Latest / Radically Genuine / 216. I Was A Prisoner Of My Own Mind w/ Dr. Riz Ahmad

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216. I Was A Prisoner Of My Own Mind w/ Dr. Riz Ahmad · Radically Genuine

• 00:00:00:02 - 00:00:09:21 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I'm doctor Roger McFillin. I want to welcome Doctor Riz Ahmad back to the podcast. This is what our third or fourth time. 00:00:09:23 - 00:00:11:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think it's our third. 00:00:11:09 - 00:00:38:20 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Third time. Well, doctor, is is the clinical director at center for Integrative Behavioral Health, one of the most talented psychologists I have ever met. And what's interesting about Riz is, like any other person, he has a story. He has a history. I'm always curious. And so one of the questions I always ask when I'm in the process of interviewing a mental health clinician is I'm interested in what drove them to do this kind of work. 00:00:38:22 - 00:01:24:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Clearly, I'm looking for somebody who feels called to it that it's more than just work. It's a life purpose. For example. And everyone has this unique life story. And that story often drives people to a certain career or field. And I'm really interested in your story. We've spoken about it before. I'm really grateful for your willingness to share it on an episode, because I think it's going to allow us to get into deeper discussions about the human experience, overcoming struggle or suffering, and some really important concepts that I don't think are necessarily part of mainstream psychology or the therapy culture that exists in the United States. 00:01:24:02 - 00:01:33:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So welcome. Why don't we just start a little bit about we'll leave this open ended about what, what drove you to be a psychologist? 00:01:33:12 - 00:02:01:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD Now, I mean, first thankful for thankful for the opportunity to do this and have the conversation about it. I think it's one that I'd say I'm more nervous about having in the beginning. Initially, because I don't like the focus on me so much. I don't like the story being about me. There's a certain level of not wanting to have ego, a certain level of humility in those things. 00:02:01:11 - 00:02:38:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD And also not come across like this is some, experience that has to be followed in some kind of way, but to, so I told myself two things that I would try to do. One is to surrender to saying whatever comes to mind and feels important and settling into that which, I think settling into a podcast episode is just like a conversation that happens a little bit over, the time that and the second was to take up space, which is not something I typically do. 00:02:38:23 - 00:03:00:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD I can walk around and scare people because they don't know I entered the room at times. I always when I was hiking or walking in the woods, I always trying to disrupt nothing, you know, leave no stick cracked. And, you can't tell your story and not take up space. So, I will have an intention to take up space. 00:03:00:12 - 00:03:02:20 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So this is somewhat uncomfortable for you. 00:03:02:22 - 00:03:32:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD It is. And it hits on pieces of the story of what drove me into this in the first place. Because I would describe myself as if you've rewound to me in high school. It would have been an impossibility in my mind that my job would have been connecting with people relationally on a deeper level, and, speaking on a podcast or presenting in front of others of the things that have happened over the decades. 00:03:32:05 - 00:03:36:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD It would have been an impossibility in my mind that that ever would have been a thing. 00:03:36:12 - 00:03:40:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN But what was high school is like a. 00:03:40:05 - 00:04:06:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD High school raise was a nerd. High school res was an a nerd who was afraid of messing up. Afraid of not doing well enough. Very perfectionistic. High school was rules driven. And what's difficult about that is I was good at the game. So it makes it harder to challenge the rules. Very good student. 00:04:06:09 - 00:04:24:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD Could aced my classes without trying. This isn't a brag, but it's kind of thing where I remember in math class, we would do these preparations for tests the day before, and we'd be, like, doing jeopardy! And the teacher made me Alex Trebek, because anytime I was on a team, like, I would have the answer so quickly that, you know. 00:04:24:16 - 00:04:58:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD So it became embarrassing and became something that I didn't like. It made me different in some kind of way. It wasn't cool, even though my school tended to be one that was high achieving. So a lot of popular kids were also pretty bright. But it wasn't, it wasn't something where I felt like I could pick any 1 or 2 people and say they really knew who I was back then, or that I showed them much of anything of who I was besides who I thought I was supposed to be. 00:04:58:12 - 00:05:23:02 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So it's interesting how you frame it, because you're using words like this rule follower. There's these stories like they're perfectionistic. You're a high achiever. There's a degree of fear, about stepping outside kind of the limitations that have been provided to you. So I'm just innately curious, then, about how you learn this, maybe a little bit about your family background. 00:05:23:04 - 00:05:51:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. It's, it's a wandering path. I would say family background. So, first generation, my dad's from India. My mom's from Pakistan. Pakistan wasn't a country when my dad was born. It became a country during his lifetime. And he was part of the population that fled India to move to this new country. He lost his dad at a very early age. 00:05:51:05 - 00:06:22:11 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think he was nine, ten somewhere in there. His, dad was a shopkeeper for, kind of like a health shop. I Vedic medicine shop. He was a businessman. He, was looking to start businesses in other places and Calcutta and other places. And, there was some kind of, altercation with a business partner who he had trusted, who was embezzling money from the business he confronted. 00:06:22:11 - 00:06:38:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD And, his dad was shot and killed in the in that encounter. So my dad, who I've come to understand and appreciate a lot more, lived in a survivalist mentality for the vast majority of his life. 00:06:38:11 - 00:06:41:20 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Can I ask how old your dad was when his father got shot? 00:06:42:01 - 00:07:11:08 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think he was 9 or 10. Yeah. And he was one of four boys. The second oldest. And so now with the single mom, growing up in poverty, he worked, even at that time, while his dad was alive, he worked in that shop. And so he was always just trying to, survive. Like, socializing was not a priority. 00:07:11:10 - 00:07:37:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD Friendships were not a priority. Play was not a thing, in his life. So in some ways, I think my understanding of him is that he's such a thinker to survive. Like, he can plan things out to the nth degree and prepare for the, you know, all the possibilities of what could happen in his mind is like, an engineer's mind, which is what he became. 00:07:37:20 - 00:07:50:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD He became an electrical engineer. He created a blueprint for his life. He told me about this at one point, about when he was going to go to school, when he was going to get married, what he was going to do after he got that, he plotted it all out. 00:07:51:03 - 00:07:52:16 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Did he follow it? 00:07:52:18 - 00:08:17:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD He did, in large part. I think in large part he did follow it. But he kind of remains in that mentality some today. I grew up in the suburbs. No. Want for money? You know, we didn't overspend. There wasn't luxurious. But, you know, we didn't take vacations very often or that kind of thing, but we never had struggles. 00:08:17:05 - 00:08:23:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So when he came to the United States, what was the work that just his education and his work background. 00:08:23:16 - 00:08:59:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD So he went to Germany from Pakistan first, and there he did graduate school training. Learned how to be an electrical engineer, moved to Canada from there. Worked for this company called, Basco. And they worked on power plants. So he served in that capacity. Power plants across the US and Canada, I believe, and then moved to New York and worked for Con Edison, which still exists today, as a major power company in the New York metropolitan area. 00:08:59:22 - 00:09:16:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD And he has worked in places like safety inspections. So he's done that since until he retired, about a year and a half ago at the age of 83, 82, 83 is when he decided to retire. 00:09:16:24 - 00:09:19:06 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So did he love working? 00:09:19:08 - 00:09:41:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD He loved it. I think his mind is still working. He's kind of of the mindset that an idle mind is. And you shouldn't have idle time. So even when he wasn't working, he was doing things around the house, around the yard. He built an extension to the house at one point that largely he learned how to do everything for the wiring, the plumbing. 00:09:41:07 - 00:09:57:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD You know, as a kid, he would call on me, and I wish I'd actually spend more time learning those things. But I was a sultry teenager being forced into doing those things, so I never did. But, now makes such appreciation. And I'm impressed by all the things he was able to figure out and do meet him. 00:09:57:16 - 00:10:10:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD And, my mom did the roof thing on their first house themselves in Canada. No experience with it whatsoever. Just a real do what you need to do mentality. 00:10:11:01 - 00:10:29:05 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah. He used the words survivalist mentality. I mean, there's a lot of great things about who your dad is that have arisen out of the trauma of his own background. When you lose your father at such a young age, then you have to figure it out, right? You can't rely on another male in your in your life. You don't have that. 00:10:29:07 - 00:10:34:15 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So you really do have to learn self-reliance. And it seems like he became self-reliant. 00:10:34:17 - 00:10:53:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD He did. And that was his messaging throughout. The number one focus was schooling. On that was it. That was the only focus in our summers. We did we did math problems. During our summer, we had like two hours of work he would give us, and then he would leave, and you come back and you check it on weekends. 00:10:53:16 - 00:11:11:08 DR. RIZ AHMAD Same thing. You know, you do math and you do grammar. English. Those are the two main things he focused on at that time. And the most pride, the most interest was on like, grades and successes you're having in that area. That's really where all the energy went for me, my two older sisters. 00:11:11:10 - 00:11:13:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So that's how you were loved and praised? 00:11:13:20 - 00:11:15:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. Yeah. 00:11:15:04 - 00:11:36:18 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN She meant academic achievement because it really meant something to him. So he had this view, this viewpoint of what success looks like. And that's certainly the success that I think a lot of people who are in the United States are able to, to create for themselves is that success in life is through the educational system and high achievement in those areas. 00:11:36:21 - 00:12:11:11 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes. With the ultimate goal being your highest degree. Prestige, money, you know, and, there was an attention on the spiritual. Like, we read the Koran in Arabic, which means we had no idea what it was saying, and we never talked about what it meant or what it was saying. Similar, I think, to how sometimes the Torah can be read in Hebrew, and people might not understand the Hebrew, but they go through the process of learning to read a different language and doing so. 00:12:11:13 - 00:12:19:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD So we did that. But there really wasn't that much talked about. Spiritual, not much talked about emotional either. 00:12:19:23 - 00:12:21:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Very mind heavy. 00:12:21:10 - 00:12:23:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD Very, very mind heavy. 00:12:23:03 - 00:12:44:07 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And that's what's interesting. I think we learned this as psychologist as we get to observe a person's unique reality, if it's created in the mind, when it's created in the mind. There's stories and there's rules and there's judgments and there's comparisons and there's evaluations, and you get to experience that person fully by them sharing their inner worlds. 00:12:44:09 - 00:12:45:11 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes. 00:12:45:13 - 00:13:01:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And in a in a culture like the one you lived in your world, your understanding of reality, your understanding of self, your understanding of what it means to have a meaningful life is influenced by the story of your parents. 00:13:01:16 - 00:13:31:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes. Yeah. And that story is largely about logic. You know that was the tool to use for planning everything. So you know even up to very recently I was a planner and make lists about all kinds of things like very much enjoyed making lists including list of values and what you want your life to look like. But it was really this, stance of trying to mold life to be this particular way. 00:13:31:11 - 00:14:01:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD And at that time, many things were approached that way. So relationships approach through a rule based, format of interacting like trying to. So it's a little bit different usually than what I hear about most therapist stories. Origin stories. Right. So maybe this gives voice to someone who's not that. But most origin stories or things like I always had an easy time talking to people, and people came to me with their problems, and I just became the person people always wanted to talk to. 00:14:01:20 - 00:14:29:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD So I realized that I needed to, you know, I've become this, that was not at all me. I think that way of living, of being so in the mind is a form of disconnection. It doesn't use the heart very much. It doesn't use the soul very much. It's very much, logical, premeditated, predictable, quote unquote, but very detached from the reality of life being impermanent. 00:14:29:07 - 00:14:52:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD The art side of life, the creativity that is necessary in conversation, the improvization, the spontaneity. That stuff did not exist so much. So I try to approach conversations or being cool. And I think many people might do this at that age too. It's like a formula is like, this is how you're supposed to dress. This is how you're supposed to talk. 00:14:52:20 - 00:15:08:23 DR. RIZ AHMAD This is the first things you say in conversation. These are the later things you say. And then if something didn't go well because it was too rigid, well, then you got to go back to the drawing board and redesign what you were trying to do here. And it was all heady, heady, heady, way of just approaching life. 00:15:09:00 - 00:15:36:02 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Interesting. As we were walking down here to the studio, we were talking about Kobe Bryant, and I reflect back on this concept of being in flow. You know, flow is when really you're absence of thought at all. Your one step ahead of everything. Like when athletes are talking about being in flow, there's like Kobe Bryant would say, the the hoop would look like three times its size, right? 00:15:36:03 - 00:15:58:18 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN He could anticipate everyone's move like a split second ahead of time, just like completely in the flow of life. And what's always interesting is when people refer to this concept or even this brainwave state of being in flow is it's the lack of thought. That's thought slows us down. Thought is interference. It gets in the way. 00:15:58:20 - 00:16:19:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes. I had this experience during meditation this morning where I was sitting with them. It was a group. It was called Insight Dialog. It's actually this practice of interpersonal meditation that can happen online. And if people are interested in that, check it out. You can see it online in Google Inner Insight dialog. Created by Gregory Kramer. 00:16:19:23 - 00:17:00:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD Good book too. But, the topic, there's usually a prompt to contemplate. And what you do is there's, there's six guidelines that take you through a process of kind of, resting in yourself and finding that state where you can achieve some kind of flow and the guidelines take you through, you know, pausing and opening to what exists and allowing and, you know, getting to a place where you can trust things emerging and be on that edge and watching the present moment, you know, fade and arise, to like listening deeply to yourself and others and then and then communicating honestly in your in your speech and having the capacity to slow down 00:17:00:21 - 00:17:41:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD enough to discern the difference between just conditioned speech and true speech, like it's a it's a really beautiful process. It takes you through and then a practice, it takes you through. And the topic today was on the topic of impermanence, which fit very well. And, whether it's impermanence in this very moment and watching things drop and fade and come, come and arise, you know, like, where's the thought even come from watching it just start to form, to sensations obviously only exist in the moment and fading out to, to larger things, like when impermanence slaps you in the face, whether it's, a big life change or a relationship and, you know, 00:17:41:16 - 00:18:04:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD kids growing up on all the ways there, and I, I lost my dog recently, December 31st, and I had him for 17 years. You know, sometimes life smacks you with impermanence and you can't avoid it. But I noticed in, like, the subtle moments, of watching the present moment, my mind wanted to, like, grab on to every moment before it left. 00:18:04:04 - 00:18:30:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD Like I wanted to analyze each thought or, tap into every sensation that was happening simultaneously. And there's kind of a resistance to getting in the flow that can exist when it gets too heady, because the mind kind of latches onto things, it clings on to things. It wants more of what it wants to figure out or to hold onto. 00:18:30:04 - 00:18:40:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD And it may have some hesitations around uncertainty and not knowing what's about to come. So there might be some push back from that. 00:18:40:23 - 00:19:04:15 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So when you were a teenager and you're in that social world and you're trying to navigate that right, and you used the word nerd to describe yourself. What came easy to you was achievement in school. But the social aspect was a challenge. It was something that you were trying to apply these like mechanistic rules in order to achieve a connection. 00:19:04:17 - 00:19:13:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What did it feel like in your body, being in mind in the way that you were in mind? 00:19:13:10 - 00:19:40:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD Detached. I think if you asked me, I could have not even noticed my body most of the time. Disconnected. A little bit colder. Numb ish. It's kind of it's. If you've had the experience of, something like being into technology for so long, like, God forbid you watch all the Lord of the rings kind of simultaneously or something. 00:19:40:14 - 00:20:07:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD And it's 3 to 6 hours of being in that mode. And I used to be in that mode at that time of video games or something. Just, escapism really, and, you know, cheap stimulation. And when you leave that, you I almost felt like I didn't have a body, you know, it would be so head focused, so much thinking focused, so much activity going on that it's hard to focus anywhere else. 00:20:07:08 - 00:20:36:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD So even the environment, there could be big changes in the room won't even notice, you know, thirst, hunger, appetite, might not be noticed very much when it was around being being around other people. The main emotion, the main feeling would be fear. Fear of not knowing what to do, to do this right, or fear of what people are going to react like that proves not doing something right. 00:20:36:17 - 00:20:43:18 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So what was the effect on you, in high school, going into college, so forth? 00:20:43:20 - 00:21:02:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD Lonely, you know, most of the connection I got was through, sports. Honestly, sports are games because, you know, as a boy, that was a really easy way to connect, in the neighborhood we moved into, which is when I was. We moved in when I was five years old. That was a suburb in new Jersey. 00:21:02:12 - 00:21:31:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD We used to live in the Bronx. I was, Queens. I don't really remember much about it, but little, little snippets of images. When we moved into the neighborhood we were in, we were the only, non Caucasian family besides our direct neighbors who were African-American and, did experience some, some racism at the time. Moving in, we had, you Hindus written on our door in crayon, which ironically, I think was written by the only other nonwhite kid on the block. 00:21:31:21 - 00:21:53:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD So he chose a side, I suppose, in the matter. But the, the main way that I connected with kids on the block is because I was fast. I was not afraid to tackle anybody when we played football. I was quick, so they would want me on their team. So that was the main way I connected then. 00:21:53:09 - 00:22:21:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD And then that continued kind of a little bit throughout high school. You know, I started playing ultimate Frisbee or the track for a little while, and those teammates became the closest thing to friends. It was still very hard to have any meaningful conversations. But there is something to interactions and of having, of being around the same people for so long and doing similar things and having a team mindset and, you know, supporting each other. 00:22:21:16 - 00:22:30:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD So it was like the Nonverbals were there, without the deeper connections about life. 00:22:30:22 - 00:23:16:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Now, I'm thinking a lot about consciousness and the observer of the experience of the mind, observing the dream of the dreamer, you know, that space that you can get into in meditation where you're actually so separate from this idea of who who you are and that's a fascinating aspect of my development and human experience. And I'm really interested in how other people experience themselves and where there's attachment and where there's this separation and this ability to see yourself as separate from your mind. 00:23:16:05 - 00:23:33:01 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN How aware were you at this point in high school that you were thinking about yourself, where you could, like, see your own thinking and that you could be somewhat you are not your mind. You are separate than your mind or it was it something that really felt like you were those thoughts? 00:23:33:03 - 00:23:59:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD I was those thoughts. There was no separation and you know, I would use that in such a way for the things I have gravitated towards. So games, including video games that my mind is useful for that math science school, that mind is useful for that, not sports all the time. I think that's where I experience more of a sense of flow at time. 00:23:59:12 - 00:24:30:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD That's why I found peace and really, really enjoyed just putting my body into things and not having to think during those times. And then of course, when you overthink, that's when it would be terrible. I have a terrible game. So, those became opportunities for it, but no completely fuzed to believing everything my mind was saying. And through that feeling, everything that would come with, the rules being what they were. 00:24:30:16 - 00:24:57:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD So it was very much as a fear based way of living. Not much room for creativity, not much reflection. It was autopilot. And sometimes I think of it as I didn't actually wake up and be aware, be born until my 20s. You know, like up to that point, it feels very much mechanistic and, just doing what you're supposed to do. 00:24:57:03 - 00:25:16:21 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah. We have this diagnostic system that tries to reduce the human experience to a set of symptoms that you can push on a checklist when you've diagnosed yourself. Let's say you're a teenager today in this diagnostic world where people are attaching to these labels. Well, label, would you have thrown on yourself or. 00:25:16:23 - 00:25:33:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD Would have gotten multiple? I would have gotten social anxiety disorder. Probably generalized anxiety disorder. Maybe major depressive disorder. And then I think he could have also found this professional would have thrown me into, like, autism spectrum. 00:25:33:05 - 00:25:33:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Really? 00:25:34:02 - 00:26:05:11 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. Because that if you go through a checklist here, some of the things on the checklist, would go through an entire day of school without talking to anybody, would avoid eye contact quite often. Did have some sensory sensitivities. So I used to be really bothered by tags and certain textures. Theory of mind, empathy. So in my head that I wasn't really going to have much empathy for other people, it was just fear based kind of living. 00:26:05:13 - 00:26:08:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD So, yeah, throw me somewhere in the spectrum. 00:26:08:04 - 00:26:33:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah. Do you see the dangers of these things as like spectrum disorders? Right. There's this controversy that exists right now is people trying to determine to what degree is there an autism epidemic versus it is the expansion of the boundaries where people just throw out the label at this point. And so we have, increased amount of people who have a diagnosis of autism and that that's true. 00:26:33:23 - 00:27:01:17 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN We've seen the increase in the prevalence rate of autism because of the spectrum, boundaries being expanded. But we've also seen an increase in what's called profound, autism, where somebody is extremely impaired. And that's serious original condition. So this is a great example of this, where a very personable, likable adult at one point in development can easily attain a diagnosis. 00:27:01:17 - 00:27:26:13 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And we live in this world now where people believe that's where real, that it's a medical condition, that there's this disorder, and this just begins to define them as one of my greatest concerns is the limitations that can be placed on any one human by these creations. It becomes a consciousness that has consequences throughout the experience of who you are. 00:27:26:15 - 00:28:06:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What you did a great job of was describing you in your mind. And we are creators of our experience. We're projecting outward from what is within. So whatever is running in the mind, if you have no ability to separate yourself and see thoughts as just energies or a chatter or something, that's around this survivalist mentality that we're born into, this separate reality is if you don't see it as that, you are that, and then you begin to define yourself by what you are not only receiving from your environment, but your own understanding of it within an internal world. 00:28:06:14 - 00:28:34:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So I just completed a Substack series on brainwashing, mind control, and how easily we are influenced by our popular culture, for example, and being an alpha states and receiving from the media that we're really being shaped because, let's face it, most people look the same because we're told what we should wear, and then that can also advance itself to people. 00:28:34:02 - 00:29:19:01 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN If they're just following the rules, what they're ingesting, they begin to sound the same as well. I was talking to a client who is from a small liberal liberal arts college in our region, and I told her that she sounds just like everyone else who's in the college in the Liberal arts college in our region. We have a lot of colleges that she sounds just very similar, because I've noticed that that people sound very much the same based on the algorithm, based on what they're exposed to within their environment, that it's hard for me to really get to know somebody who they are at their core anymore, because the impact of technology, one in social 00:29:19:01 - 00:29:48:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN conditioning, and that's been a challenge for me in becoming a psychologist who wants to be effective outside of that story, because people are just so attached to that story that they believe their their own beliefs, their their, their own thoughts. They don't even know that this is something they absorbed, probably in an unconscious state, probably in an alpha brainwave state of being that we get into when we consume media. 00:29:48:24 - 00:30:08:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And the same thing can happen in our family environments because we're just constantly consuming other people's version of who we are and who we should be. And it becomes, while you're punished for this, you're praised for this. This is how your day is set up. This is what makes your parents happy. This is what this is what success is. 00:30:08:22 - 00:30:32:04 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN This is what matters. And this is what doesn't matter. You can read the Quran, but it doesn't matter if you understand the Quran. It's just you have to think about it or you have to do it because there's this ritual or this rule and you're not connected. There's no transcendence to anything that is greater than you. You're just following a series of rules to achieve some degree of praise and reward, and you're avoiding punishments. 00:30:32:06 - 00:30:57:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes, but I think the most insidious kind of conditioning is the conditioning. You don't know you have. And yeah, I think everyone at some point, hopefully, maybe not everyone, but I think in your childhood you at some point realize that your parents are people with flaws and they have their own, things they're bringing into the way they parent and the way your home is set up. 00:30:57:06 - 00:31:17:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD And structured, and there's a ability to step back from that and see it for what it is. For me, that wasn't until the 20s, and there's a lot of things to have gratitude for and a lot of things to appreciate, and a lot of things that were very different than many other homes and why other people were acting the way they were, and I was acting the way I was. 00:31:17:17 - 00:31:42:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD But the, the, the conditioning and the scripting and the rules and the non-original thought, I mean, that that happens from the micro to the macro, right? It happens. I mean, just recently I had a conversation with, with my mom, and we try to talk every, every week and check in and sometimes the conversations, you know, I'd be like, not looking forward to it. 00:31:42:22 - 00:32:01:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD And I was like, why am I not looking forward to it? And the reason I'm not looking forward to is because I know exactly how it's going to go. I know exactly what she's going to say. I know exactly what I'm going to say to get through that conversation. It's going to be basic, basic things, without substance. 00:32:02:01 - 00:32:25:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD And so I decided to do it differently. And I decided when she said the basic things and tried to move on. And, you know, I asked her better day and she gives me nothing to, to push limits and be like, you know, if we talk like this when I actually saying anything meaningful, like, I actually want to know what's on your mind or on your heart, like what actually is going on. 00:32:26:01 - 00:32:49:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD And, and I shared a lot more because I can't just do that one way about what's actually going on for me. Things that, you know, I hadn't wanted to tell her because I felt like her response would be rote and unhelpful or scripted. And then when she did say something scripted, I would challenge her to actually take a moment and hear what I'm saying, you know, more deeply. 00:32:49:03 - 00:33:17:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD But, man, it's hard to break through that conditioning. I get kept pulling because back into this rote way of speaking and interacting. But you can feel it every time it moves in that direction. There's kind of like a compass, I feel like, or at least a felt sense that this is no longer real conversation anymore. This is shifting into what we always say or do or avoid, just this or that. 00:33:18:01 - 00:33:41:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD And then there's opportunities like course correct. Along the way, there's I pretend to be mindful of that and then make choices at a younger age. I didn't have the ability to be mindful of that or make choices. I was just following along with what it was supposed to be, which led down the road to isolation and lack of meaning or feeling depressed, which I think is not that unusual. 00:33:41:07 - 00:34:11:19 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Do you feel like it's getting worse culturally? It to me, what I see is the the influx of technology and phones is leading to greater disconnect and, less real authentic connection. And I think kids today, unfortunately, this generation, generation Z, they don't learn the same degree of social skills that, you would have in an environments where you didn't have that phone to turn to. 00:34:11:19 - 00:34:47:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So me getting to observe it not only as a psychologist, but as a parent is even when the kids are together, they're still interacting with their phone every chance that they can get. And so you do see this more scripted, very predictable way of interacting socially. And there are these rules in the way that you navigate through text messages and use of social media, and certainly things like how you like a message or how you comment, how long you have to wait before you return a text message. 00:34:47:10 - 00:34:59:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN There's all these new rules I had to learn, because if you are acting outside of those boundaries, you're communicating something and they're learning these rules and it becomes just a just. 00:34:59:24 - 00:35:14:16 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Loss of authenticity and just being able to just be in that flow as we were talking about, there's always this overthinking that these kids are in. So they don't, you know, present as weird or different. 00:35:14:18 - 00:35:48:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think, like a lot of things, it's become more polarized because all those things exist. So if someone is falling into a process where they're just going to go along with that, then it will take them there faster than I think would have happened, before all the technology. So for me to go into this rote, scripted way of interacting that happens slowly over in-person conversations, still, and even testing the waters took time to do. 00:35:49:01 - 00:36:11:13 DR. RIZ AHMAD If it was social media. I think I would have reached those destinations faster. It just would have hit harder. It would have come faster. It would have, I think likely been an even more powerful sense of isolation than it even was. So I think that how people respond to that can now go two different ways. 00:36:11:15 - 00:36:44:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD There are because I will take you to, I think depression isolation faster and then depression isolation is either a place you get stuck or an opportunity. And there are some teens I've met with, you know, through what I get to do at the practice who are, extremely creative and eyes wide open, who seem like, almost like they've matured faster because they've experienced the worst of what technology or naive relationships can bring to them. 00:36:44:03 - 00:37:08:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD So rejection for these overly simplified things, like not responding to a text message within 30 minutes, gets you rejected by somebody completely. Or being part of a social group where it's all so superficial. They're 12, 13 years old, and they're so focused on finding the love of their life, and they meet someone for a week, an hour talking about how they're going to spend the rest of their life together. 00:37:08:01 - 00:37:38:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD And, and they're experiencing how fake that feels. And, and identifying it as something that's making them feel isolated and alone. So the people who can recognize that and do something with that, I feel like are, wiser than those who would not have experienced that at that age. The people who get stuck in it, the people who are coming in often feeling depressed, isolated, and even more anxious because it's just like it's all fuel for whichever direction you're going to take. 00:37:38:01 - 00:37:41:08 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's going to happen in an accelerated pace. 00:37:41:10 - 00:37:56:17 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So let's get back to your story. Eventually you become a psychologist, but we have all this period of time from the anxious rule of following rigid ribs to somebody who actually wants to become a psychologist. Fill in the gaps for us. 00:37:56:19 - 00:38:30:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. So, I think there were little windows in college, this, more meaningful connection. I think it was through various things. Sometimes it would be through, like, harder times, like being in a relationship and a breakup and things like that. And there's just more raw, emotion experience. So rules fall apart. You get to actually experience things, and you have people who step in and help you in those times, and you feel real connection. 00:38:30:18 - 00:39:02:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD Unfortunately, and I would not recommend this, alcohol gave little glimmers, you know, like, the mind turns off with something that has that effect on you. And all of a sudden, I could be acting freely at a party or a social event, like it's, social lubricant in those ways. So in the short term, it would do things like, not just make me a lot of fun, but take down the barriers where I could say whatever I wanted to say in those times that I was otherwise rule driven and held back from doing or saying. 00:39:02:24 - 00:39:25:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD So I can remember moments like, when my captain in the Frisbee team, who I really respected, who at one point during a party where I was just in this not really in my correct state or not in my normal state of mind, said something like, you know what? You're actually pretty cool when people can hear you and, and and so little moments like that, I was like, this is possible. 00:39:25:02 - 00:39:35:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's just, how do I get to a place where this is consistently possible in a meaningful way, where it's not under the influence of something to try to have my mind quieter and not controlled? 00:39:35:07 - 00:39:53:18 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So you start thinking about your own experience now? Yeah, you're more of a observer. Okay. When I'm relaxed and having some drinks, I present differently and I get a different reward socially, I get a different reaction from people around me. 00:39:53:19 - 00:40:20:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes. And then it's more it became more, how do I get there? How do I have that happen? Which of course, the mind likes to take. And then it started making rules for how to get to that place, which was not the helpful way to go. And it's at some point in there. So following along that road, what was happening in career life and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. 00:40:20:08 - 00:40:40:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD And there became a point at which it really was a fork in the road in questioning, are you going to live your life according to the rules, or are you going to decide differently and go into the uncertain? And for me, that came, not long after college, college. I honestly followed the same path of studying when I thought I was supposed to study. 00:40:40:08 - 00:40:42:04 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What were you supposed to study? 00:40:42:06 - 00:40:53:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD My major was in biophysics. I went in as a chemistry major, did a little bit of environmental science, but everything was math, science, math, science. Because that's what you're good at. 00:40:53:01 - 00:40:55:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What did your parents want you to do? 00:40:55:05 - 00:41:22:11 DR. RIZ AHMAD Medical doctor? And after college, I kept going down that road, so I took the mCAT. The mCAT, if you don't know, is the med school admission exam, which takes months to study for. It's quite rigorous. It's quite intense. It's difficult. It includes chemistry, includes biology, includes English. And now includes the psychological sciences. 00:41:22:11 - 00:41:47:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD But there's so much information in there. And, so I dedicated, you know, a summer plus to taking all the prep classes and work and doing nothing but, you know, 6 to 8 hours a day of just studying that, scored well on it. I could have gone to a lot of medical schools, with the score. I got, which I wasn't that excited by scoring. 00:41:47:19 - 00:41:48:23 DR. RIZ AHMAD Well, on it. 00:41:49:00 - 00:42:13:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah. So I want to get a sense of who you are outside of these rules, because I'm a believer in a soul, that a spirit exists within us. And, consciousness exists outside of just this physical body. I believe in an eternal soul. Be very clear about that. And that soul desires experiences here in including a life path and a life direction. 00:42:13:02 - 00:42:38:11 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And when people are off that path, they feel it. You experience it. Some of the labels that we have psychiatrically sometimes I'll just view from that lens like you are off your path. That's why you're in despair. Or there's just low energy where there's anxiety for life just doesn't have the same meaning. I think that's purposeful. It's designed to put you back on your path. 00:42:38:17 - 00:42:45:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So it's interesting to me that you put on all that work. Then you get the good score and then your reaction. 00:42:45:12 - 00:42:46:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's disappointment. 00:42:46:23 - 00:42:56:13 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN As if you didn't want to get a good score, and you could just turn a different direction and maybe act outside what your parents wanted for you. 00:42:56:19 - 00:43:28:00 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah, yeah. And I think there, even if I reflect before that time, there's still some awareness of values that mattered to me. You know, I was always interested in obviously connection. Otherwise I wouldn't have felt so bad to be disconnected from people around me. Obviously. Love, you know, that goes with connection. I would say I was a bit of a sap into, like, romantic kind of things. 00:43:28:02 - 00:43:52:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD Very much about just being that connected to someone. That level of intimacy was always interesting to me. I was something I knew I wanted, and later I found that to be, Catholic teaching, in some way, like sharing something, you know, watching someone get to experience something for the first time that you introduced to them. 00:43:52:09 - 00:44:10:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD That was something that was always even from the simple to introducing a movie or a book to someone who never heard or read of it and getting their thoughts to, didn't matter what I was teaching. I taught mCAT prep classes after I took the course because I was like, at least I'll use this to make money somehow or make up for all the time. 00:44:10:20 - 00:44:32:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD And energy I put into this. So I taught physics at, chemistry. I, helped design their psychological science curriculum at one point and, you know, just went down that road. And the fulfilling part was the students and getting their act with the students, the subject material, it was, you know, it was what it was. 00:44:32:22 - 00:44:34:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So take us from there. 00:44:34:24 - 00:44:36:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD So, 00:44:36:12 - 00:44:38:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Just to apply to med school? 00:44:38:14 - 00:44:51:08 DR. RIZ AHMAD No, I stopped right then. I did the mCAT, and it was if you apply to medical school, you are jumping off the dock into that water. And every cell in me was not convinced that that was the way to go. 00:44:51:09 - 00:44:53:23 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What was your parent's reaction to that? 00:44:54:00 - 00:45:13:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD Unhappy. They thought I would be making a mistake, but the way I sugarcoated it or softened it is that I'm just going to take some time to figure out what I want to do, even though I think I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be necessarily heading that direction. Not positive, because at one point psychiatry was even on my radar as what to do later on. 00:45:13:16 - 00:45:36:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD But, I stepped away and, what came up was probably one of the biggest changes I'm made. So leap of Faith, which was, move out of the area in which he lives and go somewhere completely different. And I found a job. It was with this company called Epic Systems, which is based in, Wisconsin outside of Madison. 00:45:36:05 - 00:45:58:19 DR. RIZ AHMAD And they designed, electronics, medical record systems. And it was during that time where, Obama had it that everyone had to shift to having electronic medical record systems. So it was booming. They were hiring. It was an opportunity. They were hiring straight out of college, partly because there was a lot of work involved. There was a lot of travel involved. 00:45:58:20 - 00:46:16:23 DR. RIZ AHMAD You know, people who don't have established families aren't later in their careers who are, bright coming out of school were like a good fit for the job. And, you know, I could pass it off as it's close enough to medical and electronic medical records. So really, checking things out and seeing if I want to be in a hospital or be a doctor or not. 00:46:17:00 - 00:46:45:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD So I did, and I did that for, two and a half years in Madison. My job was to go to hospitals and have some of the conversations with people there about how they want to design the system, which was a good opportunity to face social anxieties, because I often had to speak in front of, you know, a lot of professionals, medical doctors and whatnot about, software, how it worked, how they could design it, you know, with meetings that kind of thing. 00:46:45:18 - 00:47:04:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD At one point, we had a user conference where it was thousands of people who had to present something in front of which I never done before. So it was it was dipping into that kind of exposure to for years, after two and a half years. I mean, there were the good things that happened in those two and a half years. 00:47:04:17 - 00:47:24:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD The things I'm grateful for is, the people I met, started to, you know, come down and crack through the scripted stuff and have connections with the people. I, I, someone I lived with who then I got introduced to her friends. And through that whole network, we kind of became a group of five of us that did many things together. 00:47:24:16 - 00:47:38:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD And it still wasn't like a ton of heart to hearts or closeness, but it was much more so, and it has developed even more so over time then. So just seeing like, more and more of those windows of what's possible with that. So that was happening in the outside. 00:47:38:21 - 00:47:43:20 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN You had to take some risks to be able to overcome your social anxiety. 00:47:43:22 - 00:48:08:04 DR. RIZ AHMAD Definitely. Yeah. There were a lot of risks. There's, there's being in those situations. And then there's what you're paying attention to in those situations. I found those to be two different things. So I could I could take the risk of saying yes to doing something that scared me. I learned to do that. I did, and I chose to do an oral presentations class in college. 00:48:08:06 - 00:48:35:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD The class met at 8 p.m., which means from the time I woke up to 8 p.m., I was thinking about that class that entire day. But, you know, I did have a mindset of if something scares you, got to do it to get better at it in some way. You know, kind of hoping that on the other end of it, there would be alleviation from all this fear and a chance to connect, you know, like, well, be possible. 00:48:35:20 - 00:48:50:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD So I did, but the thing I had to learn, too, is where is my attention when I'm doing that? Because when I was doing it and I was just in my head, then I would just be speaking in a scripted, rehearsed way, just in a different setting. 00:48:50:17 - 00:49:11:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting because what pops into my mind right now is how the medical model, the biomedical model of these conditions, has influenced an entire culture. When I was even working in schools, probably around the time that you were in college and in Madison working for epic, was that someone, a 12 year old would get a diagnosis? 00:49:11:03 - 00:49:52:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN This person has social anxiety disorder, you know, in a similar way as this person has some medical condition that impairs their ability to do perform well in school, like diabetes or something. And they would develop plans that would support avoidance. They didn't have to do like public speaking situations. They'd be prescribed a drug to blunt the feeling of anxiety, which at the time, when I was in school and what was just certainly innately understood by me at all times, was that's not how you deal with fear. 00:49:52:02 - 00:50:21:06 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN You deal with fear by facing it and being able to overcome it. So then it's not fear provoking anymore. And I was just so shocked by what was happening in our system that they were intervening. The medical professionals and even some therapists, lots of therapists actually were intervening in ways that was going to create a prolonged struggle with fear, turning it into a chronic condition. 00:50:21:08 - 00:50:47:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And they even communicated it that way. It's as if this person's own struggle with fear was a biochemical abnormality, and they were to manage this condition through further avoidance, techniques and interventions, including medically. And they communicated. And this is back to like what we create in consciousness and the limitations that are provided. This person then would develop thinking the experience of fear is wrong. 00:50:47:17 - 00:51:05:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN The experience of anxiety is it's different for me than it is for the other person and me as a school counselor working in a school, of course, you would just see that a lot of people were socially anxious. It's quite normal for different age ranges, but everyone had this different way of relating to it or responding to it. 00:51:05:13 - 00:51:34:09 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Some didn't even have the idea of it in their minds because they just didn't. They didn't fuze with it or culturally it wasn't discussed in that way. So it's fascinating how these messages really do impact large groups of people. And so one of the things that, you know, that I'm speaking out against something that you yourself really do oppose is some of these standard, we'll call them medical treatments or psychological treatments that support further avoidance. 00:51:34:09 - 00:51:39:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And label this person with these conditions actually makes them much worse. 00:51:39:24 - 00:52:13:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. I mean, I could think of how those traps would have affected me back then if I'd been diagnosed with autism. At that time in life especially, then, I would just think of myself as at that time, I would've thought myself just the weird kid. Something wrong with me? I'm incapable, then, of having relationships. Probably would have sought out people with the same diagnosis and label. 00:52:13:11 - 00:52:38:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD Probably would have connected around that diagnosis and label. I think I would have just delve deeper into things like let go of even trying to have connections, just delve deeper into video games or something else, which would have been depressing in its own right. But that's not who I am. I would have put a ceiling on what I thought I could do. 00:52:38:16 - 00:52:53:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I think it's a form of child abuse, to be honest with you, of what we're doing to kids from that model. I mean, it's so limiting. It's so wrong. It's not even science based. And it creates harm to me. It meets the definition of child abuse. 00:52:53:16 - 00:53:18:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. Child abuse can happen with good intentions. You know, even if there are, which some of those people might be. Don't want someone to feel pain. But, you know, when it comes to social anxiety, even. And deal with this now with some clients where they want to take something like a beta blocker, like a panel or something to just, eliminate some of the physiological sensation. 00:53:18:17 - 00:53:44:00 DR. RIZ AHMAD And maybe it does actually make them feel calmer while doing something like that. I don't think going back, I would even want that. Of course not. You know, even like, because it's you wouldn't get a chance, or at least I wouldn't have had a chance to learn how much my thinking is affecting what I'm feeling, how much me paying attention to it in that way is controlling not just me in those social situations, but me in my entire life. 00:53:44:02 - 00:54:13:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD Even learning lessons like how to trust spontaneity and how to let go of trying to control everything. Well, if the physiological sensation is removed, then I wouldn't have that lesson to be learned from it. Yeah, I was thinking about this as, you know, when we talked about the idea of telling stories and things, and I brought up, like, social anxiety being a big part of what I experienced, that it's so much bigger than that. 00:54:13:20 - 00:54:55:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD So even doing exposures as, like, face the fear, it's not just about facing the fear. So you can, you know, buy something from a store and talk to the cashier. It's me. Being in that mindset is connected to being so fuzed with a way of thinking and not knowing how to separate is so much about living for others and others expectations and rules and letting that dictate or control what I was doing, was about being uncomfortable with even being in uncertainty or in the moment as it is. 00:54:55:24 - 00:55:18:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD And if you can't learn to be comfortable with being in whatever moment, there's a whole host of problems that will come from that, and I won't have experiences that were new to me or spontaneous, or step into something unknown, or do something that scares me, like then that filters into all, all those places. So it's almost like. 00:55:18:18 - 00:55:28:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD If you snip off one, you kill all the other branches of learning to. 00:55:28:05 - 00:55:58:17 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah, that's an interesting way of putting it. We tend to, in this psychological treatment culture that exposure is actually viewed from the way that you were discussing it. Like, can you order at a restaurant? Can you are you able to get through a oral exam or a presentation in school and you made up a good you made a very good point is that you can enter in those things and it's can still be very rehearsed. 00:55:58:19 - 00:56:26:04 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN The mind can run the show, make it very predictable for you. You can be in control of the entire situation and never really be fully exposed to that fear that you've been avoiding and controlling. And it's not that applicable to real life, because in real life you meet somebody new, you want to actually engage in a relationship. You're going to be in an interview process. 00:56:26:04 - 00:56:50:04 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN All these things are not scripted, and you have to be able to be in that flow and be really connected to who you are and answer these questions or engage with somebody, often authentically, even if feelings of anxiety come up, which is quite normal for any situation where there is performance. 00:56:50:06 - 00:57:29:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yes. I think that's where like a process of, being able to relate to one's internal experience differently, like a whole paradigm shift in that that's the big change. The, you know, the, the behavioral stuff of being able to be in a situation that's an outcome of that change. So now I feel like, if you throw me into a room of people, I don't know, and they're all, you know, high performing professionals in some area, and anxiety came up for me, like, Will, I know what to say. 00:57:29:17 - 00:57:49:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD Will I sound stupid? Well, yada yada yada. There's a process I trust that makes me confident that I could be in any situation around any people and and not really control or consume my attention or emotion. Like it would be. It would be being able to pause. It would be being able to observe those stories going on. 00:57:49:22 - 00:58:14:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD It would be separating from them some. It would be returning to body and being able to breathe my way and experience what's here now. It would be allowing all that to occur. It would be kind of, getting into curiosity, like that, there just be a path to be able to follow that I could lean on in that situation. 00:58:14:04 - 00:58:22:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD That just gives some confidence that I could roll with it and see what happens. Then again, it's not something I would have said would be a possibility. 00:58:22:22 - 00:58:24:05 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Let's talk about a paradigm shift. 00:58:24:11 - 00:58:27:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. 00:58:27:08 - 00:58:38:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN In the materialist paradigm or separate. So your anxiety, your fear. 00:58:38:16 - 00:58:44:23 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Is unrelated to anybody else or anything else around you. 00:58:45:00 - 00:59:20:23 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And in a post material science world, one in which consciousness is expanding to understand the interconnectedness of all things that you and I right here are actually immersed in a field, an energetic field where we influence each other. So one of the things that I've found interesting is to understand that we impact others, and others impact us. 00:59:21:00 - 00:59:47:24 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Even when it's nonverbal, like when it's just energetic. So some people are very sensitive, interpersonally sensitive, for example, can pick up on the emotions and feelings and thoughts of another person. And that can be quite challenging in like larger crowds or certain type of environments, because it can be overwhelming with that type of energy. They also can be very hyper vigilant and focus to shifts in that person's energy. 00:59:48:01 - 01:00:19:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And without them learning how to manage it, they take it on as their own. And that's the challenge and the illusion of separation. And I say illusion because it is an illusion that from a like a meta metaphysical perspective and, even from physics like quantum physics and energy expression and vibration and the fact that even though we're sitting here and we have our five senses, there is energy that exists outside these five senses. 01:00:19:08 - 01:00:47:04 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Radio waves are an example. Electromagnetic fields. But we are a body electric. We are emitting that field and we think everything's about ourselves. So our mind is our mind. Our emotional reactions are our emotional reactions, as if we don't have any capacity to pick up on the experience of others. But it still seeps into popular culture. When we talk about vibes like, oh, we just vibed, right? 01:00:47:04 - 01:00:48:20 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN We felt connected and. 01:00:48:22 - 01:00:50:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD We. 01:00:50:04 - 01:01:05:13 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Talk about that, but don't fully understand. What that means is that you may enter into a situation with somebody and your intuition and your body is kind of giving you information, and it's saying, don't be here right now. 01:01:05:15 - 01:01:06:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah, right. 01:01:06:11 - 01:01:33:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And you you have to learn that without pathologizing it. No, that's just my anxiety. And this is where cognitive behavioral therapy has problems because it assumes that all situations are independent. You are independent. And anything that happens within you is you. And that's not necessarily true. We have an intuition and we, have previous learning and we are energetic beings. 01:01:33:00 - 01:01:44:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So we are going to be experiencing other people. And not everyone's a match, not every situation you're supposed to stay in. How do we reconcile that as we evolve this field? 01:01:44:05 - 01:02:22:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD Well, I think there's two kinds of arrogance I've noticed in the field. One kind of arrogance is the arrogance of much of psychiatry, which is overstating with certainty what is going on for someone when it's not based on any truths. You know, you have bipolar disorder without. Prove it. How are you proving it? Yeah. The the second is more with CBT, and it's this arrogance that the only thing we can know is what we've proven so far through, like randomized controlled trials in this particular way. 01:02:22:05 - 01:02:27:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD And anything outside of that should not be considered or utilized in any way. 01:02:27:14 - 01:02:57:18 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I'll jump in there. That's even a stretch because the the studies are limited and they're still creating studies only from a materialist paradigm, like how many cognitive behavioral psychologists are aware of, like, quantum entanglement. You know, how many cognitive behavioral psychologists will set up experiments that can test outside of the limitations of what they've been told and taught through behaviorism? 01:02:57:20 - 01:03:32:13 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So they themselves have this very filtered, limited idea about the nature of reality. And so often this comes down to what is the nature of reality. And then how do you, you set up an experiment to try to test that out. Of course it's going to be limited unless you can read somebody's mind. Right. That's the limitations of modern psychology, is that if it's only around observable data, you're already missing information because there's what a person says and what a person completes on a checklist. 01:03:32:15 - 01:03:38:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And then there's what a person really experiences. And the discrepancy can be quite vast. 01:03:38:05 - 01:03:58:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. And then it's I mean, further limited by the, the ideas that we're experimenting with or just the ideas we can come up with at the time and get funding for. And anyone who's running those experiments already has a predisposed conclusion that they'd like to come out of the experiment, which is never the way science was intended with the scientific method. 01:03:58:24 - 01:04:34:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD Right? You're supposed to be really adamantly trying to disprove what you are testing. And that's not that's not happening anymore. I, I think there I mean, some of the things that I know we've been talking about and doing in the past, few years is looking outside of those normal places of information in terms of CBT that, there are things that are wisdom that is much older than CBT, that has existed for a very long time. 01:04:34:05 - 01:05:09:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD There's there's things in eastern philosophies, there's wisdoms within religions that exists. Religion has had more power to create behavior change than psychology ever has, you know, to that hundredth power. You know, you think about transformations people experience spiritually or religiously. Now, some people might look at those and they might look at them as fraudulent, or they might, look at the worst of it, like cult followings and those kinds of things, like, that's I can't imagine what kind of CBT would convince someone to join a cult and have that kind of power of change on their behavior and their mindset. 01:05:09:07 - 01:05:25:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD For harm. But the power that different practices can have to create transformations, even people who are, reborn in some ways, or some, like they reinvent themselves through these paths, those things are worth exploring and investigating. 01:05:25:24 - 01:05:29:18 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What do you think? They're not? 01:05:29:20 - 01:05:56:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD I see our society as one that's highly logical and industrial in its roots, I think. I mean, you just look at most of the people selling, at least my office are the, the artistic, creative, expressive, sensitive, people because they don't sit well in a logical, industrial society that is more math, science, money, capitalist based. 01:05:56:24 - 01:06:18:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD So, No. Why is it more women than men? I think that's one part of it. Why do I have so many kids who are old school kids, creative school kids coming in? The people you said that who can, like, sense and pick up on what people are thinking or feeling. Well, that's that's not industrially productively useful. 01:06:18:16 - 01:06:33:00 DR. RIZ AHMAD That means you are actually not being a good cog in the the machine of what we're trying to build industrially. So I don't know, maybe that's too macro and it's but I think that bleeds down into the micro. 01:06:33:02 - 01:07:19:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I agree with you. I think that's a part of it. I also see things to be more spiritual. I do see the spiritual aspect of of dark and light, good and evil, aspects of this human experience. On this three dimensional plane, I become much more connected to a greater spiritual forces over the last five years. And I think there's something about trying to create a society that disconnects you from the divine, from your internal compass, from that, those emotional experiences that often lead to alchemy, transformation. 01:07:19:12 - 01:07:47:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN People tend to find God, or they find, greater purpose and meaning from suffering. And there's all these type of messages that sensitive people receive from lucid dreams to, the feeling and the experience of of other people's thoughts and emotions, the creative force that comes through people, that leads them to create an art, and music. 01:07:47:08 - 01:08:27:01 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN It does feel very supernatural when you talk to people who are creative and from the materials paradigm, the materialist atheist paradigm that's kind of fueled scientism in the Western world. It's to, you know, see that as woowoo or something that can't be measured, and then you disconnect them from that, like automatically. And what's interesting is when you start to follow people who are in, in physics and are interested in like the nature of all reality, they start questioning things like, like atoms and, electrons scientifically. 01:08:27:03 - 01:08:57:01 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And they explain how those theories were created from experiments, that someone draws conclusions, but they're not really sound. And it leads to a full question of all of reality is listen to a quantum physicist this morning who disputed the idea that we have nuclear bombs, he says. We have bombs and large ones, and we can create these explosions, but they're not necessarily nuclear. 01:08:57:03 - 01:09:23:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And I don't even know if that man right. This is beyond my pay grade. But my greater point is what is the nature of reality, and why is there such an effort to disconnect us from that inner compass, that intuition, that creative force that those clairvoyant experiences? Because throughout history, some of our greatest works of art are literature. 01:09:23:22 - 01:09:51:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Ancient texts are spoken to in terms of like that being almost like a divine download. Prophets have always existed and this information has been put into text, or it's put into ancient practices. And why such an intention of like disconnecting us from all that, to an extent that we have the psychiatry field that we do today, that is, really it's a weapon of war for trying to disconnect people from their internal experience. 01:09:51:24 - 01:10:20:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And I can't help but think about this in terms of spiritual warfare. So obvious to me. But we are in this secular society, and we've grown up in this world where it's kind of especially when you're in academia and you've gone through the education that we've gone through. The word God is a bad word. Even though mental health people who are spiritual, religious, they have these practices. 01:10:20:14 - 01:10:43:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN They believe that there's something much greater than themselves, and their soul has a purpose and a mission. They do so much better, right? It's very clear, like the science around that is just so clear. But to bring it in to therapy, to talk about it in terms of training psychologists and therapists, it's almost like it's taboo. I always found that word. 01:10:43:10 - 01:11:14:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD And could probably come up with a hundred different stories of why now. And which is accurate or of pieces of different ones are accurate. I mean. I think, I think the United States is a leader in approaching things in this way. Right. And I don't know, part of me is doesn't go back to history that a lot of the founding was people escaping religious persecutions and countries of origin, and such an emphasis on separating church and state in some ways. 01:11:14:10 - 01:11:36:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD And then this, adherence to science being a gold standard of things. And that was objective truth. And there's objective reality and a sense of pride in approaching everything scientifically. In that way, I can, as that led down a road of taking it too far where nothing is real, unless it can be proven by a particular brand of science. 01:11:36:20 - 01:11:49:13 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think very possibly, I wish there was more just open mindedness and there was less of, you know, you're you're disputing the science. If you go outside of that normative findings, 01:11:49:15 - 01:11:50:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Which isn't science. 01:11:50:14 - 01:11:51:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD Which isn't fully science, which. 01:11:52:00 - 01:11:53:11 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Is a search for truth. Right? 01:11:53:15 - 01:12:27:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah, yeah. So to make conclusions very, very definitive way that you don't have the evidence for is unscientific to say something doesn't exist like a collective consciousness or, spiritual force under things or some kind of energy. God, whatever you want to call it. Well, you don't have proof that that's not the case either. And there might be many ways to actually check out and test that and to see what is there, which is the phase I'm kind of in now because I grew up, you know, rejecting the religion I grew up with. 01:12:27:24 - 01:12:52:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD I didn't find any meaning or purpose to it. I read words I didn't understand, there weren't many practices that resonated with me. The most, spiritual experiences I had was through, mindfulness meditation and connecting to something I do believe is connected to something deeper and interconnectedness and impermanence. Those are like lessons learned through those. And I have belief in them because I've felt and experience them. 01:12:52:10 - 01:13:15:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD They're not just ideas, but things like, connecting to a higher power and having it, guide my life in other ways. And surrendering to that. That's kind of the next step in my own evolution in experimenting with some of these things and not being afraid to, because it's this illusion that it's unscientific. 01:13:15:24 - 01:13:27:11 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Before we get back to your story, I just read a book called The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer. Recommended to you. Where are you in the book about. 01:13:27:13 - 01:13:28:23 DR. RIZ AHMAD Doing an audiobook style. 01:13:28:23 - 01:13:31:05 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So me as well. 01:13:31:07 - 01:13:58:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD About four hours in initial thoughts. So, to give a little context about the book and what it is. So it's, it's man who I believe was studying philosophy is now his PhD was in economics. Oh, yeah, you're right, it was economics. And he decided at some point in his life to surrender to whatever the universe put in front of him. 01:13:58:02 - 01:14:21:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD And not say no, including things that his mind was very opposed to doing at times. He got deep into meditation, spending a lot of time, trying to quiet his mind. I think the experience his sights set him off was having the realization at one point that he was not his mind, and he was sitting with a friend and he's like, man, aren't minds weird like the the way they do? 01:14:21:20 - 01:14:46:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD So that set him off on this whole course. And, this idea of letting go, of trying to control your life and letting life lead you, just took him on all these, kind of wild, miraculous experiences. So my initial thoughts are one inspiration, excitement for trying to incorporate that and learning, doing practices to incorporate that in my own life. 01:14:46:14 - 01:15:01:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD And that's been happening some over the last few months, especially accelerating, to you know, my mind will be like, well, I hope this goes somewhere because I'll be disappointed if it doesn't. You know, I hope these miracles or miracles that happen. 01:15:01:20 - 01:15:02:16 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN What if it doesn't? 01:15:02:16 - 01:15:24:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD What if it doesn't work? That's the disillusionment, to like, a sense of disbelief, because some of the things that, he said, some of the things I've, you know, learned from you too, is there are things that would be hard to believe unless you experience them. They're just so miraculous that there's no way that is chance in any possible way. 01:15:24:24 - 01:15:44:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD And that has to be something divine that is communicating or something bigger than them, that is communicating and guiding him. And so, open to it and trying to be quiet, the skepticism enough to experience and experiment for oneself. 01:15:44:19 - 01:16:14:20 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah. One of the things that materialists can't explain, one is when there's no brain activity, consciousness exists, remains. And we have all these and these where people are, we can test this, that when somebody dies, they're able to explain what relatives were thinking and doing at the time of their death, what the doctors were saying around them. The tribal floor is in the hospital. 01:16:14:22 - 01:16:42:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN No explanation for that. It's like, well, they say, well, even though there's no brain activity, there's still something happening neurologically. It's kind of like a no. You can't explain how somebody could be able to verbatim be able to describe what a relative 30 miles away was doing, thinking and feeling that doesn't make any sense. When a when we break a bone, we know we have to set it. 01:16:42:05 - 01:17:11:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN But the healing takes place from this innate life force, the same life force that allows a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly, or for a plant to grow from a seed, an oak tree to grow from an acorn. Right. There's this universal force that exists. What happens with the human experience is that mind that we've been talking about ends up always limiting us in some ways, right? 01:17:11:15 - 01:17:37:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Because it's it's creating on itself and it's always wants to say, well, we'll step back here. You have to survive. You're going to be embarrassed here. You can't really do that. I don't want that. And it's constantly providing you limitations. And what Michael Singer did was he was able to enter into that space of the observer and he saw something more miraculous in terms of what life has to offer. 01:17:37:12 - 01:18:08:01 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Obviously, he was connected to a greater life force, a god. He was studying many religions, so he was studying Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and really examining the commonalities amongst religions and yogic practices as well. And he was learning about energy and surrendering to something that is much greater than him, and the value of being able to tap into a universal life force and being in the flow. 01:18:08:01 - 01:18:39:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I think he equates it to kind of like floating down a river in life and in life's adventure and what comes. So we started saying, yes to what was presented to him, and they always seemed to lead to these new adventures that allowed him to grow. He sees himself as a soul, but also he became, you know, multi multi-millionaire, started companies and businesses and maintained his spiritual practice, got a Ph.D., developed all these relationships. 01:18:39:10 - 01:19:08:23 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN He was able to create a huge community and temple around these religious practices. He's able to meet some of the leaders around the world in spirituality, and he speaks to being able to give up those limitations and restrictions. Understand the mind exists. It's a survival mind. It's it's quite needed when you have to stop at a red light in a car like these rules do matter. 01:19:09:00 - 01:19:32:07 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN But when you become completely separate from that internal life force, that soul, and what it desires to do, and you give all control to the mind, then you are going to live a limited life. And I think we as humans forget we're going to die and we just try to stay alive as long as possible. And that always seemed like a poor approach to life. 01:19:32:13 - 01:19:57:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Maybe that's because I had a father who died fairly young to me, it seems like the best approach to life is to try to really understand what your soul desires and, to connect with a purpose that is much greater than who you are and follow that, not in a hedonistic way, because that's usually not what provides people meaning and pleasure. 01:19:57:24 - 01:20:21:02 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And actually, it's quite the opposite. It's kind of the dark aspects of living. You know, the more money people pursue, the more miserable they tend to get. The more trappings of this life, the more pleasures you try to seek. It almost becomes something that's very, very empty. But what tends to inspire people to live at the highest capacity is experience. 01:20:21:04 - 01:20:48:14 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Connection, servitude and creation. Right. And that seems to what inspires people. And that's what this surrender experiment exemplifies. That's how miraculous that story is. And I think it's important because we're talking about in comparison to where you were at a certain time in your life, where it was your mind that was running the show, and then you see the limitations of that and then the impact on your physical body. 01:20:48:19 - 01:21:26:16 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And I think that's we don't talk enough about that from a paradigm of disease that being in the mind is creating chemical reactions in fear that you are disconnected, you are not in alignment. And that feeling of dis ease is going to create physical symptoms, which I believe are to bring you back on your path. And I think there's a lot of like, Chinese medicine and, I Vedic medicine and all these various traditional approaches from a perspective of healers, sees that the body is giving you messages. 01:21:26:18 - 01:21:43:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And where we are now is we're muting those signals, and that seems dark to me, really, really dark. But I want to get back to you because you had to find a way to not let your mind run your life, and you eventually got called to what you're doing right now. 01:21:43:05 - 01:22:06:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. So I think where you left off in the story was, you know, working for, for epic for a period of time, for two and a half years and having all the material, comfortable comforts that came with it. You know, it was a well-paying job at a college. I didn't have a family in it and rented a room with two other roommates. 01:22:06:15 - 01:22:43:13 DR. RIZ AHMAD There weren't a lot of expenses going on. You know, got to have fun with other people who work. There were all in their young 20s, so we were basically living a post-college college experience while there. And, and it was depressing. It was not fulfilling. It was not what I wanted to do. It was it became after, you know, as I got close to when I left there, the stereotypical thing that would have got me a major depressive disorder, which is laying in bed and not wanting to get out of bed for that workday, calling out sick when I was not sick, you know, just I can just hate it. 01:22:43:13 - 01:22:44:02 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN When you. 01:22:44:04 - 01:23:17:04 DR. RIZ AHMAD Can't do it, you know? And there was nothing practically bad about it. It just was not meaningful. I wasn't put here to design electronic medical records. I just wasn't. So I remember I used to write this line in spin and writings of mine throughout. At times I wrote Comfort is My Enemy because it would be so hard to break free of something that was so physically comfortable and so routine, and the routines are painful and comfortable and deadening. 01:23:17:04 - 01:23:46:04 DR. RIZ AHMAD But you know, so at some point that crossed over and it was when I was thinking of leaving that job, I actually, sound, meditation group and decided to try that. It started with a book. It was a Japanese, Zen, Zen Buddhist book, which I remember the name of the last name was Suzuki of the teacher. 01:23:46:06 - 01:24:11:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's a very thin book. But it was one of the first ones where I read it and kind of like my heart nodded along to some things I was reading. Like it just made more sense than anything I'd read before about these kind of experiences, about, like, life. So I got interested, found a group, learned how to meditate, some just starting with simple breathing practices and whatnot. 01:24:11:18 - 01:24:35:20 DR. RIZ AHMAD And it was enough of the flavor of finding some piece or the mind getting a little quieter that I just wanted to pursue and understand it better. So it was another one of those big leaps, and I think of every big leap that happened. And I've actually never been on grateful for making a big leap. Just every single one has been a good one. 01:24:35:22 - 01:24:58:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD But at that time, it was leave that job, let go of the comfortable salary in place. And, you know, it feels predictable. I had saved up some money through that job so I could afford to have time off from working. And I found this summer residency program online at a, Zen Buddhist monastery. It's called Grape Valley Zen Buddhist monastery. 01:24:58:24 - 01:25:22:04 DR. RIZ AHMAD It was located in class Kanai, Oregon. Still there, I think. And they might still have this summer residency program. But you could go there. You could live there for free. Live with all the abbots and other people training. You'd do some work on the grounds, you know, you do some landscaping, gardening and care for the place. But you would train alongside them and they would teach you, how to go about doing meditation. 01:25:22:04 - 01:25:24:21 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So how long were you there for? 01:25:24:23 - 01:26:01:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD I was there for eight weeks. So two months. And in that time, there were two times within there where they would do longer silent retreats that were also open to the community around there. It was a small community class organized maybe like 2000 people, so smaller than my high school. But the community was very interconnected to the monastery, to, so the two abbots you'd had meetings with, you talk about your practice, they would give you some some insights and feedback. 01:26:01:20 - 01:26:27:04 DR. RIZ AHMAD I don't think it was from one of those teachers, but I remember another teacher who they give this thing called koans sometimes. And if you've heard what a koan is, a koans, like a kind of riddle where, the riddle can't be answered logically, very easily, but the the felt sense of what it means and, your experience with what it means kind of informs some nugget of wisdom. 01:26:27:06 - 01:26:55:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD So, for example, like, what's the sound of one hand clapping would be a kind of riddle, and you'd have to sit with that and you'd have to you'd lightly put it in your mind, and you just observe what's generated from, you know, your mind would wrestle with it some, and then you'd let go of logic at all, and you go deeper to a felt sense and you try to come to some, see what it was, see where it led, you know, was basically a prompt to see where it led and lead. 01:26:55:20 - 01:27:16:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD So all kinds of places. So that one I, I remember wrestling with and I was talking to the teacher about and I was just frustrated with the whole thing, and everything I was expressing was my frustration with this riddle about how it made absolutely no sense. And, his message to me was, you're trying to clean up blood with the blood stained cloth. 01:27:17:01 - 01:27:35:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD And I still remember that because that was a very powerful image to to use for him on the why it had to be blood, but it hit home, which to me meant and I it wasn't clear to me at the time. At the time, I was just annoyed with him even more. I was like, this is supposed to be something, sort of getting something out of this, and you're talking in riddles. 01:27:35:21 - 01:28:06:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD Just say it. But honestly, I probably wouldn't have heard it very well. So it wasn't done in some circuitous way, like metaphors, similes, you know, analogies, experience art. And like, they go, they bypass the mind in some way, I think. So since my mind didn't know what to do with that one, let it be. And then, you know, what's become apparent to me is all I was doing was thinking I was spending time thinking about thinking and thinking about that riddle and overthinking everything. 01:28:06:07 - 01:28:25:13 DR. RIZ AHMAD And, you know, his message to me is you're trying to, you know, connect and find connection, but you're doing it through more thinking. You're just creating more of the mess. You're trying to get yourself out of. You know what we call worrying or ruminating or whatever terms you want to put on it. So, that was that was helpful. 01:28:25:15 - 01:28:50:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think my time at the monastery was helpful. There were lessons learned during that time. One of the biggest ones was, That's when I realized I wasn't my thinking, that, within the first few weeks, that became very apparent. It was through longer periods of sitting and things would become somewhat quiet. Or you start to notice that your thinking isn't all that interesting. 01:28:50:07 - 01:29:10:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD That started to happen. And so, like, it's just it's the same stuff. It's the same tantrums it throws about this or that. It's the same planning, it's the same rehearsing, it's the same ruminating. It's it's like becoming predictable. Like it's becoming like, it's becoming like a scripted conversation. Same in a conversation. It's just talking at me. 01:29:10:12 - 01:29:34:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD It doesn't feel interactive. It doesn't feel enlivening. It just feels like noise. I just kept being like noise, noise, noise. And then the the thing you experience in those silent retreats, because it was a six day silent retreat that happened twice. And in those retreats, you wouldn't talk to anybody. You would just give each other small bells and you'd, you know, still be living in a community, still felt connected. 01:29:34:12 - 01:29:58:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD But no conversation. No. No talking, no reading, no writing. No technology. And what would happen is, at some point and for me, it was two and a half days, and each time there'd be long periods of sitting and then periods where you're doing things with your hands, cleaning, cooking, etc.. My mind would just get really quiet, like silent, kind of quiet. 01:29:58:09 - 01:30:15:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD It would throw a tantrum first. It would be this big explosion of a tantrum of what the hell is this? And what am I supposed to be getting out of this? And I'm sitting in this place far away from the rest of reality. Like, is this is this really useful? I should be doing this. I should be doing that. 01:30:15:18 - 01:30:33:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD And this isn't productive and it's not good enough. And all that's noise. And then it would just, like, give up. It felt like like like it would be like a kid who wasn't getting his candy, and it would, it would become quiet and it would become this heightened sensory experience, this, and that's where interconnectedness was felt. 01:30:33:01 - 01:31:07:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD I would feel very aware of and connected to all the people who were around me. I told you this before, but I become very connected to my parents, who were thousands of miles away and started feeling this strong emotion about what their experience must either be like in this moment or have been like, I'm not sure where it is in time, but it was, you know, this feeling of what it must have been like for my mom to be in a place now where she's so separate from her country of origin and families, and she's in a suburb and it's relatively isolated, and in a house where my dad's working a lot of 01:31:07:07 - 01:31:33:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD the time, and I all that just kind of like hit me all at once about things. So compassion emerged, compassion like profound sadness, interconnectedness into compassion, which was unusual for me because living in your head, you don't get very emotional about very many things. Like I could count on one hand probably a number of times having cried, and then they would just come up spontaneously, very strongly. 01:31:33:03 - 01:31:51:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD I mean, this is part of the reason why I'm open to what is, with spirituality and things that are beyond my logical understanding right now have to offer, because there's something in there that I can logically explain. 01:31:51:23 - 01:32:26:10 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN This is fascinating because I think the conversation is is meaningful because it's a way of understanding human suffering and struggle outside of the typical Western paradigm. But right now we're talking about that. The mind itself is what is the origin of our suffering. And it's interesting for people who might have heard of the course of A Course of Miracles, of Course in Miracles, which, allegedly was a channeled text to a took seven years to write to an NYU professor who was actually an atheist. 01:32:26:10 - 01:32:58:09 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And it's believed to be channeled the consciousness of Christ of Jesus. And it speaks to this, the separate nature of this existence and that the mind or the ego is what is the origin of all suffering. And there's been later texts that have been written, the Wave Mastery series, for example, where this, this ego and it's described in the same way that you're describing what the mind does, this illusion of who we are, what's been constructed, wants to survive, and it wants to run the show and it does have to. 01:32:58:09 - 01:33:26:19 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN It has to die off, because it is kind of like a child that's having a tantrum. And what emerges when you're able to separate from this is that inner life force, that spirit, consciousness. And compassion emerges. The connectedness to, your entire experiencing, understanding yourself as like a drop of water in a vast ocean. 01:33:26:21 - 01:33:27:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD Or a. 01:33:27:24 - 01:34:00:13 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Ray of sunshine from the sun, and that we're all related in that way. And that sensory experience is something that tends to expand. And there's an inner wisdom that's exposed that, really does speak to some of the core aspects of many different faiths outside dogma. But this universe reality of, of love, forgiveness, connection, and that you're here for a finite period of time, but you are an eternal soul. 01:34:00:15 - 01:34:33:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And being able to obtain that experience is life changing. When you're able to do it and you realize that your ego has only caused you pain has been limiting. There's an emptiness to it because everything it tells you that you want, you get it, and then it's gone. And it's not. It's not lasting. It's not fulfilling. And that's what we see right now as we see a culture who is seeking out these short term pleasures. 01:34:33:14 - 01:34:58:21 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And it can come in the form of technology and video games, pornography, food, the constant distractions and their interference, their interference with your ability to connect to your soul, that inner wisdom, what's going to emerge when the mind quiets. So we're in this constant state of distraction and people are miserable, and then they go into their medical system and you give them a label and you give them a further drug to disconnect you from those signals. 01:34:58:23 - 01:35:14:17 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I think this is the root of many of the problems that exist in our culture, and it leads to a life of kind of servitude to the mind and to the authority figures, and you're just connected to that ego that all it does is want to survive until you're dead. 01:35:14:19 - 01:35:15:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. 01:35:15:07 - 01:35:17:02 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And there needs to be an awakening. 01:35:17:04 - 01:35:40:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD And it's a feeling. It's a tricky feeling since, like, it feels good enough sometimes, you know, like it's enough. It's just good enough and it's comfortable enough. It's. There's times that are fun enough. Just good enough. Yeah. That seems to be the, the experience that I've had with it. Anyways, that's why I still comfort with my enemy, because it's tantalizing enough to keep you in that, in that loop. 01:35:40:14 - 01:35:57:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD But at some point from there, I was like, well, do I have to live in a monastery to experience this? Because I'm not doing that. You know, I want to go back to my life. But what do you do with this when you enter your life? So then it leads to, you know, questions about, well, what conditions allow this to arise. 01:35:57:18 - 01:36:20:00 DR. RIZ AHMAD You know what? I know some of the conditions, not all of them, but some of them that lead into being stuck in the noise and stuck in the mind. I know for me, I'm not going to play three hours of video games anytime soon. You know? I know what that does to my mind. I know what scrolling mindlessly does to my mind and know we're watching sports for an entire day. 01:36:20:02 - 01:36:42:19 DR. RIZ AHMAD Does. To my mind, you can feel it. Or being in mindless conversations. Yes. Doing that again and again and again throughout the day. I just need quiet. Yeah. Many times. So what kind of conditions allow that to arise as to play some more curious about? That's why I've been interested in so in meditation as remains something, that I find valuable. 01:36:42:21 - 01:37:10:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's why spiritual connections and real conversations I crave, silence, crave figure out how to, I think I have to expand on my connection with nature, but at times I've felt that including, connection with my, dogs and cats. Like, feeling that there's something there. Two other practices to be explored. I'm currently going through, the Artist's Way I told you about. 01:37:10:03 - 01:37:33:13 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's a book by Julia Cameron. And it's meant to be a guide to. I think artists have artists, healers, religious people that have known many of these things. But they've had to learn to quiet their mind to get to intuition. And all the people who talk about, you know, great lyrics and, pieces of music and books being kind of delivered to them. 01:37:33:13 - 01:37:55:10 DR. RIZ AHMAD And then they're just a conduit that it goes through. Artists have talked about that so often, some of the most amazing ones. So I'm, I have a first. This is about living a life where you quiet your mind and you more surrender, and you take in what's being offered to you or spoken to you. It seems like that's a place to possibly follow. 01:37:55:10 - 01:38:15:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD So now I'm experimenting with that, that path and approach to to doing it. But it's kind of with this sense of knowing it's possible, the same sense that I got when I knew it was possible acquire my mind, interact socially in college. I just didn't know how to go through a process of getting there. The same things here, like the. 01:38:15:12 - 01:38:35:16 DR. RIZ AHMAD I know what it feels like to feel profound interconnectedness and love. I know that that's possible. I know to have the mind not interfere with those things. I know creativity and taking risks and trusting something is possible. It's just, how to create a process and a livelihood, a life that embodies that. 01:38:35:18 - 01:38:36:22 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN The analogy for. 01:38:36:22 - 01:38:38:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD Me. 01:38:38:04 - 01:39:03:24 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Is sometimes that you have to jump off a cliff and just have faith that you're going to grow wings because the mind creates these limits. It wants everything to be predictable, and you're feel like you're in control. So you never really surrender into life because what's out there, what your mind can't predict, what is unknown, is going to create an inner sense of restlessness and fear. 01:39:04:01 - 01:39:27:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And so people tend to stay in a very predictable state. Ultimately, it leads to a degree of emptiness. And if you look at a lot of American culture, you know, that's it. You're just doing a lot of mindless distractions from the experience. Hey, I recently gave up alcohol. I gonna have one drink, and I think I made a commitment to the rest of my life to not have a drink. 01:39:27:05 - 01:39:37:21 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Why? Well, when I was in that place of deep silence, that's what emerged. I don't drink anymore. 01:39:37:23 - 01:40:01:13 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And what's interesting is, well, I've already experienced a life. I know what it's like to have alcohol. I know what it's like to get intoxicated. Is that a better life? I don't think so. I think it comes with consequences. So what's a life? Being completely sober? That's interesting. Let's try that out. No one can argue that it's healthy for you to continue to drink alcohol. 01:40:01:13 - 01:40:27:06 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So what happens to my experience? What's it like being in environments where people are drinking? What's it like then to just get better sleep and to be healthier? All these things that are related to that, if it comes from within, in that experience, I trust it when it comes from my mind. I don't necessarily trust it that I that hasn't always served me well in life. 01:40:27:08 - 01:40:46:16 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And that's what's interesting about the book with the Surrender experiment, is there's a lot of faith to this. Like you have to have a trust that there is this greater life force, this loving life force. You can call it God, you can call it, a universal consciousness, the universe. It doesn't even matter to me because the dogma is just what splits people up. 01:40:46:16 - 01:40:56:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN You know, it's what divides people, but what's underneath it is the loving force. So how did you become a psychologist and why? 01:40:56:02 - 01:41:25:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD So, I mean, you go through some experiences with the mind like that, and it gets me fascinated into our minds work and with the effect they're having. And not only that, but I knew I wanted to work with people in some capacity. I've done jobs where I've worked without people. Lab work, did a lot of that in college at different times. 01:41:25:05 - 01:41:53:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD Hated it. Hated every bit of it. It wasn't the comfortable type of solitude it was. And very isolated. I'm working on this small piece of a larger picture that I can't see the real purpose of, or get passionate about it. So, so after returning from from the monastery, I was trying to say what what in our culture or society actually lends itself to exploring these things a little bit more. 01:41:53:17 - 01:42:17:08 DR. RIZ AHMAD I had already gone down the route of thinking in medical schools, and no, I've gone down the road thinking of psychiatry for a period of time. I shadowed a psychiatrist. I did not like the experience of doing that. There was so many problems in the way that was. It was cold, hard. Listen, honestly felt harmful. In particular, psychiatrist I shadowed was it's pretty egregious the way it was being done. 01:42:17:10 - 01:42:39:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD So, I started looking into psychology to see what they would have to offer. I went back and did I didn't take any psych courses in college, not a single one. It was all biophysics, medical world. So, so I did, and I took all the ones that were prereqs. I found some pieces interesting. Some pieces not so interesting. 01:42:39:22 - 01:42:59:15 DR. RIZ AHMAD I couldn't get on board with, normal psychopathology. That one just put ideas in my head that were honestly not helpful later on. Experimental psychology. And I found that interesting. Cognitive biases and things like that, you know, just interesting stuff. So I decided to pursue a deeper in. That's where, you know, this, I take up grad school for it and launch into it for the five years. 01:42:59:15 - 01:43:21:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD And even in that time, in the early time, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be a therapist kind of psychologist or whether I wanted to do neuroscience. And it was a similar pull of neuroscience was like the new med school, you know, it was like another way of just using math, science, logic to things. My mind was good at. 01:43:21:14 - 01:43:48:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD And there are ways of doing it. I know there are no psychologists. I know where it's, it is a very impassioned, heartfelt kind of way of practicing. You're working with people who may be becoming demented or have Parkinson's, and I always loved meeting with those people in their families, but I always hated meeting with them for one session and then letting them go and not having any follow them, you know, often delivering bad news, trying to be as compassionate as possible. 01:43:48:11 - 01:44:08:03 DR. RIZ AHMAD But then having nothing else to offer beyond that. Besides clarity of what's going on a little bit better. So that that made me lean more into wanting to see people through something, and that lends itself nicely more closer fitting to the therapy. 01:44:08:05 - 01:44:43:23 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN So in your training in clinical psychology, which presents the work as diagnosing and treating clinical conditions. What have you seen to be the problems with it? And how is your own personal experience in life, including overcoming social anxiety, finding yourself at a monastery, and dedicating your life to a practice that really quiets that ego in that mind and allows, like an inner spirit to emerge. 01:44:44:00 - 01:44:50:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Where have you kind of evolved to be able to help people? 01:44:50:10 - 01:45:17:17 DR. RIZ AHMAD I think at first I was looking to the science of psychology, to have all the answers of the entirety of things, you know, as if I would, as if the diagnoses would provide an explanation and as if all the treatments would provide, the treatments, the, the cures for these things. And that it would just be a matter of making sure there was enough access to it for people. 01:45:17:19 - 01:45:51:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD I had this mindset that there was such a thing as a group of people who are mentally ill who needed to be cured, and, a group of people who were not, and that it would not be possible for me to understand some of their experiences because, we were not the same as humans, you know, they had an illness I did not have, so I could not understand it more fully as the initial thinking, a lot of things that did not resonate with what I had experienced before that because, like I said, I could have been diagnosed with social anxiety. 01:45:51:06 - 01:46:22:12 DR. RIZ AHMAD You mentioned ADHD. You could throw all of that. And so it didn't make logical sense. It just seemed like trying to trust it long enough to see where it would go. And it broke my trust. Throughout many of the years of training, I went to facilities where there was nothing curative happening. I did a school psychology rotation where the diagnoses I did not believe in the validity of what was being communicated. 01:46:22:12 - 01:46:43:09 DR. RIZ AHMAD And I thought so much more could be done for those kids, aside from, like, learning differences, that seemed to be something that was a little bit more helpful. But when it came to emotional disturbance or other odd, oppositional oppositional defiant disorder as a label just never made any those things don't make any sense. I you know what to do with that information. 01:46:43:11 - 01:47:07:21 DR. RIZ AHMAD And I didn't really, like, see people getting profoundly better besides the people who just needed someone nice and compassionate to talk to. Like, I could do that. Well, I could do that when my mind wasn't talking too much and I was overthinking the conversations. So, it's changed a lot since, graduate school where I did my post-doc at the center. 01:47:07:23 - 01:47:29:24 DR. RIZ AHMAD You know, you train me during that year. That was a year of continuing to be profoundly in my head with some of these things, just overthinking certain things. I can think back on supervision tapes reviewed were just the way I was thinking about. It was so much into some obscure theory about something that was just missing plane empathy and understanding of what was going on. 01:47:30:01 - 01:48:16:22 DR. RIZ AHMAD I would read case formulations over pages and try to read to nauseum, so I could find the right information that would give me everything I needed to have mastery on it. Just, it pulled me back into old habits, pull me back into old habits of getting into the head. And there are so many conditions that create that, as an early therapist, the conditions of graduate school and, you know, being evaluated and graded, then all of school creates those conditions where I thrived in my worst tendencies, to ideas that there's someone mentally ill who I can't understand unless I do all this reading to try to understand them. 01:48:16:24 - 01:48:39:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD And it has to be this highfalutin theoretical stuff with all this fancy terminology that I have to be smart enough to grasp and understand, to truly understand them. Just, a lot of noise. A lot of noise to have to sift through. So what's what's changed is, I have to be much more heart centered. I have to be. 01:48:39:19 - 01:49:16:01 DR. RIZ AHMAD I do need my mind to be quieter. Empathy is the most powerful assessment tool. I got so, sometimes what I'm intuitively trying to assess or see aloud or saying in session, comes from a place that's considering ideas as beholding them lightly. And is more, more connected. And then, you know, we can talk about all the things that become apparent in the mental health field, but that's, as most of your podcast episodes that talk about some of those things. 01:49:16:01 - 01:49:41:11 DR. RIZ AHMAD So those new learnings, it kind of feels like the rug gets pulled out over and over and over again, which is a familiar, and kind of desired feeling at this point, because every time it gets pulled out, it's like you're at the optometrist and they move it to a little bit of a clearer lens, and it's, it's uncomfortable but meaningful to have it pulled out that way. 01:49:41:13 - 01:50:13:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD To have this part be now exploring, what's beyond into spiritual and interconnectedness and wisdom, feels right. And also is another rug being pulled out, you know, something else that's new because profound and. Right. So that's where it is now. And I think it's led to a lot more acceptance and appreciation for the people I work with that, they are. 01:50:13:05 - 01:50:41:23 DR. RIZ AHMAD And this is one thing that has always been a value throughout, which is wanting people who are misunderstood to be understood. Like, I felt misunderstood throughout high school and beyond. Like I had things to say and things I wanted, but no idea how to connect or be seen or heard in that way. And learning. That was a very circuitous journey to getting there. 01:50:42:00 - 01:51:12:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD And almost universally, the people I'm seeing now are people who are misunderstood. They're labeled, they're pathologized, they're just teenagers, and they're told they have this or that. They're drugs quickly. They're the autistic people who are not seen as valuable. They're women who are dismissed. They are people who, when they try to say what they're feeling, and we don't have a scientific explanation for it, it's dismissed as being not real. 01:51:12:04 - 01:51:14:14 DR. RIZ AHMAD 01:51:14:16 - 01:51:41:05 DR. RIZ AHMAD It's the people who, you know, you want to have a voice, so it's much more egalitarian where I'm here with them and when I learn about their experiences, like I'm looking to help in any way I can is kind of, you know, having some areas of expertise. So what helps people make changes and what ways of relating to their own experience will lead to more suffering and what lead to more freedom? 01:51:41:07 - 01:52:11:04 DR. RIZ AHMAD I can help with that. To the extent I can, but it's it's not top down anymore. It's not. I have to have the expertise in reading the right book to deliver the right intellectual nugget of brilliance that is going to change the whole course of everything. It's it's more patient, it's more understanding. Things are developmental, that they're in a place where they're learning this or that, and there are conditions around them and within them, and how they relate to those experiences that are creating the suffering. 01:52:11:04 - 01:52:22:13 DR. RIZ AHMAD And let's see that more broadly, more complexly. And, you know, allow wisdom to be more of a source of healing. 01:52:22:15 - 01:52:46:03 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Yeah. To wrap this up, it's interesting how my work has evolved, because I do believe that a lot of the cultural messages that people have ingested are just toxic and are and are part of the problem with creating suffering, and so much is about removing the interference. People come into our office. There's just so much interference that gets in the way of them being able to connect with this divine wisdom. 01:52:46:05 - 01:53:13:02 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN People are afraid of their minds. They're afraid of their emotions. They're entering into behaviors to escape and avoid that experience. They're told that that experience itself is damaging, that it's pathological. People are on drugs. People are on phones. People are, are living in fear. There's more isolation. They're ingesting worse foods. It's just so much interference. They're swimming in emfs. 01:53:13:04 - 01:53:48:00 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN Their lifestyles are one that are not conducive with human flourishing. And that machine that has overtaken us in Western societies, that machine that just wants to consume, consume, consume, and where your own attention as a commodity is, has created a such a mass health and mental health epidemic. And I feel like the rest of my career is going to be dedicated to trying to take down that machine and restore sanity back into our culture. 01:53:48:02 - 01:54:41:16 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And I know you're with me on that. I think that's what's ahead of us. And the amount of people who are asleep consumed by the machine, it just seems to be greater and greater. What's happened post 2020, post pandemic, is frightening and distressing, and I think we're at a we're at a point in, in our society where, where are you going to lose ourselves to machines that everything we know to be part of human nature is going to be captured by AI and technologies, wearables, anything that tries to alter, what the human experience has traditionally been. 01:54:41:16 - 01:54:46:17 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN We're on that precipice right now, versus a return to. 01:54:46:23 - 01:54:47:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD 01:54:47:06 - 01:55:35:08 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I think, interconnectedness and, awareness and consciousness of a greater life force and nature and all the things we talked about, what has led traditionally to a human being flourishing. And that's things that are certainly, I think, very reasonable and logical. When you reflect on history, human beings are best when they are out in nature, in sun, when they're serving each other, and they're having families when they're creating, when they're, using their gifts and they're looking to, through love, being able to serve their life with a greater purpose outside of just who they are and what their mind is restricted them to be. 01:55:35:10 - 01:55:54:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN And that's where I see the inflection points going to be. That's going to be the the upcoming war. And part of my job. I feel it in my heart, is to wake people up, at least in my field, and try to get to see what it means to be human again, and then how to how to flourish. 01:55:54:14 - 01:56:21:18 DR. RIZ AHMAD Yeah. I think, I mean, all your skills and abilities are suited for it. This podcast, in the way it's been, it's, taken off to that style of, targeting these things that are part of that machine is part of it. And people know, I think even when caught up in all the stuff in the mind, when I said I read that book and like, my heart was nodding to some things I see, like that's the experience of being in that trance. 01:56:21:18 - 01:56:49:02 DR. RIZ AHMAD But knowing that there's, there's more and there's different ways that feel wiser about seeing things. In, in Buddhism, they have this thing called the Eightfold Path. And among the first parts of it are, right view and right intent and, right is more like skillful in translation and skillful view is seeing things clearly as they are, and breaking an illusion and seeing things clearly. 01:56:49:02 - 01:57:21:07 DR. RIZ AHMAD And from that comes skillful intent about who are you and what that naturally leads you into wanting, to see change, which then goes to skillful effort and actions. Right. And it's this idea that to know these things is to experience and see all the suffering that they can create, but that naturally leads into action. And to act on them in some ways and lives, based on that understanding, is a way, I think, to to peace. 01:57:21:09 - 01:57:34:08 DR. RIZ AHMAD To feeling more free, to feeling like living one's purpose. So, you know, I'm still aspiring and on that path to get there, but definitely farther along than high school kid, high school resource. 01:57:34:10 - 01:57:41:12 DR. ROGER MCFILLIN I really enjoyed this conversation. Doctor Risa mod, thank you for a radically genuine conversation. 01:57:41:14 - 01:57:42:06 DR. RIZ AHMAD Thanks. Appreciate it. TRANSCRIPT (MAIN) - EP216 - Dr. Riz Ahmad.txt Displaying TRANSCRIPT (MAIN) - EP216 - Dr. Riz Ahmad.txt.