Dr. James Hollis: How to Find Your True Purpose & Create Your Best Life

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday

life

. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford Medical School. My guest today is Dr. James Hollis. Dr. James Hollis is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and author of over 17 books on personal relationships and how to

create

the

best

life

possible. Some of the notable titles and themes of those books include creating a life,

find

ing one's own path, as well as the Eden project in search of the magical. another that, as the name suggests, is about relationships. He has also written about how to access our most resilient selves in the book titled Living Between Worlds.

Finding personal resilience in changing times during today's discussion. Dr. Hollis teaches us what questions we should ask ourselves on a regular basis to better understand who we really are and what we most desire at the level of vocation, romantic relationships, friendship and family, and indeed in Regarding the journey of life, what you will quickly realize during today's conversation with Dr. Hollis is that, while yes, he is trained as a yian psychoanalyst and is also firmly grounded in practical tools, that is, he teaches us simple but practical tools that we can all apply daily to ensure we stay on our path.

In the

best

path, we analyze how the family dynamics in which we grew up, as well as trauma and attachment styles, combine with our unique gifts and, indeed, also with our dark side to lead us on particular trajectories in life that we Sometimes they take us where we want to go. but other times they lead us astray and when they do how to get back on track, today's conversation with Dr. Hollis is really special because he rarely appears on podcasts; in fact, we traveled to him to record this podcast, that's how motivated he was to be.

I was able to sit down with him because I am familiar with the many books of his and the incredible teachings of him, but I really wanted to compile the knowledge of him in one format in one place and what I can promise you is that by the end of today's podcast you will. . Before you begin, think differently about

your

self, about the people in

your

life, and indeed about life itself. I would like to emphasize that this podcast is independent of my teaching and research duties at Stanford; however, it is part of my desire and effort to achieve zero cost. to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public in line with that topic I would like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast our first sponsor is matina matina makes loose leaves and ready to drink ybba mate now I have been a fan of yerbamate as a source of caffeine in part due to its high antioxidant content, as well as its ability to elevate glucagon-like peptide 1 or glp1, leading to a slight appetite suppressant effect, as well as its ability to regulate blood sugar and possibly as a neuroprotectant. effects I also love the taste of yerbamate.

I sometimes drink it hot by pouring hot water over the loose leaf yerbamate and these days I especially like to drink the cold sugar-free matina yerbamate that I help develop now. I realize that there are many different brands of yerbamate in loose leaf and canned and bottled, but the reason I like matin the most is, firstly, it has the absolute best flavor ever, secondly, it just They use organic ingredients and thirdly, because they offer low sugar and sugar-free varieties, if you want to try matina, you can go to drink maa.com huberman which is spelled drink m a t i n a /h huberman right now matina is offering a free PB bag of loose leaf yacht tea and free shipping with the purchase of two cases of their C Brew and shake again, that's drink maa.com huberman today's episode is also brought to you by ju ju manufactures medical grade red light therapy devices now There is one thing I have constantly emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light, i.e. photons, can have on our mental and physical health.

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I have been going to therapy for over 30 years. At first I had no choice. a condition for being allowed to stay in school, but I soon realized that therapy is extremely valuable; In fact, I consider doing regular therapy to be just as important as exercising regularly, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every week, which is why we know therapy is so valuable. is that if you can

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a therapist that you can develop a very good relationship with, not only will you get excellent support for some of the challenges in your life, but you will also be able to gain tremendous insights from that therapy that can help you. improve not only your emotional life, your love life but, of course, also your relationship with yourself and your professional life, all kinds of professional goals;

In fact, IC therapy is one of the key components in bringing all aspects of life together and being able to truly direct focus and attention toward what really matters. If you want to try Betterhelp, visit Betterhelp.com Huberman to get 10% off your first month again, that's Betterhelp.com Huberman and now for my conversation with Dr. James Hollis. Dr. James Hollis, it is a great honor and pleasure to sit with you. I am a big fan of his writing and am excited to speak with you today. Thank you Andrew, it is a privilege to be with you.

Thanks, let's talk about ourselves. This is something that I think people sometimes wonder about: Do you know who I am? We wake up every day, have a stable representation of who we are in our name most of the time, and develop a story of our own, MH, based on what we know. about our parents, our siblings, our life from the perspective of yion psychology, maybe psychology in general, how should we think well of ourselves? First, the idea of ​​the self with a capital S to distinguish it from the ego. Consciousness, meaning my conscious presence as you and I are talking right now um it's a transcendent other it's a mystery it's essentially governed by our instincts you know it's nature seeking its own expression and its own healing what I've seen in terms of the self's activity over the years has two agendas, one to heal when hurt and the second to express itself in the same way that the acorn becomes the oak, so to speak.

Now the ego, of course, is that little ribbon of energy that we begin to clump together. We are born without ego. but then there are these little fragments of experience between the self and the not-self that slowly accumulate almost in tidal pools so that I begin to differentiate myself from the other, say my mother, or my father, or the object that is there and you.

true

, we are an animal that seeks to understand as part of our adaptation to the world and that is why we are narrative animals, we

create

stories about it and our stories arise from what we are experiencing at that moment so that you can see why a person is born. in a certain culture or in a certain family of origin with its relationship style or disorder, as the case may be, becomes the basis for defining that person's sense of self, so it is important to distinguish between the self and the sense of self. is what I think I am at any given moment, that's very fluid, of course, now we have all kinds of internal energy groups that are called complexes, after that they were rejuvenated and the complexes are, uh, Splinter personalities, he said, so a person might say why did I do it?

I got so upset yesterday, what happened to me or I don't know what I was thinking when I made this important decision and that is our recognition that we were in an altered state at that time, that something inside us had been activated, I had enough. energy to arise, usurp the ego Consciousness and take over it, actually the term I used in German means possession, it is a state of psychic possession temporarily, you know, we joke that lovers are stupid or lovers are blind, like that that we know that people are in a I'm sure they are trapped in a certain projection onto the other and that eventually resolves into some kind of reality through time and experience with that individual, but in that state of being one feels that you are doing the right thing. decision and no one wakes up in the morning and says, for example, well, today I think I'm going to do the same stupid, counterproductive things that I've done for decades, but there's a good chance that we will, because we have certain energy groups in we. which are activated regularly when they are activated, they catalyze a response in the ego that enacts that program, so it affects our body, it affects our script and of course it affects our personality of self and the world, so you already know this from the point of view of therapy.

One of the things we try to do is suggest to people that you are not what happened to you because one of our tendencies is to internalize whatever is happening to us and thinking about that defines us, of course, the younger, the less educated we are. . We are more likely to be defined by poverty, illness, alcoholism, sexism or whatever social constructs we are born into, as well as the psychodynamics of the family of origin, so in those circumstances, we all have a provisional sense of self and if you have a culture that says this is who you are this is what you are your orders are your marching orders here is your script and the more authoritarian the culture or the more traumatic one's environmental situation and family origin, I'm more likely to react to it, so when I've had an experience, I'll repeat it or try to run away from it or maybe spend my life trying to deal with it in some way that I'm not aware of, um, this activates many people in the healing professions, by the way, whether it's clerical nursing therapy, etc., it's often a sensitive child in the family who feels like I have to try.

Stabilizing my environment so that things return to a normal state, whatever that may be, so that it can then be there for me, but of course that never happens. You know, a child can't fix a parent. Many people in the helping professions are driven there by a powerful internalized message that becomes their sense of self, so it's a long and complicated way of saying that there is a distinction between the self, which is the natural organic development of this organism that you know like us. In other words, it's growing our toenails, digesting our breakfast, thinking, emoting, etc., most of that is autonomous activity, it's like the centipede, you know, you congratulate the centipede for how well it coordinates all its legs. and then he thinks he should move this leg. or this leg or this and it is immobilized these are not functions that we consciously govern although we can consciously interrupt them but something is there watching over us it is an organic Unity and that is what you meant by the capital I our sense of self It is a different matter and That's why one of the things I've tried to emphasize in therapy is that you are not what happened to you because we tend to be tied to our story that says that's who I am, that's what I'm defined as. or I spend my life trying to differentiate myself from that, get away from that, maybe, again, our sense of identity is very provisional, it evolves and, at any given moment, there may be something in the unconscious that activates and, for Of course, the problem with the unconscious is unconscious, so I don't know what has happened, it's that I have the unconscious uh activated, it has the power to rise, take control temporarily, deactivate its program and then after a while, you know that It goes back to the unconscious and like I said, sometimes people stop and say, "Well, I wonder what's behind that decision or why I chose that path or what's in me that's stopping me from doing what I know is right for me." You know, as Paul said in the letter to the Romans, although I know good, I don't do good well, because I didn't see it as an insufficiency of will, but we know that it is more than that, we know that there are unconscious factors at play that have a certain autonomy and the more unconscious they are, the greater their autonomy will be if they are unconscious and sometimes lead us to states, other times to traits,I mean, and that's maybe an interesting discussion in itself: you know what the difference is between a state of mind and body and a trait, but if it's unconscious, what chance do we have of overcoming these things?

I mean, where does consciousness arise? Can we do it on our own? Does it require reflection from a trained professional? And if so, you know. when we become conscious of something, does that immediately flip a switch or does it require a constant return to, you know, seeing and, you know, forcing the unconscious to become conscious again and again, well, those are great questions, first of all. Again none of us wake up saying We're going to be counterproductive today, but we will be counterproductive because of the autonomy of those energy groups within us. I've told many people who have asked that question, "Start with your own life and look at the patterns you have." The pattern is an indication of some group of energy, whether external or internal, that you carry with you um and we don't do crazy things, we always do logical things if we understand that we are at the service of my ally.

I give you an example. Many decades ago I was working in a locked hospital ward and there was a guy who was repeatedly trying to break a window and people assumed he was trying to escape or get a shard of glass for some nefarious

purpose

and no one bothered to ask him why. he was doing this and he said he was under the illusion that, first of all, he was in a closed room, so he got caught in a, you know, non-voluntary situation and in his psychosis he felt like someone was pumping air in. of the room now, if this door was locked and air was being pumped out of this room, the most logical thing we would do would be to go through a window or break down the door, so his behavior was logical based on the premise now the premise is often it's inaccurate or it's tied to one place, but it's extrapolated to another place and then we respond logically to that premise, so you start with your own life, particularly in places where you find that these are counterproductive behaviors or behaviors that They are hurtful. to you and someone else and then you say, since that's not my conscious intention and yet it's there as part of my story, then I have to say, okay, what is it inside of me that you know has the type of power to take over my ego?

Awareness now only to step back for a moment. I think we are only conscious in the ego dealing with reality. A few times during the course of the day. My favorite analogy is when you get up in the morning and get in the shower. it is too hot or too cold so you change the temperature of the water well that is the ego and its proper function is to be adaptive to its reality is to be protective at that moment it is achieving the optimal situation for you but from the rest of the time onwards when that same ego is inundated with other material, some of which is simply aware of who gets the kids after school today, how do I get to work on time, etc., but underneath that are other factors that have to do with responses based in fear or adaptive responses that perhaps were once protective, but then you know that we were not born with them, but rather acquired them along the Highway of Life, so what was once protective often becomes more constrictive. go ahead and create those patterns, so number one you start with your patterns, um, second, and everyone laughs about it.

This, but there is a certain truth: you can talk to those around you, like your spouse, your closest partner or your children, and ask them what they see in us, if you can bear to listen to what they have to say and say where it is. if you see me being hurtful to myself or others or where it is that I get in your face in an inappropriate way uh and usually they will have something to tell us thirdly, we pay attention to our dreams because we don't choose to do so we dream, but research on The dream tells us that we have an average of six dreams a night, that is a lot of activity, nature does not waste energy, it is processing something and it does not just process if we pay attention over time, you begin to realize that it has a point of view .

Another way to say this is psyche, which is the term I would use here and that's the Greek word for soul because of the way that the psyche, you know, has its own intentionality and is omnipresent and comments in terms of our feeling function. . you don't choose your feelings feelings are autonomous responses to what has happened you can repress them suppress them anesthetize them project them onto others but in the end you are a creature that has an autonomous emotional response secondly we have energy systems yes I am doing what is right for me , the energy is there, the flow is there, we can mobilize our energy and we have to do it in life to get up and feed the baby at 2: in the morning or, you know, put in our 40 hours. week or whatever the requirements are, but over time, straining the energy system leads, as we know, to boredom and exhaustion and ultimately depression, often with self-medication attached to that.

Thirdly, we have dreams that comment. Fourth, the most important thing is the question of meaning. If what we are doing is meaningful as the psyche understands it, it will support us even in the face of suffering and sacrifice, etc., if what we are doing is wrong as the psyche sees it, then over time it begins to become pathologized, so take that word Psychopathology literally from the Greek it means the expression of the suffering of the Soul which I think is ratory the expression of the suffering of the Soul now it seems obligatory to me to take seriously if my soul and again that's a metaphor, you know?

People look for the soul throughout history and you cannot find it in the pineal gland, for example, the soul is a metaphor for the organic wisdom of that natural being that we are, the soul is a metaphor for this determined expression of the organism that is. In other words, the decisive question that concerns us all in childhood and during the first half of life, at least if not throughout life, is: what does the world want from me? What do my parents want from me? What does my school teacher want from me? Playmates expect me. What does my partner want from me?

What does the employer want? These are all reality-based encounters with the demands of the environment and part of what we have to do is develop enough ego strength to create a tentative sensation. of oneself and a provisional functional self to deal with those expectations, but then when you have done that you will know why you are still here, what is the

purpose

? Are you here simply to be a creature of adaptations? Without those adaptations, we would normally feel overwhelmed. the circumstances of our lives, so we adapt them in some way, but in the second half of life and I'm using a term very loosely, the real question is what does the soul want from me, you know, what does the psyche want from me? , that is. a different question then the problem arises: what is it that wants to express itself in the world through me?

That's a different question, so what is the world asking of me? The people we would admire most in history are people who somehow found and lived, discover what their soul asked of them, it did not prevent them from suffering, sometimes even martyrdom does not free you from conflict and pain, perhaps isolation, perhaps. exile but it feeds you the purpose of it take that away and life is beautiful empty and of course we live in a culture where there is a huge barrage of external stimuli, well I buy this purchase that does this or that, the latest and this or that, the newest pimple and the most I seek to define myself through that environmental call.

It's more likely that something inside me will fix me, we all know that, but we don't know what to do about it on some level and it usually has to hurt enough inside to take a person to therapy, people don't. . I just walk in and say, well, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd stop by and talk to a complete stranger, pay them some money, and then walk out as a different person. It doesn't work that way. I have often done it. I told people that this is not about curing you because you are not a disease, it is about making your life more interesting, where you realize every morning that you wake up, that you have something profound to address today, why am I here? and in the service of what? because if you do not ask that question you will be at the service of your adaptive postures from childhood, as many people demonstrate, until the internal conflict reaches that point where the suffering of the psychopathology of the soul is enough.

I was browsing myself. When I was 30 I had achieved everything I wanted to achieve and was enjoying my life and suddenly, inexplicably, I had a very bad depression and it took me a while to realize that I was asking the wrong question, the first question that comes to mind. to a person under those circumstances is, how quickly do I get rid of this? You know, give me five easy steps or a pill for that or whatever. I didn't understand the real question is why your psyche has autonomously withdrawn its approval and support of the The agenda you have been addressing was a good agenda, there was nothing wrong with it, but something else was missing in this process and a depression was necessary, like something from below reached me and pulled me down, something was being pressed down, that's depression. and at the bottom of that well there is always a task, there is always a problem whose identification can take one to a new place in life, a different journey, in my case, led me to leave a very good permanent position in academic travel . to Switzerland and spent several years there retraining as a psychoanalyst and now I consider that depression to be beneficial, but at the time I certainly didn't, as you can imagine.

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The milestones get very close and then if we are lucky enough to be able to take a walk and reflect, put away the phone, etc.,then our mind can expand and you know, oh my god, why am I here? Know? What's up with that thing about my grandpa? my grandmother told me or told me and you know that the ability to place our perception in larger or smaller time intervals seems very closely related to all this and to the sense of mortality that we will undoubtedly talk about in the future. a little, but in a practical way in the absence of a daily therapy session.

How do you suggest people start segmenting or compartmentalizing in a way that is functional? For example, should people set aside 15 minutes every morning to just think about why they are on this Earth and why they are doing it and what they are doing instead of just doing, well, this is a central problem of our time, it is that everyone is going to say no. I have time for that. I had a now-deceased colleague, Maran Woodman, in Toronto, who used to tell her clients, "You have to guarantee me an hour a day to reflect on your dreams or journal in terms of what's going on in your life." she said always people say I don't have time for that so she said then you don't have time for therapy you don't have any priority here for this and you are right in the statements of you know Woodsworth wrote In 1802, the world is too much with us getting and by spending, we waste our powers.

This is 1802, before the Internet, with all its claims on us, there was such a noisy den around us that we were all distracted. You see, that's why it usually takes a crisis in a marriage or a depression or whatever be the case for people to come out of it and reflect on it, so I spend 15 minutes every morning before I start, just meditating, particularly working on a dream. Yes I have had a dream and secondly I reflect on things at night also because one of the things we want to try to do is say what are the stories that I am living here, you know, one of them that I have to make a living one of they I have to do this other I have to do that you see but what's with all that frenzy you see that's why I think that the first half of life and I say this semih with humor is a huge and inevitable mistake because we live simply reactively, you see, It's not generative, it's reacting to whatever is going on around us, it's a lifetime to spend reacting to things now, when you're young, there's only a limited amount of ego strength to reflect on.

This several years ago I was asked to give a talk to an advanced group of undergraduates at a university on the psychodynamics of love. Well, everyone was interested in love. I can tell you well, so it was a 3 hour seminar. for the first 90 minutes we talked about projection transference, everyone understood that they were smart kids and then we took a short break when we came back and I said now let's apply these ideas to your current or recent relationships, it was like the curtain fell. down, you know they were in 1920 21 22 in that area that they couldn't stand, they could understand the idea, but they couldn't stand to look at themselves with that kind of scrutiny.

Flash Forward 20 years old when they are 40 and their marriage has just dissolved. or um, you know the relationship has difficulties of one kind or another, it's much more likely that they have enough ego strength to endure looking at themselves secondly, um, there's enough life experience to reflect on because this kind of work It requires courage. Firstly, I have to be able to stand looking at myself and seeing what's there that won't always be pretty, and secondly, it's humbling because it's not about feeling good, it's about being called to take on responsibilities, which is a completely different matter.

Being an adult is not just having a big body, it is knowing that I am responsible for what spills out into the world through me, you once said in one of those revealing statements that torment me in a constructive way. He said the best. The burden the child must bear is the unlived life of the parents, so where I am stuck as a person, my children will be stuck or spend their lives trying to get unstuck, so the best thing I can do for them is to model for them, You know, a life lived with all the courage I can muster and as much integrity as I can manage and in doing so not only models, but gives them permission.

One of the things I found for many people who don't really feel allowed to feel what they feel, want what they want, is to go out and fight for what matters to them because life, as we learn early, is conditional, you will be acceptable in this family, maybe you will be. beloved will be rewarded or you'll be punished if you meet these conditions and if you don't meet the conditions, many people put conditions on their children. You know that many people still live through their children. You know, if you'll excuse the joke. There's an old joke about Jewish mothers: a fetus isn't considered full-term until it graduates from medical school, and that's a joke about a cultural expectation and about carrying out someone else's unfinished business in a way you know you'll do.

It's to make her feel. well instead of serving what is an expression through you, which is quite a different matter, so one of the things one has to do is ask permission to realize that life is short, we are here for a very short time and the call is to live your journey as honestly as you can and when you do, ultimately serve other people it's not selfish it's actually serving yourself if you want it's not narcissistic it's not actually self-absorption It's humbling. I never would have imagined as a child that I would spend my adult life listening to people's suffering and yet that is my day job and I feel honored to be invited into other people's lives.

It is deeply significant. I can't imagine living without it at the same time. It's not fun, it's not pleasant. but it is deeply meaningful, that is the distinction, so of those various sources of knowledge that we can have in our lives, you have to ask what is most meaningful to me, as defined by the psyche, not the culture around you, because what says the culture. it's about being successful it's about making money it's about living in this neighborhood it's about buying that thing and if that worked we'd know, obviously it doesn't, that's what brings us back to that humbling moment in the that maybe I'm not living it my life sir on k guard the Danish theologian in Copenhagen in the 19th century spoke of a man who was surprised to find his name in the obituary column and had not realized that he had died because he did not had realized that he was here in the First of all now, this is a Carard speaking in the mid-19th century.

He thinks about the increase in stimuli around us. The constant drumming among the young people. You take away their cell phone. They experience enormous anxiety because this is their connection to the world. and yet it is constantly demanding of them so again, underneath all of this, we have a date with our own souls and the question is are you going to show up for the date and I thought yes, but my psyche thought otherwise, so it was in In the midst of severe depression I began to show up and it was a difficult process, but in the end it turned out to be transformative.

I certainly agree that difficulties, for better or worse, are often how these things stimulate the self-reflection that is required for change, there seems to be a complicated situation where, on the one hand, I listen and agree. I agree that it all starts with being very honest with yourself about what you really want, yes, and I love it and thank you for mentioning this 15 minutes earlier. part of the day, perhaps the ideal would be 15 minutes at the end of the day, where one takes time from the contributions of others, in any form electronic or otherwise, to simply reflect on what is inside and the messages that arise through dreams and reflection, etc., so important, um and Sorry for the interruption, but I've often told people that it's not so much what you believe or feel or do, but what's in service to your internally, that's an important distinction, so I can think I've made a The good thing is that when it's actually old codependency or it's a way of avoiding conflict or it's a fear-driven response, we always have to be asking, but what was that in the service of my interior?

You may not know it at first, but you keep asking. the question will begin to, you know, rise to the surface, you begin to recognize that this is how we begin to identify some of those internal drivers that we call complexes because again they are groups of energy with the power to create a provisional personality and many times people They identify with their complex that is what I am you know I am what I do I am my performance more than that underneath all this there is a human being who wanders through life afraid of dying in the attempt to avoid pain as much as possible and, um, hope someone steps in and fixes it.

I'm certainly familiar with the feeling of recognizing what I want, but being afraid that if I expressed it, I wouldn't do it. it certainly wouldn't be accepted and that can certainly create problems. I'm also familiar with recognizing what I want and expressing it very clearly and some people, fortunately, respond well, but I think it's fair to say, at least in my experience, that when we are very honest with ourselves and with others, it doesn't always work out. good. I mean, I pay a lot of attention, probably too much attention to U's social media posts in the science and health landscape, it's the world I live in. a lot of the time these days, uh, and what I notice is that there is a real gravitational pull of people towards what are called, whatever, are influential public figures or who are just very clear about who they are, at least in your own self-perception, but herein lies the twist which seems to be that what I am hearing is that often our self-perception is not accurate, that is correct and it is almost useless to try to convince people that we are who we think we are. true, and I have a theory that's emerging: it's not a formal theory that the internet and in particular Med social media are borderline, they oscillate between sane and psychotic, yeah, like a borderline person would project adoration or total disgust, and I warn you.

Anyone, including me, if you are on social media you are interacting with a borderline organism, so be prepared to be told in various ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, that you are terrible and you should also be prepared to huge things. reward and being told you're awesome just for being there, that's what it's like to interact with a borderline person and there's no way to control or predict their movements, so anyway, that's a bit, you know. Theory emerging why he would do it. It can't be like that, right, you're the psychologist, but why wouldn't it be like that?

Because ultimately, social media is the emergent property of all of these individuals. Okay, so you've made it clear how a way to anchor yourself and get in touch with what's really going on inside of us, yes, reflect on dreams, reflect on what comes to the surface, keep a journal, such Maybe meditate, ideally, twice a day, maybe therapy would be ideal too, yes, but then we go about our day and do our best to be the best version of ourselves and when we get positive feedback we tend to do that. I think, as you know, neurobiological psychological organisms do more of that, they do more of that, um uh, and it's kind of like a bank account, we're looking for a positive net balance. um and we tend to do less things that give us negative feedback, except maybe go on social media where people seem to go there specifically for friction based interactions, which is kind of its own thing as we go through life in the first half. of life, second half of life, how can we orient ourselves in time, as I said before, how can we carry out these daily, weekly or maybe annual reflections in a way that really serves us?

I mean, do you recommend any? day a week getting away from everything, do you recommend that I make some type of retreat? Do you recommend that people keep a life journal? It's the story and seeing how a story evolves is that useful. What I'm trying to do here is something like this. Steer people toward some practical tools because, um, because I think at some level we can be swept away by currents of any kind, that's right and ideally we, you know, stay away from deep pathology, but even if we get to the soundtracks and we return again and again.

Again, this is important work, right, it's about being the best version of ourselves and society benefits from that, so are there more macroscopic things we can do, or is it just a small amount daily, two meditations , ideally, Therapy Journal and just anchor ourselves, um, can we ever relax well, of course, of course, um? First of all, there is no formula, it is applicable to everyone in their life circumstances. You know, the word psychotherapy literally means from the Greek to listen or pay attention to the soul however you do it, that is the right thing for you,it's up to you to figure it out and for some people work in nature, for others work with their hands, for others it will be through some creative venture or working with their dreams or meditating or whatever um I would say whatever helps you to get out of the stimulus response stimulus response body to body that we call our daily life is probably useful to you because you rest and restore the psyche or reflect on it you remind yourself how it is right you remember yourself because we fall apart I often have the feeling of untangling ourselves in life where you know this is calling you and this is calling you and this is calling you and that is calling you and it's just taking you away from some center here and again this is not about self-absorption, but if I'm not in connection with something permanent here, my behaviors or choices there will not be of much help in the future.

In the long run, you see, they will simply respond to the demands of environmental circumstances. One thing I enjoy doing from time to time is drawing. I like to make anatomical drawings and things like that, and I find that if I engage in an activity that absorbs all my attention, yes, even though I have zero minus an aspiration of becoming a commercial artist or something, two things happen, one I get out of the stimulus-response world and at the same time it is inevitable that some idea will arise later. That's right, what is that? Well, I see, I think it's a good example, as you said, about getting out of the stimulus-response cycle because in that moment something in your psyche rises to express itself through you and you know that it is you who attracts it, maybe we can. read that drawing and maybe interpret something from it, you know, like the famous Roar shock, for example, I mean what Roar shock is an ink diagram, when it's an ink diagram, not an inkblot, when I conspire a response, you see, and that response is indicative of What is happening inside of me.

That's a good example. I mean, for some people, you know, they have those moments where they go for a run, for example, or ride a bike or whatever, listening to music, there's no one right path for everyone, it's like find the place where you can. being alone with yourself and if you can tolerate being with yourself and you pay attention, something will start to emerge and ultimately, ironically, that is the cure for the great disease of our time, which is loneliness, it's interesting that the UK and Japan now have cabinet-level positions for ministers of such loneliness that we have never been more connected in human history through our electronic media, and yet people are now isolated in their rooms talking to each other. and I saw a cartoon in New York or somewhere. where a couple was getting married and the minister tells the couple to text each other.

You know, ultimately it was a joke about how we're so dependent on media now that we're disconnected from each other and anything that helps. you link to something here you asked this question that haunts me too in a constructive way, he said that we all need to find something that supports us when nothing supports us and that ultimately it is the cure for loneliness, that there is something inside of me who knows Me better than I do, is working hard toward a healthy response to whatever life throws at me, and has purpose, intentionality, and expression, and when I am in touch with that, I feel that sense of wholeness. and purpose when I'm out of it when I start to unravel, so to speak, and that's how we get tired and burned out, etc., so again, I use that word, remember, remember, it's like putting the pieces back together. somehow, so what Shakespeare? said um knitting Ravel's frayed care sleeve, you see he was using the same metaphor of being untangled somehow.

I love this notion of spending time alone and accessing the deeper resource of self-care as a way to deal with loneliness. because ultimately, I also completely agree that response to stimulus is the hallmark of texting. There can be safe and useful aspects of texting, of course, coordinating plans, etc. and communicate, but certainly social media is a stimulus response device that some people think of. It's more like a slot machine, but it never really comes back. The problem is the jackpot. And I also think that social media can be great for educating and learning. Certainly, I believe that much of what I do or strive to do. it's just incredibly beneficial, so thank you for highlighting that and also because it doesn't take much, you know, maybe even half an hour of walking or something, if I may, what do you think happens when we come out of that stimulus response?

So, do you think the unconscious mind reveals itself to us a little more? um and I think about the unconscious mind um a former guest on this podcast um a psychiatrist described that the unconscious is kind of like the iceberg that's beneath the surface all things Do you think the water recedes a little bit because there's no room for the expression of what wants to be recognized within us when we constantly respond to our environmental demands? One of the things I try to do is walk a mile every day. I've been through some health issues over the last few years, so I'm in a physical recovery stage of life and doing a mile a day even though it's physically difficult. uh and I find it revealing because that's who I am, I'm focused on being present here instead of all the distractions there and that's one of the things that I've found a form of meditation, so to speak, and what comes up for me It is often surprising.

I've talked before on the podcast about meditation, clinical hypnosis, something called Yoga Nidra, which is self-directed relaxation, sometimes we call it deep rest without sleep, etc. and without going off on a tangent, um, I bring this up because we're still talking about meditation and um, I think for a lot of people meditation sounds like something esoteric to me, as a neuroscientist, meditation is a perception exercise that can be done to improve concentration by focusing on a specific place behind the forehead or looking at a light, it can be um an uh. Open monitoring meditation where you are intentionally not trying to focus on any particular thing, but at the end of the day it is a deliberate shift in perception, in the same way that if I decide to listen to an opera with my eyes closed that is, in a sense, a meditation, it's a deliberate change of perception, um, a deliberate change of perception that we call meditation, which I think is a great label for it, that is directly aimed at better understanding the UN situation. own unconscious processing so that then one can lean into the stimulus response parts of life with more intentionality and with less opportunity to hit the rumble strips or go into the gutter, um, with a more authentic response, you see, because it is more likely to come to light. of me instead of just being reactive.

I think that's the important thing. What's so important about what you're saying is that for years we've heard that meditation is important as a way to intervene in the Ulus response process. Yes, and people say to be receptive, not reactive, and that all sounds wonderful, just as sounding brave and resilient sounds wonderful, but one of the really important things here that you're bringing up is that there are methods of doing that that almost always involve going towards inside or someone who can see what we can't see, pointing out blind spots, that's right, well I think the problem again is stopping traffic in and being present in the moment anyway, that's why I said a person You can meditate with hand work or walking or something that gets you into one of the cycles that run in your little script over and over again, so there are many forms of meditation and you know that ancient Traditions have revealed that There is also walking meditation. and so on and you mentioned music, I think that's another example of listening to music.

I think it takes something away from you, you know, nature once said without music. Life is a mistake and I think what he was referring to is that there is a sense in which music has no purpose except to be in itself, so when we are really present with the music, we were in the middle of being. If I'm okay, it's spring right now as you and I are talking and it's beautiful in the neighborhood, so I've been watching the flowers come up and stuff, um and just being present means that some of that other traffic stops and then I return and the traffic resumes, but maybe I have a little more idea of ​​who I am and where I come from.

I'm responding, you see as a result of that re-entry process, you know, Zen people talk about having no mind. I think it was his way of talking about being present in this moment but not consumed by the demands of this moment and that's it. that's a hard thing to deal with but it's essential I'd like to take a quick break and recognize one of our sponsors awake awake is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditations mindfulness workouts yoga sessions for those in need and more I started meditating three decades ago and what I discovered in the following years is that sometimes it was very easy for me to do my daily meditation practice.

I was just very diligent, but then things got more stressful, which of course is exactly when I should have been meditating more. my meditation practice would slow down if we piled on, they make it very easy to find and consistently use a given meditation practice, it has very convenient reminders and they have different durations, so even if you only have one or five minutes to meditate, you can still get your meditation, which research shows is still very beneficial. In addition to the many different meditations in the awakening app, they also have Yoga Nidra sessions, which are a form of deep, sleep-free rest that I personally find extremely valuable for restoring the mind. and physical stamina I tend to do a yoga NRA lasting 10-20 minutes at least once a day and if I ever wake up in the middle of the night and need to go back to sleep, I also find Yoga Nidra extremely helpful.

If you want to try the awakening app, you can go to waking up.com huberman to try again for a 30-day free trial at waking up.com huberman, maybe we can talk about shadow, this notion of shadow sounds very good. sinister um, what is the Shadow? And are people aware of their shadows and if they are not, how can they become aware of them and how can they work well with them? A shadow was Young's metaphor for those parts of our own psyche and our affiliation. with groups, for example, whether it be a religious group, an educational group, a national identity that, when brought to Consciousness, seems disturbing to us, perhaps contradictory to our values ​​or, you know, hostile to our sense of self-worth or something like that, for example, typical Shadow problems include our capacity for jealousy and envy, aggression, greed, etc., etc., we don't want to acknowledge those things, but since when are we exempt from the condition? human?

The wisest thing ever said about the shadow came from the Latin playwright Terrance two millennia ago, who said uh nothing human is foreign to me now I think it is important to recognize in myself I have all the capacity of human nature to express itself some of those forms of expression will be acceptable to society or to my psychological culture and others will not be um and that is the shadow material and you know there is the personal Shadow and there are group Shadows because nations can be possessed by Blood Lust. For example, o or a fashion is a shadow issue where everyone has to look the same and dress the same and So, you know, the more insecure I am as a person, the more likely I am to try to look around for of clues to be able to fit in and be like the others, therefore I will be acceptable, you see, that is not a federal crime is a very deep complex that remains from childhood.

I'm not here to fit in. I'm here to be who I am, which sometimes will fit and sometimes it won't, but that's okay, that's okay, because I. At least I have a good relationship with myself at the time, so normally the shadow manifests as something unconscious, therefore it just spills out into the world through us. A perfect example of Shadow problems, as I mentioned before, is that parents expect their children to grow up and have you. knowing the same kind of values ​​that I have, for example, the same religious views, marrying someone I find acceptable, etc., well, that's not really loving the otherness of the other, it's not really loving the child for its own sake. journey, meaning that they carry a piece of their own unfinished business secondly, uh, we repudiate the Shadow by projecting it onto some, you know, those people on the other side of the border, they are, you know, they are the bearers of, are, they, what is wrong in this world, you see, I repudiate the shadow in me by seeing it in everyone around me Yung actually said that what we often find troubling in another person is because they are expressing something within our own unconscious um, you know, like a certain itinerant, the rabbi said two millennia ago um, I can see the speckin your eye, but I missed the record in mine, it's a perfect illustration.

What The Shadow is, thirdly, you can get caught up in it, that's sometimes what rock concerts are mass events, people get caught up in a mob mentality where you lose your sense of individual ego identity and become subsumed into a collective mood and you know it could be a crowd being hanged, for example, as has happened in history too many times, and it could be a force for good or a force for evil, but again, the greatest force The lower the group, the lower the level of consciousness of the individuals in that group and fourthly, we will recognize this in ourselves, in a speech given at Yale University in 1937, Yung said that a person who He could look at his own shadow and possess it.

He said that now he has a big problem because they no longer have to blame others for what goes wrong in their lives, they have to recognize it within themselves and he also said that it is the best thing they can do for themselves. society, this is not a naval look, this is how you lift your unfinished business with your partner, your children, remove them yourself, which is a loving and civic thing if you look collectively here, so how can you learn what your Shadow is o Shadows again if you are married, ask your partner, you surely know who will tell you right away, what may be your unfinished business, or your children or your close friend, perhaps, it appears in dreams, you know, Freud spoke of a young man who repudiated the content of his dream he says well I don't know fre he said well whose dream do you think was your dream? you have to recognize that it embodied something within you so there are many ways to recognize the shadow, often the consequences accumulate and Then one begins to realize that the only person consistent in all the scenes of this drama I call my life It's mAh, so I have to admit that that is my thing and that is something very humiliating, that's why I say that this job is humiliating, no no. uh inflating in any way is humiliating so again shadow work will never be popular because it means I'm taking responsibility and yet what else would a responsible, adult human being like me accept except responsibility ?

You see, it's one of the definitions I would say of an adult person is: I know that I am responsible for what spills out into the world through me. Yes, I am responding to various things that happen around me, but sooner or later I am the one who brings my stories, my condition responses and some of my shadow into the mix and I respond from that, that is a witches brew sometimes, as you can imagine, while acknowledging it, it's okay. but that's my business because if I don't it just continues what I observe in the world and what I've experienced before is that um certainly we all have dark sides um I all mean, I think that's like I think anyone who doesn't believe that that's, uh, maybe it's not homo sapiens, you know, maybe other animals have shadows too, who knows, but when shadows collide, it gets very confusing because, given what you're saying, very few people address their shadows and these.

These days especially, there is no need to make this political, this is just social, for sure, we see a mob forming, as you said, the larger the group, the lower the level of Consciousness and then it becomes even more challenging to address Shadow when there is a perception of an attack mhm B that attack is often a reflection of the other group Shadow and C people find Refuge with people who have similar Shadow processes yes, so I shouldn't be pessimistic here, but maybe the answer to what you were referring to before is to go inward, to yourself, work with someone or someone close to you who has your best interest in mind, really best interest in mind and then try to figure that out, well, yeah, and very few people are willing to do that, that is what polarizes societies. groups and such, it's comforting to find like-minded people, but then you're both stuck in the same complex, there's another way to put it, so ultimately whatever reality it is, it's going to wear away and reveal something that uh is going to be quite disconcerting for individuals who are trapped in a collective identification in that way, you know, the shadow arises because our human nature is pushed into various social situations, we cannot help but have a shadow, you know, we have to socialize a child .

We learn to use a knife and fork and not to bring food to our brothers and that kind of thing. You learn to look both ways when you cross the street, there is a socialization that is important and yet the more socialization the more there will likely be an interruption. I mean, think about those cultures where people are forced to dress alike for some form of unity or conformity, um um, think about where a person might have a special gift or talent but it's not appreciated in family X or Y, well, where does that natural shape come from? of expression, pathologizes as depression or comes out in compensatory dreams or projections about another person or makes the person sick, you know that unlived life can make a person sick, there is a sickness under death, as Kard talked about it, you know it is uh it's that disease where the human spirit is being violated repeatedly and a lot in our culture violates our spirits and the spirit is not something that you want, it's something that is the acceleration of life energy and service to something and if you family or your situation trumps that, to give a quick example, my own family of origin was one where, due to circumstances decades ago, they could not get an education, my father worked in a factory, my mother was secretary and, um, for them.

Life was a series of embarrassing events and overwhelming events and the message to me, both covert and covert, is: don't go out, it's too big, it's too much, stay here and we'll take care of each other, so one of the first things What I did when I was 18 was quit, I went to university and came back on vacation, but psychologically I quit at that moment, something in me knew that I had to have a bigger life than that and I say that with love and respect. and compassion for my parents the last conversation I had with my mother before she died of cancer um her ancestor her father that she had never met was from Sweden and I had had a book translated into Swedish and I told her I thought it would be something that it would be good for her and she was horrified it's like why did you write it?

What are they saying? At first I thought she was referring to the critics and I realized that's the voice I heard growing up, she said you shouldn't go out. there now people are going to attack you this will catch your attention you see and his intention was protective in his last days in reality before he died he was more afraid of what people would think than of whether his son was living his journey or not and I say this with pain for her and that was the message of childhood, you know there is too much out there and yet something inside sped up and said, well, you have to go where those planes go, you have to go see the ocean by yourself, um, you have to try living in a foreign country and see what that's like, um, it was that easy, no, it was doubly difficult because of the messages I had, but it was necessary, sooner or later, again , the appointment with your life, do you keep it or not? goes to the appointment, so that was the first meeting of the appointment was leaving the house and starting the trip.

You know, in terms of the journey archetype, first is the departure and then you have the initiatory experiences that can knock you down. and then the question is do you get up and move on to the next one and sooner or later something starts to change inside you and you start to feel like this is the right journey for me. It's very touching to hear because you know that I heard that we become our parents M and yet I have never believed that, I think that for whatever reason within us we unconsciously or consciously adopt their traits or resist them 180° in the other direction MH it's not like that.

It seems to be a 90° response, as your example beautifully illustrates that there is something in the human brain and psyche that says yes, okay, that's how life is, for better or worse, or it says no, and you know, I feel like I'm 48 so I'm still learning to be a full adult um um I like to think that there's some neuroplasticity left, science tells us that there is neuroplasticity throughout life, so I believe that um, but I feel like a big part of being an adult maybe just being a human being is about learning to stand your ground and say no, no, no, no, that's me and this is what's right for me and you're wrong, crazy or just different, and we agree to disagree, and then there's the other half of being an adult is saying: oh god, you might be right, maybe you're right.

Okay you're right. I screwed up or I need to think at least think about this differently and I think the hard work of being a human being. It's knowing that when you're dealing with incoming messages that are real, they could be from a healthy Source or an unhealthy Source, it's complicated. That's why I mentioned this about the internet and social media in particular before. I think it's borderline, I think if you took out the names and faces and just put them in a script, you'd say this is dialogue coming from a borderline person moving back and forth across the line, literally, of the healthy and the psychotic and, therefore, as a human being, especially today.

It's complicated, not only do we live in small towns where we do well, well, that person tends to, you know, drift and that person seems very grounded, but occasionally they also make mistakes, you know, and that's why I feel like a lot of the job of being an adult, I said, but I'm going to replace that with just a human. It's trying to know yourself like the Oracle said and own yourself and report it to the world, but also be semi-permeable and in a way that is functional is very hard work because in both cases the adoption of what we were told and what was ingrained in us and is unconscious so that we simply live out our parents' script or where we say no, I am, I am.

I'm going to leave this small town or I'm not going to live life and relationships that way. I'm going to do it in a completely different way, maybe unconventional. Both have an element of reactivity and both have an element. of um kind of uh um there's like a vigor behind this, sure not, your point is very well taken and appropriate because it's a paradox, first of all in the Eden Project, a book that I wrote about relationships and I subtitled the search for the magic leather there is within us this childish and understandable desire to find the right person who will make our life work for us, who will take care of us, satisfy our needs, read our minds, etc., etc., you see, and the other person has that to do.

In them, because of what they project into us, you wonder why relationships become so complex, but the great gift of relationship, if you can tolerate it, is that the otherness of the other produces the dialectic, produces the enlargement that comes from the meeting with the other. I have learned a lot from my wife and I think she has learned some things from me. Our ongoing dialogue because we are both similar and very different at the same time is one that has been naturally conflictive at times, but most of the time it is a pattern of growth because we are allowed to bring that other perspective and see the same reality.

My wife has taught me to see some things that she wouldn't have seen before because she has an artist's eye, on the other hand. There are places where you have to stand up, as you said, against what is central and critical to your own well-being or your own integrity and then you have to defend that and the wisdom to know which is which at any given moment is not. in race is one of those moments where we have to find that balance between legitimate dialogue and commitment and sacrifice in a relationship there is a place for sacrifice but at the same time there is a place where you have to say "it's okay "but I also have to separate myself here and defend this from the other side of that and you know it takes Solomonic wisdom to always know what is right, but over time I think one can get an idea of ​​what it is about, so what do you know again, that's why.

We have to individualize ourselves as individuals by definition but also in relationship because it is the otherness of others that takes us out of that self-referential system, otherwise we become trapped in a circular dialogue between our complexes, for example, as I said, it is important. go to the top of the mountain to meditate, but if you stay there too long you will be talking to ghosts, you know that your complexes will be trapped in this circular cycle and you need the other to take you out of that and bring you into the presence of the other and that's where the third comes from.

Joseph Camel made an important distinction once he said about the committed relationship, he said that if you are constantly sacrificing yourself for the other, you will be filled with resentment, but if you are sacrificing yourself for the project. You two have thrown yourself together as a friendship or a marriage or whatever form it takes. They can do it in a very constructive way. That fuels them because they are mutually committed to the project. that represents this relationship and that is an important distinction, I think so, giventhat 50% or more of marriages seem to end in divorce these days.

I think that statistic still holds. Do you think that can largely be attributed to people not reaching those relationships? with the mentality you just described, people who don't get into those relationships have a deep enough understanding of themselves before that or something else, I think all of the above, first of all, young people tend to get married and have babies , understandably, um, and then 20 years later, they're somehow a different person and it's very difficult for the premises that brought them together to still hold up in an honest and developmental way. Many years later, when you get to that point, it's time to renegotiate or if necessary, unfortunately, dissolve that relationship, because I had a colleague in New Jersey years ago who worked exclusively with couples and she talked about initial marriages and He said he would never say that publicly because it sounded too pessimistic, but he said If you're lucky, your initial marriage will be good and evolve, etc., but for most people, what brought them together was running away from their parents or replicating the relationships of their parents or, uh, their insecurity about themselves, so they came together. someone else who was going to take care of it for them, whatever it is, has outlived their own natural development, the circumstances of their life have changed and then the need to make some very difficult decisions arises, so you know that the Marriage is an institution. with the best of intentions, it is tested over time and you know that sometimes it will survive the test.

I wouldn't automatically applaud if someone has been married for 50 or 60 years. I would ask what has happened to that person's soul in that relationship. Has it grown? It has developed? Did you support each other's growth and development? Or was something stuck at that point? And our early family of origin. Dynamics still dominate that relationship and from the outside we usually don't know the answer. that question, but inside you would have to say what happened to this person and the same goes for parenting, you know, parenting is very, very difficult because we would like to think that we know what is right for our own son, but then they have to spend a good part of their life trying to get away from us in some way like we did ourselves, you see, and then if you remember that, then you're a little more likely to say, you know, I really don't know what's going on.

But here I have to pay more attention to what I think I want to express through my son and support him instead of assuming that he will grow up and replicate our lives and our values, as I said before, given the number of people. For those who do deep introspective work, either alone or with a trained professional, perhaps we should be surprised that 50% of marriages survive, yes, in some ways, yes, and those that survive are not necessarily good marriages in the sense in which that the person is growing and developing, they may be stagnant, they may be afraid of alternatives, they may be limited by economics, for example, or by cultural forms, so, from the outside, you don't know what is happening inside the soul of that individual and it is very important to us Don't judge them for that reason, earlier you described the painful, sometimes painful work of really addressing what one wants and really getting in touch with the psyche of one's soul and how society or we we think that society might not approve of that and yet when I think about popular culture um a lot of times it's the people who seem to live in their own truth that are the most celebrated that's true like there's something in the crowd.

I've changed from mob to crowd here to make it sound more benevolent, but it's still a crowd cheering for the person who really seems to be in their, let's say, full expression or living in their truth, but who just comes out and says, yeah, no. I care, I really don't care what they say about me or what people think, I know myself, I know my own goodness, my own intention, my own mission and the people close to me, I hope they have people close to them and we say Yes, it's inspiring, yes, that's why I said before, many of the people.

In history, those we would admire had difficult lives, but we admire them because they held onto some value that was central to who they were and they lived that perhaps at great cost, but they live it through whatever suffering they had to transform to experience it. again. from the outside we don't know, when we see some cultural figure out there uh, maybe they're manipulative, maybe they're trapped in a complex of some kind that we don't know from the outside, you have to say, I mean. One of the themes of Shadow is how often people will live vicariously through a celebrity or live vicariously through a pop figure in some way, maybe imitate that person, again for a child, that's natural and normal, On the other hand, sooner or later you have to say, but my trip.

It's a different journey, maybe they are living there, it's been on my mind vividly and I don't mean that in a grandiose way, I don't mean that they have to go out and become something that is noticeable in society, but live in accordance with something that is desiring its U expression through us, that's why I said the ultimate question in life is what it is to want to live in this world through me instead of what I want or what my hang-ups want because they're loud. Chatters there, you know, yesterday I had a dear friend from out of state and now he's semi-retired and he's been dealing with some health issues and he said I'm not distracted now, I have time to work. about all the Goblins from the past that I left behind and he's an analyst so it's not like we're getting rid of these things, they're for life.

That's why Yung said we can't solve these things but we can overcome them, there is a big difference. You know that you become bigger than what happened to you, for example, you become bigger than that voice inside you that says you can do this but not that, um and over time you know that something inside you is craving that growth. and pushing. that and again pathologizes when that is blocked from people being able to do all the right things it is defined by their values ​​and their environment and it violates something internal, that is why we can be successful and achieve things and it still feels empty, there is nothing over there.

I know you get to the top of the ladder and realize there's nothing there and that happens so often in our culture. I remember one of the tax figures at the end of the 20th century who had a personal fortune of 400 million dollars and they asked him. what was his philosophy of life and he said well, at the end of life the person with the biggest stack wins and I remember thinking how childish it is that this was an intelligent man and an elder statesman in his field finally went to prison for some things um but that's the sandbox philosophy I have the biggest pile of sand I've ever earned no you haven't earned your debt and it's a pile of sand what are you talking about and yet this is what drove man's life and obviously It drove him to cross enough lines that he would get into legal trouble sooner or later and again I say that without judgment.

I'm just saying that this is an example of a very successful person who has been living a childish philosophy and as such, something else makes him pay a lot for That yes, I can certainly say that, despite having worked with a lot of vigor and career, without Without a doubt, friendships and relationships are the most important thing, there's just no question, especially when things get tough, that's how it is, you know, actually, actually. I have a list in this very book, I won't refer to it now, of the people I am lucky enough to call close friends, true friends you can count on, and for me, and I have always had it for my sister.

I have an older sister and she always said that you have always been a pack animal. I've always had big groups of big groups of friends and it's something I've invested a lot in sometimes at the expense of other things, including work. and other relationships, but um, but the notion that um, yeah, material things or that the opinions of strangers would somehow fulfill us, that to me is like the strangest concept, sure that's the strangest concept, but um, but clearly some people operate. in those metrics, that is, of course, and I assume that they have a reward horizon, meaning that it adds up to whatever, the algorithms are the ones that give them that thing, so it must feed some reward mechanism that It hasn't been distracting enough. like locked into this mode of time perception, you know, just go the mile, Mark, go the mile, Mark, go the mile, Mark, so they don't notice, but when you take someone like that they've You've been doing that your whole life and you say, wait.

I know you're on this track going round and round and AC crew trophies, but that track doesn't really go anywhere, it doesn't take you to the world, that's right. I guess they've just been doing it for so long that they're like an animal that's just been, you know, digging a ditch and in their cage confined, which is something that I'm finding with a lot of the men that I see, I happen to see right now. in my practice, several men. between UH 60 and 8 80 and uh one 82 um and of course they've been conditioned to work and then all of a sudden you know on Monday morning you have to stop and think about who you are, you get up, you go to work and you do What I've done all these years and suddenly you don't do that, what are you going to do?

You say, well, I'm going to go play golf every day, okay, do it, but usually within three or four months the depression hits and they'll think, well, I need to do this again or start doing that. You see very often that we find people defined by exactly that type of mentality. I finished the first lap, so what do I do, run another lap and run another? turn around and you realize that you keep coming back to the same starting point, that's why I say that it is not what you do, but what is in the service of your inner self that makes the difference, so is that person successful by the standards external?

Yeah, whatever that means, does that mean? their psyche will cooperate and give them that genuine feeling of satisfaction in something, no it won't, it's autonomous, it won't be co-opted by that and sooner or later you'll know that the chickens come home to roast and then you have depression like the one I experienced and/or you discover that your relationships are in tatters around you, so sooner or later I want to say that there is no Revelation on my part, nature will express itself and if we live long enough and then everything we have hidden It's going to come up, you mentioned men in particular, so now is probably a good time to ask about men in particular.

You wrote Under Saturn Shadow, which is how I initially learned about your work and then listen to some of your lectures online. I'm still in the process of reading your other books, but let's talk about archetypes, stereotypes of men and women, with the intention, for Of course, to better understand what is real rather than what is stereotyped, so in the, let's call it In the vision of men in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s in the United States and elsewhere, there was this notion as something like stoic, uh, work, um, uh, duty and, um, and to some extent, a fair amount of mysticism, like it's not really. because with fewer words, we have less awareness at least of what people say, who knows what they think, whether they don't talk much or not, but there was this idea that the man was someone who did. things maybe they thought about it but they didn't really talk about it much today things have changed this is born in the statistics on university campuses about how many people seek therapy if they have a problem it has gone from 15% to 85 plus% at least approximately in the statistics I've seen, but in terms of men and their sense of duty and how they're supposed to be in the world, I think as I just laid out how little you know.

Of course, it's a very outdated view of masculinity. um they would be thinking a lot about what's going on, I would do some of the daily practices that you talked about before. um, there would be a reflection that there would be um Consciousness. be um uh an understanding of Shadow himself or if one added the other accompanying stereotype that they drink a lot, right, that was a lot. I will remember my first time. I first went to graduate school at Berkeley before switching. to a different place um and when I got there they told me that it used to be that the professors and graduate students who at that time in the 1970s and 1960s were mostly men, now that has changed, fortunately, they met every day after. work to drink and then come home to his partners every day and I was shocked, are you kidding me?

I thought not every day, so you know, the idea here is that, that was the old view, now things are very different, but what? about the work of men, men and boys to try to better understand their own psyche, what it is, what are the things that are specific to them that you've talked about and then we'll turn to women and then, We'll do our best to close the gap in a conversation, well, um Ju. Just to go back to our previous conversation for a moment, you know why those men would have to drink every day and the answer is because there was deep pain that they had to anesthetize somethingthat they were generally unaware of or presumably would have the opportunity to address whatever that was, um you know and I'll come back to that in a moment.

I have often been asked to talk about men by women. Groups, and by the way, men's groups have never asked me to talk about women, right, that's right, that's right, you know people like you, but mostly women's groups have asked me to talk about those strange creatures called men and I say, imagine these three things. First, you eliminate all your close friends, the women with whom you share your worries about your marriage, your children, your body, your love life or lack thereof. You know those people are gone forever, there's no one you can share that with.

Um, you have to cut your link with whoever your Guiding Source is. You call it instinct or intuition. Whatever is cut, it is not acceptable and thirdly, your value as a human being will be defined by meeting abstract standards of productivity. as defined by complete strangers in your culture and sooner or later no matter how much you earn today you will end up being a loser and the thing is you put up with that as long as you can so keep running well and women hear that and think well that It's horrible, that's horrible, how lonely it would be, how isolated it would be and of course it's something you decide for yourself, you know, my poor father was taken out of the eighth grade and sent to work in the factory, he worked all his life. life in that factory and by the standards of his time he was a good man, he supported his family, he did not run away, he accepted responsibility, but I also know that he did not live his own soul.

I know and I had clues here. and there and I even saw that as a child um and and then when I started to reflect on men I realized that I had my own inhibitions about it and I was lucky enough to be a therapist. I would say, okay, what would you say to someone that I expressed these inhibitions, I would say okay, there are some fears here that you are defending yourself what this is about, so I thought and then I had a voice in me that said, but These are secrets, don't talk about it, so I thought well, that's my duty, isn't it?

I have to mention some of those things and that's what led me to write the book under Sater Shadow and um, I suggested several of those secrets. One is that men's lives are governed to a great extent. due to role expectations, since women's lives are less so today, but in the past they were ironclad, right? and the net effect of those roles was self-organization, you know, you are your function, you are.your duties um men's lives are governed by fear-based responses and there is a certain level of competitiveness that is essential to the culture of men. men women learn over the years probably out of a need to cooperate and support each other um and they can overcome difficult things Doing that for men, you always have to demonstrate your competence in one area or another and the one thing you don't want to do is be a loser, you see, it is a zero sum game, winners and losers and ultimately there is a deep and profound longing for the good, there is a fear of the so-called feminine which can include the feminine within, therefore the Men distance themselves from themselves.

Many years ago I had a client who was sent to therapy by his wife saying, "You know, you either go to therapy or I left here, so he was there reluctantly and he walked in and saw a box of tissues there, a box of tissues and he just sniffed it without saying anything and I knew exactly what he was saying, but I didn't. I acted like I didn't and he thought I had lost track, so he pointed to the box and sniffed again and I told him what this is about and he said well, there was a woman here before, right? "I'm going to need that and I told him: you know, every man has a lake of tears inside himself and a mountain of anger there and I said late." or early and he said no, no, we have other better ways to deal with it and I thought "well our prognosis is not very good here he left after about five sessions because he was just going to ask for more than he was capable of then." there is fear of the feminist as if it had to be as much in my masculine mode of combativeness or competitiveness. or expression of Competence I can't afford anything that one can undo my trembling control over that everywhere you see Macho Behavior you see fear-based overcompensation is what it means right, you know, saber rattling is always a fear-based response and underneath there is a very deep longing, you know, for the wise father, for the person of whom you could see some model, who would teach you something, who would share with you the wisdom he learned along the way and therefore you know the condition of modern life.

Men and things have changed a lot and I think part of it is motivated by the revolution in women's history, you know, and her courage in addressing these stereotypes about what a woman is and what she's supposed to do with his life. that men start looking at themselves too, so women have done us a great favor that men don't always recognize, but you know, in both cases you have to say okay, the message you have from the family of origin and culture may or may not work. you but you are here to deconstruct in a certain way you know those expectations and you find your own path you see uh the Spanish analyst Irene Deo did not take long to cease now she talked about the difference between focused consciousness and diffuse consciousness and I think that more than talking about gender, that it's a social construct that arises from this culture or this culture, talking about those are two different modes of orientation towards the world and we need both, we need a focused consciousness, which is gold-directed behavior that is historically associated with the masculine. and we also need this awareness of context and relationship, so this focused awareness without relationship leads to sterility and isolation and, on the other hand, too diffuse without a sense of direction and purpose.

Behavior, you know, means that one is simply feeling one's way. In life too, I've always told women in therapy, you know that to be a man, in a sense, your requirement is to know what you want and do it, but you also have to do it in what you call the Animus, that is. The so-called masculine inner or focused inner consciousness and that gold-directed behavior is what moves your life forward in a purposeful way, but for men it's about becoming aware of context and relationship again. What if I have the biggest pile of sand in my life?

At the end of my life, well, you know, obviously, you can't take it with you, but in the end it's just sand, money is just money, what was your life about? That's the question that women have to ask, that men have to do that and sometimes the culture supports that process, sometimes it opposes that and that's when you have to get into a fight, the men and Women have a common calling here and can be very supportive of each other and also celebrate their differences and recognize, you know, men are starting to recognize that if you don't address what's going on inside of you, you're just going to be a creature of adaptation and sooner or later. early you will lose your way.

Later, when I returned from my training in Zurich in the 70s, I would say that my practice was 90% women and 10% men, today it is the other way around, 90% men. I don't put up a shangle and say I see men or women. I see both, but I think again that the change is in men, they now recognize that they are lost in some way. The old masculine definitions no longer apply. You know, a lot of this happened with the Industrial Revolution, where parents and children work together. in the same trait if you were a tanner, you got a tan, you know, if you were a carpenter, you built houses, if you were a shepherd, you know, you worked with a sheep, etc., and in a way you learn who you are by rubbing yourself. shoulders with the father, well, nowadays men go to the factory or they go to the office and the children are at home with their mothers, you know, and they are school teachers, etc., and so on, again There is this deep hunger for the initiatory Father.

The supportive father in traditional cultures where there were rights of passage recognized the importance of separating the child at puberty in a simpler culture, yes, but at puberty it was not initiated by the personal father or relatives, but by elders in the tribe often wore masks or painted faces because they were archetypal forces, they were not the neighbor down the street, it was as if you were now in the hands of the gods and they demanded that you leave the house and we are going to teach you things. but we are also going to cause some forms of isolation and suffering for you, so begin to realize that you have within you the resources to undertake this journey.

What we have now is a whole culture of uninitiated men who have not left their home. Psychologically speaking, you know, in the past they were just governed by male roles and now, like dissolved for a lot of men, there's very little idea of ​​what it means to be a man, what I'm supposed to do as a man and The answer is basically go to live your life, find your path, find the courage, the resolve and the resources to sustain it over time, but you know how to do it, there is no model for that, you have to discover that you are yourself.

Look, and that's what sometimes brings people to therapy and it's interesting that I have this collection right now and it's also in line with my own stage of the Life Journey. I only have one man under 50 and everyone else is interested in how you handle it. with aging and mortality for good reason and they are also grappling with how I define myself beyond my work and that is where the unlived life often comes back in a very useful way, although there are some things that have been was and will not return in terms of the changes in the body and that kind of thing, but basically now is the time to address this emotional development of the spiritual life, that is, do you have any concept of a story that is bigger than the stories from your life?

The complexes that you see do not mean that one has to be part of a religious group, it means that you have to question what quickens the spirit in me, what moves me inside, what touches me, where do I find the numinous and the word numinous means that there is something. that causes this reaction within me, so if you and I walk into an art museum, let's say, and you're moved by a particular painting and it scares you or it moves you, you cry over it or whatever and the other person walks by and It doesn't matter what a good is, well, it's not right or wrong, it's this thing here that correlates with something here that is what caused that resonance and that resonance is your commitment to something numinous to you, you don't have to know it or explain it or whatever, but you have to value it and ask what was touched in me and if it doesn't speak to me um Duty or convention or insufficient expectations for this to happen, we cannot want these things to be numinous.

Numinosity is something that is defined by a soul and not the collective, that's for sure, and I think women and men will eventually find that they have very similar goals in their lives and that's how to balance my journey with commitments legitimate aspects of the relationship on the other side and that is why we have that wonderful word sacrifice, you don't know how to give up, sacrifice is for the sacred sacrificer to make it sacred if you are sacrificing in the name of a value that is suitable for you and your project together, then both are served by that, on the other hand. hand and the journey of the individual spirit is not also sacrificed and again it is about balancing it as best as possible and there is very little in our culture that rewards that, but the price is again the symptomatology that comes from the surface and from a point From a psychodynamic point of view, we don't say well how quickly to get rid of the symptoms, we say why they come, what they are asking of me, that's why, as I said, my first question in therapy was how quickly I got rid of this depression.

Back on the path, you know the path of careerism well and I was in time to realize that it was my psyche saying you're on the wrong path, buddy, you don't know, it's not so much that it's wrong, it's just not right for you. . There is a big difference here and you will have to find a different type of conversation in your life and so on, and during my training I was forced to do my clinical experience. I was working at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. and sometimes I was going back and forth in the same day between the psychiatric hospital, a locked word on the university campus and I realized that the conversation in the hospital was more real, somehow it was more about things that mattered and that was what that started.

So that you know more about my resolve to move from academia to being a therapist, you know, practicing therapist, etc., the point is that I need to add this. My way of responding to family of origin and social context was to Retreat into the life of the mind. I didn't realize that was what I was doing at the time. That's why the psyche had to stretch and pull me down. And then I realized that the fears I had in childhood were the ones I had to face in middle age, the difference was that I was bringing the ability of the adult to the table that was not present for the child, so, quickly, in my first week of work at the mental hospital, they hired me with some kind of oldgray-haired ex-military. who was my mentor and without asking me he took me to an autopsy, it was his, you know, let's start the new kids type of thing, you know right, I realized it was a test, so I stayed calm and stuff the whole time .

Seeing this human body, you know, cut up and so on in a radical way and I realized that everything that I had run away from in childhood was there, on the table, in front of me and continued to persevere in my dreams and so on, and I was back in Zurich in my own analysis and I talked about this and my analyst quite rightly said that when you have dealt with your fears, the fears of others will not be as threatening to you because the closed W I was in was a times violent and so it wasn't a pleasant situation, but I could feel my own sense of purpose and seriousness in that situation after that, so it's like if you can run but not hide, sooner or later what you have avoided will appear in your behaviors or your blocking your behaviors so it doesn't go away, it's going somewhere.

I'd like to just dwell a little bit on this idea that, you know, on the one hand, our job is to understand ourselves and what really feeds our soul, and to try to live that advancement as much as possible in a benevolent way, one I would expect and on the other hand, whenever we're in the relational aspects of life, particularly a romantic relationship, as we frame it here, yeah, um, because I think with friendships and work. Relationships can often align with oneself in a different way, um, and it's our job to try and, like you said, sacrifice one for the other, one for the other, in a way that over time allows both of us to not just persist but that they grow and I'm also thinking about what you said before, that you know we should be careful about immediately applauding the 50-year marriage because many times there is a death of the soul in one or both people and that we don't want to celebrate that and yet, There's something pretty impressive about a 50-year marriage as if it were an endurance event, but we have to be cautious about rewarding endurance events like that because, to the extent that they seem to be about love, I mean there are also the endurance event of the person who was a stock trader for 50 years and got to the end and then walked out of the stock market or came out from behind the computer monitor and said oh wow, I missed a lot of things, so, um , there is no manual for this, you know you spend 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there in a 2 to one ratio, children absorb energy and when there are health problems or other problems in a relationship, then you know the energy goes , you also know it, so what is it?

How is the rudder guided? I mean, does it require third-party support? I mean, I've often thought this because presumably we evolved in small towns where there was support that in closer proximity that maybe now we have people who know both individuals and have the best in mind for both um and the collective, I mean, do you? does the idea exist? That, like every romantic couple, they should have an outside trained counselor to guide them doesn't seem like a bad idea, although I think people are quite resistant to that and of course it requires resources, which is always a problem, sure, well, There is nothing wrong with having the conversation with third parties from time to time, that's for sure, we have to remember that what we call therapy is a relatively modern invention, how was that approached before we were right at the village level? , when people lived in vitalized mythological systems.

They had a sense of relationship with the Cosmos, firstly, who are the gods, do we go when we die, what is this life about, in other words, each tribe had its history, secondly, what is our relationship with the Cosmos? nature and how to live in harmony with it. nature instead of repeatedly violating it for our own purposes, thirdly, who do I belong to, who is my tribe, who are my people and is that experience of life that serves or suppresses life and, fourthly, is the mystery of individual journey by what lights to carry out my journey and so on and of course those mythological systems were not particularly interested in the development of the individual, but it is certainly about the individual being subsumed in the tribal experience, at least you have a sense of belonging, you erode it and people fall. from that into the abyss of the self, so to speak, um, you put it this way, he said, you know, PE, the people came out of the medieval cathedral into the abyss of the self in one of his letters, you see, and it became in a cultural contraption with the best intention is to help people find their way and deal with any reaction of their psyche towards you.

Usually, not always, but what brings people to therapy is that their belief system or conventional practices no longer work for them. I had a client from Houston once say in his AA group that his motto was "this doesn't work for me, but I do it very well." The course provides much more, but it is applicable to all of us. You know, our practices, sooner or later, often will because they are driven by these stories that we carry psychically INTC. They don't work for us, but we have learned how to do it. them with some ease and so on and that's when the discrepancy becomes so difficult then one has to face the fire, so to speak, then what matters is how am I going to conduct my life in the face of these circumstances that I can't figure it out at once. old way and that is the adventure and that is the challenge and at the same time it is understandable for many people, so sooner or later one has to say if this is your life or it is someone else's.

They don't live their life sadly, they live reactively, they live whatever the stories are and I don't put the stories in the sense that they are so conscious as such, but rather they represent whatever message we internalized and produced a fragmented narrative again when they were activated. it has the power to govern our behaviors, that's why you again start with your own patterns and say where this came from. I wasn't born with it. The pattern is something that is being replicated as a result of this story spilling out into the world. You know, what I learned in my own life was that I had put a lot of my emotional distress into the world of mental life, which was rich and valuable.

I don't repudiate it, but it was too one-sided and what I had to do was go back and face what was on the operating table in that psychiatric hospital, the world of repressed emotions, fears, etc., it's as if they were both some. Now see if you can honor them both and when you do, something will grow and develop within you. You have to respond to that in a new way, so we've been covering a lot of human universals and things that everyone should think about and address. We talked a little about things more or less specific to men.

What about women? What are some of them? The unique psychic challenges they face and need to specifically address. Well, first of all, every woman has to examine what message her family, her mother, her family expectations, her role models, and her cultural environment gave her. and so on and say whether this is something that supports my personal growth and development or not. I mean, it's a kind of inventory that men also have to ask the same question. We have to recognize that biological differences suggest whether you are a woman. You are the one who is going to carry that baby and even in our culture the main responsibility for it, although shared by the father and the mother, hopefully it is still something you have to attend to and many women are trying to have it both ways, as we know. professional development and being a parent at the same time.

A few years ago I saw a survey that said a large number of female executives, all at Mmbas, had reached the status of VP or something in their corporation when asked. 50 years, would you do all this again almost 100% said no, it cost me too much it cost me too much they felt that something else was missing they felt that friendship was missing they felt that intimacy was missing in many cases they felt that fatherhood was missing or had been given little attention, you see, as men often face when they look at retirement, you know the old saying, you on your deathbed, you say GE, I wish I had spent more time in the office, you know, it's like I wish I had .

This or that I know some scientists who to this day say they plan to die in their office. It's always sad for me to hear this. Yes, I also meet their children in many cases and that's about four-fifths of the time. It is not a good image, that is true, yes, and again, it is not good, these four fifths, but because other colleagues are spectacular parents, but I grew up with the children of many academics and many times it is not the pretty image. So I think another thing that men of our time really need to learn is that if you're in a relationship, part of your role is to support the growth and development of your partner and the more insecure the man is, the more threatened he is by that because She could go in another direction, you see, and that means sharing housework and sharing childcare etc, which you do the best you can, having a child and having two careers requires an enormous amount of juggling like Us, as we all know, but you can do it in good faith with the best of intentions, otherwise resentment and one-sidedness builds up, so I think women still need a partner who accepts the notion of genuine reciprocity in our responsibility. with each other and with our work together, which includes parenting, without which women are unduly burdened, it is unfairly burdened and I don't think we've resolved that yet.

I think it's still open in the culture at At this point, on the other hand, it's amazing to see women taking advantage of the opportunities available now. I've been living in a retirement community for a year now and a lot of the women I've had dinner with my wife and I had dinner with several people and I said well, when I was at this stage, women weren't allowed to do this. One woman was a scientist and she said I just wasn't recognized in the world of physics until later in my life and you forget how. Recently that was the case, I mean, it was a profound violation of the human Spirit.

Well, it was a routine and many of the women I see there who are going to be over 70 years old, most of them are over 80, they live in a world. that was no different than a segregated world, you know, just as you know, I grew up where half of this country practiced segregation, not long ago it's a little hard to understand how much things have changed and yet also how much they persist, so it is, that's how it is. Well, and you know, the '60s happened and what happened in the '60s is kind of a bottom-up resurgence in both men and women, some men and some women to overthrow the kind of oppressive nature of role definitions, etc., you know.

I mean you couldn't think about marrying a person of another religion, for example, you couldn't think about marrying someone of a different race. I mean, it was the price that meant you had to go live anonymously somewhere in the city or you couldn't be gay, for example, uh, love who doesn't dare pronounce his name what his name was, um , all of that has been radically and rightly challenged, and yet what that does is create a world of great freedom, greater freedom but also ambiguity. I know if this is not right, but what is this and what is that?

People are concerned about ambiguity and therefore there is always a reactive nature in some individuals who are fighting and that is seen again in very serious issues of racism, whether we have abortions or not or whatever the social problem is. , a lot of what is happening is traditional role definitions versus a sense of autonomy for the individual to live their journey. You say I would like to shift a little bit to discussions about pathology or um pathology affirmed today I think thanks again to social media um or not thanks to social media um there is a lot of use of psychological terms M projection of narcissism um clinical diagnosis of gaslighting I mean, I admit that I took the liberty of saying that I, as a non-doctor, see the landscape of many social networks as somewhat dubious and I do not have any credentials to be able to diagnose an individual let alone the Internet, but I'll be clear about my limitations whenever possible, but there are real pathologies of the psyche of the mind yeah, I'd like to know your point of view on the ones that tend to get people's attention the most, you know, I mean um, I think we now understand some of the neurochemical basis of certain CH psychiatric challenges bipolar schizophrenia in particular OCD in particular sometimes by what medications they do or don't respond to, um, but that alone doesn't allow us to understand their underlying mechanisms.

I think a lot of it is still a mystery, but I would love to. um, to get a different perspective on these things, which is the psychological perspective that, um, of course encompasses biology, but sees it a little bit differently, so, yeah, what are your thoughts on the way these days are these words spoken? And what is your opinion about ourreal treatment for these conditions, both for the people who suffer from them and for the people who suffer because others suffer from them? Yeah, well, I guess you're asking me to speak as a therapist and as a citizen. and I will address the first.

Part of the therapist's role is differential diagnosis, in other words, if a person comes in with depression, we have to try to define what type of depression we are talking about. There are different types of depression. This is a reactive depression, it is only pathological if it lasts too long or if it lasts too long it interferes with your normal functioning and that is a decision if a person is mourning the loss of something important in their life, the loss of a marriage I would say that it is appropriate to feel uh. depressed for a certain period of time until life changes move you forward and so on, there is biologically driven depression that can be addressed with medications, although many of the antidepressants have very limited success, long-term therapy tends to be more effective as several studies have recognized, although there is an economic cause for that and then, thirdly, there is what can be called an internal psychic depression, which is what I experienced was that there were certain parts of my life that pathology comes from the Greek word pathos which means suffering and logos which means expression of so pathology means the expression of suffering Psychopathology is expression of the suffering of the Soul so what is it in terms of the natural nature of this person?

Is the desire to live in a meaningful way that is interfering with your life biologically driven? Is it a function of the social context that they live in or is it some personal task that they have to address and that type of differential diagnosis is essential and as you said there are certain conditions that are predominantly biologically driven, such as bipolar schizophrenia, etc. So secondly, speaking as a citizen, you know the Internet and I don't want to get lost on the Internet again, but it's like it's a big open stage where anything that hasn't been addressed in people can be exposed without censorship, without reflection, without the other being represented and you know it, it allows people to reveal what is going on inside them, without genuine dialogue and of course you can have opposition, but what usually has to happen is to re-associate with people of ideas related.

I must be right because these other people agree with me you see, so you know that any of these terms can be misappropriated and will be sooner or later, so what one has to say is we can only make a diagnosis with observation over time, initially it is very difficult to know what is really happening, as I mentioned, what we do or what someone does is logical, what we do not know is what is in service within them and you will not understand much of that in Internet because it is too superficial, so it takes repeated observation and conversation for it to emerge.

The reason I keep coming back to the Internet is that I think that's where most people get their information now, unless they're listening to this as a podcast, that's where they're going to get this information. I think what you said about the lack of dialogue is really key. I mean, I think we see this now. Also at the media level we have very polarized media. Yes, this is an independent media channel, we do not have a political stance, despite what some people may claim, we are not right, this is scientific and health information for everyone who is interested zero cost that is the mission understood um when we read and see things now um about politics but also about business about sports about celebrities about children about culture um too often psychology labels are placed on those children are depressed You know they're not just lonely, they're depressed and it's They may very well be experiencing high levels of clinically diagnosed depression.

That could be true. So, you know, my concern is a real concern, which is why I keep mentioning this is that, by doing that, we both decrease the suffering of those who really suffer from those pathologies, yes, and also maybe create a little bit of catastrophizing about, ya You know, feeling down for an afternoon, could be a great source of stimulus to go like, you know, write, think, take a nap or Insight, um, and you know, I love to think that people who learn terms somehow get They are moving away more than they need. No, I agree, you know Lou Pastur from whom we got the pasteurization, of course, they supposedly put it over the entrance to his office, don't tell me your politics or your religion, just tell me your suffering and I always think about that in the context of therapy because everyone is a suffering soul because you know. life is difficult and then you die so have a good day, right, life is suffering and that's not pessimistic, that's just you know, descriptive, the question is what makes you do that suffering, what prevents you from doing, That's the central question there.

It is where the person is asked to assume a certain responsibility, you know, if you are depressed, what is the task that that depression asks of you? If you are anxious, where does that anxiety come from? How much of that is archaic? How much of that was it? inherited from the family how much of that is what you know unique to your life and what is the task that needs to be addressed there. I also wrote a book called The Swamps of the Soul that deals with anxiety, depression, loss, betrayal, etc., etc. and, sooner or later, life.

It will take us to swamp lands where you are really trapped in something and you will feel very victimized in that way, but that is the passive experience, the summons is always what is the task that this visit to the swamp lands asks of you. Do you need to address if you feel like your partner betrayed you and left the marriage, for example, okay, and took your self-esteem with it? Well, your task is to recover your self-esteem because without that there is no other option you can do. It's going to be very good, and maybe it will be a difficult project, but anyway it's the work you have to do, so always the question: what is it forcing you to do?

What is it stopping you from doing? and put the responsibility back on the individual and of course, Some people are willing to accept that responsibility, others are not and that makes a difference. Many moons ago I had a colleague who said she could tell within the first hour whether the person she was seeing was a big kid or a little kid because they are all kids in recovery. and the big kids could do the work, the little kids wanted someone to tell them what to do or tell them there's an easy solution to this, and in the long run those people are going to be stuck until something else happens in their lives.

In life, maybe well, to me it seems that the litmus test is the extent to which someone points the finger at others or directs the work towards themselves, regardless of who was wronged, surely an individual likes both, regardless, ultimately, I believe what you're saying. and forgive me for interrupting is that if you ask what the task is, develop what you know, control anxiety, develop a stronger sense of self, better understand what you really want and affirm that, set better boundaries, than projections of people are not so permeable to us, whatever it is, ultimately there is no point in looking at what others are doing wrong because everything is somewhat introspective and self-directed, which is fine and you gave good examples of the type of tasks that arises from a person's experience now, for example, if a person has been subject to serious abuse in childhood, physical, emotional, sexual or whatever, it has affected their entire life, well, what is the task, now You know, it's resting from that experience. of oneself and that one is still here to live one's journey, that is why I said at the beginning of our conversation that I am not what happened to me, I am what wants to express itself in my life through me to lead a person to that.

First of all, it takes some time and repetition, frankly, you know, the two hardest things I learned as a therapist and I still don't like either of them is patience, you have to hang in there over time, you have to sort, sift, sort and sift. . and maintain this over time until something else arises and, secondly, helplessness. I can't fix anyone, but we can try to promote the attitudes and behaviors that will allow that person to find what is right from within them because something in each of us always knows it. what is right for us if we pay attention and if we are willing to honor what arises and have enough courage to address it, then we can live in a different way and it is very difficult to confront substantial abuse, for example, because it was so intrusive and so devastating that a space has been cleared in which the self seems to find no place, but that is the task, then it is the recovery of a sense of self and of a purpose that is independent of what happened to oneself, It's almost as if one needs to really understand. your own history but then being able to separate yourself from that history, yes, that's why I said that one has to have a story bigger than what happened to you, right, one has to have a story bigger than the story that one's culture tells you.

Give to yourself or your family of origin. I tell you what that story is that's why I said my instructions and my models were to stay home and be safe something in me was hungry and I honor my teachers to this day I walk into a local librarian who showed me any book and said that he recognized that of this child. A reader then told me you don't have to stay in the children's section, you can go wherever you want in the library, which I thought was like having a lot of candy. I enjoyed that and as a child I devoured the biographies of famous people because I think I was looking for clues about how to live a broader life.

I couldn't have said it was just a deep drive within how to live this life in a more fulfilling way and I was privileged to have a few. people there, particularly the teachers and the librarian, who gave permission for it and supported it and I am and am grateful to them, so, you know, I think it probably would have happened anyway, but much later in life, but I look back and I realized there was something there that I wanted to go, like I said, to see where the planes were going. What the ocean looked like. What it meant to live in a foreign country.

Which meant learning a foreign language. You know, all those things were unimaginable to me. family and I, you know, let their souls rest, um, because I, I, I regret the life that they were not allowed to live, you know, I never forget it, and then, you know, it makes me decide again to stop and say, now same, where are you being blocked today? convention or your old fears or your inhibitions or whatever because there is always a call to show up, in fact in one of the books I said that my motto that I think about every morning is very simple, shut up, put on the suit, show up now.

I'm talking to myself when I say this means stop complaining. You know that there are people who don't have food today. There are people whose children are being murdered today. There are people who are homeless there. You have tons of shut things up don't complain talk to get dressed means get ready do your homework don't expect life to just present it to you you have to go out and work hard at something showing up means not showing off but just doing the best you can You can get into life You know, sooner or later life knocks us down, death is the great democracy, but you are here to live it the best you can with lights that matter inside you instead of what people around you say you know and for more simplistic as it is.

The tagline is I know a lot of people have copied it and put it on their refrigerator because it's a reminder that this is your life, you're responsible, what are you going to do about it? I'll let everyone take it in, I think. um shut up, put on the suit, show up it's uh it's um essential um I love it, I love the maturation stages of Eric's development um for those who aren't familiar um Ericson I think another Danne is right, it's Dane, yeah, um psychologist , you know, he started to explain to me. neurobiology without knowing anything about neurobiology and stated that there were specific core conflicts that babies and children, young adults and adults and the AG go through, the age ranges are more variable now, depending on life expectancy and other factors than they were originally, only one reason.

I like Erikson's stages of development so much that, as a developmental neurobiologist first, that's more or less where I started. It makes a lot of sense to me that brain circuits work out certain things about interactions with physical objects and relational objects and it just makes perfect sense and what a genius it was to layer on top of that some ideas about what babies do from 0 to 1 and 3 to 5. Etc. We rarely if ever hear about the maturation stages of adulthood and the core conflicts we all have to go through, you know, maybe not exactly between 45 and 50, or between 50 and 50. 55, or between 75 and 80, etc., but that life, so to speak, could be a series of, um, trying to overcome them. specific milestones and when we fail to pass a milestone, um, they ariseproblems, sure, sure, you described the first half of life as one in which we more or less forage for food for most people, unaware of how our parents or family influence it. um establish certain patterns that may or may not be healthy for us and then at some point some event comes, um many times a painful event, but it could be a joyful event like the birth of a child or something like that and all that.

Suddenly we are hit in the face with the work we have to do. Would you say that the second half of life is one where because of our life experience and a certain awareness, but also because our brain is still? plastic, but it takes more work than when we were children to modify our brain circuits, we know that we have to undertake this juggling act of continuing to try to understand ourselves while also bringing the self we have into the world. We don't, we can't really pause, go to the store and leave a year later in most cases, so regardless of whether or not someone is 10, 15, 20, 50 or 80 years old, how do we know which is it our job?

So it's like knowing better what to focus on, because it can be a little overwhelming to think about how to approach all of this, right, well, let me tell you, first of all, many years ago, when I was still teaching. At a university, I taught a course on life stages and for one of the articles I asked students to imagine two stages ahead of them, so if they were normally between 18 and 22, let's say imagine themselves in their 40s and try to write about their At 40 years old and the assignment completely failed Al, although it became useful for classroom discussion because everyone imagines that at 40 years old they would have this perfect marriage, their teenage children would adore them, and would be on these fulfilling careers despite everything we had read, everything we had talked about as a time of turbulence and disappointment, and so on, and it was a complete failure, so it's hard for us to imagine that we too will go through this kind of similar thing, but usually we do it and some of it is triggered by roles in one's life, a lot of it is determined by our own aging body etc., so for example, the last stage in the Ericson's um um discussion of so-called old age is the conflict between despair and integrity and I remember reading that when I was young and wondering what he really meant by that.

Now I know that, in a very personal way, despair is when you see your friends die, you see the avenues in your life closed in which it is not possible to do that. you face a life not lived or the mistakes you made, you face the loss of bodily functions, you face your mortality, etc., etc., and how can you not despair at that? Well, at the same time, there is again the call to responsibility. What is life asking you now? How are you going to present yourself today in this changed environment? You see so you know the stages of life you know and Shakespeare wrote about the seven stages of life.

Life I think Ericson had eight stages and again, underneath this, these things happen well and often you don't realize it, you read about it somehow, it's like when you're young, yes, mortal, I understand that I'm mortal, but you know that happens. For people, you know it's not part of my DNA, you see well, it is and, sooner or later, life will develop unless it is cut off somehow, you know, and I remember reading when I was in school graduate, um.said in ancient Greece that I saw in several different environments and they said that the best thing of all is not having been born, the second best thing is having died young and I thought, wow, that's horrible, that's true, well, I think I have understood why they said that if you are born in the Veil of Tears, so to speak, you are born in suffering, you are born in mortality, you are born in loss, etc., if you are going to be born if you live, you will go through some of those, If you live long enough, you will go through the loss of people you love and care about, you may outlive your children, as I have experienced, and sooner or later you will know that life will. take yourself to these difficult places and what you're going to do, so who you are and how you're going to approach that and that's where the integrity thing came in and I think Ericson was right about being a person. of integrity means to integrate something to remove one's things and feel that this is who I am and this is where I am Visa this dilemma is why I said that the practical question is how should I live my life now in the face of this situation which is a task that comes to each of us at some point in our lives and that never goes away, let's talk about death, okay, I have often wondered if the human brain's ability to adjust the aperture of our perception of time is o No. an adaptive thing because we can't do that, we would probably always focus on the fact that at some point we are going to die, this to me, um, is analogous to the situation in space, not outer space, but, um, Just frame it this way, we can orient ourselves in time and particularly under conditions of stress our time horizon tends to narrow, we have to figure it out for now, we get the worrying text message, someone we care about is in trouble, we need to figure it out for now so the time Horizon has been shortened we are on vacation we are relaxed everything is taken care of we are fed we are rested our loved ones are safe we ​​are safe and suddenly we can daydream so um in the space domain um, the brain can learn to navigate a small environment like this room, um, and in conversation, we are present in this room, but we can also imagine that we are just two people among billions of other people floating on a planet in galaxies and can expand our notion of space, the space-time dimensionality of the human brain's perception is vast and can be controlled consciously or unconsciously, so that's great, it allows us to be functional in several different dimensions of space-time, um, it can also allow us to avoid the reality that at some point our time here is finite, yes, and the example you gave earlier of someone who is simply trying to accumulate the most money to get to their destination was an example. .

I think of a shorter time horizon. Compulsive behaviors, perhaps even addictive behaviors. I would say that they have some component often of being a way of avoiding the reality of death, it's a way of eliminating the fear of death because if you can create these based on rewards that eventually become punishments based on the case of addiction um milestones and algorithms that the brain is running solve this now solve this now solve this you Avoid the reality that is the approaching death is us as humans, that is, it is our job if we wish to be the most conscious version and healthy self, understand and recognize our sense of mortality.

I think about what I think of as Steve Jobs' great commencement speech at Stanford in 2015, where he talks about knowing one's own mortality in reality, in his words, more or less. least one of the most important characteristics of our self-recognition as humans um so that's the question and then the um the challenge is how often to think about it um you don't want to think about it too much, uh, because it can be paralyzing it can lead to, I mean , if we just think we are, if we recognize that in fact we are, it's a fact, just two people out of billions floating on a planet in the M, then nothing really matters, right?, one can get the feeling of that our impact is zero, but if we overemphasize our impact thinking that everything we do like the movement in this book will impact molecules that will then impact you, you would go crazy, you would become dysfunctional in a real way, so those are the two extremes and I'll just address it and leave it to reflect, but in terms of our sense of our own mortality and what that means about our meaning in life it seems like a pretty important topic and I know them.

I'm writing a book about this and I'm very excited to read it when it comes out. In fact, I've written about this before. The paradox here is mortality that makes this life meaningful. If we were immortal, we would just do this. for a century then we get bored and then we do something else for a century and then we get bored and then something else for a century life is short as Yung said that brief pause between two great mysteries where we come from we don't know if we are going, we don't know the The problem is the identification of the ego, one of the things that has happened is that in many traditional cultures the ego was subsumed, as I said, in a larger story, remove that story and what is going to fill that space, the ego.

You know my own importance, my self-perpetuation, the fact that people have frozen their brains and want to be revived in some future, you know, the era is a good example of denial, it seems to me that your life means something because your choices are finite you don't live here forever now when the more you identify with the ego the more threatened you will be by that um and then you start to realize that okay the center of my personality is not the ego there are several things to say about this nothing of which is proof of nothing just observations uh and Yung pointed this out in an essay once called the soul in death um psyche doesn't seem to recognize uh its own termination people who are dying openly and they know they're dying and I, one of my patients right now, I'm a gleoblastoma client who won't be here for a few months, who is very aware of mortality, but dreams have to do with travel, crossings and things like that. in other words, as if the human psyche is not limited by time and space per se, but the ego is, if there is another life, it is another life, you know, if there is a life after this, it is another life, this is the only one we know for sure. and I would say in terms of the fear of death, which most people don't want to talk about, but sooner or later it comes up in therapy, no matter what stage of life one is involved in, you know, or is there an afterlife? of some kind that is bigger than my imagination can conjure up or there is an annihilation of this ego identity, in either case my theories about it and my anxieties about it become moot, so again, the more I identify with the Consciousness of the ego, the more tied I am to its perpetuation, the less I identify with it, the less it matters, I would tell you at this moment.

I'm trying to be as honest as possible about it. The main thing I'm worried about as I approach my mortality is that I don't want my wife to be alone. I take care of her and I know there are areas where she needs my help and I want to be here for her as long as I can and my existence a little over a year ago was somewhat problematic. Of all those surgeries, that's one of the reasons we moved to a retirement community so that there is some structure there for her, secondly, I don't know, I want to suffer, obviously, but that's out of my control and Third, I'm still curious.

As a human being, there is a lot to learn and when we talk about the Internet and its dangers, it is also a huge learning tool. I love Googling things and discovering things that used to be so hard to learn, so I'm still very invested in the adventure of life, but I'm becoming less and less attached to it in some peculiar way. It is the attachment to the ego, you know, the German word galenite means serenity, it is the condition of having let go and the The only solution, so to speak, to our fear of mortality is to accept it, paradoxically, to let go of the fantasy of the sovereignty of the ego that is somehow immune to the natural order of things, the natural progression of things.

Now I'm not saying that makes me I don't have any fear of death, that would be an illusion and it's another way, but I can say that it doesn't define me in any way and I think you're right. For many people what it usually produces is depression and torment. of some kind of phonetic activity, so a person's inability to relativize the ego in the context of the idea of ​​the soul and whether that soul is perpetuated. I don't know if I knew. I would tell them I wouldn't want to keep that. a secret, I don't know, it's a mystery, maybe I'll be conscious enough to experience it, maybe I'll just be wiped out either way, like I said, my current speculations are just speculations and ultimately irrelevant and again what we have to do.

Recognize that it is mortality that makes this life mean something because your choices matter. You are here for a short time. What are you going to do with that precious gift you call life? What will you do with it? I can not think of anything else. It's an appropriate place to end, and yet I still have many more questions, but I think through today's conversation I realized that those questions are questions we need to ask ourselves, as I think everyone listening and they see this they surely feel stimulated to ask many questions. important questions about myself um I must say I'm a little surprised frankly because, uh, you know, I'm familiarwith your teachings and work in the form of books um and it was a great wish for me in my journey of life to sit with you face to face and have a conversation so that's why today I speak slower than I normally do .

My audience maybe picks up on that and if they send any emotion it's that I feel like there's so much richness here to take in, uh, for me and for everyone listening, to take in um. I'm certainly going to listen to this again and take careful notes and we'll probably put in some notes and some highlights, we always mark everything over time. that people can navigate back to, but I think there are so many essential soul self prompts that people will be motivated to take as a consequence of hearing your words today, so I really want to say thank you.

Thank you so much for the work that you've done and are doing and continue to do and for taking the time to share this information with us because it really is really guts at the core. things about being a human being, so thank you very much, well, thanks Andrew, can I ask? Add as a footnote here is a wonderful letter from the poet RKA to a young man in which he said: "you want the answers." The key is to find the answers. right questions and live the questions, you are not ready to live the answers yet, but you ask the right questions on time if you live them honestly with as much integrity as you can, one day you will live your way to their answers for you.

And that's what I would say. When we were kids, we asked big questions. What was it? Because I am here? What is the history? What's going on here? We get so used to those questions because of our adaptive needs and we have to go back to those questions. I keep asking those questions. I have done it consciously. Now ask big questions. You will live a great and interesting journey. Ask small questions and somehow it decreases. Another thing I tell a lot of patients when you reach a decision point. In your life we ​​have to make a decision one way or another.

Ask if this path enlarges me spiritually or diminishes me and you usually know the answer to that. If you choose the greater path, you are going to grow and develop it. will give something if you don't do it. Your life becomes increasingly narrow and something inside you knows the difference and sooner or later the psyche will make its point. of view and the more we run away from those types of questions and that type of conversation, the more pathology will arise when we have avoided the big question, so thank you for asking great questions and thank you for inviting me to be part of this conversation.

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