October 5, 2025 • 66 mins
Dr Bruce Perry is back! Every time I chat with him, I end up walking away with my head spinning (in the best possible way). This time we’re unpacking why everyone feels so bloody fried right now... and well, how doom scrolling, violent content on our feeds, and the pressure to be 'resilient' 24/7 sure isn't helping.
Bruce explains why our brains literally can’t function properly when we’re overloaded, and why the 'do hard shit' version of resilience is rubbish. Real resilience is built like strength training - small doses, spaced out, with recovery in between. We also get into dissociation and how it can save your life in trauma but also be a creative superpower... plus why so many of us are stuck in relational poverty even though we’re more 'connected' than ever.
This chat will change the way you think about toughness, trauma, and how you look after yourself in a world that just won’t slow down.
SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches/
Website: tiffcook.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tiffaneecook/
Facebook: facebook.com/rollwiththepunchespodcast/
Instagram: instagram.com/rollwiththepunches_podcast/
Instagram: instagram.com/tiffaneeandco
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the Punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends are test Art Family Lawyers.
Know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Doctor Bruce Perry, welcome
(00:55):
back to Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Thank you. It's good to say.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Oh, it is a delight. You know what I always
do every single time if I ever have someone come
on a second time. The moment I press record, I
think to myself, I should have double checked what date
an episode. I know your episode number because I've told
a lot of people about it. So but now I'm
scared that I've said that nugget the episode none the wrong.
(01:21):
But I think it was twenty twenty two that we
last spoke.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Man, it was a while ago.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Three years ago, so I feel like you might have
been up to a lot. Would you like to reintroduce yourself?
Is there a difference to how you introduce yourself these days?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh? Man, I'm just a tired old man up in
North America. Tired. All is bullshit going on on the planet.
Oh people getting hurt everywhere. Everybody's angry and yelling at
each other, and you know, you know, it's it's brutal. Mean,
may not be the same way I probably I suspect
it is, but man, the amount of really want to
(02:00):
call it vicarious, but the amount of sort of visually
present trauma that we're seeing seems greater than it's been
in a long you know, since I can recall. So
it's anyway, I think everybody kind of feels that It's interesting.
It comes up in almost every conversation. I'm on the
(02:21):
board of a couple of organizations, and the first fifteen
or twenty minutes are always about people trying to settle
down after being all stirred up about a school shooting
or you know, another hostage that's you know, video showing
them starving. And then people argue about whose fault it is,
(02:43):
and the whole thing is just there's just a lot
of tension everywhere. Even if you in that moment are
living in a safe environment and your life is going
pretty well, you turn on the news and it's your
bombarded with stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So I was thinking about you the last couple of
days in relation to exactly this, because this last week
I deleted Facebook off of my phone so that I
can't look at it, and it was the day that
I woke up and watched two brutal murders on social
media like it was entertainment, and then followed up by
(03:24):
then a bunch of content relating to that that I
never had, never never signed up to wanting to see,
and then everybody wanting to give political opinions, like the
amount of scrolling through my feed and seeing people go
I don't normally do political opinions, but I'm like, oh,
I can't, I don't want. And I thought about you
(03:45):
because I think about the work you do in trauma
and recovery and helping us understand and move forward, and
I just I felt and I don't know if this
is how you feel, And I was like, how much
you feel when you're trying to push an area forward
and it's almost like the whole ceiling collapses in on you.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, it's such It's so interesting that you say that
because part of what I've been for those of you
who don't know, I'm actually part of a very large
community of researchers and clinicians and educators and people who
have been trying to better understand what trauma does to
(04:28):
people and how that impacts the way people function, their
their physical health, their mental health, the way they learn,
and so forth. And so we have all of these,
by and large, really good hearted people who are doing
really hard work, and we're all doing work and systems
that are kind of screwed up, you know, they have
(04:49):
you know, all of our systems have been built in
general with good intentions, but they have strug actual components
that are that are destructive sometimes and that have some
elements of inherent racism, right, I mean, there's just exclusionary
(05:12):
components to a lot of our systems that the way
they're organized, and you know, people have been recognizing this
and been trying to change it and so forth. But
what is happening to all of these folks that we
work with is that they get so worn out and
so burned out that they are no longer able to
(05:32):
do what is necessary to help people. Because, as we
talked about before, and I think as you well know
from your work, your ability to help somebody is directly
related to how to your health. Right. If you're not
respected and you're not to some degree rested, if you're
(05:55):
not equote literally in physical shape and mental shape to
do this work, you end up not being able to
be as effective as you can. And so I keep
my A lot of my job is trying to help
people that are in this network stay regulated and take
care of themselves and recognize how important it is. You
(06:18):
got to work out, you know, you got to go
to bed o there at times, you got to show
you got to have external discipline to your life so
you can have internal structure to your physiology which will
then allow you to kind of go do hard things.
And you know, we've talked about this a little bit
(06:39):
before about how important, for example, the discipline that you
learn as an athlete helps build helps you understand that
in a way that a lot of folks don't appreciate.
But that's a big part of what I've been doing
so like the physical, like the concrete thing you did
with saying, all right, I'm not going to watch this
(07:00):
guy gets shot ten times. I'm not going to watch this,
you know, because it wears me out. It takes a
little bit out of me. My brain has to sort
of cope with this in a way that's like, Wow,
what the hell where do I put this? And if
you have that all the time, if you're always continually
(07:20):
bombarded with images of kids dying in the Middle East,
and images of people getting stabbed in public transportation, and
images of our news stories about you know, domestic violence
or whatever whatever it is, if you get continually bombarded
by it, it wears out your reserve and so your
(07:42):
capacity to demonstrate resilience and be present and do the
hard work goes away. So that's a big part of
my work is to try and make sure that I
can use that relational contagion we know is present in people, yeah,
(08:04):
to help the people I interact with calm down a
little bit so that they can think more clearly and
that they can remember how important it is that they
actually stop doom scrolling and that they, you know, if
they want to help. It's way better that they just
walk away from their desk and their screens and go
(08:25):
take a hike or take a run, or go, you know,
go lift some weights to whatever. Whatever your regulatory strategy is,
it involves movement and being with people who are going
to be are going to be kind of make you
feel like you belong. You need to do that. Now.
(08:47):
The problem is that's been happening, and you know, I'm
sure that you've run into it, is that human beings
are relationally contagious to each other. Right, so I'm thinking
of my ten year old or my God, don't kill
me if he hears his twelve year old grandson. But
(09:11):
he doesn't say any hear of this. So he comes
back from school and he and his friends are talking
about the shooting of Charlie Kirk and they all see
it and I'm like, wait, well, how did that happen?
It's like, well, at school, it's like so it's all
over and then it's there's this weird contagion and so
that one of the most important things that helps us
(09:32):
feel regulated and safe so that we can kind of
be reasonable and rational is the presence of other people
who are reflecting back to us that you belong, you're
one of us. It's but because of the pervasiveness of
social media, you only need one or two people in
that group to kind of get escalated. And pretty soon
you think you're going to get some respite at the
(09:54):
gym and everybody's talking about it, and you think you
might get some respite, like if you go hang out
with your friends and it's everybody's gonna be talking about it,
and it's just we just have We're in a we're
sort of creating a bind for ourselves in the way
where we have this universally accessible, NonStop exposure to screen,
(10:23):
you know, really bad content on screens. So anyway, I'm rambling.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Sorry, No, I love it if I find it really
this intricate relationship between our cognitive abilities to sort things out,
to figure things out, to work through things intentionally, and
then this regulating our system and then and it's like
(10:48):
there's this little black area that sits in between those twos,
that in between those two that we don't really connect
to or understand or fill the gaps. And I feel
like lofestyle today and social media and everything we're doing
is making that that little black area bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Absolutely, yeah, And I think that's a good way to
think about it, is that there is kind of this
you know that I mean, if you know, I can't
help it thinking about the way the brain works. Because
the brain the part of us that is most humane,
you know, the part that allows us to think about
the long term consequences of our current behavior and to
(11:29):
actually reflect and draw upon our experiences in ways that
allow us to be understanding and respectful and listen to people.
That part of our brain is very easily tipped over
when we get hungry, thirsty, sick, or you know, sensory overloaded,
and and that that, you know, all of this stuff
(11:54):
coming into us has to get through that little black
space you're talking about, and if it gets bigger and
bigger and bigger, where things just sort of like they
get distorted or short circuited, and then we're not able
to actually think as well as we would normally be
capable of thinking. And in the in you know, it's
(12:16):
one of the things that we have studied about and
written about a lot, is what we call state dependent functioning,
and that basically is referring to the fact that when
your brain is in one state, it has access to
certain systems that it won't have access to in another state.
And like, so the classic examples that's kind of a
(12:38):
stupid obvious example is sleep. Right, when you're sleeping, you're
in a certain your brain is active, but it's in
a state that makes it impossible for you to sort
of think about stuff and learn new cognitive concepts like
mathematics or you know, that's your sort semi shut off
(12:58):
to the extern world. But you can be in different states.
You know, your brain can be in different states when
you're awake, right, So you can be awake and kind
of daydreaming, and you're going to process that experience different
than if you are in an argument with somebody. And
(13:21):
so if you're in argument with somebody, that sort of
reflective part of your brain, like if you're safe and
and you're not hungry, you're not thirsty, and you're just
sitting by a stream and you're listening to the gurgling
of the water and you hear some birds and all
the sort of like idyllic stuff that you know a
lot of us love in those little moments that you
(13:42):
get but you don't get enough. But when you're in
that state, your brain can do things. You can think
about stuff like, you know, what's the meaning of life?
And you can think about how what can I do
to you know whatever? It's usually, you know, that's where
you all all of your values, all of your what
you believe in. That stuff is available. But when you
(14:06):
start to get distressed or threatened, that part of your
brain starts to shut down and you are much more
automatically emotional and reactive. And so somebody comes in and
says something that you don't agree with. Instead of thinking
about it, I wonder why he thinks that? And I,
(14:27):
you know, let me tell me some more about why
why you said that. We will automatically go let's bullshit,
and I can't believe you think that, And all of
a sudden that because we're contagious. That escalates the other person,
and then you get into this weird co escalation so
that the brains of both people shut down and pretty
(14:48):
soon you're arguing like a bunch of toddlers. Yeah, as
opposed to like sitting there and going all right, well,
tell me why you think that. I mean, what's where's
that coming from? And if you if you can have
those dialogues, you can get to know somebody and understand
(15:09):
their perspective a little bit better. That's kind of why
the book I wrote with Oprah is you know that
it's like it's about what happened to you, like what
what went on, so that you think this way and
explain it to me, so I understand how you arrived
at that conclusion. And usually when people start sharing with
(15:31):
you their story, you have a better understanding of their
frame of reference or their point of view. And then
because you've been respectful and you've listened to them a
little bit, they're a little they feel a little bit
safer with you. Right you actually listen to me, You
didn't shut me down right away, you didn't attack me,
you let me share something, and you were respectful. Then
(15:55):
at that point their brain is open and will be
more receptive to you suggesting in a respectful way. You know,
because of this is why I think this. And then
you can actually have an interaction where you may give
somebody a bit of information that might help them shift
(16:17):
their point of view. But this is so interesting. We've
got to this point where we you know, I remember
there's a person I know, I care about her very much.
I was trying to help her after the loss of
a really traumatic loss, and she would engage in these
sort of arguments with people on Twitter about gun control.
(16:41):
And I was like, well, ever, in the history of
Twitter or x as it's called now, has anybody ever
changed their mind because of reading three sentences on Twitter?
Like do you actually think that there's anything that you
could possibly say that will change anybody's mind on Twitter?
(17:05):
And it just you know, when you sit back in
and go, oh yeah, you realize that you're just engaged
in this sort of almost an emotional escalating exercise that
and as you as we all see on Twitter, what
happens is frequently it escalates into these sarcastic, nasty back
(17:27):
and forth things rather than sort of a you know,
that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way. Thank
you for telling me, you know, I mean, I haven't
seen a whole lot of tweets like that. Thank you
for pointing that out to me.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
What do you think people are actually seeking maybe beneath
what they think they're seeking, like we because we take
these actions like is it the art of like being
heard is very therapeutic? Do they want to change minds?
Or is there an internal driver that's gets something else
from that expression.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
That's a great question. You know, the people that look
at this and I'm not sure that I don't know
that we really know that much about sort of the
neurobiology of this, but there are people that believe that
when you get a little like, or when somebody you
(18:23):
know gives your thumbs up after you make some witty comment,
there's this tiny little dopamine burst in your reward center
that you're like, oh, I'm seeing, I'm heard. And the
problem with it is this when people have looked at
the difference between the neurobiology of a real conversation in
(18:43):
a Twitter back and forth, and what they find is, yes,
there is this little sort of what I would call
a junk food version of reward, but it's like junk
food emotional connection as opposed to a really nutritionist nutritional
emotional engagement, which we all can sort of think back
(19:07):
on an interaction with somebody where there was eye contact
and there was a sense that they're listening, and it
felt deeper, and that's a much more rewarding form of
a thumbs up or a like or whatever it is.
But many, many, many people. Again we talked about this
(19:29):
last time A little bit. We've invented a world now
where there's tremendous relational poverty. We are around people frequently,
but we're really having a poverty of connection and so
kind of a deeper conversation with somebody that doesn't happen
(19:52):
as much. We're all kind of in a hurry. We
have appointments, we have to scourry off to this. Once
in a while, we get a lunch with friends, and
you know, and a lot of people are lucky enough
to have more, you know, you get more of those
kind of relational morsels. But we're filling our life with
a lot of these hollow relational contexts with where we
(20:21):
really desire. We want to belong, We want people to
see us, We want to be acknowledged. And yet you know,
the one thousand people that are following you, and that
the one hundred and eighteen thumbs up or hearts that
you get, those are pretty that they're like junk food.
(20:45):
They're not feeding you truly emotionally. They're kind of just
keeping you at bay. And so I think that's what
a lot of people seek. A lot of people, you know,
there are people who are very empty in their lives.
You know, We always joke about sort of the you know,
(21:05):
the guy who's in his mom's basement in Iowa who's like,
you know, sending out all of these tweets. And it's
so interesting because you know, they'll send out a tweet
and there's some celebrity or somebody who has a million
followers because they've sort of poked at them, they might
actually respond and you look at You're like, wait a minute,
(21:27):
why in the world would you ever respond to a
guy who's got thirty four followers. You know, it's like
it happens all the time. You're like, some guy in
the base his mom's basement in an farmhouse in Iowa
can actually get the attention of you know, some celebrity
(21:47):
or somebody who's trying to have a dialogue about gun
control or politics. And it's just bizarre. It's weird. You're
giving this weird, disproportional piece of your bandwidth, your attention
to somebody, and it's hollow. It's hollow. Anyway, Am I
off on a tangent?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I'm sorry, love tangents are my favorite things. Ever, That's
why I just sit back and listen. I am fascinated.
Slash often infuriated by in the resilient space. So I
talk a lot on resilience, and I am furious about how,
(22:29):
from my perspective, the world glamorizes doing hard shited glamorous.
We've got this glamorized version of resilience and toughened up
and run a marathon. And so there's which is rich
Coming from a little boxer that jumped in the ring
(22:50):
and got passed in the face for a bunch of time,
was like, yeah, I'm the bus, but it's you know,
like the whole David Goggins like that kind of philosophy
infuriates me because I think it's there's such an intricate
balance and I haven't nailed it yet. I haven't nailed
the doing and knowing with the being always I see,
(23:11):
I still see an enormous disconnecting. I can I can
see what how I'll process things. I can be and
I can be self aware in moments and go Okay,
this is going on doesn't match what I know, But
I'm still stuck in the ability to address it or
move forward in it. What is your take on on
(23:33):
our relationship with hard.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Yeah, so I'm so glad that we're going to talk
about this because I also I love that we have
the capacity to build resilience. You know, that's an incredible
characteristic of our species. I hate two things about that
the current narrative about resilience. One is the complete misunderstanding
(24:00):
that that that the way to get to resilience is
by doing hard things, kind of almost crazy hard things.
And the second is that the fantasy that you can
build resilience by sitting and taking a class, you know,
because because they have they have all these programs right
(24:23):
that oh, we're gonna build oh, whereas I'm we're gonna
build resilience in the school by having these kids learn
about resilience and learn about It's like, no, So here's
the dilemma, and I it's you do have to be
stressed to build resilience. But the key is dosing and spacing,
(24:46):
and that the systems in your body, all the physiological
systems in your body, including the systems in your brain
that are involved in kind of building mental resilience and
and all of that stuff. And this is very the
same thing is true cardio respiratory system and your and
your muscles. You build muscle and make them stronger by
(25:08):
having predictable, moderate doses of challenge and then having a
spit time between sessions. Right. And so if you look
at weightlifting, you know, you take a you might do
a set or a circuit of like six things or
five things four minutes, right, four minutes, and you might
(25:31):
repeat that three times, and then you'll do that again
four days later or three days later, whatever your whatever
your schedule is. But the truth is what you're doing
is you're you're providing a moderate stress to that physiological
system to the point where it gets fatigued and worn out.
And basically what you're telling those cells is that I
(25:53):
am going to be involved in some kind of work
that I don't have enough equipment so I then those
cells get the signal from being worked that you need
to build more of myosin and actin and you got
to you got to get bigger and stronger and more flexible,
whatever the signal you're sending, and that goes into the
(26:16):
nucleus where your DNA is. The DNA starts to get
activated and it takes time. It's literally it's like you
can't just say I want to build a porch on
my house and go boom. You have to bring the
materials in, you have to actually measure things, you have
to put the boards down. It takes time, So it
(26:37):
takes time to build muscle. So while you're building muscle,
you don't want to you don't want to stress the muscle.
You want it to rest until you've had an opportunity
to build in the new porch and then you can
go sit on the porch. And this is one this
is one of those big mistakes about hardness and resilience.
(27:01):
If you take somebody who does not have a baseline
that is the same as David Goggins, and then you
say we want you to do this hard thing to
build resilience. That is too big for somebody, and all
(27:22):
you're doing is setting them up to fail. And this
the key thing in all of this is that what
a moderate stress or is for you is different than
what a moderate stressor is for me. And the key
is to be aware enough to understand what's moderate, what's
an appropriate dose, what's a good way of spacing, and
(27:46):
so you know, you can take a different example, something
like public speaking. A lot of people are very anxious
about public speaking, right, well, you can build resilience around
public speaking. You can help build confidence and competence if
you adhere to this fundamental principle of creating moderate, predictable
(28:11):
and tolerable, controllable doses of challenge. Right, so every Friday
in the fourth grade, you know that you're going to
have to get up and recite four lines of poetry
to your class. And it's not impossible, right, It's like,
it's kind of hard. I mean it's but it's predictable
(28:34):
because you know it's every Friday, and you are very
afraid of public speaking. And the first time you do it,
you don't do very well, and so it's kind of embarrassing.
And then you realize, wow, you know, actually, I guess
I really have to study. I have control over how
(28:56):
stressful it is. Right, So you practice, and you practice.
Next time you go in and it's better, and then
the next time you go in it's better. And after
you do it, literally by the end of the school year,
you actually look forward to showing off how you can
actually be a little ham And not only did you
repeat the lines, but you use some inflection and you
(29:18):
use your hands and you started to do a little
Shakespeare and people were like yay. And so you've built
resilience around the capacity to do public speaking. And I
think this is what we get wrong all the time,
is that you can't build resilience by telling kids to
do stuff. They have to do it. And so that's
(29:39):
why I think sport and I think drama, and I
think music and ballet and all these performance activities have
kind of built in opportunities for moderate, predictable stress sorce,
and that can build resilience. I don't know that you
have to go an iron man to become resilient, you know,
(30:02):
that's it's in fact, I think that that's probably not
going to build resilience for most people. For most people,
if you decide you wanted an iron man, most people
will reinforce the feeling that they are not good enough,
they're not fast enough, they're not strong enough, they're and
that kind of backfires, right. The intention is to sort
(30:23):
of do a good thing, but it only works for
a sort of a tiny percentage of people who were
had the precursor capabilities to tolerate that much pounding on
your legs or that much kind of mental challenge. And
and so I think when a lot of the people
that are presenting that these resilience building things. They're they're
(30:46):
they're not appreciating the concept of dosing. They're doing one
size fits all. Come do my program, and this is
how we do it. Now. The last the other part
that I really hate and I wrote about the in
the the book I wrote with Oprah, there was a
section in there about resilience where we use the adult
(31:09):
world uses resilience to avoid the pain of trauma with individuals. Right,
it's so painful to realize the impact that this school
shooting has had on these kids, that we're going to
declare ourselves a resilient school. And so like every every
(31:30):
time where there's a shooting, you know, like there's chat there.
There was a shooting of a bunch of soldiers here
in Chattanooga, while back within you know, a month, they
were literally faster than that. They had t shirts that
said Nuoga strong. Well, fuck, no, you're not. You're not.
What wait a minute, is that just you're just denying
the fact that this is traumatic and you've got all
(31:51):
of this loss to deal with, the same thing happened
in Sandy Hook. They didn't they didn't want to talk
about the bad stuff. They wanted like, oh, we're strong,
We're resilient. You're not going to bring us because you
shot up our kids at an elementary school. Well yeah,
I mean you still have people now that are struggling
with that. So this weird declaration of resilience I really dislike. Anyway, again,
(32:15):
I'm rambling. Sorry.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, what we talked last time about dissociation and agreed
that it is also a superpower I'm interested in. I
guess how we do we need to be conscious of
(32:37):
it in order for it to be a superpower. And
what Yeah, what locus of control do we have?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
That's a great I love that question. Yeah. You know,
it's interesting when you look at people who are really
good artists and people who've done really creative things, many
of them are very good at dissociating, but they're not necessarily.
They'll describe it to you and they'll kind of describe
(33:06):
their process, and somebody who knows about dissociation will go, oh,
that's dissociative, But they themselves may not even be aware
of the fact that, Wow, the fact that I can
go into my head and I can create this imaginary world,
then I can write it down and it can become
a best seller, huh, or you know, Stephen King dissociated.
I mean, you almost have to dissociate to write fantasy
(33:29):
to write. And I think many athletes to do the
kind of training they do, have to dissociate, I mean,
because it's boring and brutal sometimes. And I think many
really good athletes learn how to dissociate to get into
the state of flow during competition and so, but a
(33:49):
lot of them have not sort of intentionally been taught
about that. It just kind of they develop their little
rituals to help them kind of get into the state
and then they you know, they might have had a
little bit of coaching about guided imagery or something like that,
but that's some way to get into a dissociative state.
So I think if we were more intentional about teaching
kids about this, or anybody about this, then you can
(34:14):
actually have a little bit more control over when and
how you use that skill set. And it's one of
the things that we do a lot of with kids
that have trauma related symptoms that include dissociative episodes where
and again it really goes back to that whole state
dependent thing. If you are using dissociation in the midst
(34:41):
of a domestic violence event at your house. That's highly adaptive, right.
It helps you get through it, It helps you tolerate the
emotional pain. But if you go into a dissociative state
in math class just because it's a little bit stressful
and you kind of get it's a little overwhelming, and
boom you dissociate, you're gonna flunk math. So there you
(35:07):
need to help people learn how to understand it and
then how to get there when you want to and
how to get out of it when you don't want
to be there, which you can do. You know, we
do this all the time.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Okay, tell me more about that. That's because I was
gonna I was gonna ask about that. Is it something
we can control? In hell?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Well, some there are, there are you can control it.
But if it's been a primary adaptive, if you will
adaptation to trauma in your life, there will be evocative
cues that will trigger it, that will bring they'll bring
it on and that you don't have that you don't
(35:51):
have control over. But you can come to understand that.
You know what, I dissociated because this man who is
my mom's boyfriend, yelled all the time and beat the
hell out of my mom, and I tuned out. So now,
whenever a man is either physically close or they raise
(36:11):
their voice, I dissociate. And that actually can even happen
when I have I'm in a relationship. Right, If I
start a relationship with somebody and he gets a little
bit angry frustrated with me, I shut down, and that
impairs our relationship because I don't understand it, he doesn't
understand it. But once you get a little bit of
(36:34):
awareness about it, you can then anticipate that, Okay, I
might tune out of here, and so I need to
intentionally think about an alternative regulatory strategy. Right, So let's
you and I if we're gonna talk about something that's
(36:55):
a little bit a conflict in a relationship. Instead of
sitting face to face, let's go for a walk and
talk about it. Because when I'm walking and I'm side
by side, it feels less in your face, less emotionally intense, less,
you know, and and actually a lot of times when
you when you tell your partner about this, they'll recognize
(37:16):
it and they can be helpful. Right, but it takes
this is where you need to help. Sometimes you need
a little bit of therapy to help. Some is somebody
who can kind of help you teach your partner and
help you begin to understand what things have been evocative
cues for you. And but it's interesting, almost everybody I
(37:37):
know who uses dissociation a lot has learned how to
either pinch themselves or cut themselves, or bite their their
mouth or do something that brings it on when they're
when they're feeling kind of out of control.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I've never really thought about I guess the self harm
our activities as a link to dissociation, which I guess
that's exactly what they are. Wow, Okay, that's really interesting.
I yeah. I know, like with my background, which was
(38:19):
childhood sexual abuse, and that's given me a lot of
struggles with intimate relationships and worse now probably over the
last five or six years, after recognizing another thing that
happened and because I was thinking recently, I've never been
(38:41):
less interested. And it doesn't feel traumatic. It just feels
non existent now. And it's like it's that little black
kind of gap that I described earlier of going I
see and understand all of this, but also there's this,
there's been this, There's definitely been some sort of change
because I never used to be It's not like I'm
(39:03):
aggressive or loud about it. I'm just not. It's just
not in my world now. I'm just like so disinterested.
And I never used to be that disinterested. So and
I look at that, and so I can cognitively understand,
but couldn't pinpoint. And I can pinpoint now reflecting exactly
what the thing that happened that brought me to that place,
(39:25):
but I never recognized it along the way. And it's
not like I recognize, you know, in traumatic feelings when
I meet people or when I'm approached by people. So
just it really interests me how we yeah make that
link between what the decisions that we're making beneath the
decisions we think we're making.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, well it's the it's you know, one of the
things that I think happens again, you know, I mean,
I I do my best to kind of understand some
of this stuff, but because of the way and I'm
just using a little science. We talked about this probably before,
(40:09):
and it's in some of the things I've written, but
like when I'm talking with you right now, the image
of your face that the visual image goes into my
brain through my eyes and you know, we all learn
about ah there's the retina and the cones and the rods,
and they turn all of the images in what's coming
(40:31):
into my brain into my eye. They turn that into
pattern neuronal activity, right, and that goes into a lower
part of my brain or kind of a middle part
of my brain, and then that gets kind of processed,
and then there is a synaptic connection, and then it
goes into a different part of my brain, and then
there's synaptic connections that go off and they connect it
to what I hear and what I other things, and ultimately,
(40:54):
after a couple of synaptic connections, it gets up to
the part of my brain where I go, I can
see you. And that's what happens with every sensory thing,
every sensory thing, so touch, smell, taste, visual input, it
all kind of comes into the lower, more primitive part
of your brain, and those lower parts of your brain
(41:18):
have an opportunity to kind of try to make sense
out of it before it gets up to the smart
part of your brain. And so if you've had trauma
and traumatic experiences with relationships, you've got a bunch of
kind of little distorting mirrors, little distorting lenses in your brain.
(41:39):
So that an interaction that might have gone that way
kind of goes this way. And we all do this,
and that's what essentially what implicit bias is. Right, everybody
has implicit biases based upon how you grow up. You
create an understanding of the world based upon what you're
(42:00):
first exposed to, and then when you meet things that
aren't like what you are used to, your brain kind
of categorizes that as that's potentially dangerous, that's potential, it's different.
I don't know what that is. I don't feels comfortable
with this because I've only had three experiences with that
kind of thing, and I've had eight thousand experiences with this,
And so your brain, we are this is not very
(42:22):
fair to our little brains, but we're continually distorting every
moment of every second of our lives and we're trying
to fit things into the way we view the world.
And you know, when you have when you grow up
and there are relational violations, right, We're like the people
(42:44):
that are supposed to be keeping you safe are the
people that hurt you. Or the people that feed you
are the people that hit you. It's like, wait, wait
a minute, how do those things go together? And so
your brain kind of has it will have mixed signals
about intimate relationships because your first relationships early on, they're
(43:09):
all intimate, right, They're people that are have tremendous power
over you. They have they're the ones you're supposed to
be closest to. They're the ones that are shaping how
you view the world. And if they hurt you, you know,
as you get older, then your brain begins to not
feel all that safe with human beings. And you know,
(43:34):
and I have no idea, you know what your life
experience was, but you know what that means is you're
just going to be very wary. You know, people who
have had these developmental experiences with relationships are just going
to be very cautious about who they let in and
then how they let them in. Right, They'll they'll want
(43:55):
control over the process of intimacy. Now, we all kind
of want control over that, right. But the more you
are have these mixed experiences, the more cautious you're going
to be, and the more control you're going to want
to have. And and again that can kind of screw
up relationships if the other person's got a whole different
(44:18):
worldview about relationships and they're not going to understand why
are you this way? You know you're driving me crazy.
You know, you know you say this and then you
do this. It's like it doesn't make sense to me.
And and unless you understand a little bit about that,
it's hard to explain it to them. So you're just
as confused sometimes as they are. And over time it's like,
(44:40):
you know what, it's easier just to stay you know,
it's egg and I mean really, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
It's like it's easier just to get a cat and dog. Bro,
it's easier just to get a whippet and a kitten.
There you go, there you go, and big bossips.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Can I let me just say this, don't give up
on relationships. Don't give up on relationships.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
No, it interests me. It interests me, and it is
not something that I currently obviously, maybe I'm just living
life dissociated. I don't I don't crave it or feel
sad about it. But I have a belief that human
beings are wired for connection and exactly and that that
there's a connection that's broken along the way for me.
(45:28):
And I'm like, that's really interesting and I'm really aware
of that.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Let me just let me talk about I'm going to
talk with you about development here a little bit. This
will make you feel better, I hope. Okay, So when
we develop, you know when when when the brain is
organizing and human beings are developing. A lot of people
kind of have this idea that oh, you get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,
you know when it gets stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger, smarter,
(45:53):
like it's linear, and it's not. And again, this is
something that athletes know very well because all athletes go
through this exact same thing. When you train, you put
in a lot of energy and a lot of effort,
and there's this little bit of improvement, right, and then
you put in the same amount of energy and effort
and it's like, what the hell. You know, there's a
plateau and then sometimes there's actually a dip. You're kind
(46:14):
of like, it's like you you either you know, a
lot of things can cause it, but there's this there's
kind of a disorganization before there's a reorganization and a jump.
And this happens during the development of all kids. It
happens in the development of organisms, of organizations and systems.
There's you know, there's the growth period when there's an
(46:36):
input of you know, whatever you're putting in novelty, new things,
new skills. But then with the same amount of effort
and energy, there's a plateau. And during that plateau, part
of what's going on in your brain and is that
it's trying to figure out kind of this new way
of being and you it's it's in the cation that
(47:01):
growth is on the horizon. But typically before you get
to this new place, there's kind of a disorganization, like
a total like like sometimes there's like a regression. So
the way I try to help parents understand it, because
it confuses parents about their kids, is that it's a
(47:22):
little bit like moving from one house to a better house,
right or one office to a better office. The new
office has more space and it has fiber optic cable
and it's got good views. It's awesome, it's going to
be great. But in order to get there, you have
to unpack, you have to pack all. You have to
(47:43):
literally become less functional because when you move, it's like
chaos and it's like, oh my god, I gotta take
these boxes and I gotta do this or when I
have that, and so you have a period where you
are disorganizing, and then you once you're reorganize and you're
in your new office for like a month, you're like, wow,
(48:04):
I'm way more productive now and it's way better than
I was here. But getting there is a pain in
the ass, and it takes a lot of energy, and
it involves functional disorganization because you're less. You're like, oh
my god, I'm where's my book, where's my phone? I
lost my phone, you know. And it's so you'll have
these periods where you're like, oh, I missed that appointment
and I didn't renew my registration because that the mail
(48:28):
was there, and it's like, oh my god, I got
a ticket. Because all of that stuff is more likely
to happen when you're moving than once you're in your
new office. And maybe you're just in a plateau period,
which isn't bad.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
What is your take on self sabotage and becoming self
fulfilling prophecies? So I have I've had clients who at
times over the years, you know, one of my biggest
quest people come in and do a workshop and it's like, Okay,
do you want to change? Ask yourself this? Do you
want to change the thing that you say you want
(49:08):
to change and you've tried to change for years but
can't change, or is saying that you want to change
it really affirming a deep seated belief of whatever you
have beneath the surface. And this is just another thing
that affirms that.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, well that the whole self fulfilling prophecy thing. You're
kind of there. The way you view the world kind
of makes you project things that will reinforce what you
believe in. And if your view of the world is
(49:46):
that I'm not lovable or you know, whatever it is,
you will Here's the thing about our brains. From the
moment we're like conceived in a brain is organizing in utero.
It's making these associations. It's connections about what things go together.
(50:08):
It's trying to figure out how sound and image and touch,
how they all woven together. And then we slowly create
our view of the world. And as we create this
sense of the way things work, we're continually getting input right,
and so every once in a while we're going to
get input that doesn't fit the way we thought the
(50:31):
world worked. So that activates just stress response and it's unsettling.
So what your brain learns to do is that it
starts to show a processing bias for external input that
(50:54):
fits your worldview. Right. So again, we all do this.
So when you're in an interaction and your worldview is that,
you know, people are nice, somebody can be cool, distant, rude,
and your brain will go, oh, they're having a bad day,
(51:15):
maybe they're hungry, maybe they're thirsty. And then they'll do
one nice thing out of ten kind of neutral things
and five nasty things and your brain will go, see,
look at that, I was right. And this happens in
relationships all the time, you know, like you know, somebody
can be treated poorly, poorly, poorly, poorly, poorly, and then
(51:36):
they'll bring flowers and they'll go, see, he loves me,
he sends me flowers, but you know he did you know,
he just slept with your best friend. Like that's but
he loves me anyway. So we do that stupid stuff
all the time in our brain, right, because we're trying
to make it stuff fit our world view. So in general,
what our brain does for us is that it it
(52:04):
sends out stuff. You know, it will project what you
want to get back, what your worldview wants to get back.
So if you think people are great, you know, I
had this experience a long time ago. I was in
an airport and it was crowded, and this poor couple
(52:24):
would had the little toddler that was traveling with them,
and it's hard traveling with kids, and they delayed the
gate and delayed, delayed the flight, delayed the flight, delay
the flight. The gate started to fill out with more
people for the next flight, and there was a guy
sitting next to me who was like a businessman, who
was getting more and more angry looking at his watch,
and he was really clear that he was going to miss.
(52:46):
You know, it was pretty clear that they're ultimately going
to cancel the flight. It was terrible, and so he
went up after the gate agent came up and said, oh,
or delayed another thirty minutes, and he just jumped up
and he went over and he yelled at the gate clerk,
who has no control over the weather, which is what
(53:07):
the delay was about. And he's yelled, I'm you know,
I have a really important thing in Cleveland and I
have to get there, and I'm a double placebo diamond traveler,
and you know, all of this crazy stuff. But he
was yelling at her, and she had no control over
and it was so loud and so kind of like
inappropriate that everybody at the gate just got quiet. And
(53:28):
the little girl who was walking around, a little toddler
who was like swaying back and forth, looked at him like, hmmm,
h you're kind of interesting. You know, that's kind of interesting.
So he goes over and sits down, and this little
toddler comes over and like her hands are you know,
she's been all over and sticky hands. He comes over
and this guy's wearing like a really nice suit. He's
reading the paper and she puts her hands on his
(53:52):
knees and he pulls puts the paper down a little bit,
and he frowns at her, and she just smiled at him,
and he just put the paperback up like this, and
she's like, h this must be a game. So she
took the paper and went ripped it out of his hands.
And I'm like, oh my god, I'm a mandatory reporter.
I'm gonna have to call child protection because he's going
(54:14):
to go crazy. And she just smiled at him and
smiled at him, and she's she of course thinks people
are great. People are awesome. Look at this this is great,
look at this man, and he finally just started to smile.
And within five minutes he was on his hands and
knees and she was riding him like a horse around
the gate. Oh my god. So she had elicited from
(54:38):
this grumpy, entitled man what she thought, and it was
it got what little good he had in him out.
Now he probably had a lot of good. But now,
in my mind, my worldview is you're entitled, you'r mean
to people, you're mean to kids, You're an asshole. And
(55:00):
I didn't I wouldn't talk with him. I would never
have gotten to know him at all. Didn't get to
know him. But the truth is, my worldview projected something
very different than she did. She projected that he's there's
goodness in this man, and she got goodness. I projected
he's a jerk, and I got nothing right because I
didn't want to interact with him. And and our brain
does that. Our brain loves what's familiar more than it
(55:24):
loves what's good. And so people who grew up in chaos,
and I'm sure you have friends like this. Everybody has
friends like this. They're always like sleep deprived. And they
got five projects and all of this stuff going on,
and you're like, wow, they're always late for stuff, and
they're kind of all and then you find out, oh,
(55:45):
and I adopted a dog. You're like, what you gotta dog? Like,
wait a minute. You could barely handle your life, your
plants are dying. You got a dog, and that's the
And they're like, but you find out later on you go, yeah,
they grew up in an alcoholic houst and everything was chaotic,
and that's familiar to them. So they feel when things
(56:07):
kind of get finished and school's done and I have
a job and there's you know, everything's quiet, how can
I blow this up? Oh, let me get a dog,
let me take you know, Chinese lessons at night. It's like,
wait a minute, why don't you just go home and relax. Anyway,
so we project, we project, what we what we want,
(56:35):
what we project, what we are are predicting is going
to be familiar, and then we cherry pick information to
reinforce the world view that we have, which makes it
very hard to do therapeutic work for people who don't
have a lot of insight. So one of the biggest
(56:57):
parts of therapeutic work that we do is help people
recognize that, you know, you see a pattern here. It's
you know, it's like, you know, they want to come
in and talk about the terrible relationship they're in, and
you know they want to kind of externalize it and
(57:17):
he needs to change, he needs to be better. Then
you're like, well, you know, like this has happened like
what five times in a row. Now it's like, maybe
there's a little part of this here involves you. I'm
just saying, I mean, of course they'll never come see
me again.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
So I'm annoyingly good at pattern recognition, annoyingly good at that,
and annoyingly relatively self aware. And I find that it's
such a juxtaposition because how do you therapeutically move forward?
How do you heal? How do you when you become
(57:54):
self aware and then realize that, Okay, I know what
there's a part I know what a part of me
is doing and has done. So how do I trust
me in my ability to know if this is another
version of that. I'm the common demnominator in every place
I've landed in life and every environment I've chosen to
(58:16):
be in and put myself in, and I've been fifty
percent of the interactions in every relationship.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Well, first of all, that's a tremendously insightful perspective and annoying. Yeah,
but you know, here's the deal. The wonderful thing about
human beings is our changeability. We can change. And the
(58:49):
challenging part is that a lot of times it requires
a number of experiences that are a little bit different
rent from what we think the world is. And and
it's very hard to find people in your life who
(59:10):
will who are willing to tolerate some of the little
efforts by your subconscious brain to blow up the relationship
or to walk away from the relationship. And so this
is kind of hard, you know, and it really it
(59:32):
with repetition though, with people that stick with you, people
that are patient, people that will absorb some of the
be sponge like about some of the you know, when
when there's you know, the storms and then but that's
kind of what all life is. All life is about
eruption repair. It's just that a lot of folks are
(59:56):
you know, they make big ruptures, and you know, sometimes
people that really want to want the world to be
the way they think it is, they want themselves to
be as unlovable as they feel they can do say
hurtful things. You know, they they figure out the exact
thing that will make this guy run or make you know,
(01:00:18):
what is their weakest, what is hardest for them, and
it you know, we can do this weird. We do
some of the meanest things to the people we love
the most, almost like we're trying to prove that they
really want to be there. And you know it's relationships
(01:00:43):
are tough. But if you find people and it doesn't
have to be like a romantic partner thing, it can
just be even people that you work with or people
that you get to know that you know they understand
some of this stuff. They can begin to build your
internal catalog of you know, not all people are shits.
No I'm not saying that that's what you what you feel,
but I mean that's for people who have that set
(01:01:05):
of confusing relational associations, if they build up new associations
about relationships, then that can shift, and it can and
it happens all the time. And I think one of
the things that this is why I think relational poverty
is so toxic, because what that means in order for
(01:01:28):
people to make these kinds of changes, what do you
need people. You need relationships. So if we're if we're
around human beings one twenty fifth as much as we
used to be, and we're replacing physical contact and conversation
(01:01:50):
and meals with screens, we're not having these opportunities to
reshape these kind of flawed and distorted internal lenses, and
we carry them forward, to carry them forward longer than
we would have had to if we'd had lots of
opportunity for relational healing. And that's one of the again,
(01:02:10):
community helps people heal, and and and and the way
you build your community, you can do it in a
lot of different ways, but that's the way I think
people really ultimately change is having connection and community and
lots of opportunities for people to kind of tolerate you
(01:02:31):
and re embrace you, and you know, and then for
people to kind of drive you push you away, and
and for you to learn how to be as forgiving
and recognize you know, that stands as well. So I'm
again I'm rambling. Wow, I ramble tells the end of
my day should for the Almond Brothers. I'm a rambling
(01:02:54):
man here.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Well, I'm mesmerized. It's yeah, it's again. It's been a
another incredible conversation with you. I can't thank you enough.
Are you writing another book?
Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
I am right now writing a couple of It's like
an extra chapter and a little bit more for the
paperback version of What Happened to You? Oh, and so
we haven't released a paperback version, so we're going to
add a little bit to it updated and release that.
And I am writing another book. But I's so funny
(01:03:28):
because I feel like every time my editor talks to me,
I feel like I'm my bookie is trying to chase
me down. You know. It's like it's like, oh, man,
I'll get you the chapters in two weeks. I'll get
you the chapters in two weeks. Don't break my legs.
It's brutal. I just like I see the phone calls
(01:03:49):
and I'm avoiding, and I'm like, oh shit, my bookie.
So don't expect anything soon, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Just know that I'm quietly waiting in the wings. What
Happened You're still one of my favorites. And the other
books you've written, The Boy, The Boy that was Trace
as a Dog, wasn't it? Yeah? Great books, great great insights.
And what I love about you is you just have this.
I know we're not in the same room right now,
(01:04:16):
but you have this emotional contagion in your mannerisms like
you just have this beautiful nature. So it makes talking
about stuff like this so much more accessible and so
much more interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
So thank you, thank you. I appreciate it, and I
feel this. You're just a great listener, and so you
don't have a lot of opportunities to have interviews with
folks who listen. There's a lot of people who you know,
they have their set questions and that's what they want
to do.
Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
So thank you appreciate that. Where would you like to
send people anywhere to access follow you or anything that
you're doing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
Nah, they'll find me a fake. Care No, I don't
mean to be a flaff. Don't. You don't have to
do any any.
Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
You're the best. You're hilarious. If you want to find him,
you'll find me.
Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
If you want to google me, you'll find it. Thanks, Doc,
keep up your good work. Listen. Sometime we got to
talk about sport. That would be because we have a
big n MS sort of we're doing a lot of
work in the sports arena and I would love to
talk with you about your experience.
Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Okay, brilliant. Well, we'll sign off from this and we
will talk about when you want to do that. Farewell, Doc,
Farewell everybody.
Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Thanks Syah, she.
Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Said, it's no neh, I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Love A don't guard a
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is Roll with the Punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends are test Art Family Lawyers.
Know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in
(00:29):
all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Doctor Bruce Perry, welcome
(00:55):
back to Roll with the Punches.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Thank you. It's good to say.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Oh, it is a delight. You know what I always
do every single time if I ever have someone come
on a second time. The moment I press record, I
think to myself, I should have double checked what date
an episode. I know your episode number because I've told
a lot of people about it. So but now I'm
scared that I've said that nugget the episode none the wrong.
(01:21):
But I think it was twenty twenty two that we
last spoke.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Man, it was a while ago.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Three years ago, so I feel like you might have
been up to a lot. Would you like to reintroduce yourself?
Is there a difference to how you introduce yourself these days?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Oh? Man, I'm just a tired old man up in
North America. Tired. All is bullshit going on on the planet.
Oh people getting hurt everywhere. Everybody's angry and yelling at
each other, and you know, you know, it's it's brutal. Mean,
may not be the same way I probably I suspect
it is, but man, the amount of really want to
(02:00):
call it vicarious, but the amount of sort of visually
present trauma that we're seeing seems greater than it's been
in a long you know, since I can recall. So
it's anyway, I think everybody kind of feels that It's interesting.
It comes up in almost every conversation. I'm on the
(02:21):
board of a couple of organizations, and the first fifteen
or twenty minutes are always about people trying to settle
down after being all stirred up about a school shooting
or you know, another hostage that's you know, video showing
them starving. And then people argue about whose fault it is,
(02:43):
and the whole thing is just there's just a lot
of tension everywhere. Even if you in that moment are
living in a safe environment and your life is going
pretty well, you turn on the news and it's your
bombarded with stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
So I was thinking about you the last couple of
days in relation to exactly this, because this last week
I deleted Facebook off of my phone so that I
can't look at it, and it was the day that
I woke up and watched two brutal murders on social
media like it was entertainment, and then followed up by
(03:24):
then a bunch of content relating to that that I
never had, never never signed up to wanting to see,
and then everybody wanting to give political opinions, like the
amount of scrolling through my feed and seeing people go
I don't normally do political opinions, but I'm like, oh,
I can't, I don't want. And I thought about you
(03:45):
because I think about the work you do in trauma
and recovery and helping us understand and move forward, and
I just I felt and I don't know if this
is how you feel, And I was like, how much
you feel when you're trying to push an area forward
and it's almost like the whole ceiling collapses in on you.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, it's such It's so interesting that you say that
because part of what I've been for those of you
who don't know, I'm actually part of a very large
community of researchers and clinicians and educators and people who
have been trying to better understand what trauma does to
(04:28):
people and how that impacts the way people function, their
their physical health, their mental health, the way they learn,
and so forth. And so we have all of these,
by and large, really good hearted people who are doing
really hard work, and we're all doing work and systems
that are kind of screwed up, you know, they have
(04:49):
you know, all of our systems have been built in
general with good intentions, but they have strug actual components
that are that are destructive sometimes and that have some
elements of inherent racism, right, I mean, there's just exclusionary
(05:12):
components to a lot of our systems that the way
they're organized, and you know, people have been recognizing this
and been trying to change it and so forth. But
what is happening to all of these folks that we
work with is that they get so worn out and
so burned out that they are no longer able to
(05:32):
do what is necessary to help people. Because, as we
talked about before, and I think as you well know
from your work, your ability to help somebody is directly
related to how to your health. Right. If you're not
respected and you're not to some degree rested, if you're
(05:55):
not equote literally in physical shape and mental shape to
do this work, you end up not being able to
be as effective as you can. And so I keep
my A lot of my job is trying to help
people that are in this network stay regulated and take
care of themselves and recognize how important it is. You
(06:18):
got to work out, you know, you got to go
to bed o there at times, you got to show
you got to have external discipline to your life so
you can have internal structure to your physiology which will
then allow you to kind of go do hard things.
And you know, we've talked about this a little bit
(06:39):
before about how important, for example, the discipline that you
learn as an athlete helps build helps you understand that
in a way that a lot of folks don't appreciate.
But that's a big part of what I've been doing
so like the physical, like the concrete thing you did
with saying, all right, I'm not going to watch this
(07:00):
guy gets shot ten times. I'm not going to watch this,
you know, because it wears me out. It takes a
little bit out of me. My brain has to sort
of cope with this in a way that's like, Wow,
what the hell where do I put this? And if
you have that all the time, if you're always continually
(07:20):
bombarded with images of kids dying in the Middle East,
and images of people getting stabbed in public transportation, and
images of our news stories about you know, domestic violence
or whatever whatever it is, if you get continually bombarded
by it, it wears out your reserve and so your
(07:42):
capacity to demonstrate resilience and be present and do the
hard work goes away. So that's a big part of
my work is to try and make sure that I
can use that relational contagion we know is present in people, yeah,
(08:04):
to help the people I interact with calm down a
little bit so that they can think more clearly and
that they can remember how important it is that they
actually stop doom scrolling and that they, you know, if
they want to help. It's way better that they just
walk away from their desk and their screens and go
(08:25):
take a hike or take a run, or go, you know,
go lift some weights to whatever. Whatever your regulatory strategy is,
it involves movement and being with people who are going
to be are going to be kind of make you
feel like you belong. You need to do that. Now.
(08:47):
The problem is that's been happening, and you know, I'm
sure that you've run into it, is that human beings
are relationally contagious to each other. Right, so I'm thinking
of my ten year old or my God, don't kill
me if he hears his twelve year old grandson. But
(09:11):
he doesn't say any hear of this. So he comes
back from school and he and his friends are talking
about the shooting of Charlie Kirk and they all see
it and I'm like, wait, well, how did that happen?
It's like, well, at school, it's like so it's all
over and then it's there's this weird contagion and so
that one of the most important things that helps us
(09:32):
feel regulated and safe so that we can kind of
be reasonable and rational is the presence of other people
who are reflecting back to us that you belong, you're
one of us. It's but because of the pervasiveness of
social media, you only need one or two people in
that group to kind of get escalated. And pretty soon
you think you're going to get some respite at the
(09:54):
gym and everybody's talking about it, and you think you
might get some respite, like if you go hang out
with your friends and it's everybody's gonna be talking about it,
and it's just we just have We're in a we're
sort of creating a bind for ourselves in the way
where we have this universally accessible, NonStop exposure to screen,
(10:23):
you know, really bad content on screens. So anyway, I'm rambling.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Sorry, No, I love it if I find it really
this intricate relationship between our cognitive abilities to sort things out,
to figure things out, to work through things intentionally, and
then this regulating our system and then and it's like
(10:48):
there's this little black area that sits in between those twos,
that in between those two that we don't really connect
to or understand or fill the gaps. And I feel
like lofestyle today and social media and everything we're doing
is making that that little black area bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Absolutely, yeah, And I think that's a good way to
think about it, is that there is kind of this
you know that I mean, if you know, I can't
help it thinking about the way the brain works. Because
the brain the part of us that is most humane,
you know, the part that allows us to think about
the long term consequences of our current behavior and to
(11:29):
actually reflect and draw upon our experiences in ways that
allow us to be understanding and respectful and listen to people.
That part of our brain is very easily tipped over
when we get hungry, thirsty, sick, or you know, sensory overloaded,
and and that that, you know, all of this stuff
(11:54):
coming into us has to get through that little black
space you're talking about, and if it gets bigger and
bigger and bigger, where things just sort of like they
get distorted or short circuited, and then we're not able
to actually think as well as we would normally be
capable of thinking. And in the in you know, it's
(12:16):
one of the things that we have studied about and
written about a lot, is what we call state dependent functioning,
and that basically is referring to the fact that when
your brain is in one state, it has access to
certain systems that it won't have access to in another state.
And like, so the classic examples that's kind of a
(12:38):
stupid obvious example is sleep. Right, when you're sleeping, you're
in a certain your brain is active, but it's in
a state that makes it impossible for you to sort
of think about stuff and learn new cognitive concepts like
mathematics or you know, that's your sort semi shut off
(12:58):
to the extern world. But you can be in different states.
You know, your brain can be in different states when
you're awake, right, So you can be awake and kind
of daydreaming, and you're going to process that experience different
than if you are in an argument with somebody. And
(13:21):
so if you're in argument with somebody, that sort of
reflective part of your brain, like if you're safe and
and you're not hungry, you're not thirsty, and you're just
sitting by a stream and you're listening to the gurgling
of the water and you hear some birds and all
the sort of like idyllic stuff that you know a
lot of us love in those little moments that you
(13:42):
get but you don't get enough. But when you're in
that state, your brain can do things. You can think
about stuff like, you know, what's the meaning of life?
And you can think about how what can I do
to you know whatever? It's usually, you know, that's where
you all all of your values, all of your what
you believe in. That stuff is available. But when you
(14:06):
start to get distressed or threatened, that part of your
brain starts to shut down and you are much more
automatically emotional and reactive. And so somebody comes in and
says something that you don't agree with. Instead of thinking
about it, I wonder why he thinks that? And I,
(14:27):
you know, let me tell me some more about why
why you said that. We will automatically go let's bullshit,
and I can't believe you think that, And all of
a sudden that because we're contagious. That escalates the other person,
and then you get into this weird co escalation so
that the brains of both people shut down and pretty
(14:48):
soon you're arguing like a bunch of toddlers. Yeah, as
opposed to like sitting there and going all right, well,
tell me why you think that. I mean, what's where's
that coming from? And if you if you can have
those dialogues, you can get to know somebody and understand
(15:09):
their perspective a little bit better. That's kind of why
the book I wrote with Oprah is you know that
it's like it's about what happened to you, like what
what went on, so that you think this way and
explain it to me, so I understand how you arrived
at that conclusion. And usually when people start sharing with
(15:31):
you their story, you have a better understanding of their
frame of reference or their point of view. And then
because you've been respectful and you've listened to them a
little bit, they're a little they feel a little bit
safer with you. Right you actually listen to me, You
didn't shut me down right away, you didn't attack me,
you let me share something, and you were respectful. Then
(15:55):
at that point their brain is open and will be
more receptive to you suggesting in a respectful way. You know,
because of this is why I think this. And then
you can actually have an interaction where you may give
somebody a bit of information that might help them shift
(16:17):
their point of view. But this is so interesting. We've
got to this point where we you know, I remember
there's a person I know, I care about her very much.
I was trying to help her after the loss of
a really traumatic loss, and she would engage in these
sort of arguments with people on Twitter about gun control.
(16:41):
And I was like, well, ever, in the history of
Twitter or x as it's called now, has anybody ever
changed their mind because of reading three sentences on Twitter?
Like do you actually think that there's anything that you
could possibly say that will change anybody's mind on Twitter?
(17:05):
And it just you know, when you sit back in
and go, oh yeah, you realize that you're just engaged
in this sort of almost an emotional escalating exercise that
and as you as we all see on Twitter, what
happens is frequently it escalates into these sarcastic, nasty back
(17:27):
and forth things rather than sort of a you know,
that's interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way. Thank
you for telling me, you know, I mean, I haven't
seen a whole lot of tweets like that. Thank you
for pointing that out to me.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
What do you think people are actually seeking maybe beneath
what they think they're seeking, like we because we take
these actions like is it the art of like being
heard is very therapeutic? Do they want to change minds?
Or is there an internal driver that's gets something else
from that expression.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
That's a great question. You know, the people that look
at this and I'm not sure that I don't know
that we really know that much about sort of the
neurobiology of this, but there are people that believe that
when you get a little like, or when somebody you
(18:23):
know gives your thumbs up after you make some witty comment,
there's this tiny little dopamine burst in your reward center
that you're like, oh, I'm seeing, I'm heard. And the
problem with it is this when people have looked at
the difference between the neurobiology of a real conversation in
(18:43):
a Twitter back and forth, and what they find is, yes,
there is this little sort of what I would call
a junk food version of reward, but it's like junk
food emotional connection as opposed to a really nutritionist nutritional
emotional engagement, which we all can sort of think back
(19:07):
on an interaction with somebody where there was eye contact
and there was a sense that they're listening, and it
felt deeper, and that's a much more rewarding form of
a thumbs up or a like or whatever it is.
But many, many, many people. Again we talked about this
(19:29):
last time A little bit. We've invented a world now
where there's tremendous relational poverty. We are around people frequently,
but we're really having a poverty of connection and so
kind of a deeper conversation with somebody that doesn't happen
(19:52):
as much. We're all kind of in a hurry. We
have appointments, we have to scourry off to this. Once
in a while, we get a lunch with friends, and
you know, and a lot of people are lucky enough
to have more, you know, you get more of those
kind of relational morsels. But we're filling our life with
a lot of these hollow relational contexts with where we
(20:21):
really desire. We want to belong, We want people to
see us, We want to be acknowledged. And yet you know,
the one thousand people that are following you, and that
the one hundred and eighteen thumbs up or hearts that
you get, those are pretty that they're like junk food.
(20:45):
They're not feeding you truly emotionally. They're kind of just
keeping you at bay. And so I think that's what
a lot of people seek. A lot of people, you know,
there are people who are very empty in their lives.
You know, We always joke about sort of the you know,
(21:05):
the guy who's in his mom's basement in Iowa who's like,
you know, sending out all of these tweets. And it's
so interesting because you know, they'll send out a tweet
and there's some celebrity or somebody who has a million
followers because they've sort of poked at them, they might
actually respond and you look at You're like, wait a minute,
(21:27):
why in the world would you ever respond to a
guy who's got thirty four followers. You know, it's like
it happens all the time. You're like, some guy in
the base his mom's basement in an farmhouse in Iowa
can actually get the attention of you know, some celebrity
(21:47):
or somebody who's trying to have a dialogue about gun
control or politics. And it's just bizarre. It's weird. You're
giving this weird, disproportional piece of your bandwidth, your attention
to somebody, and it's hollow. It's hollow. Anyway, Am I
off on a tangent?
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I'm sorry, love tangents are my favorite things. Ever, That's
why I just sit back and listen. I am fascinated.
Slash often infuriated by in the resilient space. So I
talk a lot on resilience, and I am furious about how,
(22:29):
from my perspective, the world glamorizes doing hard shited glamorous.
We've got this glamorized version of resilience and toughened up
and run a marathon. And so there's which is rich
Coming from a little boxer that jumped in the ring
(22:50):
and got passed in the face for a bunch of time,
was like, yeah, I'm the bus, but it's you know,
like the whole David Goggins like that kind of philosophy
infuriates me because I think it's there's such an intricate
balance and I haven't nailed it yet. I haven't nailed
the doing and knowing with the being always I see,
(23:11):
I still see an enormous disconnecting. I can I can
see what how I'll process things. I can be and
I can be self aware in moments and go Okay,
this is going on doesn't match what I know, But
I'm still stuck in the ability to address it or
move forward in it. What is your take on on
(23:33):
our relationship with hard.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Yeah, so I'm so glad that we're going to talk
about this because I also I love that we have
the capacity to build resilience. You know, that's an incredible
characteristic of our species. I hate two things about that
the current narrative about resilience. One is the complete misunderstanding
(24:00):
that that that the way to get to resilience is
by doing hard things, kind of almost crazy hard things.
And the second is that the fantasy that you can
build resilience by sitting and taking a class, you know,
because because they have they have all these programs right
(24:23):
that oh, we're gonna build oh, whereas I'm we're gonna
build resilience in the school by having these kids learn
about resilience and learn about It's like, no, So here's
the dilemma, and I it's you do have to be
stressed to build resilience. But the key is dosing and spacing,
(24:46):
and that the systems in your body, all the physiological
systems in your body, including the systems in your brain
that are involved in kind of building mental resilience and
and all of that stuff. And this is very the
same thing is true cardio respiratory system and your and
your muscles. You build muscle and make them stronger by
(25:08):
having predictable, moderate doses of challenge and then having a
spit time between sessions. Right. And so if you look
at weightlifting, you know, you take a you might do
a set or a circuit of like six things or
five things four minutes, right, four minutes, and you might
(25:31):
repeat that three times, and then you'll do that again
four days later or three days later, whatever your whatever
your schedule is. But the truth is what you're doing
is you're you're providing a moderate stress to that physiological
system to the point where it gets fatigued and worn out.
And basically what you're telling those cells is that I
(25:53):
am going to be involved in some kind of work
that I don't have enough equipment so I then those
cells get the signal from being worked that you need
to build more of myosin and actin and you got
to you got to get bigger and stronger and more flexible,
whatever the signal you're sending, and that goes into the
(26:16):
nucleus where your DNA is. The DNA starts to get
activated and it takes time. It's literally it's like you
can't just say I want to build a porch on
my house and go boom. You have to bring the
materials in, you have to actually measure things, you have
to put the boards down. It takes time, So it
(26:37):
takes time to build muscle. So while you're building muscle,
you don't want to you don't want to stress the muscle.
You want it to rest until you've had an opportunity
to build in the new porch and then you can
go sit on the porch. And this is one this
is one of those big mistakes about hardness and resilience.
(27:01):
If you take somebody who does not have a baseline
that is the same as David Goggins, and then you
say we want you to do this hard thing to
build resilience. That is too big for somebody, and all
(27:22):
you're doing is setting them up to fail. And this
the key thing in all of this is that what
a moderate stress or is for you is different than
what a moderate stressor is for me. And the key
is to be aware enough to understand what's moderate, what's
an appropriate dose, what's a good way of spacing, and
(27:46):
so you know, you can take a different example, something
like public speaking. A lot of people are very anxious
about public speaking, right, well, you can build resilience around
public speaking. You can help build confidence and competence if
you adhere to this fundamental principle of creating moderate, predictable
(28:11):
and tolerable, controllable doses of challenge. Right, so every Friday
in the fourth grade, you know that you're going to
have to get up and recite four lines of poetry
to your class. And it's not impossible, right, It's like,
it's kind of hard. I mean it's but it's predictable
(28:34):
because you know it's every Friday, and you are very
afraid of public speaking. And the first time you do it,
you don't do very well, and so it's kind of embarrassing.
And then you realize, wow, you know, actually, I guess
I really have to study. I have control over how
(28:56):
stressful it is. Right, So you practice, and you practice.
Next time you go in and it's better, and then
the next time you go in it's better. And after
you do it, literally by the end of the school year,
you actually look forward to showing off how you can
actually be a little ham And not only did you
repeat the lines, but you use some inflection and you
(29:18):
use your hands and you started to do a little
Shakespeare and people were like yay. And so you've built
resilience around the capacity to do public speaking. And I
think this is what we get wrong all the time,
is that you can't build resilience by telling kids to
do stuff. They have to do it. And so that's
(29:39):
why I think sport and I think drama, and I
think music and ballet and all these performance activities have
kind of built in opportunities for moderate, predictable stress sorce,
and that can build resilience. I don't know that you
have to go an iron man to become resilient, you know,
(30:02):
that's it's in fact, I think that that's probably not
going to build resilience for most people. For most people,
if you decide you wanted an iron man, most people
will reinforce the feeling that they are not good enough,
they're not fast enough, they're not strong enough, they're and
that kind of backfires, right. The intention is to sort
(30:23):
of do a good thing, but it only works for
a sort of a tiny percentage of people who were
had the precursor capabilities to tolerate that much pounding on
your legs or that much kind of mental challenge. And
and so I think when a lot of the people
that are presenting that these resilience building things. They're they're
(30:46):
they're not appreciating the concept of dosing. They're doing one
size fits all. Come do my program, and this is
how we do it. Now. The last the other part
that I really hate and I wrote about the in
the the book I wrote with Oprah, there was a
section in there about resilience where we use the adult
(31:09):
world uses resilience to avoid the pain of trauma with individuals. Right,
it's so painful to realize the impact that this school
shooting has had on these kids, that we're going to
declare ourselves a resilient school. And so like every every
(31:30):
time where there's a shooting, you know, like there's chat there.
There was a shooting of a bunch of soldiers here
in Chattanooga, while back within you know, a month, they
were literally faster than that. They had t shirts that
said Nuoga strong. Well, fuck, no, you're not. You're not.
What wait a minute, is that just you're just denying
the fact that this is traumatic and you've got all
(31:51):
of this loss to deal with, the same thing happened
in Sandy Hook. They didn't they didn't want to talk
about the bad stuff. They wanted like, oh, we're strong,
We're resilient. You're not going to bring us because you
shot up our kids at an elementary school. Well yeah,
I mean you still have people now that are struggling
with that. So this weird declaration of resilience I really dislike. Anyway, again,
(32:15):
I'm rambling. Sorry.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, what we talked last time about dissociation and agreed
that it is also a superpower I'm interested in. I
guess how we do we need to be conscious of
(32:37):
it in order for it to be a superpower. And
what Yeah, what locus of control do we have?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
That's a great I love that question. Yeah. You know,
it's interesting when you look at people who are really
good artists and people who've done really creative things, many
of them are very good at dissociating, but they're not necessarily.
They'll describe it to you and they'll kind of describe
(33:06):
their process, and somebody who knows about dissociation will go, oh,
that's dissociative, But they themselves may not even be aware
of the fact that, Wow, the fact that I can
go into my head and I can create this imaginary world,
then I can write it down and it can become
a best seller, huh, or you know, Stephen King dissociated.
I mean, you almost have to dissociate to write fantasy
(33:29):
to write. And I think many athletes to do the
kind of training they do, have to dissociate, I mean,
because it's boring and brutal sometimes. And I think many
really good athletes learn how to dissociate to get into
the state of flow during competition and so, but a
(33:49):
lot of them have not sort of intentionally been taught
about that. It just kind of they develop their little
rituals to help them kind of get into the state
and then they you know, they might have had a
little bit of coaching about guided imagery or something like that,
but that's some way to get into a dissociative state.
So I think if we were more intentional about teaching
kids about this, or anybody about this, then you can
(34:14):
actually have a little bit more control over when and
how you use that skill set. And it's one of
the things that we do a lot of with kids
that have trauma related symptoms that include dissociative episodes where
and again it really goes back to that whole state
dependent thing. If you are using dissociation in the midst
(34:41):
of a domestic violence event at your house. That's highly adaptive, right.
It helps you get through it, It helps you tolerate the
emotional pain. But if you go into a dissociative state
in math class just because it's a little bit stressful
and you kind of get it's a little overwhelming, and
boom you dissociate, you're gonna flunk math. So there you
(35:07):
need to help people learn how to understand it and
then how to get there when you want to and
how to get out of it when you don't want
to be there, which you can do. You know, we
do this all the time.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Okay, tell me more about that. That's because I was
gonna I was gonna ask about that. Is it something
we can control? In hell?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Well, some there are, there are you can control it.
But if it's been a primary adaptive, if you will
adaptation to trauma in your life, there will be evocative
cues that will trigger it, that will bring they'll bring
it on and that you don't have that you don't
(35:51):
have control over. But you can come to understand that.
You know what, I dissociated because this man who is
my mom's boyfriend, yelled all the time and beat the
hell out of my mom, and I tuned out. So now,
whenever a man is either physically close or they raise
(36:11):
their voice, I dissociate. And that actually can even happen
when I have I'm in a relationship. Right, If I
start a relationship with somebody and he gets a little
bit angry frustrated with me, I shut down, and that
impairs our relationship because I don't understand it, he doesn't
understand it. But once you get a little bit of
(36:34):
awareness about it, you can then anticipate that, Okay, I
might tune out of here, and so I need to
intentionally think about an alternative regulatory strategy. Right, So let's
you and I if we're gonna talk about something that's
(36:55):
a little bit a conflict in a relationship. Instead of
sitting face to face, let's go for a walk and
talk about it. Because when I'm walking and I'm side
by side, it feels less in your face, less emotionally intense, less,
you know, and and actually a lot of times when
you when you tell your partner about this, they'll recognize
(37:16):
it and they can be helpful. Right, but it takes
this is where you need to help. Sometimes you need
a little bit of therapy to help. Some is somebody
who can kind of help you teach your partner and
help you begin to understand what things have been evocative
cues for you. And but it's interesting, almost everybody I
(37:37):
know who uses dissociation a lot has learned how to
either pinch themselves or cut themselves, or bite their their
mouth or do something that brings it on when they're
when they're feeling kind of out of control.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I've never really thought about I guess the self harm
our activities as a link to dissociation, which I guess
that's exactly what they are. Wow, Okay, that's really interesting.
I yeah. I know, like with my background, which was
(38:19):
childhood sexual abuse, and that's given me a lot of
struggles with intimate relationships and worse now probably over the
last five or six years, after recognizing another thing that
happened and because I was thinking recently, I've never been
(38:41):
less interested. And it doesn't feel traumatic. It just feels
non existent now. And it's like it's that little black
kind of gap that I described earlier of going I
see and understand all of this, but also there's this,
there's been this, There's definitely been some sort of change
because I never used to be It's not like I'm
(39:03):
aggressive or loud about it. I'm just not. It's just
not in my world now. I'm just like so disinterested.
And I never used to be that disinterested. So and
I look at that, and so I can cognitively understand,
but couldn't pinpoint. And I can pinpoint now reflecting exactly
what the thing that happened that brought me to that place,
(39:25):
but I never recognized it along the way. And it's
not like I recognize, you know, in traumatic feelings when
I meet people or when I'm approached by people. So
just it really interests me how we yeah make that
link between what the decisions that we're making beneath the
decisions we think we're making.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah, well it's the it's you know, one of the
things that I think happens again, you know, I mean,
I I do my best to kind of understand some
of this stuff, but because of the way and I'm
just using a little science. We talked about this probably before,
(40:09):
and it's in some of the things I've written, but
like when I'm talking with you right now, the image
of your face that the visual image goes into my
brain through my eyes and you know, we all learn
about ah there's the retina and the cones and the rods,
and they turn all of the images in what's coming
(40:31):
into my brain into my eye. They turn that into
pattern neuronal activity, right, and that goes into a lower
part of my brain or kind of a middle part
of my brain, and then that gets kind of processed,
and then there is a synaptic connection, and then it
goes into a different part of my brain, and then
there's synaptic connections that go off and they connect it
to what I hear and what I other things, and ultimately,
(40:54):
after a couple of synaptic connections, it gets up to
the part of my brain where I go, I can
see you. And that's what happens with every sensory thing,
every sensory thing, so touch, smell, taste, visual input, it
all kind of comes into the lower, more primitive part
of your brain, and those lower parts of your brain
(41:18):
have an opportunity to kind of try to make sense
out of it before it gets up to the smart
part of your brain. And so if you've had trauma
and traumatic experiences with relationships, you've got a bunch of
kind of little distorting mirrors, little distorting lenses in your brain.
(41:39):
So that an interaction that might have gone that way
kind of goes this way. And we all do this,
and that's what essentially what implicit bias is. Right, everybody
has implicit biases based upon how you grow up. You
create an understanding of the world based upon what you're
(42:00):
first exposed to, and then when you meet things that
aren't like what you are used to, your brain kind
of categorizes that as that's potentially dangerous, that's potential, it's different.
I don't know what that is. I don't feels comfortable
with this because I've only had three experiences with that
kind of thing, and I've had eight thousand experiences with this,
And so your brain, we are this is not very
(42:22):
fair to our little brains, but we're continually distorting every
moment of every second of our lives and we're trying
to fit things into the way we view the world.
And you know, when you have when you grow up
and there are relational violations, right, We're like the people
(42:44):
that are supposed to be keeping you safe are the
people that hurt you. Or the people that feed you
are the people that hit you. It's like, wait, wait
a minute, how do those things go together? And so
your brain kind of has it will have mixed signals
about intimate relationships because your first relationships early on, they're
(43:09):
all intimate, right, They're people that are have tremendous power
over you. They have they're the ones you're supposed to
be closest to. They're the ones that are shaping how
you view the world. And if they hurt you, you know,
as you get older, then your brain begins to not
feel all that safe with human beings. And you know,
(43:34):
and I have no idea, you know what your life
experience was, but you know what that means is you're
just going to be very wary. You know, people who
have had these developmental experiences with relationships are just going
to be very cautious about who they let in and
then how they let them in. Right, They'll they'll want
(43:55):
control over the process of intimacy. Now, we all kind
of want control over that, right. But the more you
are have these mixed experiences, the more cautious you're going
to be, and the more control you're going to want
to have. And and again that can kind of screw
up relationships if the other person's got a whole different
(44:18):
worldview about relationships and they're not going to understand why
are you this way? You know you're driving me crazy.
You know, you know you say this and then you
do this. It's like it doesn't make sense to me.
And and unless you understand a little bit about that,
it's hard to explain it to them. So you're just
as confused sometimes as they are. And over time it's like,
(44:40):
you know what, it's easier just to stay you know,
it's egg and I mean really, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
It's like it's easier just to get a cat and dog. Bro,
it's easier just to get a whippet and a kitten.
There you go, there you go, and big bossips.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Can I let me just say this, don't give up
on relationships. Don't give up on relationships.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
No, it interests me. It interests me, and it is
not something that I currently obviously, maybe I'm just living
life dissociated. I don't I don't crave it or feel
sad about it. But I have a belief that human
beings are wired for connection and exactly and that that
there's a connection that's broken along the way for me.
(45:28):
And I'm like, that's really interesting and I'm really aware
of that.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Let me just let me talk about I'm going to
talk with you about development here a little bit. This
will make you feel better, I hope. Okay, So when
we develop, you know when when when the brain is
organizing and human beings are developing. A lot of people
kind of have this idea that oh, you get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,
you know when it gets stronger, stronger, stronger, stronger, smarter,
(45:53):
like it's linear, and it's not. And again, this is
something that athletes know very well because all athletes go
through this exact same thing. When you train, you put
in a lot of energy and a lot of effort,
and there's this little bit of improvement, right, and then
you put in the same amount of energy and effort
and it's like, what the hell. You know, there's a
plateau and then sometimes there's actually a dip. You're kind
(46:14):
of like, it's like you you either you know, a
lot of things can cause it, but there's this there's
kind of a disorganization before there's a reorganization and a jump.
And this happens during the development of all kids. It
happens in the development of organisms, of organizations and systems.
There's you know, there's the growth period when there's an
(46:36):
input of you know, whatever you're putting in novelty, new things,
new skills. But then with the same amount of effort
and energy, there's a plateau. And during that plateau, part
of what's going on in your brain and is that
it's trying to figure out kind of this new way
of being and you it's it's in the cation that
(47:01):
growth is on the horizon. But typically before you get
to this new place, there's kind of a disorganization, like
a total like like sometimes there's like a regression. So
the way I try to help parents understand it, because
it confuses parents about their kids, is that it's a
(47:22):
little bit like moving from one house to a better house,
right or one office to a better office. The new
office has more space and it has fiber optic cable
and it's got good views. It's awesome, it's going to
be great. But in order to get there, you have
to unpack, you have to pack all. You have to
(47:43):
literally become less functional because when you move, it's like
chaos and it's like, oh my god, I gotta take
these boxes and I gotta do this or when I
have that, and so you have a period where you
are disorganizing, and then you once you're reorganize and you're
in your new office for like a month, you're like, wow,
(48:04):
I'm way more productive now and it's way better than
I was here. But getting there is a pain in
the ass, and it takes a lot of energy, and
it involves functional disorganization because you're less. You're like, oh
my god, I'm where's my book, where's my phone? I
lost my phone, you know. And it's so you'll have
these periods where you're like, oh, I missed that appointment
and I didn't renew my registration because that the mail
(48:28):
was there, and it's like, oh my god, I got
a ticket. Because all of that stuff is more likely
to happen when you're moving than once you're in your
new office. And maybe you're just in a plateau period,
which isn't bad.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
What is your take on self sabotage and becoming self
fulfilling prophecies? So I have I've had clients who at
times over the years, you know, one of my biggest
quest people come in and do a workshop and it's like, Okay,
do you want to change? Ask yourself this? Do you
want to change the thing that you say you want
(49:08):
to change and you've tried to change for years but
can't change, or is saying that you want to change
it really affirming a deep seated belief of whatever you
have beneath the surface. And this is just another thing
that affirms that.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, well that the whole self fulfilling prophecy thing. You're
kind of there. The way you view the world kind
of makes you project things that will reinforce what you
believe in. And if your view of the world is
(49:46):
that I'm not lovable or you know, whatever it is,
you will Here's the thing about our brains. From the
moment we're like conceived in a brain is organizing in utero.
It's making these associations. It's connections about what things go together.
(50:08):
It's trying to figure out how sound and image and touch,
how they all woven together. And then we slowly create
our view of the world. And as we create this
sense of the way things work, we're continually getting input right,
and so every once in a while we're going to
get input that doesn't fit the way we thought the
(50:31):
world worked. So that activates just stress response and it's unsettling.
So what your brain learns to do is that it
starts to show a processing bias for external input that
(50:54):
fits your worldview. Right. So again, we all do this.
So when you're in an interaction and your worldview is that,
you know, people are nice, somebody can be cool, distant, rude,
and your brain will go, oh, they're having a bad day,
(51:15):
maybe they're hungry, maybe they're thirsty. And then they'll do
one nice thing out of ten kind of neutral things
and five nasty things and your brain will go, see,
look at that, I was right. And this happens in
relationships all the time, you know, like you know, somebody
can be treated poorly, poorly, poorly, poorly, poorly, and then
(51:36):
they'll bring flowers and they'll go, see, he loves me,
he sends me flowers, but you know he did you know,
he just slept with your best friend. Like that's but
he loves me anyway. So we do that stupid stuff
all the time in our brain, right, because we're trying
to make it stuff fit our world view. So in general,
what our brain does for us is that it it
(52:04):
sends out stuff. You know, it will project what you
want to get back, what your worldview wants to get back.
So if you think people are great, you know, I
had this experience a long time ago. I was in
an airport and it was crowded, and this poor couple
(52:24):
would had the little toddler that was traveling with them,
and it's hard traveling with kids, and they delayed the
gate and delayed, delayed the flight, delayed the flight, delay
the flight. The gate started to fill out with more
people for the next flight, and there was a guy
sitting next to me who was like a businessman, who
was getting more and more angry looking at his watch,
and he was really clear that he was going to miss.
(52:46):
You know, it was pretty clear that they're ultimately going
to cancel the flight. It was terrible, and so he
went up after the gate agent came up and said, oh,
or delayed another thirty minutes, and he just jumped up
and he went over and he yelled at the gate clerk,
who has no control over the weather, which is what
(53:07):
the delay was about. And he's yelled, I'm you know,
I have a really important thing in Cleveland and I
have to get there, and I'm a double placebo diamond traveler,
and you know, all of this crazy stuff. But he
was yelling at her, and she had no control over
and it was so loud and so kind of like
inappropriate that everybody at the gate just got quiet. And
(53:28):
the little girl who was walking around, a little toddler
who was like swaying back and forth, looked at him like, hmmm,
h you're kind of interesting. You know, that's kind of interesting.
So he goes over and sits down, and this little
toddler comes over and like her hands are you know,
she's been all over and sticky hands. He comes over
and this guy's wearing like a really nice suit. He's
reading the paper and she puts her hands on his
(53:52):
knees and he pulls puts the paper down a little bit,
and he frowns at her, and she just smiled at him,
and he just put the paperback up like this, and
she's like, h this must be a game. So she
took the paper and went ripped it out of his hands.
And I'm like, oh my god, I'm a mandatory reporter.
I'm gonna have to call child protection because he's going
(54:14):
to go crazy. And she just smiled at him and
smiled at him, and she's she of course thinks people
are great. People are awesome. Look at this this is great,
look at this man, and he finally just started to smile.
And within five minutes he was on his hands and
knees and she was riding him like a horse around
the gate. Oh my god. So she had elicited from
(54:38):
this grumpy, entitled man what she thought, and it was
it got what little good he had in him out.
Now he probably had a lot of good. But now,
in my mind, my worldview is you're entitled, you'r mean
to people, you're mean to kids, You're an asshole. And
(55:00):
I didn't I wouldn't talk with him. I would never
have gotten to know him at all. Didn't get to
know him. But the truth is, my worldview projected something
very different than she did. She projected that he's there's
goodness in this man, and she got goodness. I projected
he's a jerk, and I got nothing right because I
didn't want to interact with him. And and our brain
does that. Our brain loves what's familiar more than it
(55:24):
loves what's good. And so people who grew up in chaos,
and I'm sure you have friends like this. Everybody has
friends like this. They're always like sleep deprived. And they
got five projects and all of this stuff going on,
and you're like, wow, they're always late for stuff, and
they're kind of all and then you find out, oh,
(55:45):
and I adopted a dog. You're like, what you gotta dog? Like,
wait a minute. You could barely handle your life, your
plants are dying. You got a dog, and that's the
And they're like, but you find out later on you go, yeah,
they grew up in an alcoholic houst and everything was chaotic,
and that's familiar to them. So they feel when things
(56:07):
kind of get finished and school's done and I have
a job and there's you know, everything's quiet, how can
I blow this up? Oh, let me get a dog,
let me take you know, Chinese lessons at night. It's like,
wait a minute, why don't you just go home and relax. Anyway,
so we project, we project, what we what we want,
(56:35):
what we project, what we are are predicting is going
to be familiar, and then we cherry pick information to
reinforce the world view that we have, which makes it
very hard to do therapeutic work for people who don't
have a lot of insight. So one of the biggest
(56:57):
parts of therapeutic work that we do is help people
recognize that, you know, you see a pattern here. It's
you know, it's like, you know, they want to come
in and talk about the terrible relationship they're in, and
you know they want to kind of externalize it and
(57:17):
he needs to change, he needs to be better. Then
you're like, well, you know, like this has happened like
what five times in a row. Now it's like, maybe
there's a little part of this here involves you. I'm
just saying, I mean, of course they'll never come see
me again.
Speaker 2 (57:33):
So I'm annoyingly good at pattern recognition, annoyingly good at that,
and annoyingly relatively self aware. And I find that it's
such a juxtaposition because how do you therapeutically move forward?
How do you heal? How do you when you become
(57:54):
self aware and then realize that, Okay, I know what
there's a part I know what a part of me
is doing and has done. So how do I trust
me in my ability to know if this is another
version of that. I'm the common demnominator in every place
I've landed in life and every environment I've chosen to
(58:16):
be in and put myself in, and I've been fifty
percent of the interactions in every relationship.
Speaker 3 (58:26):
Well, first of all, that's a tremendously insightful perspective and annoying. Yeah,
but you know, here's the deal. The wonderful thing about
human beings is our changeability. We can change. And the
(58:49):
challenging part is that a lot of times it requires
a number of experiences that are a little bit different
rent from what we think the world is. And and
it's very hard to find people in your life who
(59:10):
will who are willing to tolerate some of the little
efforts by your subconscious brain to blow up the relationship
or to walk away from the relationship. And so this
is kind of hard, you know, and it really it
(59:32):
with repetition though, with people that stick with you, people
that are patient, people that will absorb some of the
be sponge like about some of the you know, when
when there's you know, the storms and then but that's
kind of what all life is. All life is about
eruption repair. It's just that a lot of folks are
(59:56):
you know, they make big ruptures, and you know, sometimes
people that really want to want the world to be
the way they think it is, they want themselves to
be as unlovable as they feel they can do say
hurtful things. You know, they they figure out the exact
thing that will make this guy run or make you know,
(01:00:18):
what is their weakest, what is hardest for them, and
it you know, we can do this weird. We do
some of the meanest things to the people we love
the most, almost like we're trying to prove that they
really want to be there. And you know it's relationships
(01:00:43):
are tough. But if you find people and it doesn't
have to be like a romantic partner thing, it can
just be even people that you work with or people
that you get to know that you know they understand
some of this stuff. They can begin to build your
internal catalog of you know, not all people are shits.
No I'm not saying that that's what you what you feel,
but I mean that's for people who have that set
(01:01:05):
of confusing relational associations, if they build up new associations
about relationships, then that can shift, and it can and
it happens all the time. And I think one of
the things that this is why I think relational poverty
is so toxic, because what that means in order for
(01:01:28):
people to make these kinds of changes, what do you
need people. You need relationships. So if we're if we're
around human beings one twenty fifth as much as we
used to be, and we're replacing physical contact and conversation
(01:01:50):
and meals with screens, we're not having these opportunities to
reshape these kind of flawed and distorted internal lenses, and
we carry them forward, to carry them forward longer than
we would have had to if we'd had lots of
opportunity for relational healing. And that's one of the again,
(01:02:10):
community helps people heal, and and and and the way
you build your community, you can do it in a
lot of different ways, but that's the way I think
people really ultimately change is having connection and community and
lots of opportunities for people to kind of tolerate you
(01:02:31):
and re embrace you, and you know, and then for
people to kind of drive you push you away, and
and for you to learn how to be as forgiving
and recognize you know, that stands as well. So I'm
again I'm rambling. Wow, I ramble tells the end of
my day should for the Almond Brothers. I'm a rambling
(01:02:54):
man here.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Well, I'm mesmerized. It's yeah, it's again. It's been a
another incredible conversation with you. I can't thank you enough.
Are you writing another book?
Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
I am right now writing a couple of It's like
an extra chapter and a little bit more for the
paperback version of What Happened to You? Oh, and so
we haven't released a paperback version, so we're going to
add a little bit to it updated and release that.
And I am writing another book. But I's so funny
(01:03:28):
because I feel like every time my editor talks to me,
I feel like I'm my bookie is trying to chase
me down. You know. It's like it's like, oh, man,
I'll get you the chapters in two weeks. I'll get
you the chapters in two weeks. Don't break my legs.
It's brutal. I just like I see the phone calls
(01:03:49):
and I'm avoiding, and I'm like, oh shit, my bookie.
So don't expect anything soon, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Just know that I'm quietly waiting in the wings. What
Happened You're still one of my favorites. And the other
books you've written, The Boy, The Boy that was Trace
as a Dog, wasn't it? Yeah? Great books, great great insights.
And what I love about you is you just have this.
I know we're not in the same room right now,
(01:04:16):
but you have this emotional contagion in your mannerisms like
you just have this beautiful nature. So it makes talking
about stuff like this so much more accessible and so
much more interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
So thank you, thank you. I appreciate it, and I
feel this. You're just a great listener, and so you
don't have a lot of opportunities to have interviews with
folks who listen. There's a lot of people who you know,
they have their set questions and that's what they want
to do.
Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
So thank you appreciate that. Where would you like to
send people anywhere to access follow you or anything that
you're doing.
Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
Nah, they'll find me a fake. Care No, I don't
mean to be a flaff. Don't. You don't have to
do any any.
Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
You're the best. You're hilarious. If you want to find him,
you'll find me.
Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
If you want to google me, you'll find it. Thanks, Doc,
keep up your good work. Listen. Sometime we got to
talk about sport. That would be because we have a
big n MS sort of we're doing a lot of
work in the sports arena and I would love to
talk with you about your experience.
Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
Okay, brilliant. Well, we'll sign off from this and we
will talk about when you want to do that. Farewell, Doc,
Farewell everybody.
Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Thanks Syah, she.
Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Said, it's no neh, I got fighting in my blood.
Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Love A don't guard a
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.