Huberman Lab - Unlearn Negative Thoughts & Behaviors Patterns | Dr. Alok Kanojia

Starting point is 00:00:00 Everyone's focused on changing behavior. Everyone's focused on increasing willpower to overcome this tendency. And it's like, why not just change the tendency? That sounds so simple, but that's literally what we do in psychotherapy every day when we come in and someone has a narcissistic personality disorder. This is personality. This is who they are. And we can psychotherapize them to be someone else for their natural thoughts to change, for the way that they see the world to change. for their behaviors to change on its own.

Starting point is 00:00:32 It doesn't require willpower is necessary when you are trying to not be narcissistic. It is not necessary when you are no longer narcissistic. So we've done it in psychotherapy. We know that if your self-esteem changes, if your sense of being changes, treatment refractory depression will change. Trauma, PTSD will change.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Alok Canogia, also known as Dr. K. Dr. K. is a psychiatrist and online mental health educator. He has a very unique background, having trained and earned his medical degree in the United States, but also having studied as a monk for seven years. Today we discuss powerful tools for increasing your self-understanding and mental health,

Starting point is 00:01:27 and for rewiring your nervous system, specifically, how you can unlearn unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors and replace them with ones that truly serve you and those around you. Much of today's discussion centers around differences between eastern and Western concepts of things like the ego and what makes up our self-concept. That portion of the conversation will no doubt have you rethinking why you do what you do in virtually everything,

Starting point is 00:01:51 and he provides a roadmap for clearly defining your best goals and for increasing things like your energy and drive, not through hacks, but by tapping, into deep intrinsic motivation. In fact, throughout today's episode, Dr. Kay explains specific practices that you can use to help rewire your nervous system, resolve traumas, and come to a much clearer understanding of how best to apply your efforts in work, school, and relationships. We also discuss social media, dating, and relationships, addiction, and pornography.

Starting point is 00:02:21 So there are a lot of topics covered. And I have to say, this is a conversation unlike any other that I've had on or off the podcast. Dr. Kay offers a completely new perspective on how to resolve common struggles that we all face. And in doing so, he offers a lot of practical tools. So this should be a very valuable conversation for anyone wishing to better understand themselves at the theoretical and psychological level, but also who wishes to implement specific tools to improve some or all aspects of their life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about,

Starting point is 00:02:58 science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Alok Canogia. Dr. Kay, welcome. Andrew Huberman. Thank you for having me. So interested in you and the knowledge you hold. Today we're going to talk about a number of things. I mean, Iherveda and East-West medicine motivation and dopamine, but I want to start with the internet. Okay. You had an interesting upbringing so very different than mine, not just because of our age difference, but you grew up on the internet. And so you really have an empathy for people on the internet, on social media.

Starting point is 00:03:42 Now everyone's on the internet. What was it that drew you to screens and that interface with such a degree of magnetism? You know, I was like a gifted kid growing up. And I think that one of the things that we were. we don't really appreciate is how school moves at the pace of the slowest kid. So school was incredibly boring for me. And then I was also young, so I was a year ahead. And so I was like early on when I was a five-year-old in first grade and I was competing against seven-year-olds like on the playground or in gym class, I sucked at sports. So the one thing that I really got addicted to

Starting point is 00:04:27 was this idea of like a computer game where like when you beat level one like level two is there you know and then if you beat level two like level three is there if you fail at level three you get to try level three again so it was the only activity that was like cognitively to my pacing and and so that really drew me in and I didn't realize that until years later you know my parents were big fans of putting us into school like young and if you can skip grades like that's great Right, because life is a race. And the faster you finish, the better things are. But I didn't realize how developmentally challenging it is to be like a five-year-old or a six-year-old in school with like seven-year-olds or eight-year-olds.

Starting point is 00:05:08 So I think that's what originally drew me in. If you don't mind me asking, so you were first-generation immigrant parents from India. Yep. I mean, I grew up in the South Bay in Palo Alto, so I'm familiar with intense academic environments. Sure, yeah. increasingly so in the last 10, 20 years, but even when I was there, it was intense. Did you feel that as pressure? Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:05:31 I mean, my earliest memories of my grandmother telling me I'm going to make a great doctor one day. And when I was like 15 years old, people would ask me like I'd go to like a party, right, with my parents and their friends. And people would ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And so I was like, I'm going to be a doctor. And everyone's like, wow, impressive. You know, so my 15-year-old brain was like looking at this, this, like, amazing idea of what a doctor was. And both my parents are doctors. My dad was an amazing doctor.

Starting point is 00:06:02 I suppose my mom is too, but my dad was one of the seminal researchers in, like, graft versus host disease. It's how he landed his job at MD Anderson. So he, like, came from India and, like, was an oncologist. And so I also remember, like, he used to back then, hippo wasn't, I think there wasn't even a hippo law. So he would have, you know, patients over to our house and stuff like that. He would throw a Thanksgiving party every year where, like, he would invite all of his patients, all cancer survivors and things like that. And so my dad was really like a mythical figure, incredibly charismatic. And so I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to be that.

Starting point is 00:06:39 And so it became a huge part of my ego. And then it turns out that ego is not a great way to motivate. Well, it can be a great way to motivate yourself. But then I ran into trouble when I hit college because I'd never learned how to study. So either I, like, absorbed everything and did well on the test. So I went straight from like A's to F's and then got addicted to video games, failed out of college. But your original question was, was I into computers and why? And that's probably has something to do with it.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Well, it sounds like you were so into computers. You eventually went over the cliff of computers with this addiction. I want to talk about the addiction, but I think this is. is a perfect frame, and maybe we'll jump back and forth as we move forward, this is a perfect frame for what I have heard and wonder about a lot, which is, you know, I'm Gen X, okay? You're a millennial. Yeah. And I'm told that the generations right behind Gen X perhaps had more love and encourage.

Starting point is 00:07:47 to feel their feelings, notions of what trauma and addiction were, but maybe that there wasn't this universally high standards set for all of them. That's the narrative that you see in the news right now. Oh, you know, this coddled generation, et cetera. You had high standards set for you. When you look out on your peers and you look out on the internet for millennials and younger, do you think that we can make a general statement about, oh, yeah, you know, all this appreciation and understanding about what addiction and trauma and feelings are, you know, that just was foreign to my generation, frankly, that it helped or hurt to have this awareness of kind of self and what one needs and all of that. Do you think that it, yeah, do you think it helped or it hurt development?

Starting point is 00:08:35 Well, so, Andrew, I'm delighted to be speaking to a scientist because I think it helped and hurt, right? So this is, as you know, things are multifactorial. It's rarely one thing. or another thing. So I think a lot of people picked up ground with awareness of feelings. As a psychiatrist, you know, I work with people who were unaware of the family dynamics going on in their life, in their household, unaware of their emotions, growing up with things like avoidant attachment and having difficulty forming connections. So I think it is always good to be more aware. I think actually awareness is probably the single factor that correlates the most with like success and happiness. The challenge, the really subtle thing is that talking about emotions

Starting point is 00:09:23 isn't the same as actually being aware of them. So I think what started to happen is a lot of this dialogue around trauma, a lot of this dialogue around feelings has actually been hijacked in very subtle ways by other parts of our mind, other parts, like, for example, our ego. And so it's kind of like this therapy speak has like, and this happens. So you can look at any population. And if you have someone who's like sociopathic or if you have someone who's histrionic or narcissistic and everyone is talking feelings, they will do that too, but in a sociopathic way. Feelings have now started to be used as a form of manipulation. Right. So people will use like, I see this all the time. Speaking of the

Starting point is 00:10:06 internet in its modern incarnation. We all talk about boundaries, but people have started to use boundaries as a form of control for other human beings. You know, my boundary is that you don't text anyone after 8 p.m. My boundary is that, you know, every time I call you, you need to answer the phone. So it's really bizarre how, like, the basic, like, psychological stuff can hijack. Like, our psychological patterns can hijack. like all this mental health speak.

Starting point is 00:10:38 Another really good example of this is, so I remember I was seeing an assault victim in the emergency room at Mass General Hospital many years ago. And so the MIT chief of security was, campus security was there. And so I was talking to them a little bit about, you know, because there were other students with the student who had been assaulted. And they were kind of talking to me about safety. And I remember something that the MIT chief told me that I've never forgotten. We were talking about safety. And he's like, my job is not to make people feel safe. My job is to make people safe.

Starting point is 00:11:08 And there's actually a big difference. And so something interesting has happened. We have all become more narcissistic because that's what the internet does to us. And so now if I am hurt, that is no longer my responsibility. That is because you did something wrong. Does that make sense? Like fundamentally, if I feel hurt, that is oftentimes tied to you doing something wrong. So there's this tendency towards victimization.

Starting point is 00:11:34 where you'll see even people who are like playing the victim card, which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be believing victims. I think that's exactly what happens is we started to realize that we're not taking victim seriously. But then all the chameleons in our society were looking at this pattern and they were realizing, okay, the fastest way for me to get ahead is to claim to be a victim. So there are all kinds of weird permutations that are happening right now with this sort of emphasis on feeling. One more evidence-based example of this is, you know, we're seeing the prevalence of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, addictions, body dysmorphia. Basically, everything is getting worse. And so one weird thing that started to happen is as we've talked more about feelings, there's something called a transdiagnostic factor, which we can get into. I don't know if you're familiar with these or not.

Starting point is 00:12:27 But so if you look at like all of the mental illnesses, there are certain attributes that are a risk factor for multiple mental illnesses. So a good example of transdiagnostic factors are perfectionism and rumination. So rumination doesn't make you depressed. Doesn't necessarily make you anxious. But if you have a high index of rumination, you are more likely to have a major depressive disorder. You're more likely to have an anxiety disorder. Does that kind of make sense? If you are perfectionistic, you are more likely to be depressed.

Starting point is 00:12:59 You are more likely to be anxious. So there's one interesting transdiagnostic factor, which has gotten way worse, which is something called distress tolerance. So human beings' capacity to sit with things and tolerate things that they do not find comfortable is starting to tank. And as that starts to tank, we're seeing just an explosion of mental illness. glucose is a key player in how our body functions, not just in the long term, but in every moment of our lives. That's because it is the major fuel for our cells, especially our brain cells. Glucose directly impacts our brain function, mood, and energy levels, and it may even affect our levels of tenacity and willpower. This is why I use the continuous glucose monitor from Lingo.

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Starting point is 00:16:05 The moment you said that we're seeing a reduction in distress tolerance, I heard in my head voices on the internet saying, oh, so we're just supposed to push our feelings aside? like we're just supposed to accept everything that happens to us. We're supposed to, you know, and of course, I don't actually believe that, but I can empathize a bit with that notion, right? Like these things are always on a continuum. It's a push-pull, right? I mean, I was going to raise the same thing around the standards that were set for you. Some people who grew up with very high standards set for them by parents, teachers, or coaches

Starting point is 00:16:42 might internalize that as, oh, that must mean I'm very capable. In fact, one of my favorite books, the last lecture by Randy Posh, he talks about, he was a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon. He eventually died. He gave this last lecture, which is an incredible lecture. And he said the moment that your parents, coaches, and teachers stop pushing you is the moment you should worry because they've given up on you. If you're pushed, people believe in you that there's a chance you might actually accomplish something. They believe in you. But you could also internalize it as overwhel. Yeah. And so I think this notion of distress, tolerance, like what are the standards? What are the standards for distress tolerance, for performance, for being a, quote, unquote, functional member of society while also, quote unquote, honoring one's feelings about feeling one feelings. There's no roadmap, I believe, to how to navigate that. What you said, there is no roadmap. That happens to be true and it happens to be wrong. So I know it's confusing. So let me explain. So here's the first thing to understand. The way that we collect information. This is why I love being a clinician. So like, you know, you talked about the last

Starting point is 00:17:53 lecture. So this person was saying, if people don't push you, that means that they don't, you know, care about you. They're not invested in you. The moment that you give up on someone is the moment that you stop pushing them, right? Makes perfect sense. And then there are also people who have been pushed to the point where they like crack under pressure. That's actually way more common. So generally speaking, pressure, you know, just like any other part of biology. If I exert pressure on some part, on some joint, on some part of soft tissue, will develop a callous. It'll become tough. So this is where the reason there's no roadmap is because people aren't the same, right? So we all have unique genetics. We all have unique experiences. We all have a unique internal dialogue.

Starting point is 00:18:35 And so the whole point of personality, and we can define personality like by the technical terms, which is it is the way that you interpret information, the way you perceive the world, your internal reactions, and the behaviors that you engage in. So you can take literally, you know, two different human beings in the exact same situation. I've worked with a couple of survivors of like genocidal conflicts. And the really interesting thing about that is not everybody gets PTSD, which is like really weird, right? Like if you think about this is like a genocidal conflict. So we have tons of people who all experience the same thing, but their reactions to them are really different. That's what's fun about being a clinician. What I try to focus on and what I learned, I looked for

Starting point is 00:19:16 a roadmap. And what I found is that there's not a roadmap. There are thousands of roadmaps. And those roadmaps come down to, and this is, I think, a huge problem in the information-based world we live in. So everyone has problems, right? And they're looking for solutions, which is great. the problem, the biggest mistake that I see people make, especially high performers, is a problem of misdiagnosis. So a really good example of this. I had a patient come into my office, worked in finance, was it a very, very successful firm, came in and was like, I have really bad anxiety. Like, it's really starting like I can't eat, like I can't sleep. My wife is really worried about me. So he's like, you know, I've got really bad anxiety. So we start talking about it. And he's like,

Starting point is 00:20:03 you know, I'm afraid I'm going to get fired. And we worked together for about 12 months. And then he realizes this environment is not where he's happy. And the reason he's going to get fired is because he doesn't fit in. And he decides to quit. So what's really interesting is if we had just solved that, if we'd made his anxiety go away, he would have perpetuated in an unhealthy system. And this is the thing that I think we forget when we're talking about our emotions.

Starting point is 00:20:33 Like, Andrew, which part of the brain does anxiety come from? It's a circuit-wide phenomenon. Sure. If we had – how is it taught – if you had to teach someone who's taking an undergraduate neuroscience class, and maybe you wouldn't teach it this way. But if you had to localize it to somewhere, where would you localize it to? One structure? Everyone would say amygdala.

Starting point is 00:20:54 I teach neuroanatomy to medical students. Right. Or I did until very recently. I'm totally with the limbic system as a whole, right? But the amygdala. Sure. And the really interesting thing is like crocodiles have amygdala. Right.

Starting point is 00:21:07 So we sometimes forget that these negative emotions are actually really important for us. They're really healthy for us. One other really interesting example of this is, you know, I work with a lot of like gamers on the internet. So sometimes they'll try to engage in mating behaviors. And they'll creep people out. And one of the really interesting things that I realized is embarrassing. Embarrassment is the best way to not creep someone out. So if I violate one of your boundaries and then I express embarrassment, that signals to you that I realize I did something wrong.

Starting point is 00:21:46 So if I violate one of your boundaries and then I express embarrassment, that's a really important empathic signal. And now we have all of this like content on the internet telling people to be relentlessly confident. And when they become relentlessly confident, they no longer express embarrassment. embarrassment is a really important signal to send. In the example you gave, it's very clear that somebody violated somebody's boundary. They felt embarrassment. Showing that embarrassment shows that they have some sort of empathic attunement or awareness that makes them perhaps a little less creepy and a little bit safer.

Starting point is 00:22:16 Yep. As opposed to if they just kept going forward, right? However, if it was a bit vague, like let's say that they did something of flirtation and it wasn't really clear what it was and the other person said, hey, like, that doesn't feel good to me. And then they acted very embarrassed. And the person who said it didn't feel good to them would quite understandably think, oh, it must have been really bad, right?

Starting point is 00:22:40 Oftentimes the dynamics are subtle where people don't really know how they should feel about something. At the extremes, we know. So I'm going to reverse Russian Dallas because I was all over the place. So you asked about a roadmap. Then I gave the example of anxiety. Then I gave the example of embarrassment as another emotion that's helpful. and now you're asking a question, so we're going to do it in reverse order.

Starting point is 00:23:02 Sure. But I want to get back to that roadmap because I think it's a beautiful question. I wrote it down. We haven't forgotten. Great. Let's talk about the ambiguous interactions. This is fascinating. So I saw a really cool study where when two people are flirting and that's taped and a neutral observer is watching it, they accurately detect flirting only about 30% of the time.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Different studies show 24 to 42%. You're saying ambiguity is a problem. No, ambiguity is exactly what's supposed to happen. So if you think about what flirting is, flirting is a way to preserve plausible deniability. It's a way to make you feel safe, right? So if I am really, Andrew, I'm really interested in your body, bro. But if I say that, it's, you know, unless you are matching that energy, it's not going to be safe. It's not going to be good.

Starting point is 00:23:49 It'll ruin our relationship. So flirting by nature is supposed to be missed. So this is another thing where you're saying, like, yes, there's ambiguity. It could be interpreted this way and it could be interpreted this way. That's not bad. That's good. That's how human beings actually interact. So Winnicott described this beautifully because flirting is a form of play.

Starting point is 00:24:09 That's literally what it is. And play is about a potential space. When I'm playing like dolls with my daughter, it's not defined. And the whole point is for it to be not defined. So in that absence of definition, which now everyone is sort of like we're seeing a social skills atrophy. So, you know, the parts of our brain that interpret tone, body language, things like that, like people are becoming like, you know, we're seeing a rise of like ADHD and everyone also feels subjectively like they're autistic.

Starting point is 00:24:37 It's because they're losing some degree of social skills because we text back and forth. And our brains don't, our occipital cortex is not interpreting visual information of people's facial expressions. So that part of our brain, like, literally kind of shuts off. So people are having a lot of difficulty with ambiguity. You know, people are saying like, oh, this. person is sending mixed signals, like, that's the point. In a relationship, you are going to have mixed signals. In a friendship, you will have mixed signals. We all have ambivalence within us.

Starting point is 00:25:07 I want to eat a healthy, lean protein during lunch, and I also want to eat a fried protein during lunch, right? So ambiguity is actually not something to be avoided. The really interesting thing, another transdiagnostic factor, really important one, the intolerance of uncertainty. So human beings who are capable of tolerating uncertainty, better mental health outcomes, more resilient, improved quality of life, right? So everyone needs defined answers. So I'll pause there for a moment just to address your flirtation example. But you're spot on. We can tell what the signals are at either end.

Starting point is 00:25:48 The point of human interaction is that way we can adapt to each other. you know, if I put my arm around you, then how do you respond to that? Do you get up and go to the bathroom or do you lean in? So these are how human, like, these are how human interactions actually happen. There's a lot of back and forth. Fascinating. A lot of younger guys talk to me about their challenges in the dating scene. And one of the things that they seem very challenged with is the fact that they feel like whatever happens on a date is shared on the internet. Yeah. And this is, of course, not relayed to, you know, assault or or them acting highly inappropriate or, you know, this is really like they're reported as a good or bad kisser. They're reported as a, they pay or they

Starting point is 00:26:35 don't pay. And, you know, and so I think that the room to explore ambiguity to them, this is what I hear, feels very dangerous. It feels like a slippery slope where they have to perform perfectly on every measure. And I'm sure women feel the same way, right? I just hear from more men. Yeah, it's very tricky. So I think what we're seeing in the dating world and, and I guess this is what we're talking about. Maybe it's top of mind for me because I just did a bunch of content on it. But so what's interesting in the dating world is that now we're sort of adding the internet to the equation, right, which you sort of talked about. So let's just understand a couple of things about the internet. So the first is what the internet, in my opinion, this is sort of like

Starting point is 00:27:21 a clinician's perspective, having read about 200 papers on various aspects of how the internet affects our brains and our psychology, first thing to understand is that the internet selects for emotional activation. It's not even dopamine, in my opinion. So if you look at like internet, right, so it's not just fun in games. Actually, the most engaging content is emotionally engaging. Arousal. Arousal. Absolutely. Adrenaline. And then the other interesting thing is that in order to maintain arousal, you need a dichotomy of emotions. So I need to scare you, and then I need to make you angry, and then I need to show you a cat video, and then I need to scare you again, and then I need to tell you how AI is going to steal your job,

Starting point is 00:28:07 and then I want to show you this birthday party where this baby did the cutest thing. So this is literally how they maintain engagement. And so what's really interesting about this is, as our emotional, as our limbic system is like hyperactive over and over and over again, that's one of the biggest cognitive drains that we have. So like I think the top three cognitive, the things that drain are willpower the most, suppressing emotion, repressing emotion, even just feeling emotion is like very exhausting. The internet is selecting for the most emotionally activating things. So which tweets get engaged with, the ones that are the most polarizing.

Starting point is 00:28:48 So then what happens is people are dating and now you've got a problem because, and here's the real tragedy, is people will have a perception that if I don't say the right thing, this will get posted online. That is not what happens most of the time, right? But this is where we as human beings have certain cognitive biases where the extreme example, like we get trained in this in medical school is, you know, once you miss a cancer diagnosis once, it doesn't mean that every patient after that has cancer. But that's what the brain is designed to do. Our brain is designed for survival, which means that if we get food poisoning from a restaurant even once, our brain doesn't look at that probabilistically. It takes the worst examples, and that's what we have to base our behavior on, right? Like if I'm at work and I want to, if I'm attracted to a coworker, even though there's a 90% chance that if I express some romantic interest in them, I'm going to be fine.

Starting point is 00:29:47 I can't make a strategy based on that. I have to base my strategy on the worst possible outcome. That's what we're seeing in data. You said that suppressing emotion is cognitively draining. Did I also understand correctly that being in constant arousal through different emotions is also cognitively draining? I don't know if I would use the word cognitive there, but it's absolutely draining, right? So periods of extended arousal, and this is where like when I mean cognitive draining, I'm referring to a paper that's looking at the interior singular cortex. So, and that's where when the interior cingulate cortex and your frontal lobes are suppressing your limbic system, that's very draining.

Starting point is 00:30:26 But I think high levels of arousal, right, through the reticular activating formation and things like that, just being on emotionally, hyperactivation of your limbic system is absolutely exhausting, is the word that I would use. You mentioned distress tolerance is a valuable skill to have. It feels appropriate to say, okay, distress tolerance. I totally agree. Great to be able to, you know, tolerate distress to a point. But that sounds like it's very cognitively and generally draining. So how would you encourage someone to develop healthy levels of distress tolerance? But if that involves, you know, constant suppression of an impulse to shout, to react, that sounds like it could get very unhealthy. So I realize we're taking, we're sort of staying on this tangent, but I feel like what defines healthy distress tolerance? if pushing back an emotional reaction or pushing down an emotional reaction is not good for us.

Starting point is 00:31:24 So distress tolerance doesn't only include emotional suppression, right? So what's really interesting about distress tolerance is a key feature of distress tolerance is not even suppressing is the opposite, is accepting your emotions. It's actually moving in the opposite direction. Feeling your feelings. Feeling your feelings, right? Recognizing that you feel your feelings. What if somebody feels extremely angry and they want to feel their feelings?

Starting point is 00:31:52 What is a healthy way for them to do that? Three things. Okay. So if you want to learn how to control your emotions, you want to be tranquil in the face of your emotions is what I would say. Three things you can do. The first thing is putting words to your emotion. So the moment that, so right now, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, the more angry you are, right? the more your amygdala is like hyperactive, it is drowning out every other part of your brain.

Starting point is 00:32:21 So the first thing that you have to do is put words to it. And when you put words to it, you can't put words to, ah, there's no word there. So the moment that you try to put words to it, it has to calm down in order for your linguistic centers, Broca's area and all these. In order for them to like articulate it, you have to understand it. So Freud understood this like over 100 years ago. And there's something powerful about processing emotions by putting them into words. In order to put words to it, we have to tone it down some.

Starting point is 00:32:51 So that's the first thing. The problem is that people oftentimes think that that is sufficient, right? So people will say, journal, go see a therapist and talk about your feelings. Man, the number of times that I've had, like, I had this patient who came in, if I can tell a story. Please. You know, and so, like, I was a third year resident. I'd done maybe like 100 hours, 200 hours of psychotherapy. So I had a guy come in.

Starting point is 00:33:14 He'd been in the clinic for eight years, had depression, was a dude in his 40s. He came in and he would tell me about why he was sad every day. Like every week he'd come in. He's like, I got written up at work. People are complaining because I snapped at them. You know, one of the patients is complaining because I didn't give them benzos. And so he'd come in every week. He'd talk about why he was depressed.

Starting point is 00:33:34 I'd be like, why are you depressed, bro? And he'd like tell me some story about something bad that happened in his life. And then we did this for six months. And like, I didn't know because I was. I'm like learning psychotherapy, right? So I'm like, I'm supposed to be supportive and I'm supposed to be like, okay, like that must be hard for you. How does that make you feel that must be so hard for you? How does that make you feel that must be so hard for you?

Starting point is 00:33:53 We do this dance for like six months. Then one day he comes in and I'm kind of getting frustrated. And I'm like, hey, is this helping? And he's like, what do you mean? Is it helping? I'm like, is it helping? Do you feel any better than when you came in six months ago? And he's like, I thought this was what we're supposed to do.

Starting point is 00:34:06 I'm just supposed to come in every week. I tell you about how I'm sad. And then you tell me it must be like, isn't that what? psychotherapy is. It was a huge lightball moment for me because talking about your feelings, especially for men, is not enough much of the time. Fascinating neuroscience and endocrinology behind that. Putting words to it is just step one. Second thing, this is a really important skill, cultivating additional emotions. So if you look at people who are resilient, if you tunnel down into the internal dialogue of people who are resilient, you'll notice that they do something else,

Starting point is 00:34:41 some interesting things. So my patients who are very severely ill, right, and literally what I try to do with them over the course of weeks is this thing happened and I feel overwhelming shame. The moment that you start cultivating additional emotion, so I've been dumped by my boyfriend or my girlfriend, I'm really, really depressed, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. They start to catastrophize. They have a lot of negative emotion. And it's really easy in that moment to forget that, okay, I had three years of wonderful experiences with this person before things went downhill. It's really easy to forget all of the positives. It's really easy to realize that three years of experience followed by, let's say, one year of a toxic relationship

Starting point is 00:35:27 is going to actually protect you from the next toxic relationship. So cultivating additional emotions is a huge fundamental part of EQ. And you don't just have to tolerate it or suppress it. These are the additional things that you can do. And this is really important. It's not just cultivating positive emotions when you're feeling negative emotions. It's the other way around as well. I've seen more relationships ruined by falling in love than anything else. And you just fall in love with the wrong person. You're in a relationship and you fall in love with somebody else. So many people I've worked with, you know, I have this great business idea and I get so excited about it and like, I'm going to start this AI company. That's the time that you actually want to cultivate negative emotion.

Starting point is 00:36:09 cultivate a little bit of anxiety. What could go wrong? Make sure you ask yourself that question. Like literally in addiction psychiatry, we have a cool technique that we use with people where it doesn't really work so much anymore. But we tell people to play the tape through to the end. You're really excited right now and you want to do this thing. But play the tape through the end. What are all of the negative things that could happen?

Starting point is 00:36:32 So that cognitive flexibility, that emotional flexibility is really important. We have to understand what emotions are. So a lot of times, you know, this is going around on the internet where like feel your feelings, right? Like, I'm just going to authentically, I'm going to be authentic with my feelings today, which means that you're an asshole, Andrew, and I'm just, this is my truth. Right. So we've started like speaking our truths as excuses to being assholes. Like, that's what's happening on the internet. It's what's happening in real relationships because people are watching social media and they're like, I should speak my truth.

Starting point is 00:37:06 Right. So the other thing that's really important is to understand that. that an emotion is not a behavior. An emotion is literally from an evolutionary perspective, and you may know this better than I do, is information and is motivation. That's what emotions are for. So when you feel fear,

Starting point is 00:37:27 when you're walking outside, walk into the outhouse in the middle of the night, and you feel fear, that is all this sensory input is being processed in parts of your brain, that you have no conscious awareness of. The first thing that happens is that you feel emotion

Starting point is 00:37:43 before you have any logical idea of what are you even scared of. That is your brain telling you something. The other thing is it's motivation, right? I feel like running away. And this is where, unfortunately, our brain evolved for a world that we don't live in anymore.

Starting point is 00:37:57 So, you know, back when I used to feel fear because I was being hunted by a tiger, the natural impulses that our fear encourage us to do don't work when you've got to pay rent at the end of the month. to pay your mortgage or you've got to do well on your performance review. So oftentimes what we do is we think that feeling authentically means letting our emotion run the show. We don't want to do that.

Starting point is 00:38:19 We want to ask ourselves, what is this emotion telling me? Why do I feel fear? What am I, you know, what am I afraid of? And I don't even think what am I afraid of is the right question. It's way to, like, self-help. It's way to psychotherapy for me. It's what is my fear telling me? What is the information and motivation that it's signaling. Yeah, and then what is it telling me to do? Like your client who was feeling very anxious all the time, by exploring that emotion, eventually it sounds like Kim to the understanding that it wasn't the job for him.

Starting point is 00:38:54 Perfect, right? That this is not there. And so he's trying so hard, right? So the anxiety is like clinging on to his job, but actually once you understand the emotion, it's actually walking away. And so once you have mastery over your emotion, in this way, and I think mastery is maybe a better word, it makes life like so much better,

Starting point is 00:39:14 right? That's when we talk about distress tolerance, like that's what I'm talking about. It's not just suppression. Wonderful. I so appreciate your answer. The thoroughness of it, the clarity of it, distress tolerance is putting words to emotion, adding additional language to it and exploring the reverse context as well, the negative aspects of positive emotions, the positive aspect. So it sounds like it's broadening the time domain, like thinking about this and going forward, what does this represent in the past, present, and future, and then really thinking about what the emotion is signaling. What a beautiful description of distress tolerance because it's also operational. People can put this to work. Thank you. That's fantastic. If you're a regular listener of the Huberman Lab podcast,

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Starting point is 00:40:40 I absolutely love it. Again, this is a limited time offer. So make sure to go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get started today. The roadmap. If we could go back to the roadmap. Yeah. If you could spell out for us, what do you think of as the roadmap to navigate this very complex landscape that we exist in now? Okay.

Starting point is 00:41:01 And this could be relationship with this person. It could be a doctor, go to an Ivy League school versus be an artist or, you know, any number of different examples where we have to make the distinction of what's wished for us and expected of us versus what is true to us on the inside. That seems to be to me where the friction of life exists. Absolutely. That to me is the most interesting question in life, frankly, you know. Let me just make sure I understand your question. The friction and joy of life is the rest of the world wants me to do all of these things. And sometimes this doesn't want to do those things.

Starting point is 00:41:49 Sometimes it does want to do those things. When do I listen to this and when do I listen to everything that? Yes. Right? Okay. Beautiful question. So this is where I'm going to lean into the Eastern stuff for a second. So I spent seven years studying to become a monk.

Starting point is 00:42:07 And then I went to medical school and I became a psychiatrist. And the really interesting, I had a really weird experience of training in psychiatry. Because everyone was teaching me how the mind works. Okay. And this is like good teachers at like the Harvard Medical School. And they're like, here's how the mind works. And this is what the subconscious is. And like there's cognitive behavioral therapy.

Starting point is 00:42:26 Right. So like Aaron Beck taught us that there's like thoughts, emotions and behaviors and all these things connect. And the really fascinating thing, my most instinctive response when people would tell me how it is is, no, it's not. So in the East, they have a completely different conception of mind. And here's the big problem with the Western conception of mind. You're a scientist, right? How do you learn about something, Andrew? You have a question.

Starting point is 00:42:59 Okay, good. You pose a hypothesis. Excellent. You design an experiment. where you isolate variables. Okay. And you either refute or you, in some sense, support your hypothesis. Okay.

Starting point is 00:43:13 And then you design another experiment. And you ask another question. You just keep going. And then you get tenure and then you start a podcast. Beautiful, right? Just kidding. No, no. So let me ask you this.

Starting point is 00:43:26 How do you study the mind? Here's what's really interesting. Right? So here's what's really fascinating. Like, do we have any scientific evidence of the existence of thought? We could define thoughts as some pattern of network activity. What I mean is, like, if we literally look at it, we have no instrument that can detect a thought. That's right.

Starting point is 00:43:46 Right? So we have no proof. We cannot measure a thought. Like, it is, like, literally impossible. We can measure blood flow to the brain. We can measure electrical activity in the brain. We can induce thoughts, right? We can do that.

Starting point is 00:43:59 But we have no idea that a thought exists. So like psychiatry is weird because every other part of medicine and science, we can measure what we are studying. In psychiatry, we can't do that. So along came Freud, and he made a fascinating discovery, which is when a human being speaks, we understand something about what's in their mind. And the whole reason we get trained, and the reason that we can measure mental, we can measure your mind, right, so we have validating. scientific instruments using things like factor analysis and stuff like that where we can use the Beck Depression inventory, which will tell you how depressed you are. We have good ways to measure stuff. So there's a lot of science and psychiatry. The basic problem, though, is that we have a

Starting point is 00:44:45 fundamental problem. We have no insight into what is in someone's mind. We have insight into someone's mind, but we can't detect the mind. That is a fundamental problem with science. Here's the cool thing. we have no scientific measurement of thought but we as human beings have measurement of thoughts can i ever know what you are thinking using any instrument of science you're the psychiatrist so i'm tempted to say yes but no no right can you know what you're thinking i would like to think so but i'm guessing yes i'm guessing i mean i i can ask myself what's going on in there but i don't necessarily necessarily have the ability to put language to it in a way that captures Fine, but you are capable of observing your thoughts.

Starting point is 00:45:30 You are capable of, I'm not capable of observing your thoughts. But you can, whether you detect all of them, whether they're right or wrong, that's question is separate. Just the fundamental idea of like you can measure an axon, you can, you can detect your thought, right? We all live in this way. Yeah. Right?

Starting point is 00:45:46 So we can get to the edge cases later. So here's the cool thing. So when I went to India and I studied for seven years, the difference between the psychology that was developed from the contemplative traditions is its foundation is internal observation. So yogis are capable, we're all, it's not like some special ability, but they based their theory of mind on what they could observe. Whereas in the West, that is not something we have access to. So their theory of mind is very different. So when I was training to become a psychiatrist, people are like, this is how the mind works. And I'm like, no, that's not true. Right. There is a different way. So here's one

Starting point is 00:46:25 example, getting to the roadmap. So the biggest thing that I think is different is the ego. So in the east, they have the concept of a part of our mind that is the ego. And in the West, we use the word ego. Freud defined it in some way. We all have this intuitive sense of identity, but in the same way that logic and emotions interact in a very mechanistic and defined way, in the West, our model does not include this piece. And the roadmap that you're talking about has to do with that piece. So if the rest of the world, because things get complicated, right, that's why it's so exciting for you and so challenging. Things get complicated as everyone wants you to be something. And then we make a big mistake because we do this thing called internalize. And the moment that

Starting point is 00:47:14 you internalize, now is it coming from the outside or is it coming from you? Is this something that I've been conditioned to want? Or is it something that I try? truly want, which then begs the question, what the hell is truly want? Is there a difference between want from over here and want from over there? And the yogis will say that the answer is yes. So once you understand the ego and the ego functions in a couple of ways, if I ask you, Andrew, who are you? What would you say? Andrew. Okay. Is that it? I mean, I have a list of roles that I occupy in life. Very good.

Starting point is 00:47:53 Are those you? They're facets of me. Okay. Right. So anything that you can use to describe, tenured professor at Stanford. I wouldn't put that first, but that happens to be true. I'm a brother. Brother.

Starting point is 00:48:07 I'm a boyfriend. Skater. Once a skater, always a skater. But yes, I'm a public educator. Great. I'm a son, a friend. All of that stuff is ego. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:48:19 Okay. So ego is anything. When you say I am dot, dot, dot, anything that defines you after that is actually part of your ego. And the interesting thing is that it's not that ego is bad. This is a common misconception. But like ego, we all need ego to function in the world. If you are okay not functioning in the world and you're moving towards enlightenment, then you no longer need ego. But generally speaking, we need ego.

Starting point is 00:48:44 So, you know, if you're looking for a roadmap of what you truly want in life and what is healthy for you and not healthy, for you. When you say you're Andrew, right, there's a lot of other people who can claim to be Andrew, but they're not you. You're talking about a fundamental internal experience of the self. And you were Andrew before you were a boyfriend. You were Andrew, you've always been a son. But you actually, you were Andrew before you even knew you were a son, right? Right? You were still Andrew. So there's a fundamental like bundle of experience. That's really what you are. And I think, that the best roadmap, if you're trying to figure out what to do in life, try to peel away the layers of your ego. And I know that's getting complicated. But if we sort of think about,

Starting point is 00:49:31 like, you know, what is it that like practically gets us jammed up in life is when I try to be something. I know this is going to sound weird. I'm sure you have ambition. But I don't think you are where you are because of your ambition. I think you are where you are because you listen to this internal voice, not try to live up to external expectations. 100%. I can truly say that every choice I've made to get into, you know, fish and animals when I was a kid obsessed with birds and fish and then skateboarding and then biology and science and where I'm at now has been some sense of an internal passion and something pulling me from the outside. And it's just a, I just go. Right. Those choices were always made because I knew in my heart's heart, there was no other

Starting point is 00:50:18 option in the positive sense. Yes. I'm going. I'm pulled toward it and I'm driven and I'm driven toward it. Right. So you are listening to a part of you, right? So it is an internal thing that the world then meets you halfway. So it makes it possible where there's a whole thing about that. For me, it's a physical energy. Fine. If I feel physical energy coming up in my body and I want to move towards something and for some reason I feel it more in my left arm than anywhere else that has always been true, I'll have a thought and I know and that's, and that's,

Starting point is 00:50:48 That's when I go, oh my goodness, I'm going to do this thing. I know I'm going to do it. And there's no backing out because it has to happen. That's how it feels. Yeah, right? So any desire that you have that comes from the sense organs is probably not this thing. So the sense organs can trigger something within you. But if we look at like, you know, social media, half the problem is that the hardest problem

Starting point is 00:51:17 I have as a psychiatrist is convincing people that they don't really want the things that they say they want. It's like so crazy, right? Like we're being programmed. We're being conditioned. And I realized this the other day when like I was like, man, like I wish I talked to my agent about like doing more talks. Like I want to go someplace and like get like paid speaking engagements. And I realize I actually hate that.

Starting point is 00:51:42 I don't like that. It's just what I thought people like us do. And I've done a couple of them, which have been really. really fantastic and I really enjoy that, but I like sitting with people. Right. So we're trained and just think about it. Like anyone who's listening to this, think about all the shit that you've seen that you think you want. But you don't really want. You just like look at other people and you're like, yeah, I want that thing. It can be a particular kind of relationship. It can be a particular job. Like, you know, we all want like all this

Starting point is 00:52:09 random stuff. It's all coming from our sense organs, right? This is why advertising is a thing. So stepping away from sense organs is really important for that. roadmap. Second thing is anything that you want that is a comparison. That is born of the ego. The ego is what defines you, right? So we can say a tenured professor. We can say associate part-time instructor. And so any comparison requires a definition. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. Like so all of the gold medalist, silver medalist, bronze medalist, that's a comparative thing. If I say I'm a silver metalist, then my desire for the gold medal can come out of the ego. Does that kind of make sense? Yes, it makes, the reason I'm sort of with my hand below my lip is because I, I'm so struck by this

Starting point is 00:52:59 because I've had this feeling for a while now that most of the danger in life comes from the need, the feeling that we need to prove something to others or to ourselves. Yep. And yet I know it's healthy to prove things to myself. Like, it's felt good to be able to accomplish certain things. I did that. Like, I could do other difficult things. But the origin of all of that work, for, in my mind, it's only healthy, at least for me, if it's not by virtue of trying to prove something. It's like there's a difference between a genuine heart's desire, for lack of a better way to put it, and what you're calling a pursuit of trying to win at some game in one's head. It's like a video game that that isn't real. Yeah. It's it's not that it's not

Starting point is 00:53:51 real. So I agree with you 100%. And I think there's a couple of important things. So, you know, proving yourself is not wholly wrong, but understand that it is the ego. That's what it's going to gratify. Right. So if you have an ego of I am a loser, by all means, so this is part of the process. I have people in my office who are losers, for lack of a better term, 29 years old, living at home, playing video games all day, watching pornography, no job, dropped out of college. And so what they want more than anything else is to be a winner. And so my work involves two steps. First, let's help you go from loser to winner, and then let's abandon the whole paradigm. Because I've also had people in my office who are billionaires.

Starting point is 00:54:41 and finally get to retire at the age of 52 after having sold their amazing third company. And then after retirement, it's not enough. They want to make another billion. They want to do something else. So like, you know, that loser to winner, like your mind will continually move the goalposts. If you were hungry before you got it, the thing won't fulfill your hunger. It may for a little while. And then you have to take another step of like, okay, losing and winning is now,

Starting point is 00:55:11 done, right? And I think you've gone through that. I can hear it in your words. And people can probably hear it too. Like the way that probably at some point in your life, being a tenure, I don't know why I'm, that's just the thing that that is the thing that people are the lustiest for, right, in the world that I think we come from. It felt good to get. Right. And I won't lie, it felt good to get at a place like Stanford. You know, there are many fantastic and extremely challenging places to to achieve that. It felt like the culmination of, you know, 20 years of very hard work that I enjoyed, but that, you know, it represented an important milestone for me. Yeah. But I knew I'll just say, and of course, we're just, we're talking about this example,

Starting point is 00:55:57 but hopefully people are thinking about examples in their own lives. But I knew, for instance, I never want to be a department chair. Yeah. Tons of work doing administrative stuff. I remember when they told me you'll be vice chair. And I'm like, oh my goodness, what do I have to do to avoid that? I also knew that I didn't care about being a member of the National Academy. A close childhood friend of mine was just elected to the National Academy of Sciences. We've been friends since we were seven. And I was, I'm so happy for him because he's doing exactly what he loves.

Starting point is 00:56:25 But I never aspired to be a member of the National Academy, ever. Why? Because what came after tenure in order to go there was a divergence from what I really wanted to do. Yeah, so I think this is the key thing about the roadmap, right? So, like, we get conditioned by our sense organs, so, like, just to keep it super practical. If you're trying to figure out what you should do, is this coming from my sense organs? If your sense organ triggers something that's always been within you, right? So if you see, like, a frog and, like, like, you really want to be interested, like, you want to figure out how the frog works.

Starting point is 00:56:58 But the interesting thing about the difference between the sense organ thing and an internal drive is your internal drive will find multiple objects in the outside world. right so first it was biology then it was frogs now it's neuro-optimology now it's this so i don't know if this kind of makes sense the drive is always the same and it'll encounter different things in the world yes what is that drive we'll get to that in a second okay so first thing for practically is like if you're trying to figure out what should i do first ask yourself how have you been conditioned by social media move away from that second thing is be careful about any comparisons you make any motivation that you have to because of a comparison, it can lead to success. You can be successful, but you won't be happy. Because this is, it's so annoying, right? So when I want, like, I work with a

Starting point is 00:57:48 lot of influencers and YouTubers and stuff. And so it's like, oh, we want our first million. And if you're not careful the moment that you get your first million, like you want a second million, and then you want a third million. And then it's even scarier, right? So like, oh, I got three million subscribers. That's awesome. But then you know what's really terrifying, Andrew? Is a guy who started after me is getting followers faster than I'm getting them, right? And so the ego is never going to be satisfied. The ego by its nature is comparative. And even if you're number one, people think the most anxious people I've ever worked with, not actually true, but is people who get to the top and you think that you're done. You're not done. Then you're looking

Starting point is 00:58:28 behind you at all of the people who are younger, harder working, have the benefit of AI tools. have the benefit of the path that you have carved who are catching up on you and will overtake you soon enough. So one good example of why we get, why we compare is the more you are judged, the more your ego grows and the more you will compare. Right. So this is almost like we're taught how to, when people judge us, we judge ourselves and we get judged based on ranking. And so, you know, this is what we see on the internet as social media, as we start to get judged more and more and more, we become more and more narcissistic. This is the narcissistic defense that tries to protect us from judgment. And so it's happening to everybody and it's escalating. The rate at which it's happening, people are more egotistical than they've ever been.

Starting point is 00:59:22 Do you think that's especially true for people who have large followings on social media? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, so I work with influencers and was so curious about the work that I was doing that I tried to develop a program. So we now have like a creator coaching program where we're like collecting data about whether it's effective or not. And so the really interesting thing is I think it's a unique like effect on our psychology. The closest thing is like, you know, a lot of celebrities are like really messed up. And that's because they have so many eyes on them. And people don't realize just as a simple example. The brain just doesn't think probabilistically. So you can have a thousand people love the work that you do. But all it takes is one person who's really nasty. That is what your brain is going to focus on. It's going to highlight.

Starting point is 01:00:12 It's amazing. I can be looking at like chat that is scrolling during live streaming. There are messages that are faster than I can read. But if someone says something that is dangerous, my mind will flag it. Wow. It's like a predator on the horizon. Absolutely. So we have these circuits which were designed to look at a jungle and see a single pairs of tiger's eyes.

Starting point is 01:00:34 And so the danger scanning mechanism makes it so that the bigger that you get and the more eyes that are on you, the more paranoid you have to be, the more narcissistic you will have to become. Because when someone turns to you and says, you are ugly, you are stupid. In order to defend against that, you have to say, no, I'm not. I am beautiful. I am intelligent. And the more times that you say that to yourself, this is where things get complicated, but that doesn't result in confidence. So I don't know if this makes sense, but if you are confident, you don't need to say that

Starting point is 01:01:10 I'm smart or that I'm beautiful. Does that kind of make sense? What about the, you know, to each their own mindset? Like some people will like the content. I tell myself this, you know, some people will like the content and the way I frame it and we'll look at it on the whole that, you know, some episodes more than others, you know, certain things. And others won't.

Starting point is 01:01:32 They'll hate it for whatever reason or hate me for whatever reason. And I'm okay with that. Yeah. So I think you're doing a really important thing, which is like a key takeaway. So when someone dislikes what you do, you think about them and not you. That's the opposite of ego, right? So if we take someone who's very narcissistic and they receive a criticism, they say, no, no, no, I'm great. Right.

Starting point is 01:01:58 So this is where like literally, I don't know if this is too abstract, but I'll give kind of like maybe a simpler example of this. So, you know, I trained in Boston and there was a lot of K2 use. So K2 is like synthetic marijuana. And so like sometimes like you walk into the emergency room, there's a dude who's like high on math or like high on K2. Like, you know, he's just saying all kinds of terrible things. That has nothing to do with me. Right. And the way that you framed, some people are going to like what you do and some people are not going to like what you do. That's on them. So if we want to step away from the ego, we have to understand that don't take it personally. Like literally, that's the colloquial phrase, right? But it's hard to do. So if you're someone at home trying to figure out, okay, how do I connect with my true self? How do I step away from my ego? Notice your reaction to criticism. Is your reaction of criticism?

Starting point is 01:02:52 Are you considering, are you actually being empathic? Right? So what empathic really means is are you putting yourself in someone else's shoes? And the other person, hey, maybe not everybody likes pineapple on pizza. Or are you taking it personally? Do their insults determine your value as a human being? And the moment that that starts to happen, the friction that you're talking about, which can be so fun, becomes torture. because now you have to make them happy.

Starting point is 01:03:22 In order to feel good about yourself, you have to make the people around you happy. So interesting. I think some of us grew up or somehow internalized the idea that if somebody is angry or is criticizing us, and it's being delivered in a certain way that it must be true versus the ability to just really step back and assess, you know, no, it. could very well be there in a bad mood. They didn't sleep well. You know, I grew up in a community of academics. Some athletes, mostly academics. So everyone around me wasn't necessarily hyperverbal, but you know this from training in Boston. There was a way of delivering a criticism that felt like a poison dart. Yeah. That would get right to the, to the heart of it without calling

Starting point is 01:04:14 somebody a name. This is actually a very prized skill in academia and medicine. I think it's one of the more sinister aspects of higher education and medicine. But it exists in every field. But people aren't going to say, oh, dude, you know, like, that was stupid. They're going to find a way to kind of thread that, that heat-seeking missile, right? And I think that sometimes getting to this thing about emotion versus language, the more primitive the expression, I hate you, F you, like it's easier, like you said in the with the person in the clinic on K2, do, it's easier to say like, they're crazy. They're on drugs. They are ill. But when something is delivered in a way that's very articulate or calm, we tend to give it more credit as likely to

Starting point is 01:05:04 be true. So on the internet, I see most of what comes at me that's negative as I like to think there's also learning there. But if the way it's delivered, the way I've noticed things get past my force field is I go, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, like they'll be. Like, they'll say like a PubMed ID. You don't know what you're talking about. They'll give me a pub med. Then I'll go to the paper. I'm like, that actually doesn't say that. But in my mind, I thought, oh, my goodness, I must have screwed up, right? They're not just telling me I'm wrong. They're telling me that I'm wrong because of something on the Library of Congress PubMed. So do you see what I'm saying? So I think that knowing what our, what our fences are good at filtering and not good at filtering

Starting point is 01:05:42 is hard. It takes time. It takes years to cultivate. No? I would hope that it could be quicker, but it took me, excuse me. It took me many years to cultivate. Yeah, let's just understand. So it's hard to cultivate. It took years for you to cultivate because you didn't have a teacher. Right. Right.

Starting point is 01:06:00 So let's be a bit precise here. So like, and this is the key thing. So I think, I hope people are following this because this is how you develop. Like so one of my, you know, colleagues in residency talked about this concept of a Teflon Buddha. Right. Like, you know, like this idea of like being like impervious. So how do you become like psychologically impervious? And what you're talking about when you say a heat-seeking missile, your linguistic cortex is doing wonders.

Starting point is 01:06:26 Because what a poison dart, right? What they're doing, the reason it's so effective, Andrew, is not just because of the anger. We'll get to the anger in a second. But they're figuring out where your weak point is. And they're attacking that weak point. It's not about the size of the missile. It's about the precision. Even in your language, you are talking about a precise attack.

Starting point is 01:06:48 So that precision is in academia, people are really good at detecting other people's vulnerabilities. And they go for the nuts, right? That's what they do. Like psychologically, they go for the nuts. And there's all kinds of other things going on here. But let's be simple. So it is when someone has a high anger attack, okay, this means their amygdala is through the roof. So they are thinking in black and white.

Starting point is 01:07:17 their attack isn't black and white. A black and white attack is easier to repel because it's not nuanced. Okay. So like when someone is angry, you're right. It is easier to dismiss their anger. And you're also correct that, but it's almost like a, not a, everything you said is correct, but I'd say the model that you're assuming is that these are two opposite things. They're not. The other thing is so, so when someone is not angry, they're not black and white. If they're not black and white, it is not easy to dismiss. Just because, it's not black and white, that doesn't activate your anger. It doesn't activate your black and white thinking. Right. So when someone is coming at me angry, my empathic circuits are going to activate my own amygdala. I'm going to get angry back. You did this. No, I didn't. Right. So the most psychotic denial, psychotic or delusional denial, that's a better word. The most delusional denial that you'll ever hear is when someone's angry. No, I didn't do that. I never did that. I never did that. I never did that. And they believe it because that's what happens. The amygdala makes your thinking black and white.

Starting point is 01:08:24 You know, when we have adrenaline collapsing or running through our system, it collapses peripheral vision down to a 30 degree cone. So we can only see this thing. So this is the first element of why heat-seeking missiles work. When they come at you angry, you're going to get angry. If you're going to get angry, it doesn't matter if they're right, doesn't matter if they're wrong. You're going to say, no, it's incorrect. It doesn't matter the truth of it. So this is the first element of it, right? So is that they don't approach you. They approach you in an articulate way. When they approach you in an articulate way, doesn't activate your amygdala. It does in a different way. Then the issue is their finesse. And you said a poison dart, really interesting imagery. It's something that

Starting point is 01:08:59 hurts a little bit and then flows through your veins. So I can even imagine when they said that problem ID, your first thought was not a big deal. I know my shit. And then the poison goes into your mind. Well, maybe I don't know my stuff. Oh, my God. What if there is a paper that I missed? What if there is something that I, and then that, that injury will grow in your mind. And so all of your, and this is the stuff, right, like the stuff that hurts us, when people insult us, what hurts are the things we believe about ourselves. You know, we all have these doubts because we're not perfect human beings, because we make mistakes. And when someone figures out, oh my God, this is, this is this person's weak point. And the really scary thing is that humans have evolved to do this.

Starting point is 01:09:49 All you have to do is go to any recess in the fifth grade. And kids will figure out what hurts. And then they will say it to you again and again and again and again. But I think it's really important to remember, you know, if something hurts, that's your own insecurity. And insecurity, remember, if you say, I am a loser. I am fat. I am ugly. Those are all part of your ego.

Starting point is 01:10:13 So there are certain things that you can do. And this goes back to the, what is that voice on the inside? So this is where, you know, in the eastern system, there is a self beyond the mind. So the mind is not what you are. The mind is an organ that you can observe in the same way that you can observe your hand. In the same way that your hand can change, your mind can change. Your mind changes every day. What's the best way to learn to observe one's mind?

Starting point is 01:10:37 Is it meditation? Probably the best way to observe your mind is actually psychotherapy. You'll get better insight into your mind there. But if you want to move beyond mind, and I don't mean that in like, oh, let's move beyond mind. What I mean is that if you look at your experience of existence, there is more to you than thoughts, emotions, and ego. And so if you want to get to that and step outside of your ego, meditation is the best thing for that. And there are lots of studies that suggest that meditation shuts off the default mode network. Default mode network is our sense of like self.

Starting point is 01:11:08 There are also many studies that show that you can predict the therapeutic benefit of, a psychedelic trip based on an ego death experience. So if someone has an ego death experience when they're using psychedelics, there is a greater likelihood that they heal from it, which has to do with deactivation of the default mode network. When you say psychedelics, are there particular psychedelics that tend to promote ego death more than others? I don't know the answer to that question, but I would say that most of the studies that I've seen are in psilocybin. But that's just because there are more studies on psilocybin, I think. Arguably, you know, MDMA will do it too because MDMA is an empathogen and will help people form bonds and kind of changes their perception

Starting point is 01:11:52 of the self, right? So meditation is the best way to dissolve your ego, like that, I believe. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. Last year, I became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health, hormone health, immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added tests for toxins such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics and tests for PFSs or forever chemicals. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctor.

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Starting point is 01:13:46 Meditation, potentially in a safe clinical setting, may be exploring ego dissolution through psychedelics, although there's still schedule one drug, so we have to have to be thoughtful and how I communicate this, not just to protect myself, but to protect other people. I normally say that, but yeah. I always just raise it just to be clear what we're talking about. I understood your position on that. The thing inside that we know is our true heart's desire that allows us to navigate the external pressures and the roles, these ego labels that we've given ourselves and that others have given us. Do you know any practices to help cultivate being in touch with that? Yeah, absolutely. So the meditation that I like the most, for this kind of thing is meditations around something called shunya shunya means void so if you really look at like all of the attributes of you right so i'm a man i'm a husband i'm a son whatever boyfriend all of those things are like qualities even a loser is like that presence of something right i'm a loser i'm pathetic that is the existence of a negative

Starting point is 01:14:59 thing a negative valence thing so if you really look at what you are imagine Andrew for a moment, this is going to be hard, but imagine that you only existed for 10 seconds. What would you be? Like you'd be almost nothing, right? You just get this flash of experience, but you have no narrative identity. You have no sense of self. All you are is just a raw receiver of an experience. And like I sometimes empathize with a child when they're first being born, that first

Starting point is 01:15:32 shock of awareness and you don't know what the hell is going on and you start crying right you have no idea who you are what you are you're just a chunk of receiving so there are chunya practices which allow you to connect with the void within you and the void within us is actually the most basic part of what we are it's actually what's at the bottom and so there's some ways to sort of understand what this is like so if you think about you know watching a beautiful sunset and you cease to exist. You're just soaking in the sunset. You don't have any thoughts.

Starting point is 01:16:07 You don't have any worries. It feels incredibly peaceful, right? And you are there. You're not comatose. But you don't have a personhood in that moment. Another really great example of this is like, if you really need to pee and you're like waiting to use the bathroom and then finally you get your turn, the moment you start peeing, you cease to exist, whether

Starting point is 01:16:34 you've got mortgages or you need to get a Valentine's Day present or you have to do this, you have all those thoughts, you were just there as a nothing. So these Shunya practices are a little bit, you have to do them with a little bit more caution. There's some like introductory practices. One example is if you close your eyes for a moment, this is going to sound kind of weird, but like where do you feel your body? Like so think about pro preception, right? So like pay attention to your arms, your head, your nose.

Starting point is 01:17:06 So what I want you to do is focus on the area of the solar plexus and look for like an absence of feeling there. Like as you breathe in and out, like you can feel your rib cage expands. Maybe you can feel your heartbeat. But if you really pay attention to just the area of solar plexus, there's going to be a feeling of emptiness. And so as you meditate upon that, you'll get closer to Shunya. The other really interesting, easy way to get a taste of Shunya is close your eyes.

Starting point is 01:17:41 I want you to breathe in and then breathe out. And then when you're ready, breathe in again. And when you're ready, breathe out. Just breathe nice and slow. and now what I want you to do is pay attention to the time between breaths. Between your breaths, you will have stillness. Not during the breathing. During the breathing you exist, inhalation, exhalation.

Starting point is 01:18:20 But in between exhalation and inhalation, there's a very beautiful stillness. for people who are having trouble feeling that, I love this because there's an interesting cognitive technique. Catch the moment where inhalation becomes exhalation in your normal breathing, not absence of breathing because you're normally breathing in and out, in and out, in and out. Catch the moment where one becomes the other. That'll help you find Shunya. And Shunya is defined as the void.

Starting point is 01:18:51 Void. It's also zero. Emptiness. Yeah, there's no thought of roles or any. anything else when that. And here's the beautiful thing. Like, once you find Shunya, you can go into it. So it's like as you practice this, right, so I'm sure that there's some neuroplasticity

Starting point is 01:19:10 going on where your brain is wiring. And then like when bad things happen to you, it's flowing happening to my body. It's happening to my mind. In here, there's nothing. So I tested this when my dad passed away. So I remember like going to the funeral and. seeing his body. I remember touching his skin, like his face, and shocked at how cold he was. Like, it was like my dad, but he's like, he's like ice. And so I was grieving and I was sad and I was

Starting point is 01:19:40 crying, but I was like, is that thing still there? And I found that thing was there and I felt at peace. Like, it is the mind that is sad, but I'm not sad. You know, the body is grieving, but I'm not grieving. That's really what I am. That's just emotion. It's not really me. When we become identified with our emotion, right? When we were going through a breakup and we're like, oh my God, I become sadness.

Starting point is 01:20:10 I become sadness incarnate. But then when you step away from sadness, when you are watching sadness from the outside, it can actually be wonderful. And that's why we like sad movies. We feel sad, but we feel great. the differences are you the sadness or are you watching the sadness and what is doing the watching because the sadness is in the mind there's something outside of the mind observing it that schoenya will help you find that thing and that's how you become i mean that's the core of resilience so when i work with these influencers who are being stalked and you know just no matter what they do someone is there unhappy with it, right? Because you're talking about the internet where they're, they're literally people out there who are delusional, who are projecting all kinds stuff onto you. They've never met you,

Starting point is 01:21:02 Andrew. And then they say that you're the incarnate of evil. And like, how are they making that, they're living in a, in a corner of the internet. And so in order to withstand that, in order to withstand the judgment, in order to withstand the poison darts, right? The interesting thing, if you want to be impervious to the poison dart is you are inside. The poison dart hits your ego. It hits your body. And the poison flows through you and it hurts. But you are actually even beyond that.

Starting point is 01:21:36 He seems to come up almost every episode, but my good friend Rick Rubin, who you would absolutely enjoy spending time with and he with you. I'm certain of that. Just talking with you today and knowing him very well. has talked a lot and written a lot about how this getting beyond or outside or separate from the ego is the essence of really the work he does with creative artists. It's really getting them outside of the perceptions of others.

Starting point is 01:22:04 It's one of the reasons why when he's worked with artists, when they're not yet famous, they're in their – they might be ambitious. They might want some of that, but they're just doing their art. They're not filtering it through feedback. And there's something so beautiful about that. Then it gets contaminated. And then the work over time is to ask whether or not people can get beyond that. But you're talking about Shunya, is that how you pronounce it, accessing this void, getting away from the ego as a practice for everyone, everyday life, not just people, not just influencers and on the internet.

Starting point is 01:22:39 You're talking about the kid on the playground. The person on social media going with comparison or at the game looking at what the other kids' moms. or dads have or are doing, wearing, et cetera. Yeah, I'm talking about the older sister whose younger sister is getting married first. I'm talking about the sibling whose older sibling got admitted to an Ivy League University and they didn't. I'm talking about the two of y'all that started the job at the same time and your friend gets promoted and you don't.

Starting point is 01:23:12 And all that stuff hurts, right? And the real tragedy here, I worked with so many people who are incredibly successful is sometimes when we get that hurt, we adapt. We become ambitious. We say, I'm going to be that thing. And it leads us to success, but we pay the price of happiness. And the real tragedy is that some people believe that you get one or the other. You can be ambitious or you can be happy. But I think you are a great living, breathing, walking example of when you tap into what really drives you,

Starting point is 01:23:44 then you can be successful. I don't know if you're happy. I actually am very happy and very peaceful at this stage of my life. I am. I mean, I struggle like everyone else with having to do work to clear the contaminants in my own and working on myself, certainly. one thing that I've done that I wonder, I'd love your thoughts on, because perhaps it offers a useful tool for people is whenever I feel I'm not as in touch with that part of myself as I would like, I feel like I've drifted from it or I'm just kind of caught in the current of whatever it is I've signed up for in life, which I enjoy, but now it's contaminated and there's sewage floating next to me, so to speak. I find some way to bring things into my home environment that remind me of that feeling when I was a kid. So recently, for instance, I converted a art gallery into a living space.

Starting point is 01:24:35 This is something that I can now do in my life that I certainly couldn't do some years ago. And I love fish tanks. So I brought in Aquaria. And I've got my fish tanks. And I've got a pet octopus. And my girlfriend brought for Valentine's Day, I got her flowers. I said, oh, there are the flowers. We got back from dinner.

Starting point is 01:24:53 They were there. And she goes, I got you some plants. And I turned around. And the place was like filled with plants. And I love animals and plants. I was like, oh my God. So she clearly gets me. And I was like, oh, my goodness.

Starting point is 01:25:04 And now when I wake up in the morning, like, I love those plants. I need her to take care of them because I walk near a plant and it dies. Fish and animals, I'm good. But when I'm surrounded by things that just feel really good and wholesome and just kind of basic to who I know myself to be at a certain level, then I feel like I can take that energy into everything I do. and it serves as a filter. Like bullshit shows up as bullshit at that point. People's issues show up as their issues. Real criticism that I need to internalize,

Starting point is 01:25:40 I like to think, still gets signal above the noise. So I tend to put things outside me to reawaken that. But I love, love, love, love that you're offering tools that have nothing to do with building something, buying something, This meditation is really about accessing it from within first. So anyway, that's just a reflection. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:26:07 So I want to point out, I think this is, it's such a masculine thing. So if I can. So, you know, men are really interesting. So we're trained to not manage our internal environment internally. So I had a patient who was, I saw in a jail. He was 19. and he'd been in jail like three or four times. And so I was talking to him about, you know, how he like wound up here because he's like 19.

Starting point is 01:26:38 And so he was, you know, telling me that when he was 12, his dad passed away. He's got three sisters, all older and a mom. And what they told him is like, you're the man at the house and you have to provide. Heavy. And so he was like, okay, this is what I have to do. Like so men do this thing. it's really interesting. We do emotional regulation through our environment. So if my environment makes me feel a certain way, if my mom, dad, brother, sister, boss is upset with me and makes me feel

Starting point is 01:27:11 bad, if I make them happy, they will no longer be upset with me. And if they're no longer upset with me, I will be content. We shape our internal emotional environment through our external environment. And the scariest place I see this is when men I work with, and it's not that women, this doesn't happen to women as well. This is more the way we're socialized and there's an effect of testosterone and estrogen here as well. This is a biological element to this. But then they fall into this trap of like their emotions are determined by the environment. So men are just the way that they solve their internal emotional problems is by interacting with their environment. That's just very common. So it doesn't mean that we shouldn't utilize the outside space, right? So I'm not

Starting point is 01:27:59 suggesting, I mean, if you really want to be, if you're pursuing enlightenment, then don't get Aquaria. But like most of us aren't doing that. So I think we should utilize, shape our external environment. There's tons of evidence that changing your environment is critical from recovering from addiction, right? If you're still hanging out at a bar, it's going to be really hard to be sober. So we want to utilize those things, but we don't want to become dependent on them. So shape your environment for your benefit, but also be stable enough internally to where you don't need your Aquaria to feel stable, which I doubt you need. No, no, no. I raise that example. I see exactly what you're saying. And no, I use that example because it's like the ability

Starting point is 01:28:42 to get in touch with a piece of oneself that feels very true, very wholesome, and not. for lack of a better word, contaminated by anything external. Yeah. Feels good. And I think it's the energy that one takes away from that, that I take away from that, that excites me. Yeah. So I think it's a great point, right? So I think we sometimes forget.

Starting point is 01:29:11 So I was giving a talk for executives about work, life balance. And I was like, there's no such thing. So I think we try to, work is over here and balance, like, you know, home is over. Sorry, yeah, life is over here. That's not how it works. You as a human being carry yourself between both situations. When things are bad at work is when people have affairs. If things are bad at home, you're not going to be your best at work.

Starting point is 01:29:35 So I think you're really tunneling down into, I think, the most important part of it, which is that look at how you get shaped and look at the person that you carry into your next thing. There's a whole science behind that, which I think we probably don't have time for. but like this idea of somscars, which is like almost like learning. So if you sort of look at every experience that you have, you learn something and you carry yourself forward, right, into the next experience, into the next experience. That's what we call learning. Well, let's talk about somscars because years ago, 2017, I was exposed to yoga nidra.

Starting point is 01:30:08 Okay. The guy that taught me nidra said the whole purpose of nudra is, yes, to learn how to relax the body with an active mind, et cetera, to make up sleep that perhaps you didn't get the night before, become a better sleep, all that stuff. But he said the purpose is to burn the samskars down to the roots. You're supposed to, these are like weeds that come up in your life. And you're supposed to burn them down. And nidra is one way that you rid yourself of these things.

Starting point is 01:30:37 Is he totally off base? No. So we have to be careful because you love Aquaria and you love frogs. Now we're getting to what I love. Great. Okay. Great. I prefer that.

Starting point is 01:30:46 Let's understand what yoga nidra is and what a samskana is. So one of the biggest challenge. that I have as a psychiatrist, my job is not in teaching people things. It is in helping them unlearn. So if you look at what trauma is, if you look at ambition, if you look at ego, you know, you kind of said, you try to connect to this childlike energy. I forget if it was like Leonardo or Michelangelo or someone who's like, you know, it took me my whole life to learn how to paint like a child. So if you look at literally what happens with the human psychology is we accrue these micro traumas as we go through life. We accrue associations.

Starting point is 01:31:26 I had a patient who was absolutely traumatized. So was dating someone engaged to a dude, okay, discovered that her fiance had been lying. So he was in med school, failed out. For two years, he pretended to go to class every day. And then when he graduated, he got a job. But he didn't really graduate. He didn't really graduate. Here's the scary thing. So he would leave in the morning, drive to his parents' house, spend the day there. Parents would deposit money in their account.

Starting point is 01:32:01 And so for years, like, and so one day, I think what happened is she went to his parents' house and she saw him there because she like, you know, went to. Were they in on the lie? Yeah, they were in on the lie. Yeah, right? So they were in on the lie. And so she is just like, like, what are you doing here? And then she discovers not only him, but her parents have been depositing money into their account every month. And so she discovers this betrayal.

Starting point is 01:32:24 I'm shocked. It's insane. It's absolutely insane. The lengths that people will go to to deceive you. Oh, believe me. I've experienced somebody creating a world that was a complete fabrication. And eventually all came tumbling down for them. But I remember being like, oh my God.

Starting point is 01:32:44 Yeah. Right. So when you're about to marry this person, it leaves scars. So then what happens is she goes into her next relationship and she has an immense amount of distrust is paranoid about her next partner. Next partner didn't do shit. And this guy is getting like, there's so much paranoia, right? So if you look at life, life is a series of like bad stuff that happens to us and then we adapt. But the way that the human mind adapts is the same way that the human body adapts.

Starting point is 01:33:14 which is if something is, if we get really damaged, we get a callous. We get scar tissue. Scar tissue is not functional. It's protective, but it's not functional. So most of our adaptations become maladaptations later on. Okay. So this is what a somska is. So it's like this emotional energy that lingers with you and shapes the way that you see the world.

Starting point is 01:33:36 So it's really fascinating because we have all this like trauma processing. And the yogis were talking about it for thousands of years as sumskirts. And now you were talking about, you know, this thing down there that needs to be burned. So let's understand that for a second. If you look at your mind, stuff pops up, right? Have you ever wondered why certain things pop up? No. Right?

Starting point is 01:33:59 Have you ever thought, like, why aren't you interested in the scent of a rose? Like a certain, like, it's so weird. Like, our mind just generates thoughts. And everyone is trying to learn discipline and willpower. I think it's terrible. willpower is so bad because why not just shape yourself to have the right desires, then you don't need willpower. This is what the process of yoga is really about. This is what Samskhar generation is about. Did you learn a San Kalpa when you did yoga nidra?

Starting point is 01:34:31 Well, they talk about it. I confess that I maintained a very regular yoga nature of practice, but I've not explored these aspects of it. So I'll explain to you the mechanism of a Sanculpa, and like literally it's fucking wild. This is reprogramming your subconscious mind so that the things that your subconscious mind puts into your conscious mind, you can control. Okay. So in the case of trauma, all kinds of weird stuff gets put into our subconscious mind. Like, I can't trust people. Then what happens is that floats to the surface.

Starting point is 01:35:08 In my patient's case, every time her second fiancé, she doesn't. doesn't know where he is, she's like, maybe he's scamming me, right? Like, that's what she thinks. So I don't know if that makes sense. That's a thought in her conscious, which is being born out of something in her unconscious. We, in neuroscience, call this learning, right? So we're learning certain things. So in psychotherapy, we try to get rid of that bad stuff. But let's understand how stuff goes in. Because if we can understand how the mind is programmed, and this is, It's so simple, so neuroscientific, okay? Or maybe you can tell me it's not neuroscientific, but I'm pretty sure it is.

Starting point is 01:35:46 Okay. The first thing is the one pointedness of the mind allows things to sink in. So if I'm trying to study optic nerve anatomy and I'm in a burning building with people yelling at me, I can have my eyes, look at the paper, but I'm not going to learn anything. This is the really crazy thing is a lot of people study repetitively, right? So I read the paper again and again and again and again. But it's not like each time I read the paper, I get 10% of the knowledge. If you really pay attention to your mind, when you are focused, when your mind is one pointed, you just need to read it once. What we're basically doing is we're rolling the dice.

Starting point is 01:36:27 Am I focused this time I read the page? Am I focused this time I read the page? Am I focus this time I read the page? It's also why we have studies on things like writing. So when you write, it improves your capacity to focus. So that's when things enter your memory a little bit more. So one pointedness of the mind is what leads to things being learned. Now, this is how trauma works.

Starting point is 01:36:52 So when you are intensely emotional, it actually focuses your mind. Yeah. And as you mentioned before, and I'm so glad you did as a visual system neuroscientist, when adrenaline levels are high, the visual field narrows, our depth perception, shape, everything becomes a microscope view

Starting point is 01:37:10 of the thing in front absolutely, right? And when we're having an argument because you didn't get me what I asked for for Valentine's Day and then I tell you, Andrew, you've never gotten me what I want for Valentine's Day.

Starting point is 01:37:23 That laser focus, that one statement that I make, even though I told you right before that I love you and right after I'm sorry, that thing sinks in. It's that poison dart, right? It sinks in

Starting point is 01:37:34 and that's what you remember. Because you are focused on it. So when we are emotional, we are focused. So the way that I want you to think about your mind is like a pool of water that has a lot of waves. And when the water is still, something can sink down to the bottom. But when the water is really active, nothing sinks in. So now we get to Yoga Nidra. So in Yoga Nidra, what we are doing is attaining a state of consciousness that is what's called in the yogic scientific.

Starting point is 01:38:06 literature, a hypno-yogic state. So it's not hypnosis, but it's not pure active consciousness. It is a very dormant awakeness, if that kind of makes sense, right? You're in this trance. And so in that trance, you're in the edit mode for your unconscious mind. So this is where a Sanculpa comes in. So a Sanculpa is a resolve that you put in there. And then I don't know how to explain this except in this way. So when I work, with a patient who has anxiety and they have this subconscious programming, when we have a therapeutic breakthrough, which there's tons of evidence for, right? So even Freud noticed this, that you have to activate the emotion in psychotherapy. Like my patient that I talked about a while ago who was like,

Starting point is 01:38:52 comes and he talks about how he's depressed, didn't do shit for him. What we have to talk about is why he's angry, how he's been screwed in life, all the people that he's ang. So then once that emotional energy activates, we become one-pointed, we activate that energy in the unconscious, and then if we vent it out, it disappears. That's how you burn away the things by letting them out. And in Nidra, is there an opportunity for emotion? You're very, it's a deeply relaxed, but mind-active state. No, no, yeah. So you don't want emotion in Nidra. You are actually, so emotion collapses a scattered mind to one point, but there is a state of consciousness even beyond one pointedness that would we use in studying,

Starting point is 01:39:37 where if you talk to people who like engage in not even the flow state, but beyond the flow state. So there are people who like the best, I know it's going to sound hokey, but people who like channel divinity. I think divine is the best scientific term. So there is some human beings and everyone has experienced this where like you're not you. You're like something else.

Starting point is 01:40:00 Tell me more. I think the Greeks thought of genius is not, a person is like something you channel. Something coming through somebody. Something coming through. You see this, I think, most readily in musicians. Musicians, athletes, right? So there are sometimes, like, I work with, like,

Starting point is 01:40:15 esports athletes, and some of them know that they're going to win. They see the game that they're going to play, and they know exactly what's going to happen. And the crazy thing, it's not a calculation. It's an intuition. I'm sure that on some level they're calculating. So we call this stuff divine. I'm not saying it's divine.

Starting point is 01:40:33 I'm not saying it comes from God. I'm saying that the subjective experience is qualitatively fundamentally different from like a regular logical experience. So this is a state of mind that is even beyond emotion. It's in the edit mode. And scattered mind emotion brings us down to some amount of focus, but then there's even a level of focus that's deeper. And that's where the rewriting comes from.

Starting point is 01:40:56 That's where the rewriting comes in. And then when you implant something there, that's what a San Calpa is. So when you do yoga nidra, the physiologic element, so this is what's like not bad, but is a necessary step with where we are with science. All the weird mystical stuff, I think, is real. But we have to start with the basic science, right? So the way that science works is like we start with, okay, let's look at cortisol production. And then let's look at what happens next. And let's look at what happens next.

Starting point is 01:41:29 And let's look at what happens next. So yoga nidra, whether you're talking about cardiac coherence breathing, so there's the first stage of what we call Nadi Shuddi Pranayam, which is alternate nostal breathing. But then there's a text called Vashita Samita, which talks about a particular kind of cardiac coherence breathing with a ratio of 1 to 4 to 8. So you breathe in for 8 seconds. Actually, you breathe in for 16 seconds. You hold for 64 seconds, and then you exhale for 32 seconds. If you do the Vashita Samita version of cardiac coherence breathing, the subjective experience is completely different. You will feel prana.

Starting point is 01:42:10 You will feel chi. With that pattern of breathing. With that pattern of breathing. Those are long inhales, holes and exhales. Yeah. So it's hard to get to. But like literally the subjective experience that you will have is like a sense of vibration on like at the periphery of your body. That's what it feels like to me.

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Starting point is 01:43:47 If I may, just a brief editorial about why I also believe that science needs to go down through the physiological first. My lab has done some clinical studies on breath work. We call it respiration physiology for a reason. It's important to be able to fund studies and also to be able to communicate that information to colleagues who, if they just hear breathwork or meditation or that it's a separator, right? The field of science can't go into the mystical right away.

Starting point is 01:44:18 But what's so interesting is nowadays, there are discussions about meditation that are starting to get into the deeper layers, but it took 20 years, or more of formal science to do. I'm not arguing with you. I think some people will say, why not just cut to the chase? No, no, no, no.

Starting point is 01:44:32 I completely agree with everything you're saying. I think there are ways of editing the nervous system that are non-pharmacologic, that are behavioral. You're describing some of the more ancient ones. I do believe that yogis were and are neuroscientists. They come in through a different avenue. My recollection from Nidra is that, there are some there's an encouragement to two things that I would love your your your comments on one is

Starting point is 01:45:03 there's an instruction in the nidros that I've done to move away from thinking and doing to being and feeling you're trying to get out of the state of planning out of that is there some shift that's critical and then the other one is I am statements there's this instruction to give uh like talk about one's deepest heart's desire as if it's already happened is that BS? No no no no it's It's not BS, but we have to understand mechanism. So let me talk about the science bit for that. I have a far, not simpler. I'm a clinician.

Starting point is 01:45:34 I think there's a reason we have to start with physiology, because when a patient comes into my office, if I tell them do yoga nindra, what is the effect size of the intervention? We need to know that, right? So here's the problem with studying meditation and the benefit of studying meditation this way. The problem is that we're teaching people to swim for eight weeks.

Starting point is 01:45:53 That does not show us what an Olympic athlete is. So our science of meditation is in its infancy. The reason why this is really important is because not everybody is a Buddha. So the reason we have to start with physiology is because we need, we're doing scientific studies to make predictions. Why are we making predictions? At least for me, it's to help a human being. So I don't care that, you know, there's some yogi who's been in the cave in the Himalay for 60 years and attain some weird channeling of divinity. What I want to know is like when a human being comes into my office and I tell them to meditate,

Starting point is 01:46:25 how much can I pull back on their SSRI if they've been sticking with the practice. So you have to start science is about reliability, not about possibility. That sounds so new age, but it's about what we can reliably predict. And that's a really important place to start. Going back to the Nidder thing, this is the thing to understand. So if you think about planning, planning is a higher order cognitive function that depends upon other baser cognitive functions. and I'll just give you a simple example. If I care about parties, my mind will automatically plan parties.

Starting point is 01:47:02 If I care about avoiding other people, I will automatically plan how to avoid other people. So the planning that you do is whatever, but which things are you planning? That comes from the deeper stuff, for lack of a better term. That's why, so these people, they're not doing the San Calpa in the most classic form, but they're getting there. because a being statement is the pluripotent stem cell of where you want to go. Okay? So what do I mean by that? It's like, so like, let's be precise.

Starting point is 01:47:34 And I know it sounds new agey, but there's like science here. Okay. So let's look at something like self-esteem. So self-esteem is an assessment of yourself. And think about all of the ways if I have high self-esteem or low self-esteem. That will result in so many different, like, fuck, manifestation. It's the word, right? that will manifest in your life in so many ways.

Starting point is 01:47:55 How do you respond to feedback? If someone asks too much of you, can you set a boundary? And this is the problem. The core of the work that I try to do is I try to help people get to their fundamentals. Everyone's focused on changing behavior. Everyone's focused on increasing willpower to overcome this tendency. And it's like, why not just change the tendency? And that sounds so simple, but that's literally what we do in psychotherapy every day.

Starting point is 01:48:20 when we come in and someone has a narcissistic personality disorder, Andrew, this is personality, this is who they are, and we can psychotherapize them to be someone else for their natural thoughts to change, for the way that they see the world to change, for their behaviors to change on its own. It doesn't require willpower is necessary when you are trying to not be narcissistic. It is not necessary when you are no longer narcissistic. So we've done it in psychotherapy. We know that if your self-esteem changes, if your sense of being changes, treatment refractory depression will change. Trauma, PTSD will change. Do you have your patients do Nidra? Some of them.

Starting point is 01:49:05 So I also have a whole, I mean, I just started this research and then left academia, but I was trying to develop evidence-based protocols for particular diagnoses for certain kinds of meditation practices. Beautiful. Right. So for narcissism, I would lean into Shunya practices for trauma healing and specifically the patients who come in who need a fundamental belief change. If they just didn't believe this thing about themselves. So I had one patient who had a lot of trauma. And the Sun Gulpa that she came up with or that we came up with together is, I deserve

Starting point is 01:49:37 to be whole, not I am whole. And then if you think about a Sunculpa, that's a compass that you will navigate life with. So the main thing is once it gets into her mind, I don't. deserve to be whole. If people, even her own, she had a lot of self-sabotaging behaviors. And it's like, no, I deserve to be whole. Right. That is something that she, and this isn't telling yourself. This is the problem. I want to be precise. I know it sounds weird, but telling yourself is like, there's a lot of mental activity and you're trying to say something from the outside. Like, you can tell yourself, hey, Andrew, I'm going to remember this mathematical formula. Doesn't work.

Starting point is 01:50:14 You can tell yourself all kinds of things. But like, Telling yourself is very surface level mental activity. That's not how change happens. So when we're talking about like narrative reconstruction, post trauma, and this is what's so terrible about social media, everyone's like consuming this like, you know, tell yourself every single day that this is true. That's not how you change your beliefs. That's the science of how beliefs change isn't by telling yourself things over and over and over again. That's gaslighting yourself. it's just trying to drown what you really believe with like it's like taking a piece of dog poop

Starting point is 01:50:51 and putting icing on top it's not how neuroplasticity works exactly i mean i can say that with 100% confidence i as a neuroscientist and you know i don't claim any relationship to the work but my scientific great grandparents won the Nobel prize for neuroplasticity it is a process that has certain requirements they have to happen in a certain order and at a certain depth of of the nervous system, which is what you're describing. And so no amount of repeating a phrase, positive or negative is going to engage neuroplasticity. And I wish I wish that people knew that because it would provide them a filter through a lot of bullshit. So I think this San Galpa idea and this idea of like, you know, focus on being statements because being statements are

Starting point is 01:51:40 like more primordial and they will result in the mental fluctuations of your mind in a different way, right? So they'll automatically result in a certain kind of desire, in a certain kind of planning, and a certain kind of inclination. They're your most natural tendency. And like, I'm lazy. Like, people don't realize this, but like I'm lazy. I'm still the degenerate gamer, you know, I don't like to work. I work seven days a week, but it's not work. The only way I can work seven days a week is to shape my experience of the thing. And this is what a lot of people don't realize. There's a fascinating theory that I think is somewhat true called the theory of constructed

Starting point is 01:52:21 emotion. So I forget who's the person who's the pioneer of it. But it's sort of this idea that like we think that, you know, when something happens to us, the emotion is automatic. But we actually construct that emotion. We have a hand in how we receive the world around us. Right. So people can criticize you, but you can take it constructively.

Starting point is 01:52:44 The way that you mentally respond to something is huge. So when we're doing a Sanculpa, when we're doing yoga nidra, are we burning away samsars? Sure, the samscar is the negative emotional programming, the adaptation that we made. So it'll burn that stuff away. So you will be free of that stuff. But that's not what I would do that practice for. It's really to put a positive thing in there.

Starting point is 01:53:09 And by having a being statement, it may somehow counteract. I think this is where, like, my science had, I can't be precise enough. I sort of know that how a Sunkulp works. I've used it for myself. I've used it for many patients. It really is about attaining that neuroplasticity. It's about attaining that state of mind. And if you don't get there, it doesn't work.

Starting point is 01:53:27 Then you're just repeating things to yourself. Which is why there's such an emphasis on the physiology. Because in order to enter into that state of mind, we have to be really precise with what we're doing autonomically, physiologically. Do you think that liminal states between sleep and awake are also a valuable opportunity for people to rewire their beliefs about themselves and engage neuroplasticity? Absolutely. So hypnagogic, hypnipompic hallucinations are like good examples of this.

Starting point is 01:53:57 That state is really weird. So there is one of the 112 techniques that will bring you to enlightenment is to catch the moment of sleep. beautiful technique, incredibly hard to do. So this is something that people need to understand. When we're talking about meditation, I want you all to understand that this is a technique that I did for 12 years before seeing a single result. And this technique will give you, and now we're going completely off the rails, okay, will give you a lot of insight into your past lives. So there's something, and we can get into the science of that if you want to.

Starting point is 01:54:36 But like there's something like when people come to me and they say, hey, like I want to learn about my past lives. The technique that I give them is to focus on the liminal state between consciousness and sleep. And specifically to catch the moment of sleep. So to see yourself fall asleep. So I do that in Nidra. I can observe myself falling asleep and I'm aware that I'm falling asleep. But I'm not lucid dreaming. I'm watching myself sleep.

Starting point is 01:55:04 And I literally feel like I'm falling. There's probably some deactivation of the vestibular system or something going on there. Approprioceptive hallucination. Yeah, something going on. I mean, what we're talking about here is to really just break it down is deeply relaxed state. So autonomic tone is very parasympathetic,

Starting point is 01:55:29 but alert enough to observe the self. So this is an unusual state, right? I normally think about the autonomic nervous system like a seesaw, parasympathetic, sympathetic, so alert, stressed, panic, or asleep, coma, dead, right? You know, and it's going back and forth the entire time we're alive. But what we're talking about here is a weird kind of bending of the seesaw where we're both very relaxed and very alert. And in that state, the brain is more available for instruction, for editing.

Starting point is 01:55:59 Many people, I think, use psychedelics trying to achieve this state. That's one avenue. I think it would be amazing if there were more faster entry points. Twelve years is a long time. I hear that. Other people hear that. Like, oh, shit. You know, that's a lot of meditating before I get where I want to be.

Starting point is 01:56:19 But do you think that there's opportunity for Nidra and, excuse me, Shina, the void meditation, to be valuable in the short term as well? This is one of the 112thoroth techniques. It's just that technique. Yeah. That's a really hard one because it has no preparatory practice. It has no physiology to it. It's just catch the moment of sleep. That's it.

Starting point is 01:56:40 So that's where, you know, that technique is normally if you've trained yourself, then you can do it. But it's really hard to do just off the cuff. Nidra is very helpful from the get-go, right? So from an autonomic nervous system standpoint, very helpful. We tend to be hyper-sympathetically activated. So yoga nidra is very good for parasympathetic activation. Yoga nidra is also very good for the rotation of your somatosensory cortex. So, you know, like we have this idea of the homunculus.

Starting point is 01:57:08 That's not really what it is. And we can, if I want to. A map of self. Yeah. Right. So really what it is, your somatosensory cortex is plastic. And when you do rotations of awareness through your body, it's really good for you. Really helps with things like chronic pain.

Starting point is 01:57:23 So in chronic pain, what happens is patients, their somatosensory cortex is literally locked into the part of their body that's in pain. People think that, and it's a, it's a, you know, it's a self-reinforcing thing where something hurts so your brain is thinking about it. And the more that your brain thinks about it, the more that it hurts. So Nidra is really good from the get-go. And that's where I sort of think about the benefits of meditation as, first of all, scientific to woo-woo. This we know works. This we have no clue. In my personal journey, it's been really weird. So I was brought to this weird mystical stuff, like kicking and screaming, where, you know, once you're meditating one day and you have a memory from your past life,

Starting point is 01:58:07 like, you sit there and you're like, what the fuck is that? Like, is this a hallucination? Is this some form of genetic memory? Like, is this epigenetic memory? Like, what is this? I have no idea. So I'm not saying that past lives even exist. All I'm saying is that there are things that maybe some people can do that will give you the illusion of a past life. That's all we know, right? This is where I think a lot of people are very unscientific because they say, if I have a memory of something that didn't happen, that means it happened.

Starting point is 01:58:34 No, it didn't. The human brain constructs memory all the time. Most of our memory is stuff that didn't happen, actually, technically. I have to say, I don't want to interrupt your flow, but I just have to say because I'm feeling it. I'm not saying this to make you feel good, but if it does, great. I mean, you're one of the more intellectually supple people

Starting point is 01:58:52 I've ever encountered. I hope that lands because, you know, I've been around a lot of well-educated people and a lot of practitioners. Everything from former Mr. Olympias to Rick Rubin to David Show. I mean, we've, I mean, Martha Beck, I mean, who has three degrees from Harvard, but talks about spiritual downloads. And I have to say, like, I feel what's missing from health, public health, mental health, physical health, performance, you know, broadly speaking, is this is, this is. ability to understand how the ancient practices are really of benefit, where the neuroscience and other forms of science can explain it, but also to acknowledge that even where we don't have mechanistic understanding, there's value in the practices. Like, if, you know, I really believe

Starting point is 01:59:42 that the healing that everyone wants so badly for themselves and for the world, I really believe that most people want that, resides in this business of going inward that only, you know, that only we can only do for ourselves and seeing where our bullshit is, burning it down, and unlearning the stuff that makes us unkind to ourselves and others and unproductive. You know, I think one of the dangers and discussions around yoga and these things is some people will think, okay, this is this is navel gazing. This is all me stuff. This is, you know, you just got to, you know, get out into the world and do stuff. But when we hosted James Hollis, 84-year-old Jungian analyst, He said, there are two things that are critical to a good life, if I may.

Starting point is 02:00:29 He said, every day you have to shut up. These are his words. He said, you got to shut up, meaning no whining. Be grateful. You need to suit up, meaning you need to prepare for your roles in life. And then you need to show up to your roles in life. But you also need to spend some time getting out of stimulus in response, going inward, and really touching in with what he called your genuine heart's desires.

Starting point is 02:00:58 And when he said that, I thought, like, perfect. This is the ambition, the doing, the getting things done in life that we have to do because no one wants to be the loser you described earlier. Like, no one wants to be that person. And at the same time, no one wants to be, many people think they want to be, but nobody wants to be the person that sold the company, got the marriage and the kids, and is miserable. because they took a path that wasn't really for them,

Starting point is 02:01:24 that they should have done that with someone else. They literally have the wrong. No one would say they have the wrong kids, but they have the wrong life, right? And so I think that what you're describing is the roadmap and it involves this going inward. And I think that the language around yoghurt practices for Westerners is the separator.

Starting point is 02:01:44 It's where people brace and they go, what are they really talking about here? This is this. And so as a, as a, practitioner in the West with this Eastern mindset woven in, how do you bring that to your patients? How do you convince them that this is the path? Because I really believe it is the path. And I think it's actually the most important thing that any of us can do for ourselves. First thing is I don't try to convince anyone of anything. So convincing is not an objective

Starting point is 02:02:14 that I have. So I love research, consume a bunch of research. But there's a basic problem with science, which is when we do a randomized controlled trial, we learn about a population. We don't learn about a person. So we can say that SSRIs improve major depressive disorder by about 50%, let's say. But if a patient walks into my office, I have no idea if an SSRI is going to help them. Does that kind of make sense? There's a basic problem of external validity of all of our science, all of our medical science anyway. I'm not sure about opto or neuroscience. But when you apply to a person, some stuff works and some stuff doesn't work. So my focus is on helping like a person.

Starting point is 02:02:58 And then you don't need the woo-woo stuff. I think the important thing is like understand your ego. Like that's a fundamental thing that is missing from Western psychology. But we all intuitively understand it. This person is egotistical, right? Second thing is like things like perception. Understand your perception. Your perception and you were talking about the internet.

Starting point is 02:03:18 The basic problem with the internet is that it is allowed human beings to no longer live in the same world. This is where AI is even worse. So the more algorithmic you are, so the problem with an algorithm is it shapes your perception. It radicalizes your perception. So an algorithm shows you thing one, and then it'll only show you things in that tunnel. Does that kind of make sense? So you go further and further down the tunnel and you are living in a different world than everybody else is living in. AI is even worse at this, which is why it's really scary, but there's a first case report of really AI-induced psychosis in a patient that did not have any history of psychosis.

Starting point is 02:04:00 How does that even come about? What are they talking to the AI about? We can get into that if you want. It's actually really scary, but we know the mechanism. So here's the cool thing about this case report. This person got hospitalized for psychosis. It started on an antipsychotic. Psychosis resolves.

Starting point is 02:04:14 They get discharged, stop the anti-psychotic. psychotic, start to use AI again and become psychotic again. It's really scary. And the basic problem is that AI is so sycophantic. Our reality testing of the world requires contrary opinions. Right? So like when you're like, hey, I have this idea. I want to throw something by you.

Starting point is 02:04:37 And then I say, no. So how do we know what reality is? Because we have this perception, but this person has this perception, this person has this perception. So we modulate our perception, hey, I got you a gift. No, you didn't. What? I told you yesterday that I was going to pick this up. No, you didn't tell me that.

Starting point is 02:04:56 So we stay in reality because we get signals from reality. The thing about the AIs is their language learning models. They don't actually know anything. All they do is scrape the internet. This is a simplification. I'm not a data scientist or AI engineer. But here's my understanding because people wanted to build like a Dr. K chatbot and I tried to get into understanding the mechanisms.

Starting point is 02:05:16 What an AI does is it just says a word and then it tries to figure out which words are going to make you happy. That's how it knows what's right or wrong. The user satisfaction is the ultimate thing that they're going for. So there's a lot of data that shows that literally there's a really cool paper I can send it to you later. But that shows that the number of statements that you have, the more sycophantic it becomes and the more paranoid people will become. So like, you know, there's another case of someone who murdered their mom and then committed suicide. Because as they expressed concerns about their mom, the AI reinforces that and says, yeah, you're right. Like, these people are leaving you out, right?

Starting point is 02:05:58 Because it's like trying to make you feel good. Why they kill themselves? I don't know the full details of the case. And this is what's really scary about the AI stuff is like people will say, right? So like a lot of people will make the claim, oh, yeah, like if you're mentally unwell and then you use a. So a lot of AI companies will say it's people who are high risk will use the AI and it, it activates their delusions. But Andrew, here's what's really scary.

Starting point is 02:06:20 In order to make that, I don't know if this makes sense, like this is kind of read my mind question, but in order to say only at risk people will become psychotic from AI, what data do you need to make that statement? I think you need people to be harmed by AI to have that basis. Yeah. So in my mind, from a clinical perspective, in order to make the claim that AI only makes vulnerable people psychotic, mentally ill people psychotic, you need to have your control group, which is people who are not mentally ill. You need to have your intervention group, which is people who are mentally ill. You need to give them an intervention and you need to measure their psychosis at the other end. No AI company I've ever heard of has ever done that. Does that make sense? Like fundamentally, they are not determining ahead of time, whether they're not determining ahead of time, whether they're this person is mentally ill or not. And they don't, they're not, they're not monitoring psychosis. Well, I think the studies that have not been done, at least not until recently, that needed to be

Starting point is 02:07:20 done and desperately need to be done is to evaluate what are the neuroplastic changes that are caused by social media and AI. I mean, these are the, the digital anvils that were shaping, especially young brains on. Yeah. And now we're surprised like, oh, you know, from 2010 to, you know, 2025, everyone's been using progressively more social media online more. And oh, we got brain rod. And surprise, surprise. Well, no, there's this thing called plasticity that we knew about. It's just we didn't understand how the brain gets modified on these platforms, on these

Starting point is 02:07:53 algorithms. And instead we looked at, it was like we were so focused on the content, but not the algorithmic underpinnings of the content. Excellent. So I am convinced there is. there is not great data because it's early, but I'm convinced that basically, because we know this from like basic psychology, right?

Starting point is 02:08:13 Like AI is basically like a cult of one. You get indoctrinated in your own thoughts. So whatever you say to the AI is what the AI will tell you back. This is the narcissism. It is. What you described before, that the AI becoming more sycophantic, the person getting more paranoid,

Starting point is 02:08:28 you know the image that was in my mind? What? Was an eccentric billionaire who can control everything in their environment, but is terrified and is controlling of everything because they feel like they're vulnerable if they don't. That's exactly what you describe. Yeah. AI is doing to essentially everyone.

Starting point is 02:08:49 And we'll see it also like not only in the billionaire. So there are some cool studies that show basically like who's at risk. So it's really fascinating what the risk factors are. The amount of usage is huge. So the more you use AI, the more likely this is to happen. to you, but I kid you not, I'm really, I'm not trying to be alarmist. As a psychiatrist, when someone comes into my office, I ask them, do you use meth? Because I'm trying to assess their risk of becoming psychotic based on something that is not like schizophrenia or type

Starting point is 02:09:23 one bipolar disease. Now I'm starting to ask people, do you use AI? How much? So I'll ask them these questions. How much do you use AI? Do you customize the AI to be more effective for what you want. So this is what's really scary is like this is what people call prompt engineering, right? Do you train the AI to give you more effective answers? Do you use the AI for mental health issues? And do you find that the AI's answers are far superior to humans? And these are the, these are four of the seven proposed risk factors for like bad outcomes from AI. And the crazy thing is like this is the use case. Right. Like we want people to be using AI more. The whole point is that AI is better than other people.

Starting point is 02:10:11 I'm going to use prompt engineering. And in my community, there's a lot of mental illness and a lot of mental struggles. So a lot of people will use AI. And it's really scary that like the use case is the risk factor. And I really think that there's a chance. I don't think AI is evil or all bad or anything like that. But I think we really could be looking at like 60 years from now. We're going to be looking back.

Starting point is 02:10:34 and we're going to be talking about AI the way that we talk about nicotine and tobacco. I'm letting that sink in. When I think about the algorithm being the thing that shapes the brain, the analogy that pops to mind is, you know, if I want to change a nervous system, I don't care if it's a rat cat, monkey bat, or human. I know what you're going to say. I'm going to spike adrenaline and I'm going to provide an experience. I mean, these experiments have been done by James McGa and others over many years.

Starting point is 02:11:02 It's like, I can give an animal or a person a terrifying experience, give them a beta blocker, and their memory for it. Their memory for it will be meager, if any. If I don't, they're going to have a very salient memory. It's that one-pointedness that you referred to. So spiking adrenaline is the opportunity to create plasticity. Turns out so is spiking dopamine. So is spiking. So is spiking.

Starting point is 02:11:29 Turns out that there's this kind of equality to all the neuromodulators. If you can create a high amount of arousal or an unusual state, you can modify the brain for some period of time. I feel like what was never thought about until recently is that when we scroll social media, we are on the internet, we're getting pulsed. Like you said earlier, we're getting pulsed with typically norapinephrine epinephrine, right? And so it makes perfect sense that the plasticity is both for what we're observing. but also for the action of scrolling and going through that, the wheel of experience that you described earlier, the puppy, the explosion, the, you know, the political thing, the opportunity to make money, the relationship thing, and then, and then repeat.

Starting point is 02:12:14 And surely the platforms knew this. And I don't think they're diabolical in the sense that they wanted to harm humanity. I don't. I think that they are businesses and they want to make money. They want to drive engagement. So so many people don't like what I say about AI because they like AI. And I'm also with you. Like, I don't think the platforms are evil.

Starting point is 02:12:34 I think they're just not looking at that dimension, right? So, like, no one at an AI company is designing a clinical trial to be run through the FDA to measure. Like, they're just not measuring, like, safety issues, as far as I know. Like, not at the level that we do when we're, like, looking at pharmacology. I think these people are, you know, someone. And I mean, I've worked with so many people who, like, work at YouTube and meta and stuff like that. Twitch. And I don't think they're like bad, evil people. Like this is a big, this is a very black or white thinking induced by social media content where like all these, these companies

Starting point is 02:13:08 are evil or they're totally fine. No, it's like, I know some of the founders and, owners of these companies and platforms well. And I think they are benevolent people. Absolutely. And I think a lot of times, you know, they're just like, okay, if I'm Instagram Reels and I'm like a programmer, a developer there. And someone's like, okay, like this amount of the market share is TikTok. How do we bring those TikTok? users over here, right? It's like if I have a car and it's like, how do I get someone who buys a different kind of car to buy my car? That's just what business is. I don't think they're evil. I think what they're doing, and this is how humanity works, right? So it's like we invent something

Starting point is 02:13:43 and then we figure out afterward that it's harmful. So I don't think people should stop using AI by any means, but I think that the health, what I'm most concerned about is that the health effects are a lot more causal as opposed to uncovering. I think there's like starting to be like some pretty startling data behind that. So what do you recommend for young men and women or older men and women around two things, around social media use, AI use, and we have to talk about pornography? Okay. So let's talk about social media use. Do you believe that people should have prescriptions of amount of time, types of interactions they have or won't have? I realize it's hard to create a blanket statement. No, no, no. It's not that it's hard. It's that this is a whole other podcast. So like I've studied this. We're definitely going to have to have you back. We've got a lot of conversations. So there's so much nuance to this because social media is not uniform in the way that it affects your brain. So, right, that's the number one thing. So just just because all drugs of abuse aren't. in some way dopaminergic does not mean that their effects are uniform on the brain. So first thing about use of social media, I think a big thing that people miss.

Starting point is 02:15:01 So there's some like common stuff that's like just use it less, bro. A lot of people miss is the mental state that you are in when you use it determines a lot. Right. So if you are feeling bad and you use social media, you're primed for salience. you will be programmed more, right? So this is where, like, people who use it as a form of emotional regulation, big problem. Another interesting thing about social media, when to not use it. So, you know, you require a certain amount of frontal lobe function, executive function and

Starting point is 02:15:36 willpower in order to fall asleep. You need to be able to suppress your impulses in order to be able to go to sleep. Don't use social media before you go to bed. And the main reason for that is if you use social media to the point where you're you've missed your sleep window, then it's very hard to fall asleep because now your brain doesn't have enough willpower. And this is what happens to people. So there's a really interesting study about procrastination before bed. And what the study found is that there's two kinds of procrastination. There's before bed procrastination, procrastinating going to bed. And then there's

Starting point is 02:16:11 in bed procrastination when you procrastinate going to sleep after you're in bed. So don't use it when you're not feeling good. Don't use it before bed, especially because you're going to miss that window and then it's going to mess you up for the next day. You'll be more emotionally fried, more emotionally vulnerable. Like the hour before bed. Yeah, just nowhere near bed. There's the blue light stuff, but I think this, don't miss your sleep window. That's been such a useful clinical revelation when I'm working with a human being. Because if you get past 1030 and you're on your phone, then it's going to become 1230. Because you no longer have the frontal lobe function to be able to stop. You yourself. That's the second thing. Third thing is understand that your brain is, how can I say this,

Starting point is 02:17:02 you are developing the standards for yourself through social media. So we're seeing a rise in body dysmorphia. So this was interesting because it used to be that body dysmorphia was like more common in women than men. We're starting to see that even out, especially as we have all these alpha male influencers, what you see is going to be your standard. I'll put alpha in air quotes there. Yeah. You know, so everyone's expectations for what they should be. So I went to Germany recently and I had my kids there.

Starting point is 02:17:30 And we went to like a like a spa. And there were like a lot of like we went in the middle of the day. So like we were on vacation, but you know, everybody else is at school and whatnot. There were a bunch of old German people there. And like old German people in swimsuits are like not the most attractive human beings on the planet. And my kids were like kind of surprised because there's just a lot of like German people who are old. But like this is what normal people look like.

Starting point is 02:17:55 And we've forgotten what normal people look like. We've forgotten what normal is. And the more time that you spend on social media, the more you will be divorced from normal. So I'd say those are like the three things. And sure, if you want to use it less, like use it less. The less you use it, the better off you're going to be. But I'm sure everyone has said that a thousand times. I think what people don't realize is that the impact of it is not always uniform, that your psychological vulnerabilities.

Starting point is 02:18:21 And people know this. If you've ever stalked your ex after they get together with somebody else, like people know what I mean, right? Like you're like, your ex is now dating someone else. And then you look at their pictures and you like look at all their pictures and you make yourself like kind of feel worse. Don't use it when you're vulnerable. That's huge. I realize that my statement about, you know, alpha males and air quotes, I want to be very specific. not to protect feelings at all because no one I'm about to talk about needs protection for their feelings.

Starting point is 02:18:47 But I think there are some incredible male educators and examples online, you know, people who are showing up in different aspects of their life in really spectacular ways. I mean, good friend, Jocco Willink, for instance, right? I think he has a ton to offer. My friend Ken Rydout has a ton to offer. You know, there are many, many great examples. when the people I was referring to in air quotes was in reference to this kind of newer trend of looks maxing

Starting point is 02:19:16 as it relates to what you're talking about about this over obsession in my opinion on looks and on cosmetic perfection which I do think is going to be if it's not already very hazardous for young men the feeling that even just the idea that variation in looks is being discouraged that there's sort of this need need for everyone to look the same is so very different than how I grew up where I feel very

Starting point is 02:19:44 fortunate that there was, you know, kind of a range of different appearances within the scope of healthy that define people's unique characteristics. And now this looks maxing thing seems to be all about everyone having like this angle of jaw, this cheekbone thing, this type of skin, this type, and that's the part where I go like, hey, guys, like, please don't waste your life. is going to, this is a fool's errand. It's going to destroy them. Here's what's really scary. So, like, I'm not a couples therapist, but I just made a guide to relationships because everyone in my community is struggling with loneliness. And here's the really scary thing. If you look at the research, looks are not that important for a relationship.

Starting point is 02:20:26 So there's some really fascinating studies on charisma. So looks are number six on if you do a multivariate regression analysis. Actually, I don't think it was multivariate. But if you, if you, if you look at the factors of charisma, looks as number six. And if you look at like the most charismatic people on the planet, like no offense, but like, you know, Winston Churchill, amazingly charismatic, not the most looks maxing guy out there, you know? Right. Right. And so I think the really scary thing is that a lot of this like information on social media is just wrong. It's not based in science at all. Like what we talked about with flirting, people don't realize if you're flirting with someone and they don't get it, that's actually fine. That's why you have to make three attempts

Starting point is 02:21:09 to flirt with someone statistically. And then you should level up, like, escalate the signal that you're transmitting. You know, the really interesting data point, because I'm excited about this. But women who are of average attractiveness and high signaling are more likely to end up in a relationship and be approached than women who are very high attractiveness and low signaling. Could you define signaling? Yeah. Making it known that you're open for a relationship, eye contact, smiling. So this is what people don't understand is like they think like, okay, if I'm hot, things will happen. That's not how it works at all. There's a lot about how to flirt, how to communicate interest, how to be embarrassed. And all of these things are like positive things that people don't understand. That charisma is about having vision because if you're looking for a long term partner and they're trying to figure out, can I be with this person? They have to have to have. a sense of your vision of life to see if they fit with you. It's actually way more important than looks.

Starting point is 02:22:07 The ability to handle adversity, huge element of charisma. So someone wants to know if stuff goes south, can I count on you? Way more important than looks. So the only thing with looks is that in online dating specifically, people will judge based on looks, but there are numerous studies that show, not numerous actually, one study at least that I've seen, that shows that if your profile indicates purpose, man or woman, it increases your attractiveness. So the problem with all the social media stuff is not that it's wrong.

Starting point is 02:22:43 I work with a lot of in cells. I work with a lot of beta males. It's not that they're wrong. It's that they're woefully incomplete. They haven't done a study of the whole literature. Sure, if you're more attractive, it is easier to get dates. Here's the scariest statistic. drive for muscularity is inversely correlated with length of relationship.

Starting point is 02:23:08 Right? So the more that if you're watching social media, you're like, I need to be pumped, I want to be pumped, I want to be pumped, I want to be pumped. That's what drives people away. It's hard to have a relationship with that kind of person. So by all means, get muscular, but want it less, which is really interesting because what I see is people wanting it more. Like, like, looks maxing. I want this. I want this. I want this. So deprioritize it. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. I mean, the drive and vision thing is, and purpose thing is so interesting because, you know, this is one thing where I'm not saying everyone should go into science, but in science, you apprentice yourself to somebody else and then to somebody else as a postdoc. And then eventually whether or not you get to succeed or not as an independent scientist is entirely based, not on what you did. That's just proof of an ability, right? It's based on your vision. Like, is there something exciting?

Starting point is 02:24:00 And that's what we joke in science. Like every year there's a prom king and a prom queen on the job market. And it's the person who has the most interesting and compelling vision. That's who you're hiring. And yes, they tend to have been successful in the past. You need that. But that's necessary but not sufficient. So important that you're raising this.

Starting point is 02:24:19 Do you think that young men are indeed falling behind in terms of, we hear this all the time, that they're falling behind their age-matched peers that are women, in terms of just sort of life progression. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's no, I think there's no question of that. So I forget if it was 41% of college graduates are men now. So I think like the, it's really lopsided. I think in 1975, the average age of marriage for a man was 23.8.

Starting point is 02:24:53 And now it's 30.8. It's not average, median. So half of the people are actually older than that. For women, it was 21.1 to 28.4. People will make financial arguments around that. I see that a lot. People will say, well, it's very expensive to, you know, to be able to raise a family, et cetera.

Starting point is 02:25:12 That's often what you hear, at least in California. People say that they're waiting because they need to establish a certain level of income. Is that true? Sure. I mean, I think that's what people are subjectively feeling. 50% of people under the age of adults under the age of 30 live with their parents now. I forget what the statistic used to be like 20 years ago. So we are absolutely seeing like economic difficulties.

Starting point is 02:25:33 So everything is slowing down, right? And but I think that there is the biggest difference is as a society, men are the one group of people that we expect to help themselves. So if you look at like, and there's like, I'm not saying women don't deserve help. So, you know, there's some examples of this that I think are not great. So there are homeless shelters for every gender and then there are homeless shelters for women. There are no male only homeless shelters. I think that's a good example of you don't need a male only homeless shelter because that's an example of like women who are in every all gender homeless shelters are really way more unsafe than if they're on their own. So like that's an example of like I don't think everything should be equal between all genders. But I think the challenge is that. You know, if you just talk to men or if you talk about men, there are many things that will say, okay, like the patriarchy is harmful to both men and women. Fair enough. But like what are we going to do societally, systemically to support the men who are struggling? So there aren't, even though only 41% of people who graduate from college are men, the number of male-only scholarships is like really small. So as a society, it's really interesting. I think we're not really supporting men in the way that we need to. Now, a lot of people will hear this as, oh, it is my responsibility as a woman to do things for my husband or boyfriend or whatever. I don't think it's like women's responsibility. I think that's a big problem historically that women have been responsible for certain aspects of men.

Starting point is 02:27:12 I think the work that I do and the work you do, the work we do is to try to help men, women and everybody else take care of themselves. But I do think there's plenty of data that suggests that, you know, men are falling beings. If you look at rates of addiction, deaths of despair, this is a really interesting scientific measure that came a lot of the UK. These are basically deaths that relate to suicide. You know, male suicide rates are four times what women, what they are for women. So it's interesting. Like now, hopefully this is changing. But when I was in residency, you know, we had women's mental health clinics.

Starting point is 02:27:49 We didn't have male mental health clinics. do men in relationships, you know, are they protected from some of the negative effects that you're describing? This is fascinating. So do you know what Takatsubo cardiomyopathy is? Have you heard of this? This is when people die of a broken heart? Yeah. So this is what's really fascinating.

Starting point is 02:28:08 People don't realize this. But women are far more likely to initiate divorce. So I think the interesting statistic about this is you can look at gay couples. So gay men who get married have less than a 50% divorce rate. I think they get divorced maybe 30% of the time. Lesbian couples have the highest divorce rate. So they get divorced, I think, something like 60% of the time. So it's even greater than 50%.

Starting point is 02:28:34 So I did a lot of work on this because I've had so many patients who when they go through a breakup, like it really ruins their life. And there's research on this. Okay. I'm not like misogynist or anything like that. So if you look at qualitative research, if you ask a woman after she goes through a divorce, what did you lose? She will say, I lost a relationship. If you ask a man, what did you lose? They say, I lost a life. So this is just, it's just different. So women will oftentimes form many connections. So when they lose their relationship, they lose a relationship. But men are by some amount of biology, by some amount of conditioning, by some amount of culture, oftentimes we'll have one emotional support in their life, which is their wife. And I've worked with plenty of women for whom this is overwhelming because they become their husband's therapist because their husband doesn't know

Starting point is 02:29:32 how to manage their own emotions. That's not good. That's not healthy. But if we're looking at outcomes, the cortisol spike that men get after divorce is way higher. The amount of inflammation that they experience is way higher. I think they have an acute risk of heart attack that elevates. So some of this is probably biology. We're just wired differently. Like, this is also another thing that's really interesting. The inflammatory response from a cold is greater in men than it is in women. So, like, when my wife gets sick, she's able to do stuff. But, like, my inflammatory response is actually, like, I'm out. And there's a lot of physiological evidence for why that is. And it may have something to do with, if you sort of look at like in the animal kingdom, you know, a male line is much

Starting point is 02:30:17 more likely to fight by baboons, much more likely to get scratches and things like that. So we need a more robust immune system. So we want a stronger immune response. But yeah, Takatsubo cardiomyopathy. I mean, the mortality risk of divorce for a man is way higher than a woman. It's interesting because, and these are individual cases, but not population studies, but I've had a lot of lot of young men and their parents reach out to me. Like my kid is really struggling. He, you know, he's really languishing and he's really falling behind. You know, he's got these issues, that issues. There are all these like loose correlations that I'll just throw out there. I often hear, and I'm not saying this is the cause, but I'll hear, oh yeah, you know, and even their moms will

Starting point is 02:31:05 know sometimes. They'll say, you know, he's had some like really serious sexual side effects. He was using these anti-hair loss meds. I wonder, is it that? They always. always want to find, like, what's the one thing that can put them back on track? And I'm not psychiatrist. So I've talked to them before and oftentimes we'll get a sense of what's going on more generally. And I actually have noticed that a number of these guys have relationships. They're very close with their girlfriend. They have very kind, loving, supportive girlfriends. And the girlfriends are doing well in life. They're moving forward professionally, but the guy isn't. He's sort of stuck. And that was a surprise to me. I thought they would be totally alone.

Starting point is 02:31:45 They'd have no access to, you know, dating or mates. No, that's not what's happening in many cases. They're just, they're sort of just stuck. They can't seem to find a profession. They can't seem to get ahead. And they've got these very kind, very, very patient girlfriends that are sitting it out with them for, I don't know how long. I don't know if they'll stick around. But that seems more and more common. So they can find the relationship, but they can't seem to launch into into being a grown man, frankly. Yeah. So I think, first of all, that was me. So, you know, when I, it took me five and a half years to graduate from college. I graduated with a 2.4 GPA. And then I started med school at 28. I couldn't support myself financially until I started residency

Starting point is 02:32:33 at the age of 32. My wife started working at 16 and has never. never stopped. And so there was a period of like five years where like what was I doing. I had a research assistant position at Harvard, but I was basically applying to medical school. And so like I was going nowhere real fast and she stuck it out with me, which is quite amazing. Like I'm still surprised by her and her lack of pressure and also her like supreme confidence that I was going to figure it out. So I've been in in those shoes. And I think the big thing for me was I figured out how I worked. And so, you know, we have this picture failure to launch, which is a lot of what I deal with. These are gifted kids who then hit a wall like I did. So had a lot of potential.

Starting point is 02:33:24 Just never really comes to it. They struggle a lot with things like discipline, motivation. I think oftentimes they will look for some kind of solution, right? Because we as human beings, we don't realize that most of life is multifactorial. That if you do a multivariate regression analysis, you're not going to find that it was the hair loss meds. And so this is where we kind of come back to the roadmap where I think the most important thing, and I've helped anywhere between hundreds to millions, whether you consider YouTube or not. And the main thing is they don't know how they work. See, men are not taught to understand. they're taught to do.

Starting point is 02:34:07 Like we're like, you know, do this thing. Like get a job, do this. And women have all kinds of expectations, have babies and work and do everything, you know, exceptionally well. But I think we're just not taught how to understand ourselves. So the biggest thing that I see is not a problem of treatment, but is a problem of misdiagnosis. And one of the things that you learn, I think people don't really realize this. but like most of medicine is not treatment. Like I don't think treatment is usually the hard part.

Starting point is 02:34:37 I think the diagnosis is the hard part. Understanding really what's wrong. Just as another example of this, I've worked with so many people, young men, who are like, I'm so tired. How do I increase my energy? How do I increase my energy? And what they don't realize is like if you think about tiredness,

Starting point is 02:34:55 tiredness is a signal from the brain. Tiredness is not always low energy. Tiredness is your brain. Wayne's way of telling you that this is not worth doing. And the interesting thing is there are a lot of things that we do need to do that we will feel tired for. But the real solution to that is sometimes is to force yourself to do it and kind of get yourself out of it.

Starting point is 02:35:18 You know, there are some studies that show that exercise is equally effective to an SSRI. So there's a value to that. But I think what a lot of people are missing is their conception of the thing is what's making them tired. You know, if you think about something that you haven't done before and you're like, oh, my God, I have to do this thing. And then when you do it, you're like, oh, it's not that bad. And then you procrastinate on doing the thing even though it's actually pretty easy to do. So changing your understanding of what you are tired to do is the fastest way to be able to do it.

Starting point is 02:35:55 But the problem is we don't teach men what's going on inside them, right? We don't teach them about their emotions. We don't teach them about motivation. And so when I focus on that, that's really what I focus on doing. There's an old Sanskrit sentiment that avidya, which means ignorance, is the source of dukkah, which is suffering. All of your suffering in life has nothing to do with willpower, motivation, or anything like that. It's all a lack of understanding. And the more I've worked, the more I've realized that the most powerful thing that you can give yourself is understanding.

Starting point is 02:36:29 even if I were to ask you, you know, like the things that are easy for you are the things that you understand. And before you understood them, they were hard. As someone who's lazy, like understanding what motivates you is actually more important than discipline or willpower for me anyway. I'm a degenerate. You know, and I think this is what a lot of these young men who failure to thrive, like I had one patient who, you know, was. 31 years old, struggled with addiction, drop out. You know, two years later, not only is he finishing therapy school, he's becoming a therapist. So he's supporting himself making about 150K a year. He's also writing a dystopian novel. Two years later, he messaged me that had been

Starting point is 02:37:16 published, right? And it's like understanding why he behaved the way that he did. And the more that you understand how the system works, then you can make minor adjustment. and you can make it work. A car is really hard to move. If you're not driving it, you don't know how to turn it on. I totally agree. And I think that the false message

Starting point is 02:37:41 that many people have received is, and that we hear all the time, is that a focus on self, trying to understand the self, is really just indulgent focus on one's emotions. It's the like me culture, navel gazing, but that's not what you're talking about.

Starting point is 02:37:58 You're talking about doing the work of addressing what parts of you are ego. What do you really want? Doing a shinia meditation, like learning to access the void so that you can really see the difference between who you really are and what's coming at you from the outside. So you can steer. I mean, that's what I'm hearing. And I think that the challenge is that I don't think that there's a language for this exploring of self that makes it very clear from the outset in. in two sentences that it's not about just being a victim, not about just feeling one's feeling

Starting point is 02:38:36 so that you can justify everything as a trauma, right? And I do think there's trauma out there. I think there are a lot of traumatized people. I also think that, you know, we've left now the diagnosis of trauma in the beholder. Like everyone's decided that they're traumatized by this and that. And it's created this other form of trauma, which is that people are fundamentally weak.

Starting point is 02:38:57 and the people with real trauma probably aren't getting the treatment they need and deserve. So, you know, it's interesting that we keep coming back to men and boys in the way that they're suffering. This is probably a good opportunity to talk about pornography.

Starting point is 02:39:14 Do you recommend that young males just not look at pornography? I think the majority of people report no problems from watching pornography. So, you know, some people will say it's healthy. I don't know that it's healthy or not. I think it's like the way that you use it, just like any other addictive substance. So I don't think it is all bad. That being said, there are a couple of things that are really problematic. The first is that pornography is getting more neuroscientifically engaging. Here's the scariest, like, statistic about addiction. So 5% of people under the age of 30 had erectile dysfunction, maybe like 20, 30 years ago. That number has climbed to like 20%. And a lot of that erectile dysfunction, if you defunds, if you defactile dysfunction, if you defunctal dysfunction, if you defunctal dysfunction, if you defunctal dysfunction, if you defunctal dysfunction, if you defunctal dysfunction, if you find what erectile dysfunction is, it is inability to maintain an erection through the completion of the sexual act. So it's not that a lot of people think that this means they can't get hard.

Starting point is 02:40:07 It's not that they can't get harder. They can get an erection. It's just they can't achieve orgasm or climax. So I think we're seeing a lot of problems with pornography. We're seeing a lot of very young people having erectile dysfunction, being unable to achieve climax through penetrative intercourse. It's affecting the brain a lot more. So the colors are brighter, things are jigglier, things are bouncier. There's virtual reality, 8K, 4K. The bigger problem that I'm seeing, or the scarier problem is pornography used to be something of passive consumption. So the porn is over there, and I'm over here. There's no emotional connection. There's no parisocial relationship. The really scary thing is with the things like OnlyFans, now the person that you're watching

Starting point is 02:40:52 pornography for is interacting with you. They're saying thank you. They're a pretty You're asking them and they're sending you a picture or making a video just for you. So I'm seeing a lot more scary parisocial relationships develop. I'm seeing emotional affairs. So now like we've added a dimension of our brain, the empathic circuit, the social circuits, the relationship circuits, are now starting to activate with pornography. So that's like a whole different ballgame. and then there's a lot of data just about ease of access and things like that. I think pornography addiction, you know, it's interesting.

Starting point is 02:41:31 A very strong risk factor is prepubescent exposure to pornography. Young young kids are on the internet. Majority of people actually get exposed to their first pornography now before they hit puberty. But there's something about when you get exposed to pornography when your brain is developing before puberty, it increases your risk factor for, it increases the risk of developing addiction later in life. So there is something just special about sex in the way that it affects our brain. You know, we're talking about salience and things like that. We've basically evolved this whole thing to procreate. So when we get visual stimuli, when we get auditory stimuli, you know, it turns our brain on in a very profound way.

Starting point is 02:42:14 We see a lot of emotional suppression. So what a lot of people don't realize, I work with a lot of people who struggle with pornography, really the emotional regulation component is huge. they're not horny. It's not necessarily a lot of masturbation, which is what a lot of people assume. Oftentimes it's like second screen kind of stuff. It's watching pornography like when you use the restroom and just like you're not doing, if you're not jerking off or anything, you're just like watching porn. So it's sort of like a numbing out type of activity. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. So this is a key thing to remember is in order for something to be addictive, it needs two things. It needs to give us pleasure and it needs to take away pain. And as we see addiction, over time, it shifts away from pleasure into taking

Starting point is 02:42:56 away pain. When we become dependent on something is when we require it to numb ourselves. So I think we're also seeing more pornography because life for everybody, young people, and young men, is getting harder. So as we become more socially isolated, as we, it's harder to find a girlfriend, And as we get indoctrinated by social media, as we become delusional because of social media, as our social skills atrophy, you know, like all of these things are happening. It's a pretty bleak picture. It is bleak. And I think the reason it's bleak is because we haven't been fighting back in a very focused way. So, you know, part of the reason I've focused so much on relationships, because I'm not a couple's therapist.

Starting point is 02:43:46 But like what I found is that in my patients, I could only do so much without giving like having them have a relationship. Like you can be depressed. You can be anxious. But if you have a solid relationship, that is one of the most important things. Like some point I really started focusing on this. It was like like literally I was down the street or, you know, on the opposite side of town filming a guide about like what is the science behind arousal activation? How do you flirt? Like these are the skills.

Starting point is 02:44:15 Like how do we help? people. I think it's like giving them the skills that we used to learn organically. Do you think that a lot of the attention on muscle building, on looks maxing is actually just a safer discussion for young males? Like they can talk about that. They can talk about, you know, trying to get body fat percentages or they're doing like mewing for their jaw or something, you know, like, like I think nasal breathing can be very helpful. But there's the whole thing of looks max. is so insane to me. But maybe it's a way of talking about wanting to be different because the conversation

Starting point is 02:44:55 about sex, about intimacy, about maybe someone has issues with porn or erectile issues. Maybe that's just like so scary that they have to, that it's kind of a way of them getting close to the topic, but not really in the topics. Because when people have approached me and said, hey, man, can you help me out? I'm really having problems. they're not talking to me about what I just described. They're talking about not knowing which career to have. But then they're asking me about how to work out.

Starting point is 02:45:26 And then it's sort of it's almost like they're kind of, I have a feeling there's a lot more going on. Yeah. So here's what I'd say. One of the great things I learned as a psychiatrist, the best way to run away from an unsolvable problem is to solve something else. So I think you're absolutely right. there's a displacement because I don't even know where to start with how to flirt.

Starting point is 02:45:54 But you know what I can control? Like here's the thing about looks maxing. There's no other humans involved. There's no possibility like getting somebody else to fall in love with fucking me. Like that's so hard. I don't even know where to start. I don't even like myself. How am I supposed to get somebody else to fall in love with me?

Starting point is 02:46:12 When I look in the mirror, I see disgust. I cannot fathom or tolerate the idea of going on a date and having this person look at this. So I'm going to transform myself. I'm going to solve all of those problems by solving one problem. I'm going to turn it. If I can just do this one thing, I'm going to take a multivariate regression analysis and hyperfocus on one variable. I'm going to do a very interesting selection bias and cognitive bias, cognitive filtering of ignoring all. of the beautiful people who are still single or divorced.

Starting point is 02:46:49 And the other huge cognitive bias that I'm going to do, when I go to a playground and I see lots of kids running around and I look at the parents of those kids, they're average looking. Right? Most people who have relationships look average, like statistically. That's how it works. But the mind does not know how to grab the problem is too big. Where do I start? Do I learn how to flirt? I'm creepy.

Starting point is 02:47:19 How do I learn how to flirt? How do I learn how to flirt without getting rejected? I'm tired of getting rejected. I don't want to get rejected. It hurts to get rejected. It proves all of my insecurities about myself. And that's just flirting. So if you talk to these people, a lot of times what you'll get is anytime you tell them to move forward, what they'll say is, but how do I solve the next thing?

Starting point is 02:47:40 That doesn't account for this. even if I look smacks, it doesn't do this, it doesn't do this, it doesn't do this. And that's why the more that they go into looks maxing because there's this idea that if you're beautiful, right, and this is some really interesting theory of mind, when they look at the people that they're attracted to,

Starting point is 02:47:57 in their mind, if someone's a 10 out of 10, I'd date them in a heartbeat. And if I date them, someone would date me. So I think this looksmaxing thing is like a really great way of displacing all of our, terrifying, overwhelming feelings of how do I get another human being to accept me? It's way more complicated. The good news is that I think we can actually figure it out. Like, I don't know how many research studies are published, but I was blown away. Did you know that half the studies on

Starting point is 02:48:28 charisma are published in religious studies journals? It's fascinating. There's so much science out there. Like, we know so many things. We literally know, like, how people fall in love. We know that one of the reasons that it's harder to fall in love is because the feeling of being in love, you know, that feeling of like, just seeing someone and like, you feel amazing. And like, just their presence makes you feel amazing. Floods your brain with dopamine. So as our dopamine system gets messed up by social media, it has literally become neurochemically harder to fall in love.

Starting point is 02:49:00 So now when I have patients, I tell them, go for a walk for one hour before you go on a date and stay off of any technology. Love that. Literally, your neuroscientific capacity to. fall in love is increased. May I ask what you think about this? I'm a big fan lately of boring breaks in order to stay on task for things like writing, podcast research, etc. I find that if breaks between cognitive tasks, which are demanding, if those breaks are too engaging, that it makes it much, much harder to reengage in hard work, which I love hard work, but I also experience

Starting point is 02:49:36 some of the friction going into a bout of work. Yeah. So what most people do on their breaks is exhausting. Literally, right? So if you spend time on social media, your brain will be more tired at the end of the break. So boredom is great. There's a lot of stuff around yoga and boredom and focusing the mind and things like that. But yeah, I'm with you 100%. So people don't understand what's happening to them. They don't understand also like how to make people fall in love with you. I don't mean that. That's the wrong phrase. So human beings have been falling in love since the dawn of humanity, like literally.

Starting point is 02:50:14 And there are certain circumstances that lead to that. There's a cool study that I cite over and over and over again. They had couples go on a date on a stone bridge or a rickety wooden bridge. And the couples that were on the rickety wooden bridge formed a stronger emotional bond. People don't realize that forming an emotional bond depends on shared emotional experience. So we have to feel the same thing. This is such a problem in rehab. My biggest problem when I'm running a rehab is an attending is like people keep falling in love.

Starting point is 02:50:47 Like we're trying really hard. Like don't fall in love. Don't fall in. These two are getting together. All the nursing staff is aware. They went to their rooms overnight. Like this is happening. Like, you know, we're like, no love and no in rehab.

Starting point is 02:50:59 But it happens over and over again because everyone is sharing. Trauma bonding is what people call it now. But when you share an emotional experience with someone else, that is what fosters love. But nowadays what happens is like dating is like interviews. Everyone's making judgments on each other based on a profile. None of those things actually correlate with the relationship success, whether you're six feet and how much money you make.

Starting point is 02:51:22 It doesn't correlate with, I mean, I'm sure maybe correlates on some level. But if you look at the big variables, it's not any of that stuff. And if you think about like how you fell in love with your girlfriend, how I fell in love. Like I was going to be a monk. I told my girlfriend. I didn't know we were dating. I didn't even ask her out on a date. I was just like, hey, you want to grab food sometime?

Starting point is 02:51:39 I was going to be a monk. And then I even told her, I was like, hey, I'm going to be a monk. Like, this is a temporary thing. And she's like, yeah, whatever. Seven years later, you're back from India. No, well, so I would come back, back and forth. But so we like dated during that time. And the cool thing is like, you know, as an educator, right?

Starting point is 02:51:58 Like, it's amazing if you teach someone how something works. And like, love is like not that complicated, actually. if given the right environment, internal and external environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'm not trying to be academic about it, but what you described about an hour off social media before going on a day, I think that's terrific advice to people.

Starting point is 02:52:18 I think that this idea that our nervous systems are somehow able to pivot from one sensory experience to the next without the previous sensory experience completely either contaminating or supporting what comes next is so obvious in the case of what you get to, a great night's sleep, you wake up, the next morning you feel great. You get a terrible night's sleep, the next morning you feel terrible. Everyone understands that, but people can't understand the idea of dopamine depletion or just over arousal and then going into the next thing

Starting point is 02:52:49 that should be arousing, and it's like under arousing. And I'm not even talking about sex here. I'm talking about social interaction. So when I was looking at the mechanisms of this, I realized why going on a movie is a great first date. You know, people like, back when we were growing up, people would go on movies on first dates, right? And everyone's like, why would you go on a movie for a first date? You're not even talking or getting to know the other person. Well, it turns out that movies create shared emotional experiences, which is why people organically figured out that you can go to a movie and it'll actually, it's a great first day. But I think, you know, things do seem bleak, but I think we've got the tools to reverse it. So I think the cool thing is

Starting point is 02:53:27 is we do have all of this information. And so like we know how to how to be charming, how to flirt. what are the situations that you need to create in order to foster interactions, foster a relationship, foster emotional connection, you know, what makes you charismatic, what makes you attractive. Things like humor and kindness are incredibly important. Humor is a huge signal that signals both intelligence, because if you can make someone laugh, you can read them. And so it's also a signal of empathy and ability, like does this person get me? If they can make you laugh, that means that they get you. And the last thing that I'll kind of mention is that we were talking about how, you know, the internet is like people live in different worlds on the internet. And the really scary thing, I made a great YouTube video that was kind of controversial, but why women prefer beta males. And the really interesting thing is that a lot of people were really upset by it. It was about this drive for muscularity and some of the scientific research. But the really interesting thing was the male versus female response to the video. that women were like, yeah, this guy's right.

Starting point is 02:54:35 We're actually like these super alpha guys are like not actually like not attractive. Like I would run for the hills. And then a lot of dudes were like, oh, this guy's like he doesn't know what he's talking about. So it's really interesting. Part of what makes it so hard is not only do we have these like effects from pornography and atrophy of the social circuits of our brain, but then we're also like we just have bad information. And in my experience, once you get good information, I'm sure this is true of you too, right? Like once you get good information and once you start applying it, once you start practicing it, you'd be amazed at how much understanding a system can give you mastery over it.

Starting point is 02:55:11 Oh, absolutely. I mean, I can't claim it in the domains that you're so proficient in. But I'll never forget as an undergraduate working in a sleep laboratory over a summer at Stanford. And every afternoon, the entire laboratory would go outside to watch the sunset. And I asked, I never forget, I asked Seiji Nishino. I asked, you know, Emmanuel Mino. These guys discovered the genes that underline narcolepsy and that drugable targets now exist.

Starting point is 02:55:40 Drugs exist. But at the time they said, oh, we do this to entrain our circadian rhythm. And you need to watch the sunrise. So you need to see sun in the first hours of your day. This was mid-90s. And I remember thinking like, how could that be? And I started reading about it. And the cells that regulate this had not yet been.

Starting point is 02:55:58 discovered that was in the early 2000s. Like we didn't even know which retinal neurons mediated this. But these guys knew this from their own lives and their own practices. And I started realizing, oh, there's a mechanism here. And there's more that got discovered. It's like, this changes mood, mental health, metabolism. We now just all take this for granted. But understanding the mechanism behind something tremendously empowered. And I share that story because that wasn't but, you know, 25 years ago or so. So what that means is that the things that we think are kind of out there now that are a little bit woo or a lot woo, I guarantee in 10 years we're going to understand the mechanisms.

Starting point is 02:56:42 They'll be called something different or similar or maybe the same, and people will be putting that to work. And it's going to improve mental health in a major way. In other words, the science catches up eventually, but the practices that work need to be talked about. And that's why, again, I'm so grateful that you're willing to go there. I think the reason there's skepticism,

Starting point is 02:57:03 so I'm a Reiki healer, I'm a crystal healer. I learned block flower remedies. And I don't talk about any of that stuff because I think there's no basis for it. Like, maybe the energy healer. But like, so I've studied all kinds of things, but I think the reason that people are so skeptical

Starting point is 02:57:18 is because there's so much BS out there. So the reason I leaned into yoga and meditation or first, actually primarily because of certain personal experiences I had, but those have the best evidence behind them. And I think the real challenge right now, so the reason I do it this way is because if you look at some of the really powerful techniques from meditation, people can't wait, like at least the people I work with, they can't wait 20 years to elucidate the mechanisms.

Starting point is 02:57:48 You know, when we're talking about Sanculpa and Yoga Nidra, so you can get all the autonomic stuff great. You can get some neuroscience stuff maybe, right? That's kind of iffy. We don't really know. But then some of this other stuff, like I think if people are not achieving what they want, what I encourage them to do is explore and be skeptical. Like don't just believe it, but try it, right?

Starting point is 02:58:11 So like if you're doing cardiac coherence breathing, that's not you should be, right, alternate nostril breathing. You know, do it regularly the way that you were taught and then do it for eight seconds for the inhalation, 32 seconds for the hold. in 16 seconds for the exhalation. Alternating nostrils. Yeah, alternating nostrils. Can I just insert one thing? Some people hear alternating nostril breathing of plugging more nostril than the other, and they'll go, oh my God, this is crazy.

Starting point is 02:58:35 We had the guy who works on olfaction and, frankly, breathing, because the two go hand in hand, Noam Sobel. And he explained that every 90 minutes, around the clock, there's a switch in the dominant nostril through which we breathe. You can observe this, even if you have a deviated septum, but one will be more, air will flow more readily than to the other. And it's the alternation of parasympathetic dominant and sympathetic dominant breathing through the autonomic nervous system. And so he's a physiologist. And when he said that, I thought, okay, this alternate nostril breathing thing, like for many years, frankly, I heard about this from the yogic community.

Starting point is 02:59:13 I thought like, this seems a little wacky. And here he's sitting exactly where you were, where you are now, excuse me. And he said, yeah, there's absolutely a physiological basis for this. When you breathe through one nostril, you get a very different effect on the autonomic nervous system than you do through the other nostril. And this is constantly alternating even if you're not plugging your nostril every 90 minutes from birth until death. There were certain things I would find in the yogic texts. And then I ran into this exact thing where there's, I think they call it an ultradian rhythm. Right.

Starting point is 02:59:42 That's that, oh, this is like a physiologic thing. And so I lean towards the practices that were physiologically sound that there's some evidence for it. Because I was like, I'm not going to waste my time and like nothing's going to happen. I'm going to do the stuff that at least I'll get a physiological benefit. And then as you go into advanced practices, like it's wild. And the really scary thing is that in my mind, there's a lot of this stuff is like scientifically valid, but it's really hard to study. And then the really scary thing, the thing that bothers me the most is that, I think there's a lot of stuff that's true that is not scientifically valid.

Starting point is 03:00:19 I really think it's kind of like beyond what science is capable of measuring, at least now and in the foreseeable future. Spirituality. Spirituality. I think the simplest example of this is a thought. We have no scientific evidence of a thought. The only reason that we know that the amygdala is where we feel anxiety for is because we measure what was going on in the amygdala. And then we asked to the person, what are you feeling when this part of your brain lights up? Well, you may be encouraged to learn that the great Anna Lemke, my colleague at Stanford, right, an MDN psychiatrist like you who wrote dopamine nation has a book.

Starting point is 03:01:00 Amazing work. Amazing work. She's an amazing woman at the level of clinician, human being just all around. And such a pioneer. If you look back, she's been five to 10 years ahead of everybody else in terms of her understanding and beliefs about where we're. going vis-a-vis the neuroscience impact of social media, et cetera. She has a book that's coming out later this year on spirituality. So serious scientists and clinicians like yourself, like Anna, are starting to go there before we have the rat cat monkey bat, then clinical trial

Starting point is 03:01:36 and human work done. So what I love about spirituality personally, it scares me and it frustrates me, but what I like about it is it's the only scientific exploration that no one can do for you. So what I love about it, so I like learning, I'm not really like a researcher, but I'm a very like clinically oriented scientist, I guess you could say, or science oriented clinician. And it's, it's the one thing that you can never like an experience of Shunya. Like we can, you can look at like the brain scan of Shunya potentially, but to experience it, to figure it out, you have to be the scientist. It is the only kind of subjective experience, which is what spirituality is really about, is attaining certain states, is not something that is ever

Starting point is 03:02:23 transmissible. And that's why people are hesitant to talk about it because we sound like crazy people. You know, it's like, if I mentioned this technique can give you inside your past lives, it's like, this guy is insane. But here's the struggle that I had. You're meditating one day, and then you have these memories, you have memories, but they're not from this life. And then it's like, you're like, what the hell is that? And I'm not even saying that past lives exist. I want to be really clear about that.

Starting point is 03:02:53 But for me, it was confusing. It's like really like destabilizing for your understanding of like what the world is. Especially as a psychiatrist. Well, I wasn't a psychiatrist back then. And so then it's like, okay, well, like now we have to figure this out. So if people are like interested in scientific exploration, you know, I think one of the sad things about the world is like, we've explored the surface. We figured it out. But but within every single one of us is a dimension of exploration that only you can do. You know, do you think when we're talking about samska, suncalpa, the unconscious parts of our mind, these liminal states of consciousness, we can hear Andrew talk about it. But if you want to like be there, you have to go there. No one can go there for you. And that's ultimately what I think is like really cool about it. Man, you are one of a kind. I have to say. And I also have to say there's so many things that we didn't cover, but that I would love to have you back to cover at some point soon. But I just want to say you're really one of a kind. I've been, you know, kind of peppering our conversation with this from time to time. But again, the degree.

Starting point is 03:04:09 And the depth to which you're able to think about the practical concerns that people have, the real problems, the real challenges that they face right now. And then offer tools that are grounded in neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and also ancient practices is just, it's spectacular. I have to say this is one of my favorite conversations I've ever had on or off the podcast. I'm totally lit up by it. Yeah. So grateful for what you do. You're an amazing public educator, and I just, I can't thank you enough for coming to talk about these topics. And I know that there's lots more that we could talk about, and we will.

Starting point is 03:04:49 I really want to extend my gratitude. It's been an amazing thing to hear you touch into these things and to offer practical tools about ego dissolution, about distress tolerance, to make that operational awareness, to really define what that is, to talk about unlearning, a situation. a critical component of our health. The Shinya meditation example, and I was able to get moments of it during that instruction, even though it was the first time I've ever done it. So many people are going to benefit from this. And I really want to encourage them to try these practices to explore. Just as you said, there's really no substitute for that self-exploration. Just thank you. Thank you for having me. You know, Andrew, I got to say, you are also one of a kind. I feel like you could still go.

Starting point is 03:05:39 I'm wiped. I mean, I got more hours in me if we need to, but I want to be fair to our audience. No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I can see that you've got more hours in you. And it's interesting. You know, I felt that gravity the moment you came into the room. But yeah, I mean, you're really energetic.

Starting point is 03:05:57 And so it's been awesome being here. And thank you so much. Thank you. Well, the energy is only partially intrinsic. It's also the consequence of what you offered today. And again, this has been thrilling. So please come back again. Sure.

Starting point is 03:06:12 Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Alok Canogia. To learn more about his work, please see the links in the show note captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

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Huberman Lab - Unlearn Negative Thoughts & Behaviors Patterns | Dr. Alok Kanojia

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