Emotional First Aid | Guy Winch | Talks at Google

GUY WINCH: Hello, everyone. I'm Guy Winch. I'm here to talk to you about

emotional

first

aid. And

first

of all, thank you for having me back. It's great to be back here at Google. So let's get going. I'm going to assume that in the last few weeks some of you have had a cut or scrape. And you've used antibacterial ointment or used a band-aid. And some of you may have had a cold and rested in bed. And some of you might have pulled a muscle and used an ice pack. And I say this because we suffer these types of physical injuries all the time in life.

And when we do, we know exactly how to treat them. We know exactly how to relieve our aches and pains. And we know exactly what measures to take to prevent them from getting worse. Well, we also suffer psychological injuries all the time in life. But when we do, we don't know how to treat them. We don't know how to relieve our aches and pains. And we don't know what steps we should take to make sure they don't get worse. And that is what we are going to discuss today. We're going to talk about seven common psychological injuries we encounter in daily life: failure, rejection, guilt, loneliness, brooding and brooding, loss and trauma, and episodes of low self-esteem.

I hope we have time to get to all of them. We'll also talk about the surprising ways these things impact us. Because they do it in unexpected ways. We will also look at the science. Because in order for scientists to study these things, they have to recreate these human experiences, essentially, in their laboratory. You can't grow rejection in a Petri dish. And that's a hard thing to do. We'll see how they do it. And I'll give you a hint right now. It usually involves lying through your teeth to the poor subjects who sign up for these experiments without having any idea what they're getting into.

And finally, we will see why and how we should apply

emotional

first aid to this type of common psychological injuries. And we'll look at some examples of how we can actually do it. Now I want to return for a moment to the comparison between how we generally think about physical injuries and how we think about psychological injuries. Because it is so obvious to us that we must control our physical health. We need to monitor our bodies. We have that very, very clear. But we are not clear that we should control our psychological health. And when we ride a bike or skateboard and we get wiped out, the first thing we think about is checking if we have any injuries.

But when we have a really bad rejection or a really bad failure, we don't think to check ourselves for any kind of injury. We just continue. And the other thing is that we know what type of injuries require treatment, when they are physical injuries, so that they do not get worse. We know that if we don't... we know that a cut can become infected. We know that a cold can turn into pneumonia. So we know we need to take care of that. We know nothing about what psychological injuries can get worse or how they can get worse.

And finally, when it comes to the basic physical injuries we suffer in daily life, we can virtually treat them all at home. We have our medicine cabinets with our pills and our ointments. And we can practically do all that at home. And when it comes to psychological injuries, as I say, we don't know how to treat them. But that means we really have no idea what we're doing. And we don't just prioritize our physical bodies. It's even our teeth, if you really think about it. Because look, we know that our teeth need constant care, right? We know.

We brush and floss our teeth. And we do it every day. And not only that, if our tooth hurts, we immediately take action. We go to the dentist because we know that cavities can turn into a root canal. So we know how to do it. And we even teach our children to brush their teeth every day. Three-year-olds know that they should brush their teeth every day. So if you really think about it, we put more care into our teeth than our psychological health. And I'm sorry, but it really irritates me that that's the case. And I'm not suggesting you neglect your teeth.

That's not my point. And I'm not resentful. I don't hate the American Dental Association. I think the teeth are great. I have teeth. I'm all for teeth. What I'm saying is that there is a strange favoritism that we have. While our physical health and our teeth are like the stepsisters in the Cinderella story who receive all the love, all the care and all the affection. And our poor psychological health is as ignored, marginalized and neglected as Cinderella, left to sweep the floor with the mice and birds. That's Freud, you know? Because it is very difficult to represent psychological health in an image.

So I use... and you can see the cigar. That's the clue. Okay, anyway... my point is that that fairy tale is not going well. But here's the good news: happy ending. Here is your fairy godmother. And here is your prince charming. I'm not talking about my photo on the lapel. But here is your Prince Charming. Because what you can do is start to help psychological health catch up a little bit and help take care of it. Look, like I said, psychological injuries impact us and in more ways than we realize, in surprising ways. That's why I want to show you how.

And I'm going to start with a very common injury: failure, something we all certainly do. And when I tell people, oh, that will surprise you. They say, no, it's not. I know what happens to me when I fail. I fail, my ego is hurt and I become demoralized. And my motivation is gone. And all that is true. But failure also affects us in ways we are not aware of. And here's an example of a study that people did. They took the people to a field with a soccer goal. And they had them kick a football over the post 10 times.

And it was 10 meters away. It was an unmarked field, but it was 10 meters away. And then they had them, when they were done, let's say, right. Well, how far and how high is that goal post? And everyone wrote how far away and how high that pole was. But then when they looked at the results, they divided them into people who were successful and people who failed in the lottery. And the people who failed to kick the ball over the goal post estimated it was much farther and much higher than the people who did. Now they are all in the same field.

It's not a vision problem. They are looking at the same thing. But that's what failure does to us. It can distort our perceptions, our own perceptions, of the goals we have, so that they seem more distant and out of reach. And that is something unconscious. That's an unconscious way in which that happens. But failure can also affect us in other ways. It can also change our perception of our actual abilities. I'm going to give you another example of an experiment. This one was made quite a few years ago. And they were curious to know how people respond to failure.

But they did the experiment with dogs. Some of you may have heard of it. It is not new. They put the dogs in a cage with a low barrier in the cage. And one part of the cage was wired to receive an electric shock. And they say it's an electric shock, which is not painful for dogs, although I'm not sure if they interviewed the dogs and asked them if that was uncomfortable or painful. But then they put the dog in that part of the cage. They kill him. The dog jumps over the barrier to the safe part of the cage.

First part done. Second part, they put the dog back in the cage. But this time they put a harness on the dog. They tie the dog so that he cannot move. He breaks down the cage. The dog tries to jump over the barrier; He can't, he moans. Done with the second part. Third part, remove the harness. And then they attack the cage again. And the dogs were free to jump over the barrier. And an alarming number of these dogs did not jump the barrier. They just stood there and moaned. Because they actually thought we were incapable, even though they weren't tied down.

They were free. And then the scientists said, wow, we wonder if it works that way with people. But it turns out that ethics committees disapprove of locking people in cages and electrocuting them. So they did it differently. What they did was test people. And they said, oh, this test actually measures your intelligence. But what they did was half the people got a test that was acceptable. And half of the people took the test which was impossible. They were going to fail. He couldn't pass this test. And then they gave them another version of the test. And this version, everyone could pass.

And again, an alarming number of people who were given the impossible test and failed it, failed the one they should and could have passed. Because they believed that their abilities were not up to the task. And it turns out that when you think your skills are not up to par, you can't use them. It's like you don't have them. And then what happened was that failure distorted their perceptions of basic foundational skills. And that's what failure can do to us. It can take an experience, a small experience, and turn it into something much bigger that impacts our lives in the future in ways we are not aware of.

And that's why I consider failures to be emotional colds that turn into psychological pneumonia, or can turn into psychological pneumonia. And I want you to think about times in your life when you were convinced that you couldn't succeed at something and maybe you needed to reconsider. Because maybe you were being influenced in ways you weren't aware of. Let's look at another example, pondering and reflecting. That is why it is natural to reflect on painful experiences when we have them. It's something we all do. Experiences or concerns, we tend to do it. If our boss yells at us in a meeting, don't think that happens a lot at Google, but let's say your boss yells at you in a meeting and embarrasses you in front of your colleagues.

Then you might get angry about it. And you could think about it. And you could talk to this colleague about it. And you talk to that colleague about it. And then you go home, call your friends and think about it. And you think about it at night before going to bed. And you think about it the next day. And you think about it over the weekend. And then you start to involve fantasy in your thoughts. So the fantasy... where you have the heroic fantasy, where you imagine the boss yelling at you. But then you face the boss.

And everyone applauds and it's a happy ending. And then you have this, the victim fantasy, where the boss yells at you again. And you just burst into tears. And the boss realizes how harsh and unreasonable they are and apologizes. And they hug. And it's all very nice. And then you have the tragic version, where you yell at him. And you end up homeless on the street, whatever that is. But you play it over and over again. And you might think, very well. I'm processing. I'm processing my feelings, if that's how I feel. I talk about it with my friends and express my feelings.

I'm processing them. Surely, as a psychologist, I should feel very satisfied when people process their feelings. Surely I should be excited. Well no, I'm not excited. This is not my excited face. And I'm not thrilled that there are differences in self-reflection. There is adaptive self-reflection. And there is maladaptive self-reflection. So let's look at the differences. When you reflect on yourself in an adaptive way, what you are doing is alleviating your emotional distress. The general idea of ​​adaptive self-reflection is that it reduces the potency of the event, so that when you think about it afterwards, it evokes less emotion.

It's less distressing. And that happens because, by thinking carefully, new knowledge is reached. You are seeing things from a new perspective. You are learning something. Do you remember, for example, that in that meeting I disagreed with the boss before he yelled at me? And no one really disagrees with that boss. So I stepped on the boss's toes. Then the boss stepped on my feet. Um, I understand what he shouldn't do in the future. Or you talk to other people and you hear that yes, that person has an anger management problem. You may decide that he may want to talk to HR and try to make a transfer.

The idea is for him to clarify the actions he can take to solve his situation. So having that knowledge and having the idea of ​​what you need to do differently all adds up to a certain liberation that you feel. And it helps you move forward. And you can move on. And it's less worrying. But that's when self-reflection is adaptive. When it is maladaptive, what it does is simply increase our emotional distress. That's what he does. And the thing is, we used to think that, oh, if you're just getting your anger out, if you're just expressing it, it's a release.

There is a stereotype of a psychologist. They always say: hit a pillow when you're angry. Have you heard the punch-the-pillow theory? Years ago there was a movie with Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro called "Analyze This." Have you heard of this movie? And Billy Crystal plays a therapist. And Robert De Niro is a patient who has anger problems. And he's in the mafia. Then Billy Crystal says, well, if you're angry, why don't you hit the pillow? And Robert De Niro says ah, good idea. And he takes his gun and shoots the pillow three times. And Billy Crystal isalarmed.

And he says, do you feel better? And Robert De Niro says: yes, yes, I do. But Hollywood... because that's not really what happens. When we do studies with pillow punches, some people get upset and think of a person and punch a pillow. And other people feel upset and think about the person and don't punch the pillow, people who punch the pillow get angrier afterwards. They are more aggressive afterwards. And they are more likely to take out their aggression on innocent people than people who just thought about it but didn't hit the pillow. So this catharsis theory doesn't work.

So just stewing them doesn't help us. And, in fact, it makes the need to keep thinking about it more powerful. The idea will run through your head more often, more frequently and more strongly. And the other thing is that when we're preparing so much and doing so little, it actually makes us feel passive. And it makes us start having trouble solving problems. And here's another slightly shocking example. They did a study where they looked at women who found a lump in their breast. How long does it take you to call your doctor to schedule an appointment?

And they looked at that. And they divided women into two groups: women who tend to reflect and women who do not tend to reflect. And women who tended to reflect waited on average two months longer to schedule an appointment with their doctor, which is a critical period of time when a breast lump is found. And that's because they were probably very concerned about it, and they looked for it and discussed it with people. What if this and what if that? But they weren't acting. And that's what can happen. So when we reflect and reflect, we become very, very passive.

We see the world in negative times. Therefore, it puts us at greater risk of suffering from depression. It puts us at greater risk for alcoholism because we get angry all the time. Because we are shaking. We have to relax at the end of the day. It puts us at risk for eating disorders, because we want to control our feelings with food. And we're also releasing so many stress hormones into our bloodstream that it puts us at higher risk for cardiovascular disease. So those are all things that rumination does. And for me, reflecting and ruminating is basically like picking at emotional scabs.

You are opening the wound. You're not going to let it heal. You are not doing a good thing. Alright, let's look at another example. And one of the wounds I get asked about a lot is guilt. And not just because of my mother. So we all feel quite a bit of guilt. Now, how much guilt do we experience? Well, in short bursts of guilt, like oh, I have to call her. Oh, it's already an hour. I haven't called yet. But in short bursts like that... we can have 2 and a half hours a day of mild guilt, five hours a week of moderate guilt, and three and a half hours a month of severe guilt.

So that's a lot of guilt. Except guilt isn't necessarily a bad thing. Because it does something really important. It alerts us. It warns us when we might have done or intended to do something that could cause harm to another person. And that allows us not to do something or apologize if you have done it or atone for it in some way. So guilt is a great thing because it really preserves our relationships. It is a protector of relationships. And that's a good thing, except when your guilt isn't resolved. When it's excessive, that little flashing signal in your brain like, oh, call your mom, doesn't turn off.

It just goes on and on. And that can be very distracting. It is a huge mental drain. It affects your ability to focus and concentrate. But it also does a lot of things that we are often not aware of: sometimes we are aware, but other times we are not. Because it turns out that our unconscious mind makes decisions about how it will handle guilt without us. Like the committee met without us and then decided we're going to do this. So what does our unconscious mind tend to do? It prevents us from enjoying life. And in one experiment, college students were made to feel guilty.

And the typical scenario with guilt is that they play this game where they're told, oh, the way you played, you deprived your other student, who is fictional and doesn't exist, but you deprived the other student of lottery tickets. . . Hey, two lottery tickets... big whoop, not much to feel guilty about. But then they offer it to you, now you have payment for the experiment. You can choose. And for the people who didn't feel guilty, they chose movie tickets, DVDs and CDs. And the students who are made to feel guilty for, once again, depriving someone they didn't know of two lottery tickets, what did they choose?

Notebooks, trays, folders and very, very fun things. And that's what guilt does. It prevents us from enjoying life. But it does more than that. In fact, it makes us adopt self-punishment. In another version of that experiment, they wanted to see if students who were made to feel guilty, again with a lottery ticket scenario, would be willing to give themselves an electric shock, which they again claimed was uncomfortable, not painful. And they put this box in them where they could put their hand in the box and flip the switch, if they were willing to do that. And then they pointed to a research assistant sitting there and said, that's the guy who didn't get the lottery ticket.

And zap... everyone was zapping themselves. Now psychologists have hearts. So it wasn't really rigged to hit them. They just wanted to see if they had pressed the button. There was no benefit to giving them an electric shock. So that was the test. But a lot of them were like, oh yeah, I'll electrocute myself to get lottery tickets, for God's sake... for someone they didn't know. That is why it can make us adopt self-punishment. And in fact it has a name in psychology. It's called the Dobby effect. Who knows why? Actually? "Harry Potter", thank you very much.

The elf from "Harry Potter" who bangs his head against the wall because Dobby is a bad elf. Hence his name, literally the fictional elf. And the other thing that guilt does is it makes us really try to avoid the people or the situation or any reminders of the things that we did. So if we did something and Aunt Flossie is really upset with us, we don't want to meet with Aunt Flossie or Uncle Harry either because they're related. And we walked away a little. And it happened in that part of the city. So we'll stay away from that part of town.

And she used to live in Philadelphia. And we're not going to Philadelphia anymore. And little by little we will try to withdraw and avoid it. And it can really hinder our relationships. And then what happens? Guilt is so toxic to us and so toxic to our relationships that I consider it the poison to our system. Now let's get to the most common psychological damage we all experience, and that is rejection. Rejections are a very common part of life, if you think about it, because potential dates reject us. Potential employers reject us. Our partners reject our sexual advances.

Our friends are going to lunch without us. Our colleagues don't talk to us about the birthday party. Our neighbors turn their backs on us. Our parents do not approve of our lifestyle. Our social media contacts do not publish our posts and do not retweet our tweets. There are many, many ways in which we can be rejected. But they all have one thing in common: they hurt a lot. And that's what fascinated scientists at first when it came to rejection. Why do they hurt so much? Why does it hurt so much? So they wanted to study it.

The thing is, you have to be able to catch rejection in action if you want to study it. You can't just take your research assistant to a local singles bar and say, oh, look, that guy just got shot. Quick, give them the questionnaire. That's not going to work. Then you have to recreate it somehow. So how do you recreate it? So this is what they did. Imagine you signed up for a psychological experiment... that none of you will do again after this talk. But imagine you signed up for an experiment. And you're sitting in the waiting room.

And there are two other people in the waiting room. And there is a ball on the table. And one of them takes the ball and goes, uh, and throws it to the other person. And the other person takes it and goes, uh, and throws it at you. And you get it. And you don't have to go, huh. I don't know why I said that. And you get it. And you throw it back to the first person, who then says, hmmm, throws it to the second person. And the second one is not thrown to you, it is returned to the first person, who then does not throw it to you either, he throws it to the second person.

And now they are throwing the ball at you and you are excluded. And then the investigator shows up and says, oh, we're ready for you, and he takes you into the other room. How would that make you feel? Now most people think, two strangers in a waiting room didn't throw me a ball, big whoop. I don't mind. But it turns out we care quite a bit. Because this is a paradigm that has been used dozens and dozens of times. And everyone who goes through this reports feeling significant emotional pain. And not only emotional pain, it damages people's mood.

It makes them angry. It damages your self-esteem. And this is the mildest rejection can be. And then the experimenters got very, very curious about... wow, this is very powerful stuff. I mean, let's try something. What if... it depends on who the people are? So they said: let's do the experiment again. What if we told you that the people who rejected you were people you despise? Then they do the experiment again. And they take people into the other room and say, you know, those two people in the waiting room are here for some kind of social science experiment.

They are members of the Ku Klux Klan, members of the KKK. Does it hurt now? And everyone says, yeah, it still hurts. And the scientists said, wow, that's amazing. So let's try something even more radical. Then they executed him again. They took them in and said: Okay, let's be honest. Those are research assistants. It wasn't real. Everything was rigged. Does it hurt now? And people were like, yeah, it still hurts. So scientists asked themselves: what is happening in our brain with this rejection? How come it is so unreasonable? I mean, we tell people it wasn't real and they're still suffering.

So they put people in an fMRI machine. They want to literally see what happens in the brain. And what they found was shocking to them. Because what they saw was that the same pathways in the brain light up when we are rejected and when we experience physical pain. They were literally overlapping. The rejection pathways piggybacked on the physical pain pathways in the brain. And that was really shocking to them. And then scientists said maybe we don't have to do many experiments. Maybe we'll just give people Tylenol. And they do it like that. They did the experiments again.

And they gave Tylenol to half the group of people. And people who received Tylenol reported less emotional pain. Because again, these are physical pain pathways that are being activated. So acetaminophen, a pain reliever, was enough to... Now, I'm not suggesting that you go out to our next appointment packing Tylenol. Because I'm... it's a bit of a pessimist, if you ask me. And I'm not sure that's the best thing. But they were very curious about it. So why is that? Why are we programmed to experience such severe rejection? Because? And the answer is because of our evolutionary past.

Because we grew up in tribes. We evolve in tribes. And we couldn't survive outside of them. As hunter-gatherers, we needed our tribe. Being excluded from your tribe was a death sentence. So we developed an early warning mechanism. We developed a way to alert ourselves when we were at risk of being excluded from our tribe. And that was the rejection. So people who experience rejection as more painful were more likely to take corrective action, more likely to stay in the tribe, and more likely to pass on their genes. And people who didn't were more likely to be kicked out of the tribe.

And they did not live to pass on their genes. That's why that mechanism evolved. But it also explains why we feel things so harshly. And today we do not live in small groups of humanity. We live in pretty big pockets of humanity. So the opportunities for rejection are innumerable. And that's why I consider rejection to be the cuts and scrapes of everyday life. Now I hope you are beginning to realize that these simple psychological injuries are not so simple. That really impact us in very significant ways. That can harm our emotions, our mood, our perceptions, our thinking, our cognition, our behavior, our mental health, our emotional well-being and even our physical health.

Because I gave you the example of brooding and reflecting. But let me give you another example, because there is one more psychological damage that is even more harmful to our physical health than melancholy. And that is loneliness. 40% of adults will experience loneliness throughout their lives. We can experience that when we move to college, when we move to a new city, a new state or a new country, when we get divorced, when our children grow up and leave the nest, when weWe retired and stopped seeing each other. Our colleagues. Loneliness is something we can all experience. And it damages us psychologically.

But physically what it does to us is quite alarming. Because yes, like rumination, it puts us at risk of suffering from cardiovascular diseases and depression. But it also puts you at risk for Alzheimer's disease. And it also suppresses our immune system. They did a study where they vaccinated college freshmen against the flu. And they just gave them questionnaires about loneliness. And students who were lonely, who reported feeling really lonely, had a worse response to the flu vaccine than students who didn't. It really affects our immune system. And that's why scientists have concluded that the risk factors posed by loneliness are actually the same as the health risk factors posed by smoking.

Because it can cut... chronic loneliness, yes, it can cut years off our lives. Now cigarette packages come with warnings from the Surgeon General: This is a very, very dangerous thing. But we have no warnings about loneliness. We don't know if we are inhaling two packages of loneliness a day that will kill us by the end of the story. And that's something important. The other thing that loneliness does is that it really isolates us. It keeps us alone. So all of our relational skills, our social skills, and our ability to relate and form deep relationships atrophy over time.

And they weaken. And that's why I consider loneliness to be a form of muscle weakness in relationships. We are not used to using those muscles. And a lot of times, when someone has been, let's say, single and then starts dating again, they come out and they're too intense or too suspicious because their muscles aren't quite regulated well. Unfortunately, they don't conclude, I need to work on this. They conclude that I am not worthy of being loved. So let me retreat again. So loneliness reinforces itself. And we really need to find ways to deal with it. As I said, our physical health is certainly also greatly affected by these psychological injuries.

So now I hope you can see why I was so upset before, why I'm so upset that these things are ignored, that we ignore psychological injuries. Because look what they do to us. They have such a huge impact on our lives. So now let's see what we can do about it. And since we were talking about rejection, let's start with that. I mean, we have time for a couple of examples. But let's start with the rejection. Now remember I said that when it comes to psychological injuries, sometimes we don't even realize we are injured. Eh, it's not the case of rejection.

We know it quite, very well. Because we have a strong response to rejection. So let's look at how people typically respond to rejection. So one of the first things that happens is that people may get a little angry or aggressive. "Fatal Attraction," anyone? I don't know. Do you know the movie? She boiled the bunny and then lunged at it with a knife. That's why you can become a little aggressive when you feel rejected. The other thing people often ask when I ask people is: what do you do when you feel rejected? Vodka! They grab the bottle of tequila, whatever.

They reach for the bottle. It's not a good idea; It turns out that when you suppress your feelings with alcohol, they often come back to the surface. So that's not going to work. And the other thing we often do is turn to food. We try to drown our sorrows with food by hugging the desert bowl, perhaps while someone has a sympathetic hand on your shoulder as you do so. Now, needless to say, these answers don't really work very well. They don't really do anything about rejection. They just make you drowsy or raise your sugar or whatever.

So what should we do? How should we really deal with rejection? There are several wounds that we must treat. But the most urgent of them is that we must do something to revive our self-esteem. Because our self-esteem has just taken a hard hit. That's why we need to do something to revive our self-esteem. And one of the most common ways in terms of how people do it is positive affirmations. I don't know if you're familiar with them. Those are statements like I am attractive and worthy. I'm going to have great success. You'll find those statements in books, refrigerator magnets, and at the end of annoying emails.

And you will see them everywhere. And the thing about positive affirmations... you think, that's great. That is something good. I will recite that mantra regularly. But when we do studies on them what we find is that positive affirmations don't work. And what's worse, people whose self-esteem feels low actually end up feeling worse when they use positive affirmations—not better, but worse. Well, why is that? Why when your self-esteem is low, telling yourself that you're going to be successful and that people are going to love you and that everything is going to be great, why would that make you feel bad?

Well, we have to look at persuasion theory. Persuasion theory tells us that when a statement falls within the boundaries of our belief system, we will accept it. And when a statement falls outside the boundaries of our belief system, we reject it. And so when you feel really unworthy of love and really unworthy of success, and you say to yourself, I'm worthy of love, I'm worthy of success, you'll actually reject that statement. Your unconscious mind will reject that statement. And you'll actually back up that other statement of, no, actually, I don't feel worthy of love. I don't feel like I'm going to be successful.

It will make you feel worse. And I'll tell you, the positive affirmation industry... I mean, there are subliminal tapes. It's something amazing. But the people who need it most are the ones most likely to be harmed. So that's unfortunate. So what should I do? Well, there is another type of affirmation that really works. And that's the one I'm going to suggest. It's called self-affirmations. And the thing about self-affirmations is that you generate them. Then you will know that they fall within the limits of your belief system because you are the one who has to come up with them.

And here you have one of the exercises that I suggest in the book to reactivate your self-esteem. I say, and I say it now, that you make a list of five qualities and attributes that you have and that you truly believe are valuable in any field. So let's say it was a romantic rejection. You could write that I am loyal. I am emotionally available. I am a great support. I'm really open to all kinds of fun. I am a great cook. Whatever you do... a list of attributes. If it is in the workplace, then I have a great work ethic and a high learning curve.

I'm trustworthy. I am responsable. I'm motivated. You make your list, as long a list as you can generate. And then you write a short essay, one or two paragraphs about one of the items on your list in which you talk about why it is important, why you value it, why other people value it, how you have expressed it in the past, how that affected people, how you could express it in the future. You really explain why that's a big deal. And that will really remind you of the self-esteem that you really have. It will remind you, you know what?

I'm practically a bargain for those people to hire me. Or I actually have a lot to offer in the dating room. Doing that will make you feel better. Now some people tell me, I've tried it. It didn't work. And I would like you to make the list and write the essay? No, no, no, I just thought about those things. And I thought about why they were important. And I said, well, no, that's like saying I was hungry. Then I thought about the food I had in my fridge. Turns out I'm still hungry. No, you have to write the essay.

You have to make the list. Because making the list is like taking food out of the refrigerator and cooking it. And writing the essay is how you eat it. That's how you absorb it. Your brain needs you to think about it, process it, and write it down. This is how the message is absorbed, not on spec, in a rushed 30-second thing. No, that doesn't work. So you really have to write. The essay is something important. Now it turns out that trying to increase our self-esteem is a good idea in general. And this is something I talk about in the self-esteem chapter of the book.

Because when our self-esteem is higher, not too high, but higher, it can actually function as a buffer when we encounter things like rejection, failure, anxiety, and stress. Now I say higher, not high, because narcissists, for example, who apparently have very high self-esteem, it does not act as a buffer. One small insult to a narcissist and he will be a puddle of indignation on the floor. So it is a higher level, but not too high. That's why we know that when your self-esteem is higher, it can actually help you feel more emotionally resilient. And self-esteem is like this armor that you can wear in life that will help protect you.

And that's why I think... and when your self-esteem is low, it's like having an emotional immune system. And when your emotional immune system is low, you are more vulnerable. And when it's high, you're less vulnerable. So low self-esteem is like having a weak emotional immune system. And using self-affirmations will boost you. But there is something else that will drive it that I also want to mention. And that's why I think it's so important for us to be aware of our self-esteem as a psychological construct that we really need to protect. Because it's like this armor. And what happens is that when our self-esteem is low, the greatest damage it suffers is us.

When our self-esteem is low, we tend to be self-critical and blaming, we look at all our flaws and focus on everything we do wrong. And we're like kicking ourselves when we're down. Now it's something we all do very, very naturally. We will call ourselves losers and stupid. People do it all the time. They do it publicly. Like, shut up. That's not a good thing to do. Because if you thought of self-esteem literally as an emotional immune system, or as armor that you are going to wear in the battle of life, you would hardly see people preparing to wear their armor by putting holes in it and making it weaker.

That wouldn't be something you would do. You would think about strengthening it. That's what our self-esteem consists of. It is necessary to strengthen it. And one of the ways to do it, another technique that you can use to do it, is the following. When your self-esteem is low and you feel that you are very critical and you feel bad about yourself... and again, I must say that our self-esteem fluctuates day to day, hour to hour. It's not this monolithic thing. I have good self-esteem or I have bad self-esteem. It can be good one minute and bad the next.

It's like having a bad hair day or a good hair day. You can have a day of good self-esteem or a day of bad self-esteem. So it can really fluctuate. We can all have moments of low self-esteem. When your self-esteem is low, when you feel yourself becoming self-critical and guilty, do the following. Again, it's a matter of writing, because remember, that's how we absorb best. Write: If you had a dear friend to tell you, this is how I feel. I feel self-critical. I feel bad about myself. I blame myself for this. I think I have all these defects.

What would you write to them if you were trying to encourage them? If you were trying to encourage them, if you were trying to nurture them, what would you say if you were trying to calm them down and remind them of all the great things that they are? Write that. And that's what you need to tell yourself in those moments. Another writing exercise… is called embracing self-compassion. And self-compassion is a great antidote to low self-esteem. Because it reminds you to treat yourself with kindness, allow your self-esteem to recover, allow your emotional immune system to become stronger again.

And if you do it, it really will. So those two exercises (one is for rejection and the other is for self-esteem, but you can use both for self-esteem) are two things you can do. Because they happen very, very often. And I assure you that if you practice them, if you take the time to think and write, you will feel better. So look, I want to talk to you about the benefits of practicing emotional first aid, what it can do for you. It can ease your emotional pain. It can restore your cognitive functioning. It can help you think more clearly.

It can minimize the risks of infection, as we saw with failure, and the damage to your mental health in the long term. You can minimize the risks to your physical health. And it can increase your emotional resilience over time. These self-esteem exercises, for example, will increase your emotional resilience, if you do them regularly. So look, I hope I've been able to convince you to ask Cinderella to the ball, to really think about your psychological health as something that needs as much attention and care as, yes, you give to your teeth. And I have looked at all of you.

You all have good teeth. So do it for your psychological health. I really hope that the next time you experience some kind of psychological injury, you not only hurt, but try to apply emotional first aid. Thank you so much. GUY WINCH: So we have time for a few questions, if there are any brave souls who would like to ask one. AUDIENCE: I will be a brave soul. WINCH BOY: Excellent.AUDIENCE: I'm wondering where you think Buddhist practices like mindfulness (and although I was thinking of loving-kindness meditation) fall in terms of first aid for our emotional well-being.

WINCH BOY: OK. It's a great question. And I'm actually all for them, because I think they're good examples. I mean, that's actually what I'm saying. Mindfulness, and especially Buddhist mindfulness, is a way of thinking about your life in a way that you do practice. It is a way of thinking about things so that you pay attention to your psychological state, your thoughts, your feelings. And especially a lot of those things, they really do that trick of being kind to yourself. Mindfulness is a way in which, for example, mindfulness meditation is a way in which you reflect on your thoughts and feelings, but do not judge them.

You might notice that I'm feeling this. And you push him away. And you try to keep concentrating. And you do it over time to clear your mind and get the thoughts away. Just label them so you know what they are, but there are no emotional judgments about them. And they are actually very therapeutic. And there are a couple of exercises in the book that are very conscious in their approach. So yeah, I think that's actually a good thing. I think it falls within the spectrum of things I'm talking about. AUDIENCE: Oh, thank you. AUDIENCE: Hello. So I want to think... when you're planning something, or you're going to a job interview, or you're going on a date, one thing I'm going to do and I don't think it's going to work. -- and I don't know if it's true or not -- is trying to cheer myself up beforehand.

So I'm wondering, oh, you can do this. You have this, when maybe I feel like I don't have it. Do you think that's something that can make the rejection or hurt worse? GUY WINCH: This is what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that I think inflation is a good idea. How you would do it is more specific. I have this or yay for me it's too general. In fact, maybe I would do that self-affirmation exercise. Maybe I would sit down and write a little bit about all the things you have to offer this potential date, all the things you have to offer this potential employer.

Because that will put you in touch with real things. This will allow you to be more confident and be more yourself. Because when we are nervous, we think too much about what are they thinking about me? And you're not thinking enough about, well, what do I think of them? And they want me to work here? Well, do I want to work there? And do you like me? Well, do I like them? So doing that, doing the self-affirmation exercise, I think, will put you in touch with more real things, will give you real confidence, as opposed to the general yes, yes, yes, which is like... it's like a balloon.

It's not very substantial inside. That's why I would use the self-affirmation exercise before a date or job interview. AUDIENCE: Thank you. GUY WINCH: Anyone else? No? Alright. Well, look, thank you very, very much for coming. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me again. Have a nice day.