HealthyGamerGG - You Can't LOGIC Your Way Out of Depression

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

🎧 Dr. K explains why logic can't treat depression and shares practical tips on developing emotional awareness. Learn how meditation and journaling can help overcome flawed assumptions and purify perception to tackle depression. 🧘‍♀️📝 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I want to talk to you all today about why logic is not effective at treating depression. And this is a really important problem because a lot of people out there who struggle with depression or even subclinical depression where they don't necessarily have a diagnosis will struggle to pull themselves out of it. They'll analyze their situation and they'll recognize, okay, I need to do this or I need to do this, but they can't seem to, despite all the logic, bring themselves out of it. And on the flip side, we also have something incredibly scary, which is, is that sometimes when people are really, really depressed, or even things like suicidal, they're actually really logical about it. They sort of reach the logical conclusion that actually there's no reason for me to live right now, right?

Because I've done the analysis. I don't have a bright future. Generally speaking, day to day, I suffer a lot. I'm in a lot of pain. The only bright points in my life are like these dopaminergic activities like gaming or porn or whatever. But like there's objectively no reason for me to be alive right now. this is what's really challenging is if you try to talk to these people, you'll oftentimes find that their logic is actually really sound.

And even in the cases when it's not really sound, you can try to convince them otherwise, but it seems like you sometimes hit a brick wall. And if you're struggling in this way, you may have noticed that you may try to argue against yourself, but your mind always comes to the same conclusion. So we're going to talk a little bit about, first of all, understanding what the relationship between depression and logic is, and also why it is that. that logic sort of doesn't work and what the real problem is with depression. Hey there, thanks for watching and I'm glad these videos have been helpful.

A lot of times I'll read the comments and see people asking, well, what do I actually do about it? Which is such a great question. And unfortunately, my experience has been that the resources out there aren't actually that good at helping people create sustainable change, which is why I started HG in the first place. HG coaches are trained on a curriculum that integrates all of my understanding into what is motivation, what paralyzes us, and how to create lasting behavioral change. So if you're ready to take the next step, HG coaches are ready to build the life that you want. They've helped people build careers, find relationships, build networks of friends, discover what their passions are, and pursue their hobbies.

So if this sounds like something that you'd be interested in, check out the link in the description below. And so what we're going to talk about today is the relationship between logic, depression, and even IQ. And what we'll sort of discover is actually a little bit bizarre. First of all, not only is it that logic doesn't really work for depression, but the more intelligent you are or the more logical you are, there's a good chance that your depression will actually get worse. Not only does it not work, it's actually fuel for the fire. So let's start by understanding the relationship between IQ and depression.

Because we tend to think about IQ is a positive thing, right? And this is sort of a situation where, like, generally speaking, the higher your IQ is, the easier life becomes. That's the way we sort of think about it, is that it's unilaterally a positive thing. But if we look at studies on IQ and depression, we discover something that's actually really bizarre, which is the higher your IQ is, the more likely you are to be depressed. So if you look at the general population, about 9.5% of people are depressed. There are some studies where researchers have looked at the top 2% of people in terms of IQ. So they took the smartest 2% of people in the world, and they assessed how depressed they are. And if you're in the top 2% of people, you have a 36.6% chance to be depressed.

We're talking about a fourfold increase in risk of depression. And that's like absolutely insane, right? Like how on earth does that work? Even though these studies have some methodological problems, there's some really interesting supporting evidence on sort of understanding why is it that smarter people are more likely to be depressed. So there's a series of trials that really look at something called insight, which is your awareness of what your problems are. So what they sort of discovered is that if you have a debilitating

neurological disease, like let's say you've got like ALS, right, which is Lou Gehrig's disease or it's like a degenerative nerve disorder. If you've got Parkinson's or something like that, if you get diagnosed with something that's like really bad like cancer, the awareness that you have, your ability to analyze and accurately assess your situation correlates with suicidality. So the greater your insight is, the more aware you are, the more suicidal you are. There are also situations where they've looked at diseases like schizophrenia, and they've also found that, like, when you have people with schizophrenia, the more aware of the problem they are, the more damaging the situation actually is, and the more suicidal they become. So that sounds kind of weird, but like, let's kind of dive into a little bit of like, why is that? Why is it that IQ can worsen depression and kind of like worsen suicidality and things like that?

So let's start by understanding, first of all, what do we mean by logic? We start with a set of assumptions, and then we take those assumptions, and then we can run some kind of analysis, and then we come to a conclusion. And generally speaking, the smarter you are, the more logical you will be, the more analytical you will be, and the more faith you will have in your analytical process. Because if you're smart and you are very good at logic, it becomes a useful tool, right? So we use logic to solve problems in life. And if logic comes to a particular conclusion, we trust that conclusion because it tends to, work. So if I'm trying to figure out, okay, how do I get a better grade? This is what I need to do. I can kind of logic it out and figure out what the right move is. If I'm having trouble at work,

I can run through an analytical process and I can figure things out. And the higher your IQ is, the more likely you are to become dependent on logic. Now, let's take a look at depression. There's a lot of really interesting neuroscience, which helps us understand, like, what goes on in the brain of someone who's depressed. And as we understand what happens in the brain of someone who's depressed, we'll start to see how that can impact logic and even hijack it. So the first thing to understand about depression is I sort of think about it as the autoimmunity of mental illness. So if we look at autoimmune conditions, we have this thing called the immune system. And the purpose of the immune system is to fight off infections, right? These are the

soldiers of our body. In autoimmunity, what happens is these soldiers start attacking us. So if you look at things like allergies, this is a situation where there's a benign particle, which we're inhaling, and our immune system is like, this is the enemy, let's attack it. In other cases of autoimmunity, we will actually attack our own tissues and cause things like rashes or inflammation or things like that. So what happens in depression? What happens in depression is our brain gets turned against us. So this is what's really terrifying is the stronger our brain is, the worse the depression is. Because if you have a really powerful logical fallacy, but something in your brain has changed to always blame you or look at the negative or feel guilt or shame or whatever,

it's going to leverage that brain against you. And this is why it's so hard to kick. So how does the brain actually do that? Let's understand a couple of things. The first thing in depression is we see that there is amygdala hyper-reactivity. What does that mean? So we have this part of our brain that senses threats and sort of detects negative things. When the amygdala is hyper-reactive, it does a couple of interesting things. It changes our perceptions. So if there is a benign stimulus, if someone says, hey, I'm busy today, sorry I can't meet. In the depressed brain, the amygdala being hyperreactive will interpret that in a negative way. So it alters our perceptions. We become hypersensitive to negativity. So even if someone says, hey, thank you so much for inviting me. I loved the

meal that you cooked. It turns out, though, I wasn't able to enjoy the alcohol because I don't drink. because of my religious beliefs. But I loved the appetizers. The fish was delicious. You have a lovely place. I had such an amazing time. And so if you look at that sort of experience, this is a statement where someone is saying,

you know, five or six positive things. And one negative thing, they're not really blaming you for it. They're like, hey, I'm sorry I wasn't able to enjoy this thing. I just don't drink. And in the brain of a depressed person, that person will highlight that one piece of information. There actually is a cognitive filter

that will knock out positive information. and will actually amplify negative information. And this is all due to literally amygdala hyperreactivity. As signals are coming into our body and our brain, our brain is literally ignoring like 90% of them and just focusing on the 10 most negative. The second thing that we have to understand about the brain, and this comes a little bit more from Eastern psychology.

It's validated by Western Studies, but I think the Eastern perspective is easier to understand. We have to understand the relationship between emotions and analysis. So oftentimes when we're feeling emotional, we will try to logic ourselves out of it. We'll try to analyze our way out of it. But there's a really interesting feature of the brain, which is that when we are highly emotional, our emotions hijack our logic. So if you look at a political debate, these people are emotionally charged,

and they are both convinced that they're logically correct 100% of the time, right? And the more emotionally charged the debate becomes, the more sure someone is that they are thinking logical. You may have engaged in arguments with people where the person that you're arguing with is really, really emotional and not thinking clearly. But if you ask them, their perception is that they are perfectly logical. And let's be fair, if you're arguing, you're probably emotional and you're probably thinking that I am 100% right and they are 100% wrong. So we have to understand this really key relationship between. emotions and analysis, which is that the more emotional we are, the more likely we are to actually hijack our analytical circuitry. And then the emotions are actually in control and they're pulling

the strings of our logic. And we absolutely see this in depression as well. Now that we've understood a little bit about, okay, what's logic? We're sort of taking a set of assumptions. We have to start with axioms. We're doing some kind of analysis and then we arrive at a conclusion. Great. In depression, we've got something that filters the information that we get. So it filters our inputs. And then we also see in depression that our emotions can hijack our analytical circuitry. What is this result in? So let's take a look at someone who has high IQ, who is very logical, and what that means for

them if they end up depressed. So the first thing to understand is that if someone has a high IQ, there's a developmental component, which we've got to dive into. So when I'm smart, if I'm a kid, and I'm smart. I start to lean on logic more and more and more. So what we sort of see is that kids who are smart and are quite logical will use logic to solve their problems. It makes sense, right? So if I'm logical and if I'm smart, I'm going to use my intellect to solve problems. What that means, though, is that we tend to have underdeveloped faculties when it comes to emotional

awareness and emotional processing. So if you look at kids who are very logical, they will use their logic to overcome their emotions. They will sort of set their emotions aside. They will sort of of like suppress their emotions and they'll approach things in a very cold and logical manner. That's just how we work. And the way that you can sort of think about this is if I grow up and I'm right handed and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to like learn. Oh, this is a Sharpie, so I don't want that to fall off. And I start writing with my left hand, what is going to happen to my capacity to use my left hand? The better I am at writing with my right hand, the worse I will get at writing with my left hand. So this is exactly what happens in development, is that if we have

something that we're good at, we lean on that a lot to the exclusion of other things. Now, let's compare that to a child who does not have super high IQ. So if they can't use their intellect to solve every problem, what do they have to do instead when they approach problems? They have to use some of these other things like EQ or emotional quotient. They develop more emotional awareness. They sort of work with other tools, right? So if I've got an S-class IQ, I'm going to just be owning things right and left with my S-class IQ. I'm not going to use my B-level emotional circuitry. And so over time, I don't even level that stuff up. So the first thing to understand is that kids who have a high IQ will sometimes, in a weird way, have a low EQ because they just don't have that emotional development. This may also

explain, for example, like if you're a smart person who's very logically oriented, like, you may notice that you have like some deficits. Like there are some things in life that seem really harder to you, which you know people who are not as smart as you are. And they seem to have no trouble with it. And you're like kind of confused. Like why, if I'm so smart, why is this so easy for other people and so hard for me?

And then you sort of result in some kind of conclusion, which is that like IQ can be a curse. But if you ever say that to people, they're like, lull, cry me a river. Like IQ is a curse. Oh my God, you're so smart. You think you're so smart. Oh, lull.

right? So like no one ever actually listens to that. But that's actually the case. It's really bizarre, but it's actually the case. The second thing, which you all may have already figured out, is if we are using logic, but our amygdala is shaping our perceptions. What that means is the assumptions that I start with are flawed. And this is the core of the problem in people who are depressed and why logic doesn't work. It's because the assumptions are incorrect. So you can run that analysis as much as you want to, but the assumptions are where the problem is. Because analysis and logic is completely separate from the faculty of perception, right? This is actually one of the things that I think is sort of missing in Western science.

We don't really know how to like fix cognitive biases or perceptions. We sort of focus on once we have a particular belief, how do we work with that belief? We're sort of focused on logic, but we're not focused on perception. So the biggest challenge with people who are depressed, they're logically correct, but they're operating from the wrong assumptions. And that's not something you can, you can't logic yourself out. out of your assumptions or it's very difficult. What you really have to do is change your perception.

So if you start getting new inputs, it will start to change some of your logic. And that's really what needs to happen. But this is the key problem with like logic and depression is that the information that you're starting with is fundamentally flawed and biased. So you can try to logic your way as many ways as you want. But if I give you a set of building blocks that is busted and can never build a house, there's no arrangement that you can put together that will result in a house. The last thing to keep in mind is we sort of talked a little bit about how emotions hijack logic.

And this is the real problem of sort of the autoimmunity of depression. So once you reach a conclusion internally and emotionally that I am a bad person or I will never be successful in life, once you lose faith in yourself, once you feel shame or guilt or hopeless, once that energy is there, it will hijack your logical circuitry. If someone feels hopeless, you can try to argue with them as much as you want to about, hey, here are the reasons you can live. Here's why you should believe in yourself. You can try to reassure them. You can try to convince it. It doesn't work. Because this is where the logic is actually being controlled by the emotion.

And so what we really need to do is unpack that emotion or disarm that emotion. And then the logic will actually like normalize by itself and you'll feel a lot better. And this is the real tragedy of people who are smart who struggle with depression is that their ability to digest that emotion is underdeveloping. Right? Because they've been smart their whole life, so they never developed emotional awareness. And in fact, half the people that I talk to who struggle with depression who are very smart, if I ask them, why are you depressed? They don't even mention an emotion. They don't say, I feel ashamed about myself. That's never what they say. They say the reason that I'm depressed is because of this, this, this, this is why my life is hopeless. I can logic it out to you. I can

argue. I can convince you. This is truth. It's not emotion. It's actually the exact opposite. This is objective. It's not subjective. Why do these people believe that? And because their emotional awareness has been underdeveloped because they've relied on IQ their whole life. Now, if you've reached this point, you may be a little bit concerned. Does this mean I am screwed? Right? So does this mean like you were telling me Dr. Kay?

Holy crap. So 9.5% of the population is depressed normally. And I use logic a lot and my depression rate is 36.6%. That's scary. Also that like the more I understand about life, the more suicidal I will become that scary. does that mean I'm screwed? And this is the beautiful thing. Actually, absolutely not.

And my experience as a clinician has been awesome. Because when I work with patients who are smart, or I help people in general who are smart, so far the biggest problem is that their intelligence or logic is being leveraged against them. And amazing stuff can happen when your logic starts working in the right direction instead of trying to feed your hopelessness, which is what the logic does. It's amazing when you can really use it to tackle the hopelessness instead. And so what are the steps to that? So the first thing that we've got to do is understand that this is primarily driven by emotion.

So when I work with these kinds of people, what I really focus on is building emotional awareness. And so the more that we build emotional awareness, then we can start tackling the emotions on their own. So we don't have to logic our way out of them. That's not really going to work. What we really have to do is like validate and process those emotions. So this involves three steps. So this is like awareness of emotions. So do you feel ashamed about yourself?

What do you do with that feeling? I don't know what to do with it. I can't fix it, right? So I ignore it. And then I try to logic my way to success. So that's the exact problem is you can't logic your way out of emotion. It's not really the way that the brain works. It's just not how we're wired.

In fact, emotions can trump logic. It's usually not the other way around. So what we have to do is, first of all, recognize the emotions that we're feeling. The second thing that we have to do is oftentimes name them and really understand when we're feeling them. And the third and four things that we can try to do is tolerate them and process them.

So this is where when that emotional energy comes up, if we can tolerate it without reacting to it, it'll start to feed our logic a little bit less. Okay? The next thing is, this is a beautiful thing, is if we can do emotional processing, then as the emotional energy decreases, the amount that it hijacks our logic will decrease. And if we're no longer hijacking our logic, then we can use logic to start helping us. But as long as logic is serving the master of hopelessness, it's not going to work. So how do you do this. This is where we've got some community events like we did this right in the fields event, where we sort of helped, you know, thousands of people in our community build emotional

awareness. Our coaches are also kind of familiar with that. But this is really where if you're struggling with depression, I'd strongly recommend that you see a therapist, right? So because therapists are trained in this sort of emotional processing kind of stuff. The second thing that we can really do, and this is a little bit trickier, is work on our perceptions. So this is where when we sort of look at like meditation, mindfulness and yoga, we know that these things are effective at treating depression. And one of the key things that meditation, mindfulness, and yoga really do psychologically that we don't really do a whole lot in the West is learn to purify our perception. So we have, for example, in Dr. Kay's guide, we've got a whole section on how to purify your sensory

organs. So how can you better receive information? How can you remove the cognitive biases that you have by sort of like removing the filters through which you get information. We also have Dr. K's guide to depression, which y'all can check out where we dive into a lot of this kind of stuff. But this is where the short answer is if you want to purify your perception, meditation, I think honestly, is like one of the best ways to do it. And if you all can sort of add these two elements, what I've seen is a lot of progress. So when I worked with people and I work with hundreds of people who are depressed, hundreds of people who are very capable and depressed, which is what makes it so confusing, right? So these are people like bankers at Goldman Sachs or CEOs of

startups that are incredibly intelligent and incredibly capable and struggle with like crippling depression. And the reason is because they're missing some of these things. And if you sort of think about that, like how can meditation help? So what we do with meditation is observe the breath. We're not judging it. We're not saying that breath is good or breath is bad, right? And sometimes I'll even do a practice with someone where I'll tell someone, bring in a food that you dislike and try that food and put it in like, take a bite of the food and pay attention to where your dislike comes from. And inevitably what happens when people do this is that, oh, wow, this is not as bad as I thought. So what we're really doing in those moments is we're changing the way that our brain interprets stimuli.

And the second thing that we do when I do therapy with people, right, and y'all may have seen this on stream, is we'll talk to people who are hopeless. And then we have a good cry. And after people have a good cry, they feel better. Their mind is calmer. Their logic starts to move a little bit better. That is emotional processing. So the other thing that you can kind of do is by all means, like, you know, use everything that we have available, go see a therapist. But the other thing you could do is like just like process those emotions.

Like you try journaling or just have a good cry. Talk to someone about, you know, hey, like I'm really struggling right now. And I really feel extra ashamed. And this is the other problem is that the more intelligent you are and the more capable you are, the worse you feel about yourself for not being able to fix the problem. And that's the real tragedy, right? if you've got a high IQ and if you're very analytical, you've used this to fix so many things. And this is the one thing that you can't fix. And you should be able to fix it. And if you should be

able to fix it, what does that mean? That means that you feel shame because you should be able to do something and you're not able to do it, which in turn makes you stupid, right? Makes you worthless, makes you pathetic. And this is an example of how if you kind of think about it, but hold on a second, what's going on here? We start with depression. I should be able to fix it. I'm not. I'm not able to fix it, therefore I'm ashamed, therefore I'm worthless. What does that do? It feeds the emotion. So we've got to break that cycle by recognizing, okay, hold on a second, I feel ashamed of myself in the first place. How can I sit with that? How can I tolerate it? And how can I process it? So when it comes to logic and depression, it's a really common problem because people who are

very logical and very intelligent have actually used their logic and IQ to solve problems. The challenge is that when it comes to depression, this is a situation where we are turning our powerful logical ability, and the depression actually turns it against us. So it's not just that it doesn't help us so that it's ineffective. It's that actually logic and IQ can make depression worse, and there's scientific data that supports that. And so then the question becomes, okay, then what do we do about it? And this is where we have to develop our emotional awareness a little bit, develop our emotional processing, and also remove that cognitive filter. And as you're able to do these two things, your experience of feeling sad or some of this logic will actually start to get way better.