Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - One From The Vault - MFTPSE - With Dr. Russel Fulmer - Episode 22

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Dr. Russell Fulmer is an Associate Director at the Counseling Program at the prestigious Northwestern University. He has research interests in Artificial Intelligence and Psycho-dynamic Theory. He lived in the Caribbean for 5 years where he had a counseling practice as a therapist and professor. Dr. Fulmer teaches a course called Psycho-dynamic Counseling. YOUTUBE EPISODE: https://youtu.be/N1c_WPKvHYc ***** Connect With Dr. JC: https://zez.am/makessense Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/makessensepodcast  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcdoornick Instagram: @drjcdoornick #RISEUPWITHDRAGON #PERSONALGROWTH #SELFDISCOVERY @psychodynamictheory #russelfulmer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hmm. Makes sense. Welcome to the Rise Up with Dragon podcast with your host, Dragon. Awesome. Great morning, everybody. So I want to welcome everybody to the Rise Up with Dragon podcast. So let me tee this up because I want to get into the nuts and bolts of this. So today's episode called Motherfather, Teacher, Preacher. Now, I talk about that a lot in my podcast and in my book.

And what I'm referencing is just this idea and this awakening that a lot of the things that we think are not necessarily our thoughts. They might be coming from a program. Every time I say these things, you'll notice that Russell's eyebrows will raise because he'll have an opinion on this. But it's coming from a program that I always like to just recognize has been programmed by our programmers. And I call that mother, father, teacher, preacher.

And I don't look at that as a good or a bad thing, but I've become acutely interesting. in the whole game of consciousness and the very, very small amount of time that we spend within consciousness versus our automatic program, our subconscious. So I'll tell you how this came into play. I submitted one of my chapters that was all about, I won't give too much about it, but it was all about going back and referencing different periods of time that happen in my life or in your life and going back to a time in our life that we perceive traumatic or not that something happened to us. And I've learned how to reprogram my brain and start looking at how it might have happened for us, but also asking what really happened. So that's what that whole chapter is about. So I'm talking and

talking about this with chicken and everybody else. And then I come across this concept of psychodynamic theory. So what's interesting about that, and our guest is about the foremost expert in that, and he probably wouldn't want me to say that, but I've done some research, and he knows a lot about it. And I'll tee him up in a second. But what I realize is one of those interesting moments, and I want to offer this to everybody that's listening, a lot of the things that we're looking at and working through in life, we think that we live in, we're living in this, like, big discovery where we came up with these ideas. But then all of a sudden you come across something or someone that talks about what you've been thinking about and working on in an evidence-based way or in a scientific way and you say, hold on a second.

This psychodynamic theory thing sounds like not only what I've been thinking about, but also something that I think perceptually happened to me. So in my book, you'll see long story, and maybe Russell will accept me as a client on the air today, you'll see that a traumatic event happened to me when I was 11 years old that completely changed the course of my life, which I didn't know until later in life once the course had been changed and I didn't like it. So I've spent the past eight years of my life making breakthroughs by going back and unpacking that and reorganizing it and creating a different, I say a different fantasy. I always think that both sides are fantasies. And I don't know, I'm scared to

ask this question to our guests, but I sometimes take interest in the simulation theory in life. But anyway, that's how I said, oh, my God, I want to have a conversation with this man that teaches this at one of the most prestigious colleges or universities in the world, and that's at Northwestern. So let me tee up our guest here today, because you guys are in for a treat. So this is Dr. Russell Former. He's actually, he's a Ph.D. and he's a head and lead professor of of the psychodynamic theory, which you're about to find out about, at the prestigious Northwestern University.

And then if that's not enough, and we're not excited enough to just get that information, he's also, now, I don't know if you know this, but Dragon's father is a futurist and potentially an alien who's totally into things like artificial intelligence and robotics and all that stuff. Turns out Dr. Fulmer has a very, very big passion and interest as well in artificial intelligence

and how it relates to, this world of psychodynamic theory and therapy. So without further ado, Dr. Russell, first of all, busy, busy guy. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Rise Up with Dragon Show. I appreciate those compliments. Earlier, you put a lot on the table and we could unpackage psychological artificial intelligence or AI. I'm not foremost expert in either, Although, let me just say one thing for now with regards to what you said before. You mentioned a trauma in your life. And although your trauma would be unique to you without a doubt, a lot of people have endured trauma.

In fact, I presume that people have a trauma history until proven otherwise, rather than vice versa. because not everybody has, but a lot of folks, if you assess, if you introspect, if you just look back on your past, you're the recipient or the victim of a traumatic experience. And trauma is a good illustration that the past doesn't die. And often the past is alive and well in the here and now. But we do often operate on kind of like autopilot in an airplane. You know, you think we're the pilot. We think that we're the pilots of our lives and we're navigating the aircraft. But sometimes we've flipped on autopilot and we're still being guided.

We're still moving. But it's not always in a conscious way or maybe a guided or rational way. So the metaphor only goes so far. But I still think it works. more or less. Sometimes we're on autopilot, that's one point and that many people have a trauma history. That's the second point. Well, my Intel processor has just spit out six thousand, five hundred questions that I'll have to get to it another time. But let's, let's, for the, for the sake of the listeners and the audience, one of the things that I love is whenever I have a guest,

people are always very interested in what guests, you know, do. But they're more interested, my listeners are more interested in unpacking the why behind it. So if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, leading up to where you're at right now as an educator and a researcher in this field, a little bit of your backstory about how this came to fruition. I know that you lived for five years in the Caribbean. So I'd love to hear just a little bit of how you came to fall in love, take interest in this, to the point where you're now educating other people. And then after that, I would love just a basic, you know, explanation of what the psychodynamic theory is. Sure.

It's a long story and I will try to condense it. Like many of your listeners, I'm sure, I simply have an interest in us and that why question. It's a million dollar question. Why do we do what we do? And we can approach it in myriad ways. The researcher in me would say this. Imagine a pie. and why, fill in the blank, why am I this way, why is this happening?

Usually, whatever you think it is constitutes one piece of that pie. It might be a big piece, but even a big piece is going to comprise a small amount of the total variance. So it's complicated. We look for simplicity. We look for that one thing, but we're complicated creatures. And the mind is as well. The mind is kind of like a microcosm of life. and what's happening out there is going on in here with us, right?

We know conflict. We know it well. Most of us know more what it feels like to be ambivalent or melancholic or have envy or just be at odds than we do inner peace. And I often say, if you are the person who's reached that, I'm all ears. But most of us are a work in progress. And we struggle in an intracycic way. But that's not getting at your question.

My story is I started college as an undecided, undecided, with my major. I fell in love with psychology because of why. I wanted to get to know myself and the human condition better. Fast forward, mainly through intuition, frankly, and it felt like the thing to do, and I was willing and able. I continued and got my master's in doctorate later on. Yes, I was able to spend some time overseas. in medical education, and I also was a practicing therapist there in a multicultural rich environment, by the way.

We're in the Caribbean, were you? Tremendous learning. I spent time on two islands in the Caribbean. One is called Saba, S-A-B-A-S-B-A-S-B-A-B, and the other is Nevis, part of the St. Kitts and Nevis Federation. And my burgeoning interest in psychodynamics took root there, and I was able to expand and capitalize on it more through some other academic positions that follow. So that's the short version. So your initial interest in, because I actually, so I wanted to be a doctor and I got some

great advice from my mentor when I went to college to do my, you know, pre-rex and stuff like that. He said, listen, you could be the greatest doctor in the world, but if you don't understand people, you won't help anybody. So I just, I made a decision when I went to college, to actually double major in bio and psych. And what's interesting is that here I am now, I don't practice as a doctor anymore, and I work as a coach. And all I do is work with people and dissecting

and helping them unpack and free themselves up. So I love that. And I love what you said about how everybody has trauma. And I love that visual of the pie. You know, what a great way to look at. Sometimes we only look at this, that one slice of the pie. Sometimes we don't want to look at the other slices. We crave just one more follow-up, if you may. We seem to crave definitive answers,

preferably a simple one that we've already decided ahead of time must be true. And we also have a tendency to dichotomize. This is also known as polarizing, black and white thinking. It's either this or it's nothing. And in actuality, in many cases, you know, never said ever, in many cases things are a little more nuanced and layered and multifactorial. And the answer is just complex. And it can't be answered with much validity by saying, this is it. That's it. Nothing else.

Because after all, we are biological creatures and the neuroscience and the genetics matter. They're psychological creatures and our individuality and cognitive processes matter. We are sociocultures and our sociocultural context. That's all relevant, too. And when that synthesizes, you know, that comprises a large chunk of us, but that looks different for everyone. And under each one of those three realms, biopsychosocial, in other words, there's a lot there.

So that makes things sometimes messy and not to keep saying the same word, but sometimes rather complex. And I think one of my passions is, you know, the opposite of complexity and a mess would be just the idea of gaining clarity. And I think that there's also a decision in that. You know, some people don't want to unpack something and get clarity. We talk a lot about how, I mean, I was having this conversation this morning that there are certain things in my life.

I mean, here I am fully engaged and fully open to learn, yet still recognizing every now and then that there are things that happened in my childhood that I was just kind of hoping would no longer exist in my mind. Fascinating. So just to the layperson, give us a basic explanation or a lot of people are going to want to go research this and learn more about it because there's so many nuggets in it, just the basics of what psychodynamic theory is. Sure. I'll try to explain in part by some examples. So psychodynamic, is some would consider modern manifestation of old school psychoanalysis. So my best guess is that many folks have heard of Sigmund Freud,

and you may have an image in your mind of the bearded man smoking a pipe, setting in a chair with you lying on a couch and pouring your heart out. It's not that clients can't lie on a couch today, but that is a somewhat archaic notion, image anyway. And for some, they believe that psychoanalysis is stuck in the Victorian era. Well, it's not 1899 anymore. And many of us view Freud as a historical figure. And the notion, if we are still Freudian, this comes up a lot.

I think one of the true experts in our field, his name is Jonathan Shedler, he put it, to summarize, he put it this way, in some ways, no and other ways, yes, we are Freudian. Freud got some things started that we take for granted today. Like, the childhood does have an impact on adulthood, psychosomatic, even regularly scheduled appointments, talk therapy that some of your woe may be alleviated in part by way of processing. He wasn't always the originator, but he certainly enhanced these concepts, these ideas. is. Today, psychodynamic, psycho of the mind, for something to be dynamic, it's not static. So it's in motion. So it's like the mind in motion. And you'll note sometimes competing factions

of the mind. So we have the topography of the mind. And a lot of this relates to awareness. What are we aware of right now? You're aware of listening to me or listeners maybe of maybe listening to me, maybe they've tuned us out. That's our waking consciousness. We can easily summons up, what did you have for breakfast today? What did you do last night? You might not be thinking about it, but you can bring it into awareness. Is that it?

What about those things that happened to us that are harder to bring up into our waking consciousness? Do they exist? Are they setting in a corner of the mind twiddling their thumbs? As we know from trauma history, that's usually. not the case that they're exerting an influence, albeit behind the seams, and they can be responsible for a lot of things, like what we're thinking, what we're feeling, our relational patterns, sometimes our choice of occupation. If we take this far enough, it can provide a pretty

thorough explanation for a lot of what we do. So psychodynamics is an attempt to help people understand themselves. Their narrative to gain ultimately some emotional insight, which is different from just knowing something. There's people, I know I do this, I shouldn't do it, but that's different from emotional insight. An A name for this is in therapy, a corrective emotional experience. It's hard to make changes. That's the reality. No book, no self-help book, me, or anyone else usually can make people just make a change like that because most people we've lived with our stuff with our issues for years or decades right it's it's pretty deep-seated and to think that it's all going to just magically go away in a grand epiphany I think is is just not realistic so anyway

I think there can be inherent value in understanding this is one reason why I'm just doing this, why my circumstances are what they are. And the psychodynamic approach excels in that. It excels in the art of understanding. I was just envisioning because I have my own opinion about personal growth and it sounds like we're in alignment. But I'm just imagining the person that, and I've been that person that goes to like, you know, a Tony Robbins event or something. And what a master, you know, but that moment where they come out and they have this motivation and belief system and clarity, and it's all been rewired for just flawless, flowing success. Now, what I'm thinking is, is that what they achieved in that event was just to focus on the one

slice of the pie. You know, maybe I don't want to be a critic because who am I to say? If something's worked for someone, so long as it's ethical, I suppose, then great. I think what sometimes happens is that envision, there's a weed. Okay. The weed is our problem. You know, weeds grow in our yard and I think sometimes they grow in our mind. This is a little cliche, but I think it drives the point home that we have the weed and we read this book or we get this insight and like one leaf of the weed or one piece of it gets sniffed off. However, a bigger part remains, including that root system. And even if you do cut it off, it might pop up again. You know, they can be like dandelions, hard to get rid of.

I don't claim to have a magical solution to all of this. It's just in my experience, many of our issues do take root, and it's hard. And we're a work in progress. And we have a tendency to regress to that mean, that baseline behavior. So sometimes we'll make some gains kind of two steps forward, but then we'll take a step back or than three steps back. And that's the human condition. If there was one way from Tony Robbins to Sigmund Freud to anybody else, to make us all reach enlightenment and all perfect, I suppose, that would have been highlighted

and broadcasted a long time ago. So the psychodynamic system or approach theory is one way that works for some. So I'm going to go a little deep here. I'm going to selfishly grab some stuff from you here. So what I'm thinking, because what I perceive, and I think a lot of people can grasp this, that one of our biggest challenges in life is this whole, concept of the mismanagement of emotions and things. I call them happenings. If a happening, something happens or someone happens in your life and you respond effectively and you continue to

move forward to whatever it is that you want, I consider that a forward moving vehicle. You know, I think a lot of people are trying to get from point A to point B in a rocking chair. So sometimes whether it is actually reality or fantasy, as long as somebody is moving forward, and enjoying their life experience and not harming others, I'm all for it. I heard this quote from a great author Eckhart Tolle one time. And this was a big shift for me. He said, the first step to end suffering is the acknowledgement that you are. You can't end something without knowing that it's actually happening.

So what that gave rise to for me, and I'd love you to talk a little bit about this, because my biggest fascination, and I've gone pretty deep down the rabbit hole with this, is this just whole concept of subconscious versus conscious, and we can talk about it, but no scientist has ever discovered where it actually exists. Does it exist in this wet piece of meat in our skull? Right now, the latest stuff that I've found is that they think it exists in a field outside, but I think, correct me, I'd love you, hear your opinion,

I think one of our greatest challenges that stands in the way of that forward-moving process is just the ability to become conscious of something, which gives rise to potential forward movement. So I would assume that as a therapist, isn't that sort of what you're guiding people to do, to just begin by making themselves aware of something? Could be, yeah. Hedging my vents a little bit here,

because in my field, the answer is it depends so often. In part, I think what you're saying, Dragon is making the unconscious conscious. You have something to work with. And that could be. That can be, I should say, a goal. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just say yeah. I'll just say, yeah, that can be a goal.

That can be a goal. One of the things, and I can tell you from experience, and I'm an open book, but one of the biggest epiphanies I ever had, and I know everybody has this, is that when I was 11 years old, And there was, and I won't go too far into it. I'm open to it, but just because of time, a traumatic event happened where, unbeknownst to my parents, on my 11th birthday, I walked in the house to a scene where my parents were getting divorced on my birthday. And they had forgotten about my birthday. So you can imagine from that day forward, I created a, I started to rewrite my story.

I was a victim. I've been abandoned and all that stuff. which I didn't know. I think my response that day was, okay, I'm going to go play with my friends, right? And I didn't realize what that had done until I started to notice a pattern that I didn't like my birthday. I would avoid my birthday. I would pretend it wasn't happening. If people gave me presents, I would feel guilty and all that stuff. So I got to a point where in my life, where I always refer to this part of my life as the doc ages. It was a little too much for me. It was that frightening, overwomen. well, and I went for the first time in my life to see a therapist. And this is in my 20s. And I was in bad shape. And thank God, somebody led me to this person. I don't even remember her name because now that I'm achieving success, I just want to go buy her a car. So I just saw her one day and she was the one that helped me connect. What else was going on on my birthday? Never knew it. And once I made that connection, that day, because I was in bad shape. And I think

everybody listening knows what it's like to be in bad shape. I think everybody kind of has tasted that at some part in their life. But as soon as I made that connection, Doc, in my book, I call it a snap. It's like everything came into clarity and I began this road to freedom and success and fulfillment and also helping other people. Is it that powerful? Because I would assume, and you're going to say it depends. But is it that powerful when a human brain makes a connection that could potentially release them from something? Well, you're a testament that it can be. Yeah, that was a gripping story. Yeah. So it might depend on the person true. It's not as if everyone who would become aware of that event would necessarily make, I'll use the word progress that you did, it's fair to say,

but it can happen because you just, you just shared with us that it can. Yeah, sometimes events can occur and nudge us or set us off on one trajectory and we'll do things like repress it or even deny that it happened for sometimes a long period of And we do it. Why do we do it? Because we have to. We do what we have to to survive and to cope. And if there's too much distress on the mind, the mind can fragment. It can crack. And sometimes we're in just survival mode. And we do it. We have to to keep to make ends meet. We know what that's like. Maybe I'm an external environmental. You know, I work a lot because I need a paycheck. Well, the mind copes and defends it. itself accordingly as well. And if it's too much to handle what that means, what I just saw, what that entails, what that could mean for me. You know, the mind's going to do what it has to do to not crack. It's like a system, you know, if you apply enough force to a building, to a car, whatever, what's going to happen to it? Look at the mind that way. So sometimes it'll just

drag, reach up and drag it out of consciousness, you know, but even though it does that, it doesn't mean that that memory or that even trauma is setting idly in the corner. It's still probably operating, albeit behind the scenes. And for you, it sounds like later, ah, now I'm more prepared to process this, address it. I know what led me this way and was responsible. And that's light bulb moment for me. And it was it was productive. Yeah, that was that was what I, what I refer to as the rise of the.

dragon. You know, the dragon is this mythical creature that most people don't have any evidence exists, but all of a sudden, when you come into this new reality of becoming someone thinking like someone that you previously did know exists, I call that a dragon. So somebody asked me the other day, like, so what is the purpose of dragon? And I said, I think the dragon is here to defend all the people that are stuck in the dark. And I'm trying to lead people to the light. You just teed this up perfectly. And I love this. And I heard you speak about this before. Talk a little bit about defense mechanisms.

What I love about this concept of defense mechanisms is a defense mechanism, when you hear that, it sounds like you're, it could be perceived as a good or a bad thing. But what's interesting about defense mechanisms is whether you think you're doing something productive or in a negative fashion, proactive or reactive, you always have a defense mechanism. You know, I would assume that if I wake up and I'm stressed out and I go to the gym and I drink water and I eat healthy food, that's a defense mechanism as well. Talk a little bit about it because I think it's important for everybody to recognize and identify potentially. Well, I shouldn't say it's important. It might be important to the individual. I'm starting to learn that to identify their defense

mechanisms. I identify them all day long and I get to know myself better. Yeah. So, you have a defensive process that the mind uses to shield itself from something that's unacceptable to it or just too much. So it could be like anxiety or shame. I'll bet some under here's an underrated one. We talk a lot about anxiety or depression and rightfully so. But I'll bet a lot of your listeners know the sting of shame, being shamed, feeling guilty about. And so what are your options for the mind when that is there. You can set with it, you know, 100%, here it is, and I'm just going to be with it, or, and often unconsciously, the mind will shield itself from these painful events or emotions. And it defends itself from the pain that is anger or that is

guilt or humiliation. And we can call these our defensive defense mechanism. And we are really creative in the ways that we will use to defend ourselves against them. So we'll do things like we'll project onto others. You are the one who is feeling less than. It's not me, right? So I'm kind of putting that, putting that onto you. When we're kids, when we're during our upbringing, here's the inverse of projection. It's introjection.

We will interject or bring into our constitution the voice and message of others. So sometimes as an adult, you will catch someone saying, my son just like my mom, saying that. Or that's what my dad always does. I shouldn't be doing that. And well, that's because it really is. You've kind of incorporated the voice or the way, the message of them from way back when, your caregiver, your parent, whoever, and then it becomes kind of infused within your own worldview and your psyche and your mind. Therefore, later, you're probably going to at least

sometimes offer that message. But think about what that interjected message has done potentially to your self-esteem, your self-perception, your self-epicacy. So we would say, with the old, you know, I'm just like my mom here. Well, yeah, you really are, you know, and you use the defense of interjection when growing up, say, to make that come about. Is there a problem with it? Well, it might be. Every defense has a cost. So look at it this way. A less pricey defense would be, I'm feeling stressed. I'm going to go to the gym for a while. I'm going to choose not to think about this. I'm going to suppress it. So suppression is one. That might be a less costly one.

A more costly could be, say the interjection example, and I still have this voice that I'm terrible and I'm not good enough and I was criticized a lot growing up and it's still a part of me. And that's enacted a pretty hefty price for you, probably. So is that bad? Well, you can be the judge of that, but it's probably stopping you from becoming your authentic self, dare I say? You know, whoever you are right now, piffits heavily infiltrated by so many people from the past,

maybe abusers, maybe people who traumatized you, then you're still playing that out. And that's, you could argue, it's not you. We can talk about who you are right here and now and who you want to be, but it's probably not that. So, yeah, they can be more good, and they can be more bad. Or you might say more or less costly. I love anybody that are open. say, well, maybe so, maybe not. You know, I think that's a wonderful way to live life.

So we're... Humility, and I'm sorry to cut you off there, but how can I really know what's best for you, right? So I think, you know, if you and I or any two people are going to work together, it's often better as a collaborative endeavor, bouncing ideas, or here's a possibility, there's an hypothesis, and the other person, oh, maybe, or I'm going to reject that for now, rather than a paternalistic, do this because I say so. You have to be pretty damn smug to think that. You know, to think that I know your life and what's better for you than you do.

Maybe I can help you with some insight and we can work together. But the whole because I therefore thou thing is not something that I like to prescribe to. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to be on my high horse. I would have my moments like everybody else. But I do my best to not do that. I'll put it that way. I think it was Descartes that said,

I think therefore I am. So I always like, whenever I hear someone say something, I can see that you think that. So I don't know if you've ever gotten into some of the work by this amazing man, Jim Dethmer, who talks about 15 commitments of conscious leadership. And his way of explaining is you're either above or below the line. And just to put it in words, have you ever heard of his work? No. And it's just another way of explaining a lot of the stuff that you're talking about. Just to give you an idea, if you're reacting with the id part of your ego, that would be below the line. If you're acting with your super ego, it would be more above the line, right? And then let's call the line ego.

But what's interesting is one of the traits of somebody that is below the line, first of all, they're unconscious that they are. It's not good or bad to be above or below the line. it's unhealthy if you don't even know, right, is that they play the role either of the victim, the villain, or the hero. And what's interesting, and this is what I want to hit, I find a lot of people, my listeners included, whenever they hear something and we're going to get feedback from this too, a lot of people like to be right.

And they also like to play the role of the hero and give their impression, but what they don't know is a lot of the things that they say have exclamation points at the end of them. And they're unconscious to that. How do I know? I was one of them. And sometimes I am as well.

Get off of my high horse. So what do you have to say? I just love to speak a little bit on how human beings, and I would assume in a therapy session, somebody comes to you for help and has a tendency of telling you what their problem is and what they need to do. And you probably just say,

so that role of needing to be right, isn't that a defense mechanism in itself? of hiding a truth about yourself. Like I always found that if my kids were like wrestling in like in a department store and a clothing store, I would get so angry at them. And then I realize it's because I'm the one that taught them how to do that. You know? So can you speak a little bit about that?

Because once again, the moment that I figured out that I was choosing to be right versus kind or that I was constantly trying to fix things but not acknowledge my own. situation that was a freeing moment for me I started listening more yeah who doesn't want to be right right there's a number of things including kind of gives you a quick fix it's almost like become like a drug like aha gotcha you know and I approve and I feel better about myself but it's usually fleeting and then you know you need it again you need to convince someone else that you're right So we resort down to that our baseline behavior, our baseline cognitive processes, self-esteem level, and such.

Yeah, I don't want to begrudge anyone. You know, I could do this too. Again, who doesn't want to be right? You could examine your motive for this. And here's a model to use for that. Then I'm going to have to oversimplify it if you'll bear with me. But there's something called the three V&E schools drawing from my theory here. And overarchingly, I could say that we seem to fit in one of the three.

So am I really after pleasure or survival? And that's at root. That's the core of one doing this. Am I really after power and control? Am I really after meaning? because I feel purposeless right now. If your core is one of those three, it's probably going to have some type of outward manifestation. For example, a lot of folks are in the second category of control.

And what's inversely correlated with being in control? Anxiety. If you feel anxious, then you do things like, well, what if, what if? Or you should do that. You shouldn't do that. and people will compensate for their anxiety by wanting to control it. You have complete control over self and environment that everything is known, right? Everything is known and I have power over it and I feel a little bit better.

Of course, the real world is not that way. You can't have control over everything. And sometimes people will compensate by way of becoming a perfectionist here or they will, oh, they'll, like, caustic, sharp tongue, don't get to criticize everything. You do because really there's inner turmoil going on with me, so I've displaced some of that onto you.

So anyway, as a way to understand some of it, ask yourself what your motive is and how it goes back to one of your issues for a lack of a better word. usually does. It could be some learned behavior too. To your point, dragging about your kids, well, they learned it from me. Yeah, you know, we do that. We learn from others. It's learned behavior. Then we incorporate that and that becomes our way. But why am I doing what I'm doing? Is it really a matter of survival and or power and control and or meaning in the search for meaning or purposelessness?

and I don't have meaning, right? That can lead to a bunch of stuff too. And I don't want to say each category exists in a vacuum. It could be a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But according to one model anyway, it's often one of them at core, the nucleus anyway, of why it's happening. You're familiar with neuroplasticity? So what is your opinion on our ability to rewire our brains?

It doesn't have to be in a neuroplastic way, but I would assume they're both one and the same. because I currently feel like a different person. After all this work that I've put in, I see differently. I mean, I still am completely familiar with my past and I become open to it and I work it, but in a forward moving fashion. What ability does the human brain have to actually rewire itself and create a new reality? Because artificial intelligence might play into that. And we were talking about Elon Musk chipping brains and stuff like that.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about... It's a big question. Suffice it to say, I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'm grateful for neuroplasticity. And there's the neuroplasticity of the brain, and then there's the felt experience of the mind and the interplay between the mind and the brain

is a lengthy discussion or debate or philosophical and that's a whole other other thing. I'll say this, Dragon, suffice it to say that I've borne witness to some just miraculous abilities of people to make profound changes in their lives. And undoubtedly, this would show up in the brain, okay? But at the time, they're much more interested in their felt experience of it. Some people who have gone through a living hell, and some people do, can turn their life around, can just live a much more fulfilling and enriched life by most of them have done the work, you know, though. You know, they've gone there. They've, they've inspected, they've seen their therapists or sometimes through other means as well.

but they've found a way to become empowered. They've empowered, and they've gone up nudge. And I would think that if the brain didn't have the ability to do this, to rewire, as you say, or to make corrections, just change. Then I suppose what happened to us when we were seven and had that traumatic experience, we would be set for life and, you know, out of luck. But it is possible. There's hope there. And it's a wonderful and beautiful thing.

when it happens and it certainly can happen. I've seen it. I love it. Just like we were, we always heard, choose your poison. I think in the same life, we could say, choose your fantasy, you know, choose whatever, whatever reality you would like to see. I mean, I do think that we have the ability to do it. I choose it every day. You know, there's an old saying, rule your thoughts, or they will rule you, or rule your mind, or it will rule you. And that's easier said than done. But when you can get to a point where you are in control of your mind and your thoughts and emotions, then that's a much different, much different, sorry, place, space to be in as opposed to being under the control of something that seems like is out of your control.

So a lot does go back to control using the three V&E schools there. Again, a lot is about control or those perceived control and power. So we're going to, what I'm going to do is in the podcast, because this will load as a podcast, but also the video reel. Dr. Russell gave me a link that I will share with you where you can go and learn more about this. It was interesting when I spoke to him, I said, hey, what would be an action step after? And he says, oh, well, if anybody wants to have a conversation with me, just let me know.

And I go, no, we can't do that. There's too many people. So, and he's also, he's recently. but he's not actually in need of anything right now. He actually legitimately loves to just help people. So the way he's going to help you is he's going to direct you somewhere where you can dive deeper into this. And I'm sure with the advent of technologies, if you really wanted to find Dr. Russell former, you'll find him. But what I would love to do is maybe have him do a follow up at some other time. And if you could hang out, do you have a couple more minutes?

I do. Okay, cool. I just want to see if anybody in Clubhouse. So if anybody wants to jump into the Clubhouse room, at Makes Sense, you can ask an actual question because we're going to stop the recording. I do have to give my father-in-law, Johann Staplesberg, a shout out, because I see that he's here live. What an amazing individual this man is. Just giving him that props.

Love that guy. Miss my South African family. Excited for the pandemic to end and open up the skies. Dr. Russell, thank you so much for this. You've really changed the directory or trajectory of my book because you've made it even clearer to me some of these things that I've been talking about and I just love that freeing feeling. So I, for one, once again, have created the grounds for change again

and I just love that. I really appreciate it. I'm going to be following up with your, you because just such a fascinating conversation. So we'll close out now and we'll be in the, I see people are joining us in Clubhouse. So Dr. Russell, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invitation.