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Dr. David Burns - Stanford Psychiatrist, 10M Books Sold | The Stanford Study That Changed Everything · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  When I was a psychiatric resident, people come in and talk and then we would give them pills.
• 0:04
  I can't remember anyone ever recovering. I always had the ring,
• 0:08
  aren't we supposed to be able to cure people or bring them out of depression?
• 0:11
  That's what I finally learned how to do after 40 years of treating people.
• 0:17
  He changed the way we understand our thoughts and how they shape our lives.
• 0:20
  Dr. David Burns is the psychiatrist and author whose work broke the mold,
• 0:24
  making cognitive behavioral therapy accessible to millions.
• 0:27
  When you try to help people, it kind of puts people on the defensive.
• 0:31
  So I go in the opposite direction. I try to persuade people not to change.
• 0:35
  I become the voice of their subconscious mind.
• 0:37
  That really helps me empathize with people at a deeper level.
• 0:41
  With best-selling books like Feeling Good, the new mood therapy,
• 0:44
  he didn't just publish research, he sparked a movement.
• 0:46
  He pioneered the turning therapy into measurable, rapid recovery.
• 0:50
  Today, his methods have helped tens of millions battle depression,
• 0:54
  anxiety, and the inner storms we rarely talk about.
• 0:56
  I recently did an experiment with about 2,000 people,
• 1:00
  and proved for the first time negative thoughts do cause depression.
• 1:04
  There's nothing better than recovering from depression.
• 1:07
  Take a piece of paper and write them down and see what you're telling yourself.
• 1:10
  You may be surprised that's can be the first step on a journey to enlightenment.
• 1:15
  If you had to describe what you do for a living,
• 1:28
  how would you describe your work?
• 1:30
  Well, I'm trained as a clinical psychiatrist,
• 1:34
  but what I do is very different from what most psychiatrists do.
• 1:39
  I'm not any more a drug prescriber,
• 1:42
  although for a while I was doing research on this chemical imbalance in the brain
• 1:46
  and giving out pills by the bucket full,
• 1:49
  but what I really like to do is bring about high speed change
• 1:54
  to people who were struggling, often for years or decades,
• 1:58
  with severe depression and anxiety and transform their pain into joy
• 2:03
  in a short period of time.
• 2:05
  And by a short period, I'm talking about usually in a single therapy session,
• 2:09
  lasting maybe two hours, and I like to complete treatment in a single session
• 2:15
  if I can, and usually that is possible.
• 2:19
  But when I was a psychiatric resident,
• 2:23
  we just had people come in and talk and then we would give them pills,
• 2:29
  and then they'd come in and talk some more and give them more pills.
• 2:33
  And there never seemed to be any conclusion to the process.
• 2:37
  I can't remember anyone ever recovering when I was a psychiatric resident at Stanford
• 2:42
  or University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
• 2:46
  And I always had the dream, you know,
• 2:48
  aren't we supposed to be able to cure people or bring them out of depression and to joy?
• 2:54
  And that's what I finally learned how to do after, you know, 40 years of
• 3:00
  treating people and doing a lot of research on people, how people actually change.
• 3:06
  Well, you're describing, I think, is the way that most people are treated,
• 3:11
  the sitting in front of an individual for years, talking about their problems,
• 3:16
  getting some sort of prescription.
• 3:19
  Maybe just help people understand where this system or where this style of help even came from.
• 3:26
  I had first seen it when I was a medical student. I was, I went to Stanford Medical School,
• 3:32
  and I shouldn't have one of my college advisors said,
• 3:36
  you should go to medical school.
• 3:37
  I said, well, I'm not a pre-medical student, and I never wanted to be a doctor.
• 3:42
  And he said, I think I'll be a psychologist because I'd like to do psychotherapy and, you know,
• 3:48
  help people change.
• 3:50
  And he said, oh, no, no, you have to go to medical school because drugs are going to become so
• 3:54
  important and psychologists can't prescribe drugs.
• 3:58
  So you should go to medical school. I said, well, how could I get in?
• 4:02
  I'm not a pre-medical student. I've never had a biology class.
• 4:05
  And they wouldn't want me. And he said, oh, you can talk your way into anything.
• 4:09
  They won't even notice.
• 4:12
  I talked my way into Stanford Medical School, but I was like a fish out of water.
• 4:17
  I cut most of my classes. I didn't enjoy what I was doing.
• 4:22
  And I just wanted to get in a situation where I could, you know, work with people,
• 4:27
  and free people. But I cut a lot of my medical school classes.
• 4:32
  But I went to this thing in Palo Alto called the Human Institute.
• 4:36
  And this crazy Chinaman named Hussein Chang was the head of it, and he was kind of a guru type.
• 4:43
  And they would have these marathons, 48-hour marathons, where they'd get maybe 35 people in a house,
• 4:51
  and they'd pay 35 bucks for this two-day experience.
• 4:55
  And one by one, they'd go in the center and be confronted, and they'd kind of crash.
• 5:01
  And they'd rip away their defenses, you know, kind of see through them.
• 5:05
  How phony everyone was. And then when they crashed and cried,
• 5:10
  that all of a sudden, you know, they would throw them in the air,
• 5:13
  and they'd go into a state of joy. And it was like becoming vulnerable and becoming real.
• 5:20
  And I saw rapid change pretty much every time, and that I would go back to the Stanford Medical School
• 5:28
  for my medical school classes. And it was all this kind of pompous psychiatrist in the department
• 5:34
  as psychiatry. And you just talk to people endlessly, and, you know, people weren't measuring
• 5:42
  anything. I didn't see anything changing for people. And I dropped out for a year on two
• 5:51
  different occasions. And then finally, I ended up homeless with my now-wifed living down their
• 5:58
  Carmel Valley. And my wife was pregnant. I would just was counseling people for free.
• 6:05
  And if I met them in a coffee house or on the beach, or whatever, you know.
• 6:10
  And but we didn't have any money. And then it occurred to me, wow, if I went back and did my
• 6:15
  internship in residency, I still wouldn't know anything. But people wouldn't know that. And they
• 6:22
  think I know something. So they would pay me to come and talk to me. And then we could have a
• 6:27
  place to live and food and stuff like that. So I went back and I did my internship in residency at
• 6:35
  a big county hospital in Oakland, California, Highland Hospital. And that was a fantastic experience
• 6:42
  for me. And then ended up at UPAN Medical School. And I started studying really hard. And I
• 6:49
  won awards for my research and had a tenure track position on the faculty. But I still wasn't
• 6:57
  seeing anyone being cured of anything. And I was doing research on this chemical imbalance theory
• 7:08
  of, you know, brain chemistry is the cause of depression. And our research proved it was a false
• 7:14
  theory. And I published that in the top psychiatry journal in 1975. And it took the field 30 years
• 7:21
  to catch on to the fact that, you know, depression is not due to a deficiency of brain serotonin.
• 7:28
  There's never been any proof of that. There's never been any evidence of that. It was just a stupid
• 7:32
  theory that someone made up to get grants. And meanwhile, is that not, is that not, sorry, that's
• 7:40
  fascinating. I mean, do people still not believe, I thought people still believe that in 2024?
• 7:45
  Well, sure they believe it because the drug companies promote that theory. So they can
• 7:50
  sell these placebo's that are called antidepressants, which are nothing but chemicals with side
• 7:55
  effects, but they're not true antidepressants. And they don't really outperform placebo's by any
• 8:00
  significant clinically meaningful effect. But to test it, we did a simple experiment that I
• 8:09
  think a fourth grader could understand at the VA hospital, we had a depression research unit.
• 8:15
  And I did a two year postdoctoral research fellowship in depression research after I finished
• 8:21
  my psychiatric residency. And we reasoned if depression is due to a deficiency of serotonin in
• 8:31
  the brain, which the claim was, then to raise brain serotonin will eliminate depression.
• 8:40
  And so we divided the depressed veterans on the research unit into two groups.
• 8:46
  And half of them, they both got milkshakes each day, but half of them, the milkshakes were
• 8:51
  released with massive doses of L-triptyphane, which is an essential amino acid that the body
• 8:58
  cat produced. You have to get it in your diet. And it goes from the stomach into the blood and
• 9:05
  into the brain, where it's instantly, enzymatically transformed into serotonin, the so-called
• 9:11
  happy molecule. And so we had both groups for a number of weeks with half, but it was double
• 9:20
  blind. So nobody knew who was getting the massive doses of L-triptyphane. And then we broke the
• 9:26
  code. We measured their depression levels every day. And after four or five weeks of this,
• 9:33
  there was no difference. Neither group had shown any improvement. And there was no
• 9:38
  difference in the depression levels in any other group. And so we published in the archives
• 9:45
  of general psychiatry, serotonin precursors in the treatment of depression was the name of the
• 9:51
  article. And we reported, well, that since massive influence increases in brain serotonin
• 10:00
  did nothing for depression. How can it be that depression is due to a deficiency of it?
• 10:05
  But people didn't care. It was a correct conclusion. But the drug companies make billions
• 10:12
  marketing these things called antidepressants, which aren't really antidepressants. If you believe
• 10:19
  something's going to help you, if someone says this pill is an antidepressant, a third, you have
• 10:24
  got a one-third chance of improving. And that's what you see with them. But you also see that if
• 10:29
  you give them a sugar pill and say it's a powerful new antidepressant. And so I said, I don't want
• 10:36
  this job at the university that I got a big grant from the government to build a serotonin
• 10:41
  research laboratory because we were doing cutting edge research. But I told my advisor, I said,
• 10:48
  I don't want to spend my life doing this because at the theories of fraudulent theory,
• 10:54
  and no one's being helped, you know, we've been giving these veterans on our research in
• 10:58
  massive doses of antidepressants. I've never seen one of them recover. We had prozac in the 1970s,
• 11:08
  before years before it came to market. It was called lily-110140 that we got all the new experimental
• 11:16
  antidepressants. But I could see it was wrong. And so I left the university. They pressured me to
• 11:26
  stay on the faculty. And they said, this is stupid. You're burning bridges. You're known all over
• 11:30
  the world for your expertise on brain serotonin. I said, well, that expertise isn't worth anything.
• 11:37
  And I want to find out how to cure people, how to help people who are depressed. So I started going
• 11:41
  to Dr. Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy seminar just because a colleague said he's got a new theory
• 11:49
  that depression is caused by negative thoughts. And I said, well, that's right. All my depressions
• 11:56
  have negative thoughts. But you can't cure depression by changing negative thoughts. And he said,
• 12:02
  well, why don't you go to a seminar then and prove it to yourself, try it on some of your patients,
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  and then as part of your research fellowship, and then you'll know that it doesn't work,
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  that it's a fraud. Because Beck looked like a fraud to me. He was a fast-talker guy,
• 12:17
  were these goofy looking bow ties. And so I went to his seminars and they started trying it on
• 12:25
  my patients just to prove to myself that it wouldn't work. And for the first time, they started
• 12:31
  turning the corner on their depressions. And I couldn't believe it. And I said, maybe there's
• 12:38
  something to this thing after all. And I treated more and more people and got really impressive
• 12:44
  results. And the patient said, keep going to that seminar, keep learning these techniques.
• 12:48
  And then that's when I left the university and said, I'll just develop my private practice and
• 12:53
  help develop this, what was then new cognitive therapy. And I wrote my book Feeling Good.
• 13:00
  And it just changed the whole trajectory of my life. And in those days, we cut the treatment time
• 13:07
  down from maybe a year or two for depression to maybe a month or two. And that seemed like
• 13:17
  a fantastic acceleration. But since then, I've done further refinements over the last 40 years,
• 13:23
  and now can do it for most people in just a two hour period of time.
• 13:29
  So the way that what you're saying is the way that most people understand depression, it's a
• 13:36
  con. It's not true. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's right. It's a con. It's not true.
• 13:42
  And it's worse than false theory because the false therapy theory is generally discarded by
• 13:47
  scientists, but a false theory that supports economic gain people stick with. So then
• 13:56
  to help me understand, if this, if the traditional definition of depression is not true,
• 14:01
  what actually causes it outside like negative thoughts, it's hard to put a finger on.
• 14:07
  How do you describe how do you quantify a negative thought? Well,
• 14:12
  because I have a paper about to come out on that because, you know, 2000 years ago,
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  epictetus said people are disturbed not by things, but by our views of them, our thoughts,
• 14:23
  our interpretations of events. And that's been debated for 2000 years. And of course,
• 14:29
  the cognitive therapist believe it's true. And other therapists say our theory is fraud. It's
• 14:36
  shabby. It's not not true. And so I recently did an experiment with about 2000 people and
• 14:42
  prove for the first time that negative thoughts do cause depression. And the way we measure that
• 14:49
  is that we ask people in therapy or in an experiment, you know, what are some of your
• 14:56
  self-critical thoughts like, you know, I'm not as good as I should be. That's a common one.
• 15:02
  How much do you believe that? Oh, I believe that 100 percent. Or I'm defective. A lot of depressed
• 15:07
  people have that thought. I believe that 100 percent. And then with our app, we use a lot of
• 15:15
  techniques that I've developed or learned to help people challenge the distortions in these negative
• 15:21
  thoughts and to lower their belief in them. And as they stop believing them, we can measure
• 15:29
  negative moods with 96 percent accuracy with new scales. And sure enough, as their negative
• 15:38
  thoughts go down, the negative feelings go down. And when they stop believing those negative thoughts,
• 15:43
  the negative feelings disappear completely. Is there anything that happens harmonically
• 15:50
  in this process or no? We are organic beings. And so the brain is constantly, it uses more energy
• 15:58
  than any other organ in the body, even more than muscles. And so there's, you know, billions of
• 16:06
  nerves and billions of circuits firing all the time in the brain. We're going to meet tomorrow
• 16:12
  with a group from Utah who have a clinic who have some of these multi-million dollar functional
• 16:21
  MRI brain imaging machines. And we're going to do some studies of people using our app and
• 16:30
  have their brain's image simultaneously. So we can see the very moment when the change in
• 16:35
  feelings comes exactly what's happening in the wiring in the brain. It's an experiment I've
• 16:42
  been wanting to do for 35 years. And I finally talked someone into doing it. And we're very excited
• 16:50
  about that. But in the therapy, it's a very practical thing. It's using a variety of techniques.
• 16:58
  There's really over a hundred of them now to help people crush these negative thoughts. Because
• 17:04
  the thing about the negative thoughts is they're really distorted. They're not true. And the moment
• 17:12
  you realize that your feelings will change. And I can give you an example of it if you want.
• 17:18
  Yeah, they could clearly share sure. One of the first patients that I tested this on when I was
• 17:24
  going to Beck's clinic. And I was still, you know, didn't know what I was doing really from a
• 17:30
  psychotherapy point of view. But she was referred to me from the intensive care unit of University
• 17:36
  of Pennsylvania Hospital. And because she had tried to kill herself an elderly woman.
• 17:42
  And I thought, well, this would be a good one to test this new, what was the new cognitive
• 17:50
  therapy in those days. And I'd been giving her pills and having her talk the way I was trained
• 17:58
  to do. And nothing had changed. I measured her depression every week. And she was stuck. And I
• 18:04
  said, there's this new thing I'm learning. Would you mind if I present your case at the conference?
• 18:09
  We have a weekly conference with about six or eight of us. And maybe I'll get some tips on,
• 18:15
  you know, we could try this new cognitive therapy. And she said, sure, you know, I'd love it if
• 18:20
  you do that. So I said, Dr. Beck is this elderly woman. And she tried to kill herself and almost
• 18:25
  succeeded. And what, how would I treat her with this based on negative thinking? And he says,
• 18:31
  well, that's easy. Just ask her what she was thinking. The moment she tried to kill herself.
• 18:37
  I said, oh, that makes sense. That's easy enough. So I went and I said, told her I said,
• 18:41
  Dr. Beck said, I'm supposed to ask you what you were telling yourself the moment you tried to kill
• 18:46
  yourself. And she said, oh, yeah, well, I was just telling myself I was a worthless human being
• 18:52
  because I've never accomplished anything in my life. I've never done anything worthwhile.
• 18:57
  And I said, well, why is that? What have you done in your life? She says, I've done nothing,
• 19:02
  but you know, clean people's floors and clean their houses and scrub their floors. And
• 19:10
  I've done that my entire life with my children ever since I was a young woman. So I don't,
• 19:16
  I don't have any fancy accomplishments. And so she said, so what am I supposed to do? And I
• 19:24
  said, I don't know. Let me go back to the class again and find out what I'm supposed to do next.
• 19:28
  So she said, fine, you know, tell me next week. And so I told Dr. Beck, he says, well, just
• 19:34
  ask her to use a technique called examine the evidence, tell her to make a list of three things she
• 19:40
  has accomplished. And I said, oh, that makes perfect sense. So I went back and she said, what did
• 19:46
  Dr. Beck say? And I said, well, he said that you're supposed to make a list of three things you
• 19:51
  have accomplished. And she said, well, that's what I told you last week. I've never accomplished anything.
• 19:58
  So what am I supposed to do? And I couldn't think of anything to say. So I said, well,
• 20:01
  maybe you could take it as a homework assignment and see if you could think of something. And you
• 20:06
  know, you could give me your list next week. So the next week I came back and I forgot about the
• 20:13
  homework assignment. And I did my things. You need any more pills and how are your symptoms? And
• 20:19
  and that type of thing. And halfway through the session, she said, aren't you going to ask me
• 20:24
  about my homework? And I said, oh, I forgot. We were able to think of anything. And she gave me a
• 20:30
  piece of paper with about 10 things on it. And number one, she said, I forgot that when I was a young
• 20:38
  woman, you know, my husband and all of our family died in the concentration camps. But I managed
• 20:46
  to smuggle our two boys out of out of Nazi Germany. And we made it back to the United States
• 20:57
  in New York. And I got a job
• 21:06
  cleaning people's houses. So we put a roof over our heads and I was able to put food on the table.
• 21:15
  And I thought, well, maybe that was an accomplishment of sorts. And my son just graduated number one in
• 21:23
  his class at the Harvard Business School. And I thought, well, maybe that was a good thing too.
• 21:31
  And then I forgot about the fact that I speak four foreign languages fluently. She had listed that.
• 21:38
  And then she said, and then number five was I was I'm a gourmet chef.
• 21:44
  And she had all this stuff listed. And I said, well, how do you reconcile this with your claim that
• 21:51
  you're a worthless human being who never accomplished anything worthwhile? And she says, Dr. Burns,
• 21:56
  I can't. It doesn't make sense. I have no idea how I got that idea in my head. I don't believe
• 22:03
  it anymore. And I said, how are you feeling now? She says, I'm suddenly feeling a whole lot
• 22:08
  better. She said, do you have some more of these techniques? And I said, we have to wait another
• 22:14
  week. That's the only one I've learned so far. But that was kind of how it went. And it lifted my
• 22:20
  heart so much to finally after spending seven years really in medical school, another seven years
• 22:27
  in residency and never learning one thing that would help people finally to have found ways
• 22:33
  of helping people and connecting with people and seeing people go from suicide or tears or total
• 22:41
  belief that they're worthless to joy and laughter. And that's kind of been the story of my life.
• 22:49
  And the reason we've created the app, the feeling great app is because I've probably trained
• 22:58
  40 or 50,000 therapists in my life. I've done workshops all over the United States and Canada.
• 23:07
  And I've discovered it's very difficult for human therapists to learn what I've developed.
• 23:13
  The techniques are great, but there's only a handful of therapists who can really
• 23:18
  do it at a high level of skill. And so I thought, well, I bet the computer would do it
• 23:24
  what I tell it to do. And you could learn how to do this. And so we've got AI doing it.
• 23:29
  And the AI is doing it almost as well, maybe even better than what I can do. And that's been my
• 23:37
  life, my dream to develop a scalable way of getting this out to everyone because I can't
• 23:43
  treat everyone by myself or that anyway. That's kind of the story of my life.
• 23:51
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• 28:15
  have you thought about what she said when she sort of came to the realization that she didn't
• 28:23
  understand how all these negative thoughts creeped in because that was that moment when all these
• 28:29
  negative thoughts creeped in when she felt worthless almost ended her life. So have you thought about
• 28:37
  for people listening, first of all, how do they stop this feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness
• 28:44
  even start to creep in? Where does that come from? Well, we don't know that. You know, it comes from
• 28:50
  negative thoughts, but we don't know why some people have more negative thoughts than others.
• 28:55
  And it's a genetic all the theories of causality are just pure speculation and we don't know the
• 29:03
  cause, but we do know that negative thoughts in the here and now are the cause. And we do know
• 29:09
  now have, you know, over a hundred techniques to help people crush the negative thoughts.
• 29:15
  But one way to think about it, when I was a teenager, I used to love magic and I go to
• 29:22
  magic stores and learn card tricks and it was really fun. And once I saw this book, it cost 25
• 29:30
  cents. It was 25 ways to hypnotize your friends. Well, that would be cool. So I bought this book and I
• 29:38
  took it home and I read it and I did exactly what it said with one of my friends and Lomba
• 29:44
  hold the guy went into a hypnotic trance. And I found about a third of my friends were extremely
• 29:52
  hypnotizable and we would do all these goofy things the kids do. And it was a lot of fun. It was
• 29:58
  probably irresponsible, but it was funny. And you know, it was like endlessly entertaining.
• 30:04
  But I've come to see depression and anxiety as well as like hypnotic trances. You're giving
• 30:12
  yourself messages that are not true and believing them with all of your heart, like I'm a loser.
• 30:19
  I'm not as good as I should be. I shouldn't have screwed up. I shouldn't have made this mistake
• 30:23
  when I was young. I shouldn't have this social anxiety. There's something wrong with me.
• 30:29
  And you're believing that with all of your heart. And what you don't realize is that those
• 30:34
  thoughts are all frauds. They're distorted. They've got what I put in my first book, Feeling Good,
• 30:41
  10 cognitive distortions like all or nothing thinking over generalization, like a young woman,
• 30:49
  a lovely young woman broke up with her boyfriend that they've been going together for two years.
• 30:55
  And then she says, Dr. Burns, does this mean I'm unlovable? And she was really devastated. And
• 31:03
  that's like an over generalization going from this relationship broke up. Then myself must be
• 31:10
  worthless. Myself must be unlovable and I'll be alone forever. And why human beings succumb to
• 31:19
  this kind of distorted thinking is totally weird and hard to understand. You might think about
• 31:29
  the book of Genesis and the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, how Adam and Eve were allowed
• 31:38
  to live in this garden of Eden where everything was provided and then they had to screw up and get
• 31:43
  themselves banned from that garden of Eden and to place where there's thorns and suffering.
• 31:49
  And to me, it's always been about as strange as that because the thoughts that caused the depression
• 31:56
  are always totally off base. That's the weird thing about it. If a loved one dies or a pet dies,
• 32:05
  and you say, I really love that person and you grieve, but that's not depression. That's a healthy,
• 32:11
  healthy grief. But when people are depressed, you're telling yourself you're no good or when people
• 32:16
  are anxious, they're telling themselves, oh man, if I say something stupid in a group of people,
• 32:22
  they'll all reject maybe the wordless bread and all of these things, fortune telling and mind
• 32:29
  reading and emotional reasoning and hidden should statements and self-blame. But I don't know
• 32:38
  all the answers, just enough of the answers to be able to have a lot of help available for people,
• 32:45
  maybe who are listening to the show right now and who are struggling and saying, I feel like
• 32:51
  what Dr. Burns is saying, I feel like I'm not good enough and I'm unhappy a lot and I see myself
• 32:58
  as inferior and adequate and kind of screwed up or I'm anxious all the time or I have all these
• 33:07
  thobias and fears or whatever it is. Well, I think a lot of people feel that and there's various
• 33:14
  degrees, I think that's very important to highlight. So you have people that are on the verge of
• 33:20
  suicide and people that feel like they have no value on this earth, but to a lesser degree,
• 33:26
  I think almost everybody who I know has some version of imposter syndrome. Oh yeah, right. Yeah,
• 33:32
  yeah, we must hang out with the same crowd. Unfortunately, I think we do.
• 33:39
  But it's true. It's very true. It doesn't have to be such an extreme example. I teach a free
• 33:45
  counseling class for psychotherapists at Stanford every week and we have it virtual now,
• 33:51
  so therapists can come for free from all over the world and get training and these new techniques.
• 33:57
  And did you ever see those New Yorker cartoons about how neurotic psychiatrists are?
• 34:03
  Yes, yeah. Yeah, well, it's true. And I think the people that we do live therapy with them,
• 34:11
  you know, as part of their training. And I post a lot of them on my podcast, the feeling good
• 34:18
  podcast, you can hear live, you know, examples of being people being treated in two hours and
• 34:25
  going from tears to joy. But I would say over 90 percent of the therapists in our
• 34:31
  Tuesday training group are convinced that they're not good enough and they struggle with insecurity
• 34:36
  and depression and anxiety. And so like you, I see it everywhere. And I think there are some
• 34:43
  people who are immune, my mother-in-law, I don't think has had an unhappy day in her life. And she's
• 34:51
  one of those people just born happy and she's joyful and positive all the time. But I,
• 34:59
  to me, that's pretty rare. I see people struggling and suffering.
• 35:05
  So you've actually written Feeling Good, which they sold over four million copies.
• 35:10
  But there's been research that has shown that just reading your book alone to a degree can
• 35:16
  treat depression. Is that correct? Yeah, that's right. And I didn't intend it to be a self-help book.
• 35:22
  I just wrote it when I was opening up my practice because the story like the woman who tried to
• 35:27
  commit suicide, I had so many of those. I just wanted to write a book to tell people there's a new
• 35:32
  approach and share my excitement. And I imagine patients could read it for homework when they're
• 35:40
  going to therapy. And then the therapist wouldn't have to teach them all the stuff in the book. They
• 35:44
  could just individualize the therapy. But the book was published in 1980. And in 1988,
• 35:53
  somebody said, if you've seen the headline in the New York Times. And I said, no, I don't read
• 35:58
  the New York Times. What's the headline says? Well, apparently they've been doing research on your
• 36:03
  book. And they found out just by reading the book, people overcome depression. And this guy from
• 36:09
  the University of Alabama was named for a scogan. He was a research psychologist. And he did
• 36:17
  experiments where when people would come to seeking treatment for depression, he said, we're going
• 36:24
  to have to put you on a waiting list for four weeks. But in the meanwhile, he gave half of
• 36:30
  my book Feeling Good. It was a random assignment type of study. And they said, read this book while
• 36:38
  you're on the waiting list. And then they reported that after four weeks, most of the people on
• 36:47
  the waiting list had improved so much that they said they no longer wanted or needed treatment.
• 36:54
  And so then he submitted that and some people from the National Institute of Mental Health said,
• 37:02
  well, this might have been a placebo effect. You have to do another study and randomly assign
• 37:08
  them to some other book and see if it's the same. So he did a second study and he gave half of the
• 37:14
  patients my book Feeling Good. And half of them, that book by Victor Frankl, Man Search for Meaning,
• 37:21
  which is some kind of classic book about someone who survived the concentration camps. And then,
• 37:30
  again, for four weeks. And then after four weeks, again, about two-thirds of the people who
• 37:36
  read Feeling Good had improved dramatically, but none of the people who read the other book had
• 37:41
  improved. So they approved it wasn't a placebo effect. And then he did eight more studies that were
• 37:48
  published in top psychology or medical journals, peer-reviewed. And he could just confirm that over and
• 37:55
  over again. But nobody too much cared because no one could make money off of that finding because
• 38:03
  the book no, you you lose people money. Yeah, you lose people money. Right. Because now if people
• 38:09
  are fixed, they don't have to pay for a therapist. They don't have to pay the drug companies. People
• 38:14
  are just fixed. Right. And then at the time you could buy the book Feeling Good for two dollars and
• 38:18
  40 Sam's wholesale. So you can now too. By the way, I've heard that people are buying it and
• 38:24
  use copies on Amazon for about that amount of money. And some of them are getting first edition
• 38:30
  hard covers for that. And which are rare. They found somebody found a load of undiscovered first
• 38:38
  edition hard cover feeling good. But anyway, that was part of what inspired me to create the feeling
• 38:46
  good app. And now we call it the Feeling Great app to to be able to get that effect out the same
• 38:53
  that was in my book Feeling Good, but more powerfully and to make it available to more people because
• 38:57
  we can do so much more now with, you know, video and interactions with the patient and AI and
• 39:05
  things like that. But it was a shock to me that because I never thought that people would be
• 39:10
  reading the book in the book itself would have such profound anti-depressant effects. But it did.
• 39:19
  You've worked with a lot of different systems and strategies now to help people have this massive
• 39:31
  change in their life, massive, massive shift from depressed to feeling happy, feeling good about
• 39:37
  themselves. Obviously, in the book, in the app, there's lots of different things that people can
• 39:45
  explore and learn about. But in your mind, at least, what are some of the most impactful or life
• 39:52
  changing strategies that you've thought through that you've tested on some of your patients that
• 39:56
  have worked exceptionally well? Well, the original thing and feeling good is still very helpful to
• 40:03
  people. And it seems so simple. A lot of patients refuse to do it because it doesn't seem fancy
• 40:09
  enough. You just write your negative thoughts down on a piece of paper. And then you look at my list
• 40:14
  of ten distortions for my book Feeling Good or any of my books or the app and find out what are
• 40:20
  the distortions in them. And it helps you see that the thought isn't really true in the way you
• 40:26
  thought it was. And I can give you a personal example of that when I was first working with
• 40:34
  doctor back. And I didn't know much. And I would present cases to him. And one day he criticized
• 40:42
  the way I dealt with a patient who hadn't been paying his bill in the clinic. And I can't
• 40:51
  remember what I did, but I said the wrong thing or whatever. And then I got on the train going
• 40:57
  home and I felt horribly depressed. And I said, well, you know, why are you depressed? I said,
• 41:06
  well, I'm thinking that I'm a worthless human being. They'll probably take away my medical
• 41:11
  license. I have nothing to offer. I have no talent as a psychiatrist. I'm a bad human being.
• 41:22
  And those thoughts seem terribly valid. And I was telling myself, David, you should just write
• 41:30
  them down like you have your patients write down the thoughts and then look at see if there's
• 41:34
  distortions in them. And then I told myself, oh no, this is real. My thoughts are true. And it was
• 41:41
  such a strange experience. It's like I had finally discovered that I was a terrible, bad human being.
• 41:49
  And it seemed like it was unarguable. Like it was just a fact of the universe. And I just felt
• 41:59
  terrible. And I had a six mile jogging trail over hills that I would run on. So I said, David,
• 42:07
  write down your negative thoughts. I said, no, that's a waste of time. I'll go out and jog and get
• 42:12
  my brain endorphins up. So I went out and ran this six mile loop. And the farther I ran, the more
• 42:20
  depressed I became. And it didn't do me a bit of good. And I finally went home and I told myself
• 42:28
  to say, David, you're being stubborn like your patients. Just take an effing piece of paper and
• 42:34
  write down your thoughts and see if there's any distortions in them. So I said, okay, but I
• 42:39
  not won't do any good. So I wrote them down. I'm a bad human being. I'm going to lose my medical
• 42:45
  license. I have no aptitude and psychiatry. I have no future in psychiatry, you know, things like
• 42:53
  that. And then I looked at those thoughts and I said, wait a minute. Is that true? And isn't that
• 43:02
  an example of all or nothing thinking? I said one wrong thing to one patient. Now I'm going to lose
• 43:06
  that. That's one of the distortions. That's one of the distortions. Yeah, all or nothing
• 43:11
  thinking. And I said, yeah, David, you've got a little all or nothing thinking going here, don't
• 43:15
  you? And then how about emotional reasoning? You know, I feel worthless. So I must be worthless
• 43:22
  by feelings must reflect reality. And then fortune telling, they're going to take away my medical
• 43:28
  license. David, how many times do they take away a medical license for somebody who talks to a
• 43:35
  patient about not paying their bill? That doesn't seem entirely realistic. And then I said, well,
• 43:41
  what could you sell? Tell yourself instead right down positive thoughts on the right edge of the
• 43:46
  paper and the left I had written down my negative thoughts. And I said, well, I could think about
• 43:51
  it like this. I could say, David, you're a beginner and you're entitled to make mistakes and learn
• 43:56
  from your mistakes. In fact, it's impossible to learn anything worthwhile without making mistakes.
• 44:04
  And it's maybe not even a bad deal because you're going to see this patient tomorrow.
• 44:10
  And you can talk it over with them and tell them that you felt ashamed and felt like you let
• 44:14
  them down and let's talk it over. Maybe he'll forgive you. And I immediately, my heart just
• 44:22
  jumped. I felt wonderful. I thought, my God, that really is a con. I've been conning myself.
• 44:28
  And the next day I saw the patient, I said, you know, Bill, yesterday, we talked about your bill.
• 44:35
  And my supervisor told me I didn't handle it sensitively or correctly at all.
• 44:40
  And I've been feeling ashamed and like I really let you down because I like you.
• 44:46
  And I believe that I hurt you. And I just wanted to tell you that. And my feeling really
• 44:53
  heard and angry and disappointed. And I want to hear what you have to say. And he talked and opened
• 44:58
  up. And at the end, he says, Dr. Burns, this is by far the best session we ever had. This is just
• 45:05
  your fantastic. I couldn't believe my ears. But that was, you know, like one powerful thing that
• 45:14
  still fruit today is, is if you, you know, when you're upset and you're beating up on yourself,
• 45:20
  write down your thoughts on a piece of paper and then take a look at the list of 10 distortions,
• 45:26
  all or nothing thinking over generalization, mental filtering, discounting the positive
• 45:31
  mind reading, fortune telling, magnification, should statements on and on. And that's a good
• 45:37
  first step. Now another thing that's that's really powerful, that's kind of new with my book,
• 45:43
  Feeling Great and the Feeling Great app is that I was taught as a doctor that negative feelings
• 45:54
  are bad at their mental disorders. So if you've been feeling down and guilty and shamed and
• 46:02
  adequate and worthless, that means you have a mental disorder called major depressive disorder.
• 46:09
  And I as an expert in supposed to fix your broken disorder, that's the whole way psychiatry is
• 46:16
  set up and clinical psychology as well. And what I've discovered is that all of your negative
• 46:24
  feelings do not result from what's wrong with you, but from what's right with you.
• 46:31
  And so I've developed a technique called positive reframing where I have, once I've had people
• 46:37
  record all their negative thoughts and feelings, I ask them, what are these negative thoughts and
• 46:43
  feelings show about you that's positive and awesome? How do these negative thoughts and feelings
• 46:50
  help you? And that patients have never heard that before. That's like some alien language or something.
• 46:58
  And then we began to come up with this list. We come up with 10 or 15 really beautiful things
• 47:05
  about them. And the genuine things. And then we say, well, I say like, sure, I've got techniques.
• 47:16
  I could probably carry you in today's session. I have no doubt that would be possible.
• 47:21
  It probably is going to happen, but given all these positives, I don't think we should do that.
• 47:27
  And then people say, well, please, please do that. You know, I know that shows beautiful
• 47:33
  things about me, but I'm hurting it. But that is called positive reframing and that it opens
• 47:38
  them up because they suddenly become proud of their suffering rather than ashamed. And that seems
• 47:44
  to open up the door to rapid recovery because after I do the positive reframing, that's usually
• 47:51
  just maybe 15 minutes to the finish line then. And then I use a technique called externalization
• 47:58
  of voices. They say, I'm going to become the negative view. And I want to see if you can
• 48:04
  defeat me. And one of the things you're telling yourself is that you're no good. And you're not
• 48:11
  good enough. And I'm going to be your negative self. And I've got the same name as you. I'm just
• 48:18
  like you, but I'm this voice in your head. And then I start saying, you know, you're no good.
• 48:23
  And I'll see if you can defeat me. And they try. And then if they can't, when a huge victory say,
• 48:30
  let's do a role reversal, I'll say, I'll show you how to crush that thought. And we do role reversals
• 48:35
  back and forth for two or three minutes until they get it. And they suddenly see through the thought
• 48:40
  and whamble, the negative thoughts typically go to zero at that point. And those are three of the
• 48:50
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• 49:22
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• 49:27
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  it. Visit inbound.com slash register to get your ticket today. If you look at sort of so obviously
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  drugs, I think everybody is I think generally people are comfortable with the idea that drugs are
• 51:53
  not the answer. However, a lot of people still default to I would say quote unquote traditional
• 52:00
  therapy. So you probably have a harder argument for people that are in traditional therapy for
• 52:06
  years at a time. They're going to have a hard time because I think I think that it's not a hard
• 52:10
  argument to say that drugs are not good and drug companies are property. But what would be in
• 52:17
  your mind the biggest difference outside of speed? Why does traditional therapy get it wrong?
• 52:24
  Well, the one thing in traditional therapy is they generally have this one thing that's supposed
• 52:32
  to be the answer. And so they keep doing that over and over again and it keeps not working.
• 52:38
  Whereas one of my philosophies is fail as fast as you can because the technique that works for
• 52:45
  Scott won't work for Sarah. And I've developed roughly 140 techniques for smashing negative
• 52:53
  thoughts and helping people change the way they think and feel. And so if something doesn't work,
• 52:59
  I just go on to the next thing. Another thing that traditional therapy has wrong is that they're
• 53:06
  trying to help people who are broken as I mentioned with the positive reframing. And that's the basic
• 53:14
  error of just about all of the so-called schools of therapy that when you try to help people,
• 53:24
  it kind of puts people on the defensive. And so I go in the opposite direction. I try to persuade
• 53:30
  people not to change. I become the voice of their subconscious mind. And that really helps me
• 53:37
  empathize with people at a deeper level. But I would say the main thing is when I was a resident,
• 53:44
  we never measured anything. We just talked to people endlessly and assumed that in six months
• 53:49
  or 18 months something good would happen. And it was bullshit because I never saw anything good happen.
• 53:55
  But when I, then I do it during my research years, we had to measure depression. And I saw how
• 54:02
  important that was to have an objective scale. And now I've developed really quick, highly accurate
• 54:09
  scales to measure not only depression, but suicidal urges, anxiety, anger, and even happiness
• 54:18
  in the here and now. And I measure that at the start and end of every therapy session. How
• 54:23
  depressed are you at this instant? And these tests are 95, 96% accurate. How suicidal are you?
• 54:31
  How anxious are you? How angry are you? How happy are you? And so I measured at the start and end
• 54:37
  every session. And that makes me accountable for getting change in today's session. And you know,
• 54:43
  we're going to measure it and we're going to see right away, did you do any good, David,
• 54:48
  or are you just bullshitting with this with this patient? And another thing is I also have the
• 54:55
  measure, rate me on empathy. How warm and caring was I? Did I understand how they were feeling
• 55:02
  inside? And the scale I've developed that they take at the end of the session is very, very
• 55:07
  sensitive to the tiniest errors. And most therapists, when they use the scale initially, they get
• 55:14
  failing grades from every patient at every session. And they discover that their empathy skills
• 55:20
  really are not good. And then that's what I do in my training group, my free training group,
• 55:25
  teach them how to correct these errors. But it's data driven. It's the science-based based on
• 55:33
  research that I've done on how people change and data driven. But three quarters of the therapists
• 55:40
  are more refused to use measurement scales. And as the Buddha said 2,000 years ago, they're screwed.
• 55:49
  Because human therapists do not know how your patients feel. They think they know
• 55:55
  but I've done research in the Stanford hospital to see how depressed does your therapist think
• 56:01
  you are? And then how depressed do you think you are? And there's virtually no correlation.
• 56:08
  They're complete lack of knowledge. But the therapists don't even know that their impressions
• 56:13
  aren't correct. And so you have to start measuring. And it's like, suppose I told you I want to start
• 56:22
  a new emergency route. And I want you to invest. But we're not going to use any of X-rays or
• 56:29
  blood pressure cuff or blood tests or anything like that. Would you invest?
• 56:35
  No, I definitely would. I would not invest. Yeah. And not to say anything. Would you spend money
• 56:40
  on a therapist who's not measuring anything? I wouldn't. So all the, I mean, so then you must have
• 56:47
  a massive issue with all these like telemedicine companies offering therapy and whatnot because that
• 56:53
  can't. Yeah. And I've wanted to do a head to head comparison with our app. But I don't think
• 56:59
  they would permit it. But you know, you can use our app for free. And if anyone wants to try it,
• 57:06
  it's not expensive. And if you can't afford it, you will give it to you for free.
• 57:11
  I'll link it in the, I'll link it in the show notes too. I'll link the app in the, yeah.
• 57:15
  Yeah. Yeah. Great. But the, we were going to go against, it's called better health, I think,
• 57:20
  because one of my colleagues checked it out and said it was just horrible. And I think you pay
• 57:24
  300 a month or something. They assign a therapist. And I said, well, we could randomly assign
• 57:29
  patients there or to our app and then publish the results. But then I realized that the better
• 57:36
  help, if they caught on to what we were doing, they would forbid it. And, and I think to be ethical,
• 57:43
  we'd have to towel the therapist there that we're doing research on them. And I kind of cooled
• 57:48
  off to that idea. But, but I, I would love to do that kind of comparison because the, the app,
• 57:58
  we, I recently did some research on the AI and the app is getting like a 50 to 60% reduction
• 58:08
  in seven negative feelings in new users. The first time they sit down with the AI chat.
• 58:17
  And if you look at all the world's published outcome studies with psychotherapy or anti-depressants,
• 58:23
  they don't get that in six to 12 months or even two year studies. So it's literally thousands of
• 58:30
  times more powerful. Do you have a sense of when you do these rapid change strategies,
• 58:39
  how will the day last? What's the longevity of these, of these strategies? When someone has recovered,
• 58:44
  I tell them the good news is the next few days will be the happiest days of your life. There's
• 58:50
  nothing better than recovering from depression. And here's the even better news. Within three days or
• 58:57
  three minutes or three hours or three weeks, all those negative thoughts and feelings are going to
• 59:02
  come back and you're going to crash horribly. And that's what we're hoping for. And then they say,
• 59:09
  well, why should we hope for that? I say because nobody's allowed to be happy all the time.
• 59:15
  That's impossible. But let's practice now what you're going to do when those negative thoughts
• 59:20
  come back. And I call it relapse prevention training. And here's what you're going to be telling
• 59:25
  yourself. And here's your negative thoughts. And then let's practice crushing those negative
• 59:32
  thoughts right now ahead of time. And I tape record that. So I tell them all the things are going
• 59:38
  to tell themselves when they have a relapse. They'll say, oh, this proves that the apt didn't work.
• 59:43
  Or this proves that the therapy didn't work. And this proves that I'm hopeless after all. And
• 59:47
  this proves I really am worthless. And I knew this would happen. And I'm screwed. And that type of
• 59:54
  thing. And then we just do roll, roll reverses blasting those thoughts out of the water.
• 1:00:01
  And in my clinical practice, when I was in private practice, I did this with every patient
• 1:00:08
  before I discharged them. And then I told them the last thing. And I said, I hope and pray that
• 1:00:13
  you will relapse. And they said, well, why is that? I said, because if you don't, I'm never going
• 1:00:18
  to see you again. And I've just gotten to know you. And I really feel close to you. And I'm proud of
• 1:00:23
  you. But if you ever relapse and need my help, you just, you just call me and I offer unlimited
• 1:00:30
  free tuneups for the rest of your life. That's how confident you are in the product,
• 1:00:34
  how confident you are in the system. But, but relapse is an issue. And it's not to be underestimated.
• 1:00:40
  In the Buddha knew that 2500 years ago. And one of the things he said is we all drift in and out
• 1:00:46
  of enlightenment. And when I first heard that, it sounded nonsensical. But now I know what it means.
• 1:00:53
  Because when you recover totally, it is enlightenment. It's just you feel close to people. You have
• 1:01:00
  no territory to defend. You have no self. You just feel tremendous joy. And then drifting out
• 1:01:07
  of enlightenment is when you go back into your own pattern of self-self-critical thinking.
• 1:01:12
  So the question that you raised is vitally important.
• 1:01:19
  Do you think there's, I mean, you've mentioned a few times, there's all these different
• 1:01:24
  forms of negative self-talk that people use. Is there one that is the most nefarious, the most
• 1:01:34
  malicious that you wish people would be aware of? Yeah, absolutely. And by the way,
• 1:01:40
  our AI guy just studied 27,000 negative thoughts of abusers and categorize them in different categories.
• 1:01:51
  And surprisingly, the most common, and we're going to have a meeting on this tomorrow and probably
• 1:01:55
  do a podcast on it. But the relationships is the most common one. Like I'm a bad father, I'm a
• 1:02:02
  failure as a husband, I'm a bad mother, things like that, or so and so rejected me, so I'll be
• 1:02:10
  alone forever. But the most dangerous one of all is hopelessness. And that's the idea that things
• 1:02:17
  will never change. And that's a hallmark of depression and a lot of anxious patients feel that
• 1:02:26
  way too. And my mentor, Aaron Beck, used to say that we can put up with anything as long as we
• 1:02:35
  see hope at the other light at the end of the tunnel. But when you think there's no escape from
• 1:02:40
  your suffering, that's when people turn to suicide. And so when people start saying, I'm worthless
• 1:02:49
  and I'll always be worthless and I'm hopeless and there's no treatment, no one's been able to
• 1:02:53
  help me and nothing will be able to help me. That's the most dangerous one of all because that's
• 1:02:59
  when people turn to suicide. And I've treated so many people who were hopeless. And if you hang
• 1:03:05
  in there and work with these new techniques, you can always transform the way you think and feel.
• 1:03:12
  The hopelessness is the worst, but it's also the cruelest fraud, fraud of all. But again,
• 1:03:20
  I could tell you stories we're probably running out of time of hopeless people in the technique
• 1:03:24
  that work for them. But there's always a way to get people back to joy and self-esteem.
• 1:03:32
  I asked Dr. Beck about it early in my career. I said, Dr. Beck, all my patients, they come to me,
• 1:03:37
  they tell me they're worthless and hopeless in some of them. I'm beginning to think, maybe it's true.
• 1:03:41
  What do you think? Because they're so persuasive to press people, they make a real case.
• 1:03:47
  They believe it, they believe it.
• 1:03:49
  Yeah, and you believe in it. And Dr. Beck says, well, David, you'll have to make your own decision
• 1:03:54
  about that. But I have never bought into the idea that anybody's hopeless and nobody's worthless.
• 1:04:04
  And that has really paid off for me, but you'll have to make your own decision. So I came to
• 1:04:09
  the same decision. So it was paid off for me too. But it's a great question because
• 1:04:17
  these thoughts, as I say, the hypnotic trance of horror that we're in when you're
• 1:04:23
  depressed or panicking or anxious is very, very real. And people can't imagine that their thoughts
• 1:04:30
  are not valid. And when I was feeling down, I thought, man, I've just made a discovery about
• 1:04:36
  myself. How could it have taken me to, you know, to be 30 years old before I realized I was
• 1:04:41
  a horrible human being? It was like a discovery. And it just seemed true, but it was pure malarkey.
• 1:04:47
  It's fascinating what we can convince ourselves. Very scary. Very scary. Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:54
  I'm going to put a whole bunch of links in the show notes. But where should people go and check
• 1:04:59
  out your work? Is there one website or? Yeah, there's two websites. They might be interested in.
• 1:05:05
  Well, first, you know, I have my own feeling good podcasts. And you can find them on my web
• 1:05:10
  page, which is feelinggood.com. And that's filled with free resources. I have a free depression class,
• 1:05:17
  a free anxiety class, a free relationship class. I've got 400 and some free podcasts and all kinds
• 1:05:26
  of free free resources in my books, which are pretty inexpensive. You know, you can link to Amazon,
• 1:05:33
  pick them up. The other thing would be the feeling great website, which is the website for
• 1:05:39
  feeling great app. And that's that's kind of a new exciting tool for anyone who's struggling with
• 1:05:46
  depression or anxiety. And you can go to just feelinggreat.com. It's easy to remember. And you can
• 1:05:54
  check out the app and either the app stores. You can download it and take a get a free ride
• 1:06:02
  for a week or two on it and see if you like it because it works really fast. And if you like it,
• 1:06:09
  you can get a your subscription to it and you can use it, you know, whenever you're feeling down.
• 1:06:16
  Or if you if you really like it, but can't afford it, just email us, contact me and we'll give it
• 1:06:22
  gladly, give it to you for free. And so those are some and then also I've got a lot of new things.
• 1:06:29
  I'm posting on the internet on both on the feeling great. I'm also doing new videos now and we have
• 1:06:37
  a little video to studio. So every week I go in and post cool little videos on different topics.
• 1:06:44
  I know. I saw I saw you. They're good. They're very good. Yeah. They're very good. Yes. Yeah. So we're
• 1:06:49
  having fun without without, too. I'm just trying to do my legacy, get as much stuff out there
• 1:06:56
  as I can in the time I've still got. I always like to see how you've looked at your own life,
• 1:07:01
  your own career, your own successes because you've had an incredible career. And if you were going
• 1:07:05
  to go back and you all the lessons that you've learned about success, about mindset, about happiness,
• 1:07:12
  about depression, but would be one lesson that you'd want to leave your children with.
• 1:07:17
  I think for anyone that to look at your negative thoughts when you're feeling down and anxious
• 1:07:25
  and panicky and take a piece of paper and write them down and see what you're telling yourself.
• 1:07:31
  You may be surprised that's can be the first step on a journey to enlightenment. And then another
• 1:07:36
  thing that I've learned I used to think like that attorney that I had to be perfect to have anyone
• 1:07:43
  love me or care about me or impress people. And what I found is that the world is far gentler
• 1:07:50
  and more loving than I had thought and that when you're just yourself and you're vulnerable and show
• 1:07:56
  people how wonderful they are that that that that that's a greater and better path to to love and
• 1:08:05
  intimacy than trying to impress people with yourself.