kind
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: of put us where we are. I wanna get this
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: statement right right here. Why is a trauma event different
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  Speaker 1: from other stressful events? Like what makes it a trauma?
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  Speaker 1: Like some events could be traumatic for some people and
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  Speaker 1: the same event not traumatic for others. What exactly is
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  Speaker 1: it about the mind, body, soul that makes the event traumatic?
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  Speaker 1: Or like what is the mechanism?
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  Speaker 2: Right, great question. So every traumatic event is stressful but
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: not every stressful event is traumatic. So, you invite me
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  Speaker 2: on your show, and for some reason I don't show up,
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  Speaker 2: and you had this studio arranged, that might stress you,
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  Speaker 2: but it doesn't traumatize you. It doesn't leave you with
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: a permanent wound. So it's traumatic if it leaves you
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  Speaker 2: with a wound, and if that wound leaves you more
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: constricted and more afraid and more suspicious and less comfortable
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  Speaker 2: with yourself, more hostile to other people, less comfortable in
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: the world, then it's traumatic. Not every stressful event will
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  Speaker 2: have that effect. But if it does, then it's traumatic.
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  Speaker 2: If it makes a wound. If it makes a wound,
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  Speaker 2: that's what makes it traumatic.
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  Speaker 1: Because a wound is sensitive, even if you think of
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: a wound.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And if it's not healed properly, then it's always a problem.
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  Speaker 2: Well, there's two ways a wound can show up. One
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: is just an open wound and if you touch it.
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  Speaker 2: So I have certain emotional wounds and well into my
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: 70s or even, I'm 80 now, you know. Say my.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: You look great.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks. It's all the Botox. And the adrenaline. No, it's.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And in my 55-year-old marriage with my wife, she might
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: say something or react in some way that touches an
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: old wound, and all of a sudden, I'm not this
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: 80-year-old guy. I'm this one-year-old kid responding, you know, because
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: that wound is sort of, I'm not giving an excuse here.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying that that's the challenge, you know. So
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: in one sense, a wound is, a trauma is an
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: open wound that you touch it, ow. That's the one thing.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: But then the other thing that happens to wounds is
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: they scar over. Now scar tissue is thick, it's hard,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: it doesn't grow, it has no nerve ending, so it's insensitive.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: So we get hardened.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Wow, so you can either get extremely sensitive or very hardened.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Or both.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Or both. Depending on, you know, and when you talk
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: about hardened criminals, guess what hardened them? is that they
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: were so wounded in childhood. Again, I'm not making excuses,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I'm just telling you what the science shows. And so
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: then the question is then how do we treat each
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: other in a society where so many of us carry wounds?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about unprocessed trauma. So you
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: talk about emotional isolation as being something that really negatively
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: nurtures unprocessed trauma.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: So once you're hurt as a child, you tend not
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: to trust other people. So you could be in the
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: middle of a crowd and be laughing and interacting, but
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: still feel quite alone emotionally. Maybe you've had that feeling.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: And that emotional isolation itself then has effects on your
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: body and on your mind. So the people who are lonely,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: and the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Admiral Vivek Murthy, just
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: issued a paper on loneliness in the United States. And loneliness...
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: And there's an epidemic of loneliness. People are describing us
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: as lonely in much higher numbers as they did 20,
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: 40 years ago. Now, loneliness is as much of a
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: risk factor for physiological illness as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Yeah,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: so loneliness is both a manifestation of trauma and a
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: cause of tremendous stress, which then undermines physiological and mental health.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, say that to me one more time, so.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: So loneliness is both an outcome of trauma.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: So it's an outcome of trauma. So something traumatic happened.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: It wasn't processed properly. And then now you will feel lonely.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: You will feel lonely. You will isolate. Because look, if
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: I am always being a nice guy so that you
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: will like me, but inside I'm feeling all these emotions
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: that I'm not sharing with you, that's pretty lonely. Even
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: though you might like me because I'm showing you this
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: nice side of myself.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Right, that's not really me.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: That's not me. There was a study done in Australia.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: I used to work in palliative care as a doctor
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: looking after dying people. In Australia, there was a palliative
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: care nurse who wrote a book called The Top Five
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Regrets of Dying People. These were people that were dying
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: before that time, like I used to look after, of
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: cancer or chronic neurological illness. You know what the top
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: regret of dying people was? That they didn't have the
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: courage to be themselves. And the third top regret was
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: that they didn't have the courage to express their emotions.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: They pretended to be happy when they were not and
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: so on. So the question for the rest of us
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: is do we want to wait till some terminal illness
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: wakes us up or should we just confront the fact
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: that in so many ways we're afraid to be authentic
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: Because we're so afraid of being rejected. And as children,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: we didn't have much choice. As adults, can we develop
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: that freedom to be ourselves? Wow.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's amazing what your feelings are your,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: or your mind will like want you to do sometimes,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: but then this other smoke comes in this, that feels
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: stronger sometimes and it clouds, it almost clouds that feeling away.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: But it does. Yeah. And am I interrupting? Sorry.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: No, I just want to do, you said that in
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the book that if you have a trauma that you
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: can't process, you essentially have the trauma of unprocessed trauma.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: So now you've had a trauma that's happened. And then
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: if you can't process it, now you have almost a
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: new trauma of unprocessed trauma.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Well, they have the ongoing wound, which is what trauma means.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Now look, let's take an extreme example.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Let's say a child is being sexually abused. So what
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: would their instincts tell them to do? Well, their instincts
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: would say, fight back. or run away, or ask for
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: help for God's sakes. But by definition, none of those
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: options are available to the child. So the only way
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: they can survive is to disconnect from themselves. And that
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: disconnection then gets wired into the nervous system, into the brain.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And every time they even think of being themselves, as
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: you just described, they get scared. Because being themselves Because
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: had they fought back, had they tried to escape, it
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: would have been worse for them. So that disconnection from
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: the self was the only way they survived. Now every
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: time as an adult, even think of being authentic, that
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: fear comes up.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: And it may not even come up for them like
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: in their awake mind. It's almost like it comes up
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: at a level where you don't even realize like... that
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: something's pulling the strings in the distance. That's what's pretty remarkable.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Well, pulling the strings is exactly the right analogy. There's
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: a neurobiologist, neuroscientist, quite well-known at Stanford University, Robert Sapolsky,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: who wrote a book recently called Determined, by which he
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: means predetermined. He basically says there's no such thing as
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: free will because we're so conditioned by our biology, our culture,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: and our early experiences. And he's almost right. Because what
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: he's talking about is, as you say, we're pulled by
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: these invisible strings of our unconscious that were programmed into
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: us even before we were born, even in our mother's wombs.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And so it's just a life, I find it personally,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: a lifetime's challenge to cut the strings and to actually
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: be in the present moment as an adult person connected
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: to myself. Let me tell you, it's a lifelong's work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: No, I, I, I feel you. It's funny. Like I
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: didn't even know that I, I didn't know that my
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: son crazy. I didn't even, I existed and everything was
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: fine in my life, but I was having trouble like
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: building relationships. There were just things that I didn't have
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: any real tools to, to make my life evolve. And
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: so I started to think, well, what is going on here?
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And then, um, you know, with a lot of therapy
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and different modalities of therapy, I went more into like
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: my past and I started to see like, oh, I see.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: It's because of these, you know, these things that have
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: happened and then I never processed them that some of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: them are still pulling me back. You know, some of
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: them are still holding me.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: And until you did process them, what freedom did you
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: actually have? Right. You were like puppets on a string.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, and yeah. And I was almost a figment of,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: It's funny people say a figment of your imagination. That's
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: almost what I was sometimes. I felt like I was
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: something that my mind or that my soul or whatever
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: had created to best face.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Persona. Yes. Did you ever read Pinocchio as a kid? Oh, yeah.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Geppetto, dude.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember when Pinocchio becomes a real boy.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And he looks at his puppet self and he says,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I was so foolish when I was a puppet. But
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: we're also foolish when we're puppets. We're not stupid.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: But we're unaware. Yeah. You know?
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, unaware. Man, I've been taking this all weekend when
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  Speaker 1: Theo to sign up for your free six trial. That's ShipStation.com,
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  Speaker 1: code Theo. Let's personalize this a little bit. So what
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: was the trauma in your life that started you on
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: this journey?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Well, what started me on the journey was well into adulthood.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: for a long time I didn't realize I was traumatized
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: just like you didn't I just was a puppet on
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: a string in some ways you know and I was
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: successful I was a well respected family doctor but I
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: was unhappy I felt I had potential that I hadn't
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: even nearly touched and I had no idea how to
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: get there my marriage had difficulties a lot of tension
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: my children were facing their challenges and in some ways
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: they were even afraid of me, you know, and, uh, well.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Like afraid of your energy, afraid of like, afraid.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Of my sudden odd bursts of, of, of uncontrolled, I
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: don't mean physical violence. Yeah. I mean, uh, just odd
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: bursts of, of, of rage, you know, anger. Yeah. You know,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: I can relate to that. And, uh, My son Daniel,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: who helped me write The Myth of Normal, he says
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: in the book that the floor was never the floor.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: He never knew when the floor might disappear. In other words,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: when the loving and devoted and playful parents might all
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: of a sudden erupt in one of their dramas and
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: the kids are there watching this hurricane sweep through the house,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: emotionally speaking. Well, that doesn't create a basis of trust
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: or security. And it's not because we didn't love our kids.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: It's not because we didn't do our best. So looking
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: at all that, at some point, I had to start asking,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: like you had to start asking, well, what's going on here?
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: And that's when I started looking at what happened to
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: me as a kid.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: What were you like as a kid?
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: What was I like?
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I was very smart.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard you say, I've heard you refer to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: yourself as smart child.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: You like to rebel.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I was a rebel, yeah, in communist Hungary. You really
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: have to follow the rules. And the teacher at some
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: point sent a warning to my parents saying that he
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: better watch it because he agitates his classmates.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: I loved getting those. I was very thoughtful. I wet
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: my bed until I was 13.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Dude, I wet my bed, I think, until I was 26.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Okay, and that does go back to childhood trauma,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: early childhood trauma. Yeah. When I was eight-year-old, my mother
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: took me to a psychologist and the psychologist took my history,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: you know, Jewish infant born under the Nazis or living
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: my first year under the Nazi occupation and all the horrors.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and then a separation from my mother for six weeks.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: And he said to my mom, madam, if the only
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: problem this kid has is that he wets his bed,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: you're very fortunate. Well, I can tell you, that's not
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the only problem that I had. So on the one hand,
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I was highly functioning. But on the other hand, I
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: had all this unseen stuff that erupted later on.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny. You don't even know it's there, especially
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: when you're a kid. You don't know.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: No, you don't know.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't know. You don't know that it's there.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And then later you have to– it's almost like a
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: fire that starts when you're young. But you don't– the
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: smoke doesn't show up.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, for me, it wasn't until my 30s. And
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: I was like, where the– is all this smoke coming from?
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. That's what happened to me.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: And then I had to go back and look at it. Yeah,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: it's like– yeah, unprocessed trauma. It's like– yeah, it's like
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: a– like imagine starting a fire, but no smoke comes
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: out of it. That's unprocessed trauma. Does that make sense
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: or it doesn't?
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: No, it makes total sense because what happens is, like
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: when you said earlier you were fine, the heck you
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: were fine. You thought you were fine. And that's because
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: we push down all the rage that we never expressed
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: as kids. We push down the pain. We push down
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: the isolation. We pretend. And we can function in the
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: world in ways that the world can even respect and
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: reward at this. I mean, look at, we're talking here
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: in Hollywood, look at all the figures here that were
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: great successes, idols to millions. And they had these miserable
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: in our lives. I mean, you, you can list a
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: hundred of them.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I got 50 of them in my phone.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: It's, I mean, it's, and it's, yeah, it's funny that
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: if things, if, if, if it's not, the foundation isn't there,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: then you'll go find it in the world.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: And sometimes what you go find, even though you're just
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: trying to replicate what you didn't get when you were young,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: can be detrimental to you.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Which is why people get into unhealthy relationships. Because where
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: did we most want love when we were kids? When
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: we most wanted to be seen? By whom? By the
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: people that couldn't do it. Therefore, we will repeatedly... look
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: for people who can't see us and hoping that this
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: time they will, they will, you know?
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: And, uh, it's so funny. I have this, I have
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: this thing that came into my head. Like I could
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: jump off of a cliff, right?
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: But if I heard a mom come home from work
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: or back on the top of that cliff, I would
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: find a way to get, or if I heard like
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: high heels, if I heard a woman's footsteps, I'd find
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: a way to get back up there and, and, and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: look towards her.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: Cause you're looking for the mom.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Cause I'm just, yeah, it's like, it may sound crazy,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: but yeah, just like, yeah. It's like, if I can't help,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: but look, I can't help, but wonder does, is that
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: woman accept me? You know, even with dating and all
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: my relationships, I see it now. It's like, you know,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I'm always kind of, I'm always, even, even in just
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: any relationship, I'm just, or any moment I'm just looking,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: do you accept me? I can feel this. Do you
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: accept me? Yeah.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: And, And unfortunately, it really gets in the way of
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: male-female relationships. Oh, yeah. Because a lot of us, I
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: mean myself included, in my relationship with my spouse, in
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: some ways I just wanted to be mothered. Not just
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: loved as an adult, but actually mothered. On the one hand,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: on the other hand, I would resent it, you know,
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: because I don't want to be controlled. Right. You know,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: so it puts the woman into an impossible situation. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I would never date me.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, jeepers. Yeah, I wouldn't.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Even now?
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: It's getting better, but it's still, we still, it's getting better.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, those relationships are tough. You know, I
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: have trouble committing in a relationship. You know, I did
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: some ayahuasca ceremonies. People do plant medicine.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Well, hey, you haven't read the chapter yet on ayahuasca.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: There's one in here?
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah, dude. I think it's chapter 31.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: So you had experience with it?
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: I used to lead retreats with it.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: No way, bro.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Dude, that's amazing, dude. What were you going to
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: say about it?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: I was going to say that when I did a
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: plant medicine retreat, that I realized one of the reasons
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: why I've had trouble getting relationships is because I'm still
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: waiting for this original relationship.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: The perfect mom. Yep.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And it's no blame. It's not a blame on my mom.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: I don't, I don't do, I don't do that anymore. I, I,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I lament some of the feelings from my youth, but
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I love my mother and I'm
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: grateful that she did the best that she could. And
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I believe that she did. Um, but yeah, I realized like,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I can't, there's just a part of me that, that's,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: it's just still like, I feel like it's like a kid,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: like standing on a dock, like waiting for a boat
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: to come. That's how I envision a lot of times.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: So there's a deep longing.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: I totally understand that.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And then you try to get someone else to fill
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: it and they don't even know what to do. And you,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and for years, I didn't even know I was trying
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: to get somebody to fill it. It just nothing. I
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: couldn't figure it out.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: There was that emptiness.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was wild, man. And my life was still okay,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: but just below, right below the surface level of my life,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: there was, It was a precarious foundation.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: I totally understand. I found out about ayahuasca after my
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: book on addiction got published in 2009. It's called In
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: the Realm of Hunger Ghosts and it's about how addiction
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: is not a genetic disease, it's a response to trauma
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: as it affects the brain and the psyche. But after
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I published that book, I go on book tour and
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: people got asking me, what do you know about addiction
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: and it's healing with ayahuasca. I know nothing about it.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Next visit, next stop. What do you know about it?
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Leave me alone already. I mean, you just spent three
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: years writing the book and you're asking me about the
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: one thing I don't know anything about. And then finally said,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: somebody said, you know, you could experience this up here
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: in Vancouver because the Peruvian shaman who came up there
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: So I did the ayahuasca and experienced pure love for
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: the first time in my life. There's a little baby
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: in the tent whose father had done a plant and
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: the mother was there with the baby. And the baby
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: started cooing and wooing and awing. And these tears of
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: love just flowed down my face. And my heart just opened.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: And I realized how close my heart had been because
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: it was so bruised so early that I closed it down.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Not that I deliberately closed it down, but as a
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: way of protecting it. And that, right away, I said, okay,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: I can work with this to help people who are addicted. Now,
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: I'm not here to advocate its use. It's not for everybody.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: It's certainly not a panacea. you know, psychedelics is a
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: whole other conversation.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, same. I'm not saying anybody should.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: They have their place. They're not the answer and they're
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: certainly not for everybody. But in the right context, with
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: the right guidance, the right preparation, they can really help
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: people open up to parts of themselves that they weren't
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: even aware that they were there. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's fascinating and I hope that that, the
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: knowledge of that evolves over time. But that can also
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: be scary, because some people go and get addicted to that.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: I've seen that happen with people.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: I've seen it too, because what people get addicted to
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: is not so much the substances, because nobody's going to
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: get addicted to ayahuasca.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nasty. You can't just have some at a club.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: But what they get addicted to is the heightened experience.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: And if they don't know how to integrate what they've
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: learned into their lives, then they keep looking for that elevated,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: experience that takes them out of their ordinary self. And
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: so I really think that that's one of the risks
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: of psychedelic use is that you start looking for that elevated, heightened,
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: or deepened experience that's missing from your life where the
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: whole thing is, the experience can open a door. But
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: you gotta walk through it. And you have to keep
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: walking through it. Not when you're under the influence of
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: the medicine. The integration, yeah.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: It's so key.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we've lost, that's a huge part of our society
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: that's kind of, now we just kind of get a
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: piece of information and then we're like, oh, we have
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the information, but we don't take as much time to
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: integrate something into our life. Like, that's one thing I've
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: noticed for myself anyway. I don't want to pin that
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: on everybody, but I'll notice that sometimes I'll learn something,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: I'll learn a fact or I'll learn like a way
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: that I've, oh, I know this about me now or
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: this is something I've learned, but unless I integrate the
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: solution to that or the, um, the information from that,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the positive information, instead of just shouting it out that
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I know it actually integrating it and taking time to
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: integrate it, you know, even taking time, like if you
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: go to a church sermon or a, um, or a, um,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Mosque sermon or synagogue sermon. Yeah, Jewish church. Synagogue sermon.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: And you can hear a message, right? But then you
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: can just go on about your day. But taking time
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: to integrate a message in your life. What did I hear?
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: How does it make me feel?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: What do I think about it? I think we used
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: to have a lot more time to do that just
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: because our society wasn't so, our lives weren't so frenetic.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I think we're addicted. Particularly, I think the United
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: States is addicted to the quick fix. Yeah. You know?
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that Earl Scheib.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: The spray paint it.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Have you struggled with addiction before?
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Have I struggled with addiction?
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I know you struggled with work addiction, I think you
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: talked about.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: I've had two major addictions. One is workaholism.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: And.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Again, I have to make a distinction here. I mean,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I did good work and I did work that had
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: meaning and made a contribution. That's good. That's the calling.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: But then there's another part of it, which is being driven.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: And when you're being driven, you're not in charge. You're
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: like a leaf being driven by the wind. And I
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: was driven to work because I have to keep proving
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: my importance and that people should like me, people should
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: respect me. Why? Because I didn't respect myself. And because
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I got this message early in life that I just
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: wasn't important. And I believed it. The trauma is not,
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: for example, the trauma is not, for example, that my
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: mother gave me to a stranger when I was 11
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: months old to save my life. That wasn't the trauma.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: That was a traumatic event. Trauma is what happens inside you.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: The trauma inside me was that I concluded from that
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: that I wasn't lovable. I wasn't important. Now, that drives
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: the work addiction. Because you have to keep proving to yourself.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: The other addiction I had, and people often laugh, and
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: you can call that an addiction, but really it was,
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: was shopping for classical compact discs. CDs? CDs. But I
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: could drop $ 3, 000, $ 4, 000 a day on them. You can't
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: even smoke on them. No, you can't smoke. And no
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: sooner would I leave the store, but I'd have to
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: run back to get some more. So it wasn't about
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: the having and the enjoying. I love the music, but
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: it wasn't about that. It was about getting more and
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: more and more and never having enough. And so I
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: would lie to my wife about it. I would sometimes
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: neglect my work. I mean, I don't think I mentioned
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: this in this book, but in my book, Addiction, I
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: talk about how I left a woman in labor once
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: to go get a compact disc.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Wow. What album was it?
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: That I don't remember anymore. I think it was a
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Mozart symphony, but I don't remember anymore. So I'm talking about,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not talking about my passion for music. I'm talking
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: about my drivenness. And sometimes people say, well, how can
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: you compare your addictions to your heroin addicted, cocaine addicted,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: HIV ridden clients? And I said, I don't. I said,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: the differences are obvious. It's the similarities that are interesting.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: And when I told my patients in the downtown Eastside
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: who were using the heroin and, you know, and the
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: cocaine and whatever, that, you know, I've got these.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: These boys to men albums, yeah.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they said, they never said, how can you compare?
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: You know what they said? Hey, doc, you're just like
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: the rest of us, aren't you? And my point is,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: we are all just like the rest of us. We
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: all find some chronic escape. Not all of us. Most people.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Whether it's drugs, pornography, sex, internet, cell phones.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Gambling, there's so many.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Gambling, self-cutting, eating, shopping.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Running, working out. That's a huge one.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Extreme working out and all that. And we're running away
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: from ourselves. Yeah. And when I ask people, not what's
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: wrong with your addiction, because that's obvious, but what's right
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: about it. Like, for example, you've had alcohol and drug issues,
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: I've heard you say.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: What did they do for you in the short term?
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I think it just, it gave me a break from
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: how I wanted to feel. It gave me a break
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: from me.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: It gave you a break from how you felt. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: It gave me a break from my feelings.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: And it just gave me a break from me. I
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: was just.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: But that's because you were really uncomfortable with yourself. Yeah.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: And because you had feelings that were painful. So my
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: mantra on addiction, which I mentioned in this book, is
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. And
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: if you understand why people have pain, don't look at
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: their genes, look at their lives. What happened to them? Yeah.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you say, or I've heard you, in your book
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: you talk about addiction, if you recognize the harm it's,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: or I think it might have been in an interview
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: you did, if you recognize the harm it's doing and
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: you keep doing it.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so addiction is manifested in any behavior in which
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: a person finds temporary relief or pleasure and therefore craves,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: but then suffers negative consequences and they don't give it up.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: So pleasure, craving, relief in the short term, harm in
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: the long term, refusal and inability to let go of it,
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: that's what an addiction is. So it's got nothing to
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: do with drugs. Well, it could have to do with drugs.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Could have to do with any of the things we
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: already mentioned. But any of the things we mentioned.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: But why the pain, that's the question.
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: The question is why the pain. Yeah. What are we
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: running away from? Right.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had– like once I saw like pornography and
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, it was like– and I could do
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: masturbation or jerking off or whatever people call it. But
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: once I– that was the first way that I realized, oh,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I can make myself feel good. Yeah. And it was
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: like the first time that I like– yeah, I could
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: make myself feel good. And so then it just became– Yeah,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: it became a way that I always, I mean, I
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: would just, but yeah, I would just, if the only
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: way I knew how to make myself really feel good,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: even though it's just for a moment, that I would
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: take it.
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Should I tell you something scientific about that? Yeah. So
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: cocaine addicts and crystal meth addicts, or any stimulant addicts,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: in fact, all addicts, amongst the things they're looking for
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: is a hit of dopamine. Dopamine is the incentive, motivation,
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: chemical in our brain, it's what makes us feel vital
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: and alive and, you know, ready to go. And without it,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: we can't survive. Now, cocaine, crystal meth.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Without it, we can't survive.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: No, we can't.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: That's cool to hear, it's interesting.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Oh no. Because dopamine flows in the brain when we're
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: exploring a novel object or a novel environment, when we're
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: seeking food, when we're seeking a sexual partner. We can't
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: survive without that stuff. You can take a mouse in
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: a laboratory... and put food in front of him, and
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: he's hungry, but he won't eat. Why? Because genetically you
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: knocked out his dopamine receptors, and he doesn't have the motivation.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: So it's the motivation chemical. It's absolutely essential. Now, cocaine, caffeine, nicotine,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: crystal meth, they literally give you a direct hit of dopamine.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: So does pornography. When you do a brain scan on
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: some people, they get repeated spikes of dopamine. It's not
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: the pornography they're addicted to. It's that hit of dopamine
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: that they get in their brains. Wow. And all addictions
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: show up. I mean, when I went to the record store,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: it was the dopamine. Like, I've been diagnosed with ADHD.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: The first book I wrote was on ADD. And, you know,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: spacing out, absent-mindedness, you know, all this kind of stuff.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, daydreaming, they used to call it.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But when I was in the record store, I
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: was present. I was focused. I could almost remember which
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: records I bought at which store at what time. Because
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: the dopamine was flowing like crazy. And that's why I
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: needed to go back. It wasn't because I needed more music.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trunk's full.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: I was after that. I was hiding the discs on
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: the porch and in the attic so my wife wouldn't
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: call me. But I was after that.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: The ceiling caves in. It's just a bunch of Van Halen.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was after that dopamine. Dopamine.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: You know, which is what you're after with the pornography. Yeah. Yeah.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: It just was, and I was a way to make
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: me feel good. And it was the first way that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I could interact with a woman where it felt like
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: I could, and I know it's not real interaction, but
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: it was like, this is the safest, closest I can
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: get to interacting with a woman and it being like, okay.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Cause I would, I would get so nervous around women
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: or like if women looked at me, I would like
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: my whole body. Like I just, I couldn't handle it.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Um, But yeah, that dopamine is, it's interesting to hear.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: So yeah, no matter what it is, it's the dopamine
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: behind it.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: It's the dopamine. And there's another chemical that's involved in
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: many addictions, like the heroin addicts or the opiate addicts,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: the fentanyl addicts. Those are opiates which come from the
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: opium plant. But why do they work in the human brain?
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Why would an opium plant work in the human brain?
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Because we have receptors for them. We have molecules that
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: receive the opiate molecule. Now, why do we have receptors
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: from a plant that grows in Afghanistan? We don't. We
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: have receptors for our own internal opiates. So we have
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: an internal opiate system. And they are called endorphins. Endorphin
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: means endogenous internal opiate system.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: So those are, our endorphins are our own opiates.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Opiates.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: So we manufacture our own opiates.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: Not only we do, plants do, animals do, everybody does. Now,
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: the question is what do the opiates do in the
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: human brain? Well, they do a whole lot of things.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: But three, importantly, they relieve pain, physical and emotional pain.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: Because pain is necessary for life. Otherwise, I could smash
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: my hand on this table.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you jump out of a window and you wouldn't care.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: But I also have to some pain relief. That's the endorphins,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: number one. Number two, what they do is they give
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: you a sense of pleasure and reward. So when people
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: go bungee jumping, they get this high level of endorphins.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: That's what they're after.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Ah, that's why they keep doing wild stuff like that.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: That's right. And the third thing is the most important.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: The endorphins help to make possible this little thing called love.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: And if you knock on it, the endorphin receptors of
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: little mice in the laboratory, they will not cry for
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: their mothers on separation. But what would that mean in
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: the wild? It would mean their death. So endorphins connect
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: people to each other, especially parents and children. And so
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: we're each other's opiates in a way. We're each other's opiates,
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: especially in a healthy parent-child relationship. And they both have
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: endorphins flowing in their brain when they're looking into each
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: other's eyes. Yeah. And When I ask heroin addicts or
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: opiate addicts, a sex trade worker I asked once, what
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: does the heroin do for you? She said, when the
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: first time I did heroin, it felt like a warm,
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: soft hug. What was she talking about?
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: Connection.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: Connection, yeah. And in this book, I talk about it,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: and so many of the addicts, like a very well-known
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: recovery leader and fearless advocate is Jamie Lee Curtis. And
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: she told me.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: Is she?
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Sorry?
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: She is.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, she's a big 12-stepper.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, she's a huge 12-stepper. Oh, that's awesome. And
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: very forthright. About her addictions and also her recovery. Wow,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: that's fascinating. I'd love to talk with her.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen her eating lunch in the Palisades before,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Pacific Palisades before.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: But she told me that what the opiates did for
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: her gave her a sense of warmth in the belly.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: That warmth is what we're all after. That comes from
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: human connection. And when we didn't have the connections we
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: needed early in life, then we keep looking for that
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: warmth from other sources. So these people that are addicted
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: to opiates, that's what they're looking for.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: A bunch of hug hunters.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: I want to go back a little bit to trauma
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and isolation. Yeah. And I wanted to ask, what is
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: it about not being emotionally isolated that allows one to
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: process a trauma?
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So... I did a day long event here in L.A.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: just a day before we were recording this. And I
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: worked with a woman called Kimberly Shannon Murphy, who is
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: one of Hollywood's top stunt women. She just got a
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Lifetime Achievement Award. And she worked with Cameron Diaz and
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Uma Thurman and Tom Cruise and all these people. No,
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: she was sexually abused by her grandfather. all throughout her
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: childhood and adolescence. And of course, the family was in denial.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Nobody noticed it. If they noticed it, they kept silent
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: about it. She was totally alone with it. So that's
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: what induced the wound. And had she been able to
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: talk to somebody and say, this is happening to me,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: please help me, she would not have been traumatized. So
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: the trauma happens. When a child suffers and has nobody
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: to share that suffering with, whether it's the extreme suffering
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: or sexual abuse, or the milder, you might say, suffering
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: of just not being seen for who you are, if
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: you're alone with it, you can't process it. So what
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: happens later on, to answer your question, when you meet
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: somebody where you feel safe, and now you can express
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: what's happening with you, that's what helps to process the trauma.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: So it requires compassion and safety. And ideally, I mean,
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I criticize the 12-step groups, not for what they do,
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: because I love what they do, for what they don't do.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: I don't think they talk about trauma enough. That's my view.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: But a 12-step group that's properly run will offer you
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: support and safety. So now you can share yourself and
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: be seen by others. Amen.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Amen.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've gotten even into like the intimacy disorder
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: groups and those are a lot more potent with people
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: talking about their emotional disorders and like, like, you know,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: traumas and things that happen. And it's not a crybaby
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: group either. You know, like sometimes we talk about trauma,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: but I don't talk about it from like a crybaby place.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: I like to talk about it from like, this is important. And,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: and it's, and it's important to learn about, and I
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: like to share what I learn about from it, you know?
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: It's not about people victimizing themselves or trying to present
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: themselves as a victim. It's saying, this is what happened
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: to me, and it's my responsibility to learn from it.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: That's the truth.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: And it's my responsibility to grow from it, not to
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: wallow in, oh, look what happened to me, and I
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: can't help it. That's nonsense.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll tell you this, Mr. Mott, I'll tell you
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: that a thing I realized I was addicted to a
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: few years ago, self-pity.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: And I didn't even know it. I kept always thinking, man,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? I have to fix this. Every day,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: nothing was enough. And then I realized that even though
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: it seemed like I was trying to make myself better,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: the truth was that I was always seeing myself as
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: less than because those things have to both be present
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: at the same time. Because I can only get better if,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm never enough. And by never being enough, though,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure this out. I got addicted to self-pity.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I got addicted to like.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: Can I jump in with a thought?
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, please. Thank you.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Dear God, please. It did something for you. It took
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: away responsibility from you. Human beings have a hard time
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: taking responsibility. I mean, you know, I have a hard
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: time taking responsibility. You know, we all have a hard
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: time taking responsibility. So when you're in that self-pity mode,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: you're suffering, but you don't have to take responsibility. I'm
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: suggesting that's what it did for you.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, yeah, maybe there was a part of
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: me that wanted to keep it around because it always
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: let there be something wrong with me too.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: You know, like if I never solve this, if I'm
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: never enough, then there'll always be something wrong with me.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Does that make any sense?
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: It makes sense because again, it takes away the challenge
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: of growth. Right. I mean, we talk about growing pains.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: Growth is painful.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, people go from damn seven inches to seven feet,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: six and a half, six one or whatever.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and emotional growth is also painful.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: And so when we don't grow, at least we avoid
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: the growing pains. Right. You know?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to, whenever I used to smoke, I
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: used to be like, part of me didn't want to
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: quit smoking because I wanted to have an excuse for
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: why I wasn't doing other things.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: It makes total sense.
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• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: What else did I want to talk to you? Oh,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: this is really fascinating stuff here. So trauma fosters a
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: shame-based view of the self.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I'd love to talk a little bit about shame, man,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: because that was a huge part of my life.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Well, tell me about it.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: I just felt ashamed of myself. Yeah. I felt ashamed
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: of like, Yeah, I felt ashamed of how I looked.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: I felt ashamed of like my ears, my nose, my face,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: the way I stood. I felt, yeah, I felt ashamed
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: of my family, of my home. Everything, I just felt
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: a ton of it. I'm not whining about it right now.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: I'm just thinking back. But yeah, I just felt a
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: ton of shame. I felt like, I think I felt
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: ashamed of who I was at like the first molecule
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: almost like the first cell of my, you know, the
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: dirt under the roots. It felt like I just, there
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: was a part of me that felt like I was
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: me or anything that had to do with me was gross.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: I understand.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: You know, and I used the word gross cause that's,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: it felt like gross.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: No, the only thing I'll say is, um, It's not
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: that you felt you were gross, it's you believed you were. Right, yes.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. I didn't feel it. It wasn't like
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a feeling on the surface of me. It was like
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: a knot someone had tied a long time ago in
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: the beginning of my time. And in that knot, it
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: was in there somewhere. And I couldn't really even access it.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: But shame, yeah, I want to hear about shame. Did
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: you feel it?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: How'd you feel?
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Well, growing up in Hungary, in Eastern Europe, and I
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: lived there until I was 13, there was a lot
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: of anti-Semitism. And my grandparents had died in Auschwitz. I
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: almost died as an infant. My mother, my father.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: That's when your mother gave you to someone else to
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: save you?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: That's right, yeah. Wow. When I was 11 months of age.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: But even after the war... there was anti-Semitism. And so
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: I'd feel ashamed of being Jewish. I don't anymore, but
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: I did as a kid, so I would kinda, then
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: I'd have, I was ashamed of my Jewish looks.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, so you have to hide or you have to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: feel like, yeah.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something different about me that isn't quite right.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: And you know, there was a lot of anti-Semitism and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: taunting in the school that I went to, you know,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: when I look back on it now. So, yeah. And
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: then I develop body shame. To this day it's kind of,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: it's interesting. But every day I judge aspects of my body.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: This is not big enough or this is too big
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: or whatever. So shame, but shame, nobody's born with shame.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: No infant is born ashamed of themselves. They're totally there.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. If you saw a little infant that
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: was ashamed of himself, it would break your heart.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: They wouldn't even know how to do it.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: How infants get shamed is when they're not seen. Yeah,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: and what happens then? Or if they're mistreated. Well, let's
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: say a child is not seen or worse, is being hurt.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: They can make two assumptions. One is these adults are stupid.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: They're incapable. They're incompetent. I'm all alone in the world.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Or the child can believe there's something wrong with me,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: and maybe if I can work hard enough, I can
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: fix it. Now, which belief do you think is more
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: acceptable for the child?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: The second one.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: The second one. So then they develop this deep sense
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: that there's something wrong with us. We just have to
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: work hard enough. or look good enough or something, and
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: then maybe we can fix it. So even that shame,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: which comes from being cut off from human contact the
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: way we need it, has a kind of protective value.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Because it makes us at least think that there's something
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: we can do. It gives us hope in a weird way.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: It gives us hope in a weird way, yeah. But
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: here's the thing. Children are narcissists, young children. When I
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: say narcissists, I don't mean in a pathological sense. I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: mean in the sense they think it's all about them.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Right, and they don't have any other choice. They're all
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: they know.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: That's all they know. So if the parents are happy
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: and connected and there's an atmosphere of loving acceptance and
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: so on, then the child thinks, hey, I must be
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: pretty good. I must be good.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everything's good.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: I'm okay. Yeah, but if the parents are stressed, depressed, traumatized,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: racially challenged, economically challenged, or such terrible things as the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: children in Gaza are experiencing right now with the daily
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: bombings and all this kind of stuff. What can they think?
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: That there's something wrong with me.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, imagine some kid over there in Gaza looking up
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and there's a bomb, and they think, man, I'm so horrible,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I deserve to be bombed.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: Well, you know what? There was a study done of
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: guys and children.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Man, that's crazy. I hadn't thought about that. Like, really,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: imagine that, though.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: There was a study done of children in Palestine 21
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: years ago. And 95% of those, 95%, this is long
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: before the current horrors, long before October the 7th, long
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: before the aftermath of October the 7th. the 7th. 95%
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: of those, 5% of those kids showed traumatic symptoms, high
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: percentage with their beds, like you and I did. They
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: expressed aggression towards their parents. They had panic attacks, anxiety, fears.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine what's gonna happen To that generation.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Years from now?
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: Years from now. I mean, it just breaks my heart
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: every day when I think about it. And I know
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: a lot of my fellow Jews don't agree with me,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: but as a Jewish person, I'm not the only one
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: who feels that way. It especially breaks my heart.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When you put it in that sense, imagine a
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: kid like, you know, yeah, because what are they going
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: to think? They don't know, they just think, man, something's
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: so wrong with me, I deserve to be killed. Or something,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It depends if the adults are able to hold
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: them and keep them feeling loved. But 19,000 kids have
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: been orphaned. And when I say orphaned, I don't mean
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: just that their parents have died, their extended families have
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: been wiped out. What's gonna be the future of those kids?
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: You know, and it's just a terrible.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: No, it's heartbreaking. I mean, it feels like a genocide
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: is going on over there and you don't know what
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: to do. You know, for me, it's like, you know,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can pray, you can speak up about it.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: And I know that there's like a more political aspects
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: of it. And we've had different people come on to
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: talk about Israel and Palestine on here. And it was
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: very knowledgeable for a lot of our listeners because you
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: hear about it a lot, but you don't know the
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: history and everything.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: But well, I've been there. I went there two and
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: a half years ago to work with Palestinian women tortured
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: in Israeli jails. Wow. And they had post-traumatic stress disorder.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: I've seen it with my own eyes. And who's the
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: black American writer, Tanahasi Coates?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: Tanahasi Coates?
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He's just written a new book. And he talks
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: about visiting Palestine. And he says, yeah, Tanahasi Coates, yeah.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: In his new book, he says, why don't you go
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: there and see it? You can't unsee it, you know?
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: And I'm the same way. Yeah, our media doesn't cover
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: it super fairly. Yeah.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: I feel like our media doesn't cover it super fairly.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: That'd be interesting to speak with him then. Thank you
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: for bringing his name up.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's heartbreaking anytime something's happening to a child,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: you know? That should be the one thing that we
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: can all figure out this shouldn't happen.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: No. It's also the truth that it's also happening to
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: kids in Israel. There's bombs and rockets and so on.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is the time to go
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: into the politics of it. It's not a question of
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: valuing or sort of esteeming one's suffering over another. We
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: don't compare traumas, but the degree and the scale of
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: suffering in Gaza is unprecedented.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Look. It seems like it.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: When my wife walks into a room, I'm 80, I'm
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: typing away, I'm reading a book, She walks in the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: room and I don't hear her. All of a sudden
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: I hear her. I go like this. Now this is
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: the startle response of an infant. If you take a
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: three-month-old who's sitting there, who's lying there, and you go
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: like this, it's called the startle reflex. That's built into me.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: Because when I was three months of age and throughout
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: my first year, Budapest was being bombed by the Allies.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: Quite apart from the anti-Semitism and the genocide, there was
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: the war going on. So I'd be thrown into a
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: laundry basket and they'd rush me down to the basement.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: So when I hear a noise, I still go like this.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: Now this is eight years later.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: Or when you see a load of laundry go by. Man,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: so we can stay with... So what you're saying is
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: it can stay with you that long?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: It can stay with you that long.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: It gets locked in you, in your cells, really.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: It's actually literally locked into your cells and into your chromosomes.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's heartbreaking for those children on both sides.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: And just anywhere, anytime you think like... and even a
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: kid when they think like, even in America, it's like
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: in America, it's like we're bombing each other. Like there's,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: we can't figure out a way. There's a huge planet here.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: We can't figure out how can we not figure out
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: a way that we can do live. All, all God
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: is asking us to do is be alive and do
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: it without war. That seems, it seems unreal that we
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: can't figure that out, man.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: Well, that, I mean, the great spiritual teachers have been
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: addressing that insanity for thousands of years, you know?
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but how does shame cause us to lose compassion
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: for ourselves?
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Let me tell you a story. I mentioned this
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: in The Myth of Normal. After my book on addiction
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: came out, In the Realm of Hunger Ghosts, I got
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: an email, not an email, a letter from a guy
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: in Seattle. And he said, I really appreciate your book
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: and showing how trauma causes, addiction is not the only
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: outcome of trauma, but it's one of the outcomes of trauma,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: one of the potential outcomes of trauma. And he said,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate all that, but he says, I can't
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: blame my mother, it's my own fault that I'm a shit.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: And I thought, oh my God, you poor guy. You
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: still see yourself that way? What lack of compassion. Because
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: if he actually understood, fully understood, that he was just
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: a baby at some point, needing and wanting to be
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: loved and held and seen and valued just for being
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: a human being. And that didn't happen to him. And
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: that caused so much pain in him that he escaped
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: into some drug addiction. He's not a shit. He's just
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: a hurt human being. But that lack of self-compassion, I
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: see it all the time in my workshops when I
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: do therapy work with people. One of my main tasks
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: is to help them to notice, not to criticize them
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: for it. but to help them to be aware of
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: how they lack compassion for themselves. Yeah.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: It's hard to even notice that you're getting in the
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: shame circle. It's so hard to even notice that you're
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: in it. You could be living in the center of it.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: That's how I was with self-pity. I was living it.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: I just didn't realize it. And the self-pity was manifesting
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: itself like, oh, you can figure this out. But by
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: trying to constantly help myself figure it out, all I
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: was doing was focusing on my own being not good enough,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: which in a way is really just self-pity.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: But it's also lack of self-compassion. Yeah.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: Not giving myself some grace. I remember the first time
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: somebody said, hey, man, give yourself some grace. I'd never even. Wow.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: I was like, wow. Because people find themselves accusing themselves
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: and talking to themselves in ways that they would never
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: talk to others. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That most people wouldn't. Yeah.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: Some would. Yeah. But most wouldn't. Yeah.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: Can you notice characteristics or actualities in your life today
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: that you can directly correlate to side effects of childhood trauma?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: My own? Yeah. Well, my capacity to get triggered. Triggered
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: is an interesting word because we keep using it. But
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: what does it mean? Well, it means a reaction that's
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: way out of proportion to the To the actual stimulus. Yeah.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: But when you actually look at where the metaphor comes from,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: it comes from a gun. Now, how big a part
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: of the gun is the trigger?
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Small.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: Small little part. What makes the trigger work is that
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: there's ammunition and an explosive charge. So as long as
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: I'm full of explosive charge, which is my unresolved trauma,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: some of you will say boo, and I'll go, ooh.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: So my capacity to get triggered, my difficulty... believing that
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: I was really loved and accepted in my marriage relationship,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: even though I was. My tendency to blame others for
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: my own reactions rather than taking responsibility. We mentioned the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: addictive behaviors. Certainly, the first book I wrote in ADHD
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: is called Scattered Minds. My scattered mind is certainly an
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: outcome of early stress, because I mean, that dissociation, that
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: tuning out, it's just an escape mechanism. So the way
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: I was unable to see my kids for the beautiful,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: sensitive creatures that they were, and my workaholism, oh, it's
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: shown up in so many ways.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: You said that not believing that people love us.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's crazy.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's huge, man.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: What is that? Why do we sometimes, you'll be in
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: a marriage, in a relationship, and we'll still believe that person,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: they don't love me, or we won't believe their affections.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: What did you say?
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we won't believe we're loved or accepted. Well, Peter Levine,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: who's one of the great trauma teachers, he talked about
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: trauma being the tyranny of the past. The attorney of
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: the past. past? The tyranny.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: The tyranny of the past.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: So we're in the present moment, but we're actually reacting
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: to the past. Now, throughout the first year of my life,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: given our situation, my mother was really stressed, unhappy, even terrorized.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: She couldn't give me that calm, attuned, loving attention that
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: I needed. She did her best, for God's sakes. What
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: could be greater love than for a 24-year-old young woman
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: to give her baby to a total stranger in the street?
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: But how do I experience it? I experience it as
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: a rejection. Right. So the person that ought to be
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: loving me is giving me away. I can only conclude
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: from that that I'm not lovable. Ah, I see. Now,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: once I don't think I'm lovable, I'm not going to
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: believe that anybody actually loves me, no matter what they
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: manifest or what they show me. Yeah. And then I'm
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: blaming them for my own sense of unlovability. This is
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: unprocessed trauma we're talking about.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: 100%. Yeah, I've almost even thought it. Sometimes I thought like, oh,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: you're dumb for loving me.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but that's the other side of it. Yeah.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: It's like Garcho Marx said, that I wouldn't belong to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: a club that would have me as a member. Yeah.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: So anybody would love me. They can't be very bright,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: can they?
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: They must be out of their minds. You talk also
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: about not parent blaming, which I think is really important.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: Well, look. I mean, your story right there about your
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: mother gave you away because it was the Yeah, I mean,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: imagine the terror, the pain in her of like, the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: only thing, the most loving thing I can do is
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: put my child somewhere else away from me right now
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: for its own safety.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Right. Well, all parents, we're born with
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: a caring instinct, you know, like we're born with certain
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: emotional systems in our brain. Play is one of them. Curiosity, seeking,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: the dopamine circuit is another one. Caring, loving is another one.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: We're just born with that. It's instinctual. All mammals are
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: born with it.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: No mammal infant would survive without it. Right. You know?
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: So I don't, I never doubt that parents love their kids,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: that there's at least an impulse in them to do so. But.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: The love that the parent feels is not that the
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: love what the parent child receives. What the child receives
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: is the quality of the parent's presence. Are they calm?
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: Are they attuned? Are they emotionally present? Are they preoccupied, stressed, depressed, traumatized, overworked, whatever?
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: Any of those conditions, the child does not experience the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: love in its whole sense. So even though you might
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: know that your mother loved you, and I'm sure she
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: did in her own way, and she did her very best,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: but she was not able to give you those qualities
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: that you would really in your heart experience as love.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: And so in this society where, as you said earlier,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: parents have to go to work just to put bread
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: on the table, and where so many people are economically insecure,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: where there's so much stress, so much division, so much angst,
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: so much aggression, so much suspicion. What's it like to
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: be a parent? It's really, really difficult. And don't forget,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: we didn't evolve in nuclear families. We evolved in groups
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: where kids are around nurturing adults the whole day, including
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: their parents, but not only their parents. So in today's society,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: Parenting has become almost an impossible task. Why would I
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: blame any parent? And I'll even say this, and I'm
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: not trying to excuse anything, because there's no excuse. That's
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: not the point. But if you look at parents who
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: abuse their kids, what happened to them as kids?
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: They were abused, for sure.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: It's multigenerational. It's not that they grow up, it's not
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: that they decide, I'm going to abuse my kids. They
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: just act out what happened to them.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: So, I think blame, now, responsibility is one thing, blame
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: is another. I think blame is totally unscientific, it's cruel,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: and it's totally inappropriate. So as much as I point
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: out the impact of early experience, there's absolutely no room
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: for blaming parents. And Theo, what's really interesting to me
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: is after I wrote my book on addiction, occasionally, some
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: strange person would come up to me and said, my
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: child died of an overdose and I thank you for
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: writing the book. And I always find that a bit
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: startling because in the book I'm saying that it's childhood
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: experience and trauma that ultimately result in addiction and they say,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: you know what, because I finally get it. I finally
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: understand what happened. And I get it as multi-generational, that
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: it's nobody's fault. There's nobody to be blamed here. The
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: question is, in each generation, can we take responsibility so
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: we don't pass it on to the next one? But blame,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: there's no room for it. And Robert Sapolsky, the scientist
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: who I quoted, he said, there's just no room for blame. Yeah.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: It's not, it's not.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: You can have, you can have discussions about responsibility and
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: things like that and share, Hey, I think you could
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: have been more responsible about this or, seeing something that
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: was somebody's responsibility, but yeah.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: And you can even be angry.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: You can be angry. Without blaming.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: Because why wouldn't you be angry?
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: When those things happen to you? So it's not a
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: question of telling people, don't be angry, but having anger
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: and owning it is not the same as saying you
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: did something deliberately that you shouldn't have done and you
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: should have known better. And, you know, you said terrible,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: you know, it's so there's anger, healthy anger, necessary anger.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: And then there's the expectation that people take responsibility. Each
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: for ourselves. And then there's blame, which is a whole
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: other bag of monkeys.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a zoo we don't need to be involved in.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: No, we don't need that.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: What makes you laugh? Is there shows you like to
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: watch or a thing you like to do?
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: Sometimes what makes me laugh is my own ridiculousness.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes me too. I know it's going to be
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: a good day if I find that I'm laughing at myself.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Well, there's so many, you know, like the
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: little human ego is, I mean, on the one hand,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: we can be compassionate towards it. But on the other hand,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: it's so ridiculous. So we can laugh at ourselves. My
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: wife and I laugh a lot.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, you do?
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. That's one of our saving. It's been 55
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: years in a month. And I tell you, we've laughed
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: so much together at ourselves, at each other.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: That's adorable.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: You know? What makes me laugh? Usually absurdity.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: When things are absurd, they make me laugh. You know,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: the sort of touch of reality. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Those
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: are the things that make me laugh.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: Is there like a film that you like? Like what's
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: a movie that you like? I'm just trying to just
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: know a little bit more about you.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. A movie that made me laugh. Or just a
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: couple movies. Fish called Wanda. Oh, yeah. Talking about Jamie
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: Lee Curtis. That I roared my head off about that one.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: I don't have such a good memory for that kind
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: of stuff. A funny book will make me laugh, you know.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you have a favorite one or just a
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: fiction book that you like?
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: I tend to go for the classics. So I keep
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: rereading the Iliad by Homer.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: With the Trojan War. I keep rereading Dostoevsky. I just
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: reread The Brothers Karamazov last year. Because it's such a deep,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: such a deep understanding of the human soul. The darkness
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: and the lightness, both.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: Of the human soul.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: It's fascinating.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I tend to go for the classics myself.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: I read some modern novels, but not that often. By
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: the way, you know what made me laugh? Catch-22. Yeah?
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: I reread that a couple years ago. I split a gut.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: Who was it? John Steinbeck, who wrote that?
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: Joseph Heller.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: I think it was Joseph Heller was his first name.
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: We had to read that, I think, in school.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: Well, by modern standards, there's some parts of it that
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: are really sexist and misogynist, and in some places even racist.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: So I'm not making any excuse for that. It was
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: the zeitgeist at the time. But it's just reprovingly funny
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: about the absurdity of war and the self-conceit of important people. Yeah.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I'll have to check it out, man. I think I
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: had to read it sometime, but maybe in college we
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: had to read it. Did you ever read John Irving,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: any of his books? Like The World According to Garp,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: remember that book?
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: No. You know, I started reading that decades ago. I
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: never finished it.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it happens. Some of his books, his latest book is,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what it is. It's very long.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, you need to bring a tent with you.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: Recently, there was a book that's got a lot of attention,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. And she wrote The Poisonwood Bible.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: That's her most famous book. But Demon Copperhead is kind
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: of a modern take on David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: And it takes place in Appalachia. Wow. And I just
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: saw an interview with her yesterday, how she goes after J.D. Vance.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: Because she's in Appalachian.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: Right, so they're both from that area.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: They're both from that area. Different mindsets. And she's saying, buddy,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: you don't represent us. Interesting. And Damon Copperhead takes on
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: the hillbilly image of Appalachians and plays with it beautifully.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: Wow, I'd love to check that out. She seems like
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: an interesting woman.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: She's a very interesting woman. She's very thoughtful, very forthright.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: That'd be cool. Yeah, maybe after I read the book,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: I could see if she would want to come and visit.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I always feel like I have to, explain my intentions.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: There's a part of me that always feels like I'm
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: manipulating somebody. Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: That's not a feeling.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: So what is it? It's a thought?
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: It's a belief.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: It's a belief.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No. And there's a reason why you have it.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Like, even if I'm just doing something nice, there's a
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: part of me that's like, oh, you're, Yeah.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: You think you're fake. Yeah. Yeah, it's called the imposter syndrome.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: And it has to do with the fact that you
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: couldn't be real as a kid. In some ways, you
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: had to pretend. And it's really hard to let go
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: of that, of that sense that I'm still doing it. Yeah.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: It's what you grew up with. So you could be
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: kind to that part of yourself. Okay. The part that
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: You could actually, because it's not a feeling, you know, Theo,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: it's a belief. And beliefs can be, you don't argue
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: with feelings, but beliefs you can challenge. Is it really
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: true that you're manipulating? Like when you're talking to me now,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: are we having a genuine conversation?
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: I believe that we are.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: Or is it true that you're actually manipulating me in
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: any way at all?
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think I am.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: And furthermore, give me some credit. Maybe you can't manipulate
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: me even if you wanted to.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: So that.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: So that fear of yours is both a lack of
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: compassion towards yourself and a lack of, in a sense,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: trust in the other person's capacity to look after themselves.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: It's just funny. I was just talking with my brother
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: yesterday cause we had similar childhoods and we're thinking of, well,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: what are some things that I could think about to
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: talk with him about? And, and we were talking about that,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: that sometimes we always feel, uh, like we're manipulating ourselves,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: or that our ability to manipulate would be so powerful
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: that we wouldn't even know what we're doing, which is
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: pretty crazy, too.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: It's a lack of self-trust. Lack of self-trust. Now, you
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: know what? Have I manipulated? Yes, I have. Yeah, sure.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: But it's not a question that one never does it,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: but I know when I'm manipulating. Right. And usually it's
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: because I want something that I don't know how to
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: state directly. but I'm afraid that I might not get otherwise.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 2: And then I'm afraid to show up with my vulnerable request.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: Which would make sense as a child, there was something
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: you wanted that you didn't think you were gonna get otherwise,
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: so you didn't show it.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: So it makes sense. Children manipulate out of a sense
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: of weakness. And that's pretty much all they can do
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: if otherwise they don't get their needs met.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of the, your book that I've read so far,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: it's about, it's getting to the part where it's like, uh,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: that Western medicine doesn't always take into context as much
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: that the body and the mind, like us as an
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: entire thing, as our society, as you know, it's almost
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: like in like, if say if like the whole world
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: and time and culture and everything were a car, Instead
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: of the doctor looking at the car, they just look
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: at the human, which would just be one part of
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: the car. And so they're always just working on this
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: one part instead of looking at the whole car, which
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: could also be a cause of why the part isn't
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: doing well.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: That's the whole point. And see, we have to make
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: a distinction here. There's Western science. Then there's medical practice.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: The two are not the same necessarily. So I was
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: trained as a medical doctor. Nobody ever taught me about
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: the mind-body unity. But physiologically, you can't separate the mind
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: from the body. So that our emotional circuits and the
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: immune system and the hormonal apparatus and the nervous system
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: are actually one system. They're not separate systems. So when
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: things happen emotionally, naturally they have a physiological effect. So
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: I could give you 10,000 examples. Children whose parents are
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: stressed are much more likely to have asthma.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: Children of what?
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: Children whose parents are stressed are much more likely to
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: have asthma.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: So their airway is narrow and they get inflamed. There's
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: a study that showed that black American women The more
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: episodes of racism they experience, the higher the risk of asthma.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: It's been shown that women with severe PTSD have double
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: the risk of ovarian cancer. This is a study out
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: of Harvard University. Adults who experience the loss of an
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: adult child have a higher risk of malignancy of the
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: bone marrow and the blood. Grief. A Danish study Parents
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: who lost a child have double the risk of multiple sclerosis.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: There are hundreds of studies showing the physiological impact of
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: stress and trauma and loss on the physiology.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: So manifesting itself in our bodies as a disease or
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: contributing to.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: Contributing to the onset of the disease. Got it.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because cancer, it's like you say in the book, like,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: people get cancer. A lot of times you hear like,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: the guy got cancer, he died three weeks later, right?
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: You hear that all the time. But the cancer had
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: been there forever. And it just, enough had happened, I guess,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: that it turned over into being.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: Well, we know that stress, for example, can turn off
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: genes that protect you against cancer and turn on genes
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: that can cause cancer.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: It's not even controversial. And we know that people that
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: repress their healthy anger, they're actually suppressing their immune system.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: And this has been studied over and over again, and
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: great clinicians have been recognizing this forever. And 2,400 years ago, Socrates,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: the Greek philosopher, said that the problem with the doctors
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: of today is that they separate the mind from the body.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: 2400 years ago. Now, I can name you any number
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: of great medical pioneers, I mention some of them in
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: the book, who 150 years ago, 100 years ago, 80
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: years ago, 40 years ago, pointed out that mind and
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: body can't be separated, that in fact we are biopsychosocial creatures,
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: which means that our biology is inseparable from our psyche,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: our emotional apparatus, and from our social relationships.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: Wow, so all of it.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: It's all one. Scientifically, it's all one. The problem is
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: medical practice doesn't recognize that oneness. So most of the time,
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: you go to a physician with rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: for both of which there's plenty of evidence about the
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: role of trauma and stress, but the doctor's never going
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: to ask you about any of that stuff. They're just
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: going to deal with the physical aspects of it, which
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: they should deal with.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: But they also need to look at the whole You know,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: what happened in this person's life? And what's stressing them now?
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: And how can we help with that part of it?
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: You know, so medical practice, as a doctor, I don't
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: know if to be told how miraculously effective the achievements
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: of modern medicine can be. But at the same time,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: there's a huge piece that we're missing. And that piece
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: is not just intuitive or spiritual, woohoo, it's science. But
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: they don't teach that mind, body, unity science in the
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: medical schools. Yeah, in fact, the peace is a whole.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: That's what they're missing. They're missing the wholeness. Now, if
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: you look at indigenous medicine, there's the medicine wheel, which
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: consists of four quadrants. There's the physical, our physiology. There's
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: the mental, which is our emotions and our thoughts. There's
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: the social, which is our relationships with other people and
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: other creatures. And then there's the spiritual, which is our
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: connection with something greater than just a little ego, however
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: you define that. And health, they say, depends on a
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: balance between those four quadrants. Scientifically, That's totally true. But unfortunately,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: that science is largely ignored in medical training.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah. Well, especially now, a lot of our
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: medicine has kind of been compromised, or I think our
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: industry has, you know? Oh, yeah. Maybe, I don't know.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: And I don't know your industry, and I'm not trying
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: to offend it. But it certainly seems like just, you know,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: it's been, most industries have been compromised, you know? The
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: fact to have better, you know, balance sheets then.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: But look if you continue with depression by the way
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: that's another diagnosis that I've had so I've actually taken
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: medication for depression so I'm not here to you're not
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: just guessing you know to dismiss them yeah but if
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: you look at the word depression what does it actually
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: mean to depress something hold it back is to push
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: it down yeah now what gets pushed on in depression
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: your feelings Our feelings. Why would a person push down
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: their feelings? One of the needs of the child, one
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: of the essential needs of the child, as I point
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: out in this book, I don't make this stuff up,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: I just report it, is to be able to experience
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: all their emotions, anger, grief, fear, panic, love, playfulness, curiosity,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: lust for life and just hunger for life. The child
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: doesn't need to express all those emotions when they arise
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: and have that understood, accepted, and validated by the adults. Now,
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: if I'm in an environment where the parents can't do that,
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: you've had guests on this program, I won't mention them
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: by name, who teach that an angry child should be
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: made to sit by themselves until they come back to normal. No.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: A two-year-old kid gets frustrated, they get angry. If you
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: give that kid the message that if you're angry, you
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: can't be with me, the child is in an impossible dilemma.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: Am I going to separate myself from the person on
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: whom my life depends? Or will I push down my anger? Well,
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: give that message to the kid often enough. What are
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: they going to do? Depress their feelings. 30 years later,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: they're diagnosed with this disease called depression. You know? Now,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: If you come to me with depression, I might decide
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: that temporarily it might be a good idea for you
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: to be on antidepressants. And I've taken them. They help
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: me for a while. But it's not enough. Let's also
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: look at what made you push down your feelings, what
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: happened to you. Now, prescribing the antidepressant takes me three minutes.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: Talking with you, about what actually happened to you that
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: made you push down your feelings, that takes a long time.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: And doctors are not even trained to raise that question.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: So even if, as a physician, I don't have the
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: expertise to deal with that question, at least I could
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: refer you to somebody who does. But no, most of
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: the time, it's just the industrial model. You come in,
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: I got five minutes with you, here's a prescription, goodbye. Well,
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: that doesn't deal with the underlying problem. It deals with
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: the symptom, which may sometimes be helpful. Sometimes it isn't,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: but whether it's helpful or not, it does not deal
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: with the underlying dynamic. Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: It's just, and it's just where our society is too.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: We've gone so far down this road and it's just like,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: how do we, yeah, back in the day, it's like,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: it seemed like if you were like, maybe this is crazy,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: but if you were like, just, a small group around
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: a campfire, you could see if somebody was hurting. Everything
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: was right there. You couldn't hide anything.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: Not only that, you know what you would do? You'd
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: do ceremonies, healing rituals.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: You would drum. You would dance. You would chant. You
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: would shake a stick. It'd be communal. A friend of
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: mine who I quote in the book, he's a part
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: Lakota physician and psychiatrist. His name is Luis Mel Madrona.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: And he said in the Lakota tradition, when somebody gets sick,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 2: the community says, thank you. Your illness represents some imbalance
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: in our community.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: You're like the canary in the mine. So your healing
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: is our healing. So let's do this together. Now that
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: makes so much sense.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: Both scientifically and emotionally. We don't do that. We sort
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: of isolate the individual and then we separate the mind
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: from the body. So we say it's just a brain problem. No,
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: it isn't. It's a life problem. And that life is
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: lived in an environment, in a multigenerational family, in a
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: certain culture. Let's look at the whole thing. That's all.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: Do you think we can start to head more in
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: that direction or how do you think this changes? Because
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: we are pretty far down the well here I think
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes you even said roar. Like I, sometimes I feel
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: like our whole planet just wants to fucking roar. You know,
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: it's like, it just like, I feel like everybody just
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: wants to go in the yard and just scream at the,
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: at the sky. It's like, I don't know. It feels
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: like there's just something trapped in us that is, does
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: that make any sense, man?
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. And it's had some cultural expression as well.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 2: What was that movie where somebody yells, I'm fed up
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: and I can't take it anymore. And he starts yelling.
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, Falling Down? Michael Douglas?
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: Is that what it was? I don't know which movie
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: it was, but it was somebody just starts yelling, I'm
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: fed up and I can't take it anymore. And everybody
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: starts yelling, I'm fed up, I can't take it anymore.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I think there's a deep sense of frustration
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: in this culture.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to be
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: able to take this anymore.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Network.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, Network. That's a great movie. If you've never
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: seen it, it's a great movie.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: I'm mad as hell and I'm with it. No. That
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: was decades ago. I think the level of frustration in
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: our society has increased. Why are people frustrated? Because their
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: needs aren't being met. And that scream, look, I travel
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: all over the world. I just came back from a three-week,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: six-country tour of Europe. I talked to 12,000 people. That
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: sense of frustration, that sense of longing that we talked about,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: It's so universal these days.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: It is. Yeah. Yeah, is it? Because that's what it
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: feels like this. Are other people feeling this? That's what
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: I wonder a lot. Are other people feeling this same way?
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: Well, some people are not because they escape. And this
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: society is absolutely brilliant at creating escapes through mass media,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: mass sports. Yeah. consumption, and so on. But I'll say
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: something here. And this is particularly true of comedians I
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: have found. Some people are just born more sensitive.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: That's a great point too, and I have to take
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: that into account. We all do.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: And more sensitive means, sensitive is from the Latin word
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: sincere to feel. Now some people are genetically born more sensitive.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: They feel more. That means when things go wrong, they
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: feel it more than the others. So the same thing
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: can happen externally to different people. But if one of
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: them is more sensitive, they're going to feel it all
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: the more. So it's especially the highly sensitive people who
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: are feeling that scream that you talk about.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, that's what it's just like.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: I just feel like we've just gone so far off
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: the path of.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: But if I can say something, your sense that we've
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: gone off the path, what in you knows that?
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: Like what part of me you mean?
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: What in you? Who in you knows that we've gone
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: off the path? It's the part that hasn't gone off
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: the path. It's the part that actually sees. So that...
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 2: I don't want to create too much doom and gloom here. No.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: There is this self here. There's this trueness here that's
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: never been damaged, never been destroyed. There's nobody's damage goes
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: that way. It's always in here. It's a question of
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: can we connect with it? Right.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: And that, yeah, how do we get back to connecting
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: with that sort of thing? Because our society, our culture
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: is not going to do it for us. It doesn't
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: feel like we might have to start with it as individuals.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: We do begin as individuals, but You've probably realized, I mean,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: just for example, in your AA group, there's a community
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: there who have a lot of shared experiences and who
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 2: are very vulnerably open in sharing their experiences. And that's
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: a source of support. When you share about yourself, that's
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: a source of support to others. When they share about themselves,
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: that's support for you so that ultimately, no, we don't
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: have to do it by ourselves. It begins as an
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: individual process, but pretty soon you find that we're not alone.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you think we can get out of this
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: toxic culture? Do you feel like there's a way out
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: of where we are Or do you feel like that
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: humanity is just....
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 2: I believe in human beings.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: That's a great statement. I do too.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: I believe that. there's an essential goodness there, a desire
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: to connect, a desire to belong, a desire to celebrate life.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: I think we're endowed with those capacities. And as difficult
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: as things may look, and especially these days with these
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: terrible wars going on and the suffering that we've talked about,
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: I still believe that there's so many examples everywhere I
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: go I meet such good people. People are trying to
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: make a difference. People are trying to do their little
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: bit or their big bit to reduce the suffering in
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: the world, to speak the truth, to offer some love,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: compassion to the world. I really do believe in humans. No,
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: we have the potential to be monsters. We have the
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: potential to be angels. But that good side never totally disappears.
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: Some people, it's covered over so much that they might
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: never get in touch with it. Most people, I think,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 2: are quite capable of getting there once they decide that
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: they want to.
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, what scares me, I think, is that
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: in order to be a human being, we have to
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: have the present moment, right? We have to... Yeah. be
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: able to still have like the ability to reflect and
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: recognize and think. And our society or our culture has
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: created a lot where we're so many distractions so that
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: if we never even take the time, if we can
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: be distracted enough from being able to really think or feel,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: feel really probably, starting with feeling, then we're, then we'll
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: be trapped forever in a way. Does that make sense
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: at all?
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: It's interesting how you say all these really insightful things,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: then you keep asking me if it makes sense or not. Sorry.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 2: Don't apologize.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: I can't think and talk to you at the same time.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: I can't feel and speak at the same time.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: No, but I'm just telling you. I'm just noticing something.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: I don't feel like you are appreciated.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: Thanks. So here's the thing. We're born as feeling creatures.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: We feel before we think. The feeling apparatus is present
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: in us before we're even born. The thinking apparatus doesn't
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 2: start developing until much later on. So that if there's
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: a scaffolding of healthy feelings, then our thinking will be
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: aligned with reality. But it's the feelings that, we're feelings
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: We're feeling creatures before we're thinking creatures. So what you
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: said makes absolute sense, even from the evolutionary and physiological
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: point of view. Animals feel, but they don't necessarily think.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: In fact, they don't think. But without thinking, without feeling,
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: they wouldn't survive. And we think we can get by
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: on thinking. We got it backwards.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: That's what it feels like these days. It feels like
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: everybody's just thinking. It's like even with like autonomous inventions
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: and technology, I'm like at a certain point, I don't
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: want any more technology if it's not helping us.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: Like stop. Like you're killing what it means to be
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: me or not me as a human, but just us.
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: It feels like we don't need to get faster. It's
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: just like you're going to take jobs away. If a
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: guy doesn't have a job, he doesn't have a purpose.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: Having it. Having a job isn't only your purpose, but
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: it's what gives people some sense of purpose.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: And a sense of meaning.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: And a sense of meaning, right? And once you don't
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: feel like you have any of that, then what are you?
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: It's like we're almost just, I don't understand why our
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: society wants that.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I totally get where you're coming
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: from because when we talk about AI, my mind glazes over.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: I don't care.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: I don't want one more piece of technology. I'm much
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: more interested in what happens with human beings.
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: Man, thank you, dude. That's how I feel. I just
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: care how people feel, you know? And I just like,
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: And when you talk about meaning, if you look at
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: the diminishing lifespan of especially white American men, it's that
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: loss of meaning. When they hollowed out the industrial heartland
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: of America and they outsourced all the cheap labor to
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: other countries. Well you can see that from the profit motive,
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: it makes sense. But from the point of view of
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: human lives, you just deprive people of the sense of meaning.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 2: And that sense of meaning, it's a psychologist friend of
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: mine calls dislocation, is a major source of distress. And
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 2: a major source of self-harm and addiction.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I even think like it used to be, and
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: I say this many times, but like somebody worked in
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: your area and they worked at a factory and they
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: made like a table and they brought it. And you
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: even had one of the tables at your house and
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: you were proud of your dad because he worked there
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: and he made it. And then. but now you have
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: somebody in another country mailing something over here. They don't
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: care about it, that they're making it. Their kids don't
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: know even what they do probably, you know, and it just,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: it's just like, where is the victim? I don't understand
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: what level of this we're going to get to that
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: is healthy.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: Well, I think now what we're talking about here is the, um,
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: good old profit motive because profits don't care about human values,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: you know, and, and, and, uh, Most companies, that's what
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: they're interested in is what will maximize profits. And if
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: they have to throw 1,000 people out of a job
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: in some town, they'll do it. Yeah. I don't understand that, though. Well, work,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: I think, is very important to people.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're creatures who work.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: I just read a really interesting book, by the way.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: It's called The Continuum Concept, published 40 years ago or so.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: This woman goes to the... Venezuelan jungle, six weeks away
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: from civilization. And she watches all these Stone Age people
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: bring up their kids. That's the book I did, The
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: Kandiyan Concept. How they bring up their kids, why they
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: hold them everywhere like we said, they don't punish them,
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: they don't yell at them. These kids will grow up
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: really happy and comfortable with themselves. But the point I'm
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: making is this tribe, they don't have a word for work.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 2: They have a word for cutting wood. They have a
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: word for planting. They have a word for fishing. They
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: have a word for washing. But there's no word for work.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: In other words, they just do what they do. But
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: there's no alienation from it. Whatever they're into, they're just
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: into it. That's what they're doing. But here we talk
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: about work-life balance. Now look at that phrase. What does
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: that imply? That here's life and here's work. And the
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: two are not the same. Yeah.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: It's almost like we enslaved ourselves.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: Well, we have.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: And then also our society, as you're saying, creates so
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: much stress and uncomfort because like, say if you took
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: something that's supposed to be somewhere and you put it
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: somewhere else, it's going to always feel stressed because it's
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: not like in its home, right? It's not in its
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: natural spot.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: Funny you should say that because I often say, You
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: can study a zebra, and you could conclude that the
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: zebra is an animal that mostly lies around all day,
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: gets up a few times to eat or to defecate
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 2: or something, and then lies down again, walks around a
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: little bit. And it would be true if you observed
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: a zebra in a zoo, in a cage. But if
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 2: you observed a zebra out there in a savanna or
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: wherever she lives, you'd see a totally different creature. Oh,
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: they're turnt out there. And they're human beings in a sense.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: we've put ourselves into a zoo. We're so far away
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: from our natural evolution and environment. It's not a question
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: again of going back to Stone Age, but it's a
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: question of recognizing what we've lost. In a certain sense,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: we've put ourselves into a zoo and we're studying ourselves
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: totally out of our elements and then we're wondering how
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: come things are going so badly.
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: It's almost, and I hate to even laugh at it,
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: but you're saying it's absurd.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: It's absurd.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: We're literally living in a theater of the absurd.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: In your book, you also talk about like the history
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: of humanity, that what we call civilization is less than
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: 5% of our existence as a species, right?
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: Human genus, that it represents less than 1% of that time,
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: like our civilization, right? We're such a small piece of
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: how long humans have been alive. And we have learned
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: that such groups a long time ago held values emphasizing hospitality, sharing, generosity,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: and reciprocal exchange for the purpose not of personal enrichment,
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: but of connection. These values were intelligent, time-tested guidelines for
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: mutual survival. Yes, there was violence and bad behavior and
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: all the rest. We have never been perfect. But we
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: knew something about setting the collective context for our humanness
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: to flourish fruitfully. That it was a group effort.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: It was a group thing, and people never saw themselves
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: as separate individuals. from the environment or from animals or
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: from other human beings. And in British Columbia, excuse me,
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: where I live, the indigenous people used to have a
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: ceremony called a potlatch. And the potlatch is they would
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: invite all these people, neighbors and other tribes and so on,
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: and they'd give things to each other. So it wasn't
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: about getting, it was about giving. When the British colonists arrived,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: you know what they did? They outlawed the potlatch. Damn.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: Because they wanted to kill that spirit of communality that
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: the indigenous people thrived on. So they knew how to
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: do it. So they forbade a lot of the practices
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: that gave the indigenous people meaning, including the giving. And
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: until very recently, decades ago, it was outlawed. So people
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: had to do stuff in secret. They outlawed the chanting.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: They had to chant in secret. Because they knew the
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: healing power of the chants. And the chants really connected
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: indigenous people to their traditions. Now the colonists did this everywhere.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: They did this in the United States, they did it
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: in Australia and New Zealand. They did it in Canada,
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: of course, parts of Africa. And so that a real
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: effort was made to divorce people from their essential communal drives.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it feels like. That's what it feels
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: like inside, like we're not supposed to be doing this. Yeah.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: You know? Yeah. One woman that you mentioned, Darcia Narvaez.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Darcia Narvaez. Darcia Narvaez. Yeah.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: Said that we have become species atypical, a sobering idea
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: when you think about it. No other species has ever
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: had the ability to be untrue to itself, to forsake
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: its own needs, never mind to convince itself that such
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: is the way things ought to be.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: Or to destroy its own environment. Yeah.
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I still wonder if Mother Nature is mad about, like,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: if some of the diseases we have now are because
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: of like what happened to the indigenous cultures, you know,
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: if some of that just like, is like, you know,
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: cause mother nature remembers, you know? And so it's like,
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: are we still just suffering the sins of like what's
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: happened a long time ago?
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: We are. Yeah. And the problem is we haven't learned
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: from it yet. Like actually, I work a lot with
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: indigenous people in Canada. They often invite me to talk
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: about addiction and stress and trauma and so on.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: We did a show in Vancouver. Some of them came
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: out to the show.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: Did they?
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: And they gave me some gifts.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, fantastic.
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really, really beautiful.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: Beautiful, isn't it?
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was awesome, man. Yeah, it was great. It
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: was really nice of them.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: So I do a lot of that work, but I
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: get so much from it. Because they have such deep wisdom.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 2: Like even with all their trauma and all the dysfunction,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: all the addiction and mental illness amongst them, which is
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: strictly a result of colonial trauma. But there's still such
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: gentle wisdom. There's still such connection. I remember doing a
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: ceremony with some indigenous friends two years ago, Art and Nature.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: They talked to every plant. They're so connected. You know,
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: such deep wisdom. And I actually believe that when this
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: society starts getting its head screwed on right, we'll be
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: very humbly willing to learn from the indigenous people. You know, like, yes,
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: civilization has brought many amazing things. Not to forget that.
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: But what if we could meld our... technological know-how and
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: scientific brilliance with indigenous wisdom. What a world we could
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 2: actually create.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: And maybe that is where we're headed, right? I think
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: that has to be the hope.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I believe that's certainly a possibility.
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that has to be the hope that
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: we take away. Yeah, because if I were ever a leader,
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: I think we would get back to some of the
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: things that were important, you know? you know, one of
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: my favorite times when I was a kid, the power
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: would go out sometimes.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: And so we'd all have to like, mom would put
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: a couple of candles out. And so we'd all have
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: to be right there together.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: And it was just like, I don't know. All that
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: mattered was just like, um, like you could joke and,
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: but it was like, I don't know. Like we just
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: all needed each other. You need to know where everybody was,
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: everybody here. I don't know. There was something special about that.
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: Well, you can see it even now. Um, When there's disasters,
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: people really come together. Right. They tend to come together
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: to support each other. Yeah, yeah. They'll go out of
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: their way to give and to support. Oh, for sure.
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: You see it with the flooding and stuff in the
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: Southeast right now.
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: Many places all over the world.
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's so much to learn from our natives,
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: from the indigenous people of the land, you know, just
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: as we learn from animals in all parts of nature.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: Well, Darshan of the... scientists today, psychologists that you mentioned,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: she's written a book called The Evolved Nest. And she's
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: talking about our commonality with other animals and how they
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 2: rear their young and what we could learn from them.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's an amazing little book. I wrote the foreword
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: for it. Darsha's done some amazing work on the actual
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: needs of human beings. Really?
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: She's a pretty fascinating woman?
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: Which is very interesting, very interesting. If you ever want
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: to talk to her, I'm happy to connect you.
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: That would be really cool. You Canadians are dang interesting, man.
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: Well, Darsha is American.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, she is?
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll take it.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: No, no, she's a retired professor at the University of
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: Notre Dame. Wow. And she's still very active. And this
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: book is called The Evolved Nest. It's just a slim
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 2: little volume.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: But you should learn about how penguins bring up their
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: kids or wolves. But when a mother dies, then wolves,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: who haven't even been pregnant, start lactating to feed the
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: young ones. And how, when the baby elephant is born,
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 2: you know what happens? All the other mother- Elephants put
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: their trunks on it. Yeah, all the other mothers, they
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: stand around and they touch the baby. They know the
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 2: need for touch. There's incredible wisdom in animals as well.
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 2: And Darsha and her writing partner, Gay Bradshaw, they really
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 2: show us the lessons we could actually derive just from
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 2: watching our animals bring up their young.
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: We still have a lot to learn. Is that the
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: best message to take away from your book, do you think?
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: We still have a lot to learn and we need
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: to be humble. We need to realize that for all
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: our achievements and our intellectual brilliance, become disconnected from our hearts,
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 2: from our gut feelings, and that we need to really
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: be curious about what our hearts and our guts are
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 2: telling us, not just our intellects. Amen.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: We need an emotional revolution. That's a good way to
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: put it.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: Before you go, and thank you so much for your time.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: My pleasure.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a part... Rafi, there's a guy in the
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: book Rafi.
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, Rafi.
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: Rafi.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: No, Rafi's a children's singer.
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: A children's singer. Oh, yeah, that guy?
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: That's him.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: I'd like to be him under the sea.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: Is that him?
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 2: No, no, that's Ringo Starr. Oh, damn. You're singing Octopus's Garden. Yeah. Oh, Jesus.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 2: But Rafi used to sing Baby Beluga.
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. You know, and- Apples and Bananas, that song?
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and Banana Phone.
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: But he says we discover who we are from the inside.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: You wrote that on your book.
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 2: And Rafi actually played in the White House at the
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: Clinton inauguration.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, sweet.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: And he's like the children's troubadour of the world.
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, when I was a child, we listened to all, yes,
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: they had all of it.
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 2: So Rafi's a friend of mine. Oh, excellent. And at
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: some point, some years ago, he wakes up in the
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: middle of the night And the word child honoring comes
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: into his head. And he says, what would the world
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: look like if we honored children and the needs of children?
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 2: So he started this child honoring institute. Now the thing
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: about his singing for children is it's not condescending. He
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: really plays with kids and really gets them. And his
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: heart is really so childlike. So he says, whatever the
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 2: quote was, that we... We discover who we are from
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 2: the inside.
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: We discover who we are from the inside.
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: And he's actually talking about how human beings develop, which
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: is through our feelings first. And those feelings begin in
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 2: the uterus. So already when a mother is stressed, the
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: child already feels that in the uterus. And that stresses
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: the child. And that interferes with the child's brain development.
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: So that actually we develop our sense from our feelings first.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: And as I said earlier, then the intellect comes in.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 2: But if the emotional circuits are out of balance because
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 2: of early stress, then it's hard for us to even
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 2: think straight. Right.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: And our society we have is when so many mothers
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: have to work, it's like we've just, yeah, we're a
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: little misconstrued.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: Well, the United States, 25% of women have to go
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 2: back to work within two weeks of giving birth. And
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: what nature would prefer scientifically and physiologically is for the
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: baby with the mother for at least nine months. But
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: actually for years. Or if not the mother, but at
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 2: least with the mother for at least nine months. But
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 2: ideally well beyond that. But with other nurturing adults. So
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: it's not just caregivers who give you food and Right.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: It's the mother, the grandmother, the aunt, the neighbor, the
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: sense of community, your whole genes being right there.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how did we get off on such a different
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: tangent then? If we were supposed to be in these tribes,
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: these groups, it's just evolution and there's nothing we can
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: do about it?
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: Well, that's civilization.
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: Right, civilization.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 2: Which has obviously brought all kinds of benefits, but also
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 2: look at, all that we've lost. So again, it's for me,
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: can we value our achievements and our knowledge and try
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: to remember what we've lost and try and reconnect with
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 2: those parts of ourselves that we've kind of got divorced from? Yeah.
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and your children, just look into them, pour into
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: them what you want out of them, you know? Pour
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: into them as much as you can And yes, some
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: kids don't know how to feel sometimes. You have to
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: also talk them about their feelings.
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: No, you don't. They know exactly how to feel. They
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: don't have the words for, so they know how to feel.
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: It's our job to give them words for their feelings. Right.
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: It's right. It's our job to give them words for
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: their feelings. Right. So yeah, if you're a child, if
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: you're not doing that, it's, it's not a judgment and
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: I don't have any children, but that's what I could
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: have used when I was young. It was like, how
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: do you feel? Let me help you with this.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: Not even how you feel. You're really angry with daddy
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: right now because you wanted a cookie before dinner and
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 2: daddy said no cookie. So now you're really angry, aren't you? Yeah.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: You know, so it's not even, we don't have to
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: tell them how to feel. They're feeling creatures. We have
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 2: to accept their feelings. Okay. That doesn't mean we give
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: them the cookie. Yeah. But it means that we do understand.
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: Hey, I understand you want that cookie.
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: Right now you're really mad at daddy. Okay. I get it.
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: That's all. That doesn't mean you're allowed to hate your brother,
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 2: but I get that you're angry. So we're not about
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 2: permissive parenting. We're talking about authoritative parenting, not authoritarian. Authoritative,
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: where the child is understood and held and guided And
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: we give them words for their feelings, but we don't
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 2: ask them to suppress themselves. We may not accept certain
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: behaviors or put limits, but we know how to do that.
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 2: If the child trusts you and is looking to you,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: like natives, indigenous people, like we said earlier, never hit
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: their kids because the kids trusted the adults for guidance.
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 2: You know? Which all comes from connection.
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: 100%. And now we're learning so many things. We learn
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: them like, you know, through a YouTube video or through, we,
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: we learned so we, I mean, now most people learn
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: about sex through pornography. It's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: We need each other to, yeah, we need each other
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: and are, we're creating, we're creating more and more that
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: we don't.
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 2: That's right. And, and, and we're creating more and more
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: that if you have needs, there's something wrong with you.
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: If you have emotional needs, you're a weakling.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, one day our feelings will be in a museum.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: You'll go visit them there. Like, hey, remember this? They
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: used to have that.
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: Mate, thank you just for putting all this together. It's
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: really fascinating. I mean, you have so many other... like
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: therapists and scientists and philosophers and doctors and everything that
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: you've quoted in here to really put together a beautiful
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: piece of work here.
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: It's really fascinating. And it's not all like Debbie Downer
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: stuff either. And I don't mean to be, and I
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: don't think we were that much in this conversation. It's
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: just looking at things and saying, hey, well, let's take
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: a look at where we are, possibly how did we
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: get here?
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: Well, that's my intention. And my intention is to promote healing, actually.
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 2: It's not just to spread doom and gloom. And actually,
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 2: the healing part of the book is the longest part
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: of the book.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: I'm not there yet.
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, yeah. I hope you get there someday.
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: I think I will.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: I've been reading it. A good clip. I'm enjoying it.
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. It was,
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: if I can boast, can I boast?
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: Sure. I would love for you to.
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 2: It was 19 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list.
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: Let's go. For a year and a half, it was
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 2: a Canadian bestseller. It's been published in 41 languages now, internationally,
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 2: and it's been a bestseller in a whole lot of countries.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 2: So I think there's value in this book.
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: Well, I think also that it's good to know that
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: enough people are starting to recognize in some of this
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: same thought, you know?
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: Because that in itself, those numbers itself, and that prolificness
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: is a source of hope, I think.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: I think what's happening, actually, is that as society in
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 2: some ways goes more into crisis, also more and more
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: people are waking up. And they're starting to ask questions.
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: And I see that as a good thing.
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too. Thank you for letting me ask
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 1: you questions today. Thank you for, yeah, just for your time.
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: So many of my friends love you and look up
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: to you. I had my own therapist was like, he's asking,
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you're my therapist. But he was excited that
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 1: I was getting to sit down with you. So yeah,
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for your commitment to curiosity.
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: And thanks for your time.
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: I was floating on.
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: The breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 2: I must be cornerstone.
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: peace of mind I found I can feel it in
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: my bones