Something You Should Know - Do We Really Have Free Will? & How to Handle Rejection Better

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Starting point is 00:00:45 If you want to say it was free will that you decided to floss your upper teeth before your lower ones rather than the other way around, go for it. Nonetheless, I think it is perfectly fair to say that what we call free will is the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. Also, is there any disadvantage to being an only child and why rejection hurts so much and how to handle it better? I think it's really important to know and if it's just if it's rejection or any of the other feelings we've talked about, that emotions, they rise up and they go down on their own. Even in a moment where something feels

Starting point is 00:01:22 so big you're never going to get through it, that you will get through it. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

Starting point is 00:02:02 She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Starting point is 00:02:33 There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. You know what's really fun for me is sometimes advertisers who end up sponsoring this podcast get here because someone who works for that company is a listener of this podcast and they drop me an email and say, you

Starting point is 00:03:13 know, we'd be curious to know what it takes to advertise on your podcast. And I love when that happens because as you may have heard, podcast advertising has really taken off because it's very effective. And so if you have a company that you think might want to advertise on this podcast, feel free to drop me a line. We'll send you the information. First up today, you ever notice that when people are stressed out, maybe you do this, you tend to rub your forehead. You also do it when you're worried or frustrated. And as it turns out, it's a proven way to relieve tension and even lower blood pressure. For most of us, rubbing your head is a brief natural reflex,

Starting point is 00:03:55 and we may not even be aware that we're doing it, but it turns out we should probably do more of it. Researchers found that 15 minutes of massage to your face and head can do wonders for tension relief, focus, and productivity. Spend a few minutes in key spots, such as massaging the temples, scratching the scalp, and giving the forehead and brow area some extra attention. It's a great excuse for a well-deserved break, and you'll be more productive when you come back from that break. And that is something you should know. What causes people, you and me and everybody else, what causes us to behave the way we do?

Starting point is 00:04:40 When we act a certain way, is it choice? Is it free will? Or are other forces directing our behavior? And if that's true, if other forces are directing our behavior, imagine the implications for things like criminal behavior. Do you really have a say in what you do or not? Well, you're about to hear a very different and interesting theory on why we act the way we do from Robert Sapolsky. Robert is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and author of several books, including his latest, which is called Behave, The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Hi, Professor. Welcome. Oh, thanks for having me on.

Starting point is 00:05:28 You bet. Well, I would like to believe, and I think a lot of people believe, that behavior is a choice, that we are responsible for what we do, we are responsible for the consequences of what we do, and that behavior is a matter of free will. So why is that wrong? The main thing that's come out of the last couple of centuries of people studying what biology has to do with behavior is over and over getting people to stop in their tracks and say, whoa, I had no idea that had anything to do with behavior. I had no idea my upbringing, hormones, culture, my genes, my fetal life, etc. And after a while, the whole

Starting point is 00:06:16 idea of free will begins to feel just a little bit suspect. But how can that be? I mean, I'm raising my right arm right now because I want to. Not because you told me to, not because you made me, not because of my upbringing, not because of anything other than my choice to raise my right arm, which is now starting to feel a little foolish, raising my right arm, but it is my choice to do so. It's not, though, in that, for example, if you were raised in a culture where you didn't have a mindset of being skeptical and challenging, that wouldn't have occurred to you. It's to be something to do to reaffirm the notion of free will. If you had certain elevated levels of stress hormones in your bloodstream today, you may have been distracted and not paying attention to what I said, and thus you wouldn't have raised your arm, etc., etc. And if I'm trying to be polite and be a good house guest. What I would say is, if you want to believe in free will, it's clear there's far less of it than people used to think.

Starting point is 00:07:32 And it's in less and less interesting places. And at the end of the day, if you want to say it was free will that you decided to floss your upper teeth before your lower ones rather than the other way around, go for it. Nonetheless, basically, I think it is perfectly fair to say that what we call free will is the biology that hasn't been discovered yet. If it's not free will that I floss my upper teeth before my lower teeth what is it it's a billion biological influences okay so you do a behavior like flossing your upper teeth before your lower ones

Starting point is 00:08:14 and that is a consequence of what went on in your brain one second before but what went on in those neurons one second before was influenced by the sensory stuff going on in the world around you seconds to minutes before. And your sensitivity to those influences were shaped by your hormone levels in the previous hours to days. And how well they affected your brain was shaped by the neuroplasticity in your brain over previous months. And then before you know it, we're back to adolescence and childhood and what your fetal environment was like and your genes and culture and evolution. And in all those cases, they're making a difference.

Starting point is 00:09:00 And the best way to show that is when you have an experimental manipulation in someone, you manipulate something in their biological environment, and they don't know it, and they behave differently. And after the fact, they would say, well, that was free will, obviously. And you know, experimentally, that's not the case. Great, great example of this. I love this study. You sit people down, and you have them fill out a questionnaire about their political views, social issues, economic, geopolitical, whatever.

Starting point is 00:09:37 And it turns out, if people are sitting in a room where there's a terrible smell from some garbage can sitting in a room where there's a terrible smell from some like garbage can sitting in the corner, on the average, it makes people more socially conservative. They're more likely to decide that somebody else's social practice that's different and alien from theirs is wrong rather than just different. It does nothing to your politics about economics or geopolitics or any such thing. Simply by having subliminally a bad smell making you feel slightly disgusted,

Starting point is 00:10:14 people are more likely to judge something different as being wrong. If you get people and they're hungry, they become less generous in economic games. They're more likely to cheat. If you raise their blood glucose levels, you reverse the effect. Just endless examples of that where there's stuff going on shaping our behavior, and we haven't a clue that that stuff's happening. And afterward, we say, well, good for me. That was my free will.

Starting point is 00:10:51 But it seems to me those things you just described, having a smelly garbage can or the other things, are influences on behavior. That's different than predetermining someone's behavior. They may be more likely to do something because of all the influences in their environment, but it doesn't mean they still ultimately did not choose to do that behavior. And maybe this is just the semantics, but in any event, so what? I mean, what do we do with all of this? Well, that's a good question.

Starting point is 00:11:21 I spend all my time thinking about it these days. And the answer is, I don't know. If people actually went and started believing that there's next to no free will, let alone that there is no free will whatsoever, I haven't a clue what the world is the domain where it has to impact things the most and the fastest is the world where we judge behavior harshly. And that's the criminal justice system. That's the whole notion that words like evil and responsibility and volition are compatible with 21st century brain science. And they're not.

Starting point is 00:12:07 I mean, there's one example of that. So there's this part of the brain, the frontal cortex. It's like the coolest part of the brain. We've got more of it than any other species. What does the frontal cortex do? It makes you do the right thing when that's the harder thing to do. Gratification, postponement, long-term planning, impulse control, executive function, all these great sorts of things. And if you damage somebody's frontal cortex, you produce somebody who knows the difference between right and wrong. And nonetheless,

Starting point is 00:12:37 they can't regulate their behavior at that critical juncture. They're going to make the wrong choice every time. And remarkably, about 25% of the men on death row in this country have a history of concussive head trauma to their frontal cortex. And you get somebody in that situation, and you're not talking about evil, you're talking about like a car whose brakes don't work very well. Well, you're right. That would certainly make a very different world because what you just said is not what most people believe, and perhaps more importantly, it's not what people want to believe.

Starting point is 00:13:14 And it's intuitively very, very tough because we are trained, particularly in a culture as individualist as our own, that we've got a whole lot of faith in internal loci of control and being the captains of our fate. And we sure don't like the idea that we are biological organisms. And the weird thing is, you know, if it's going to be hard to accept that our worst behaviors are just biological,

Starting point is 00:13:45 I suspect it's going to be even harder for us to accept that our best ones are as well. I'm speaking today with Robert Sapolsky. He is a professor of biology at Stanford University and author of the book, Behave, The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Contained herein are the heresies of red off punt wine erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator join me as i study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving god and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Redolf Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world,

Starting point is 00:14:35 looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Starting point is 00:15:15 Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Robert, in the case of someone who makes bad choices because their frontal cortex is damaged, well, they don't make bad choices all the time. Sometimes they make good choices,

Starting point is 00:15:46 good decisions. They behave themselves well. So why? Why aren't they misbehaving all the time if this is so biologically programmed? Great. Okay, so you get somebody with damage to their frontal cortex, and if anybody cares about this minutia, a sub-area of it called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. And then you've got somebody who's like your textbook case of, I know the difference between right and wrong, but they can't regulate. They regulate their behavior just fine in some circumstances. People with damage there can sit and give you fabulous, prudent advice about how

Starting point is 00:16:27 you should go about living your life and what moral decisions you should make, but get them in a circumstance when they're emotionally aroused, where they're stressed, where they're tired, where they're hungry, where they're frazzled in some way, and the limited frontal capacity that makes them okay at giving you dispassionate advice goes out the window at that point. In other words, brain regions work better when they're not being stressed. And this is a part of the brain that's a great example of that. And thus, you get people who can have perfectly appropriate behavior in one setting, and because of their biological constraints, it goes out the window in the others. I mean, to take a very nuts and bolts example of it, you get somebody with a dementia, like Alzheimer's, if it's not too serious,

Starting point is 00:17:19 in the morning they can tell you their name, their grandkids' names, what decade it is, whatever, and you get them late in the day and they can't tell you any of those things, something called a sundowner effect. So you say, aha, some of the time they know the name of their grandchildren. So when they say they don't remember the names, they're choosing not to because some of the time they can. No, the answer is blood glucose levels change over the course of the day.

Starting point is 00:17:48 And by the end of the day, like you've got a brain that doesn't work very well, that's not getting as much energy as it does in the morning. And thus that challenging task that you could just barely pull off at breakfast, the name of your grandkids, you can't do in the evening. So what does this do to the concept of personal responsibility? It sounds like you're saying there is no such thing. Yeah, and this is where people get all agitated and say, how's the world supposed to function?

Starting point is 00:18:19 And this is where my answer is, I have no idea. But what I take some comfort from is we've already shown societally that we could handle this in at least one domain where we could look at abnormal human behavior and subtract out any notion of responsibility or volition and replace it entirely with biology and get the word punishment completely out of the equation and things still work okay and society hasn't fallen apart. And the example that I always come back to is epilepsy. 500 years ago, if you had an epileptic seizure, the best of European science had an explanation for what causes seizures, which is you're in cahoots with Satan. And the medical intervention was

Starting point is 00:19:12 absolutely obvious. They burned you at the stake. And somewhere along the way, people figured out, ah, it's not demonic possession. It's a neurological disease. And these days, if somebody from out of nowhere with no prior history suddenly has a seizure, and in the process, while they're driving a car, they hit somebody, it's tragic, it's horrible, but no one says this person was evil. Do you do nothing about it? not if the seizures can't be controlled the person shouldn't drive and every state has laws as to how long you have to be seizure free to be able to get your driver's license back but when the person's license is temporarily revoked nobody sits there and says aha justice is served but epilepsy is involuntary murder is is not. Exactly. But 500 years ago, it wasn't. 500 years ago, somebody made the choice to align themselves with Satan. And this is how you can tell they have a seizure. And thus, they made the choice. They made that choice. Nobody told them to go like hang out with Satan. And it's their own damn fault when we burn them at the stake. And somewhere along the way, 100, 200 years ago, most people in westernized societies learned instead to say, Ah, it's a disease. 50 years ago, more like 60 now, if somebody had schizophrenia, like the parents of this teenager

Starting point is 00:20:47 asked the doctors, what caused this? What caused this? The answer then that every wise psychiatrist would have told you was, you caused it. You were a lousy mother. You mothered in a style that's called schizophrenogenic mothering. You generated schizophrenia in your child. It's your fault. And somewhere in the 1950s, people learned, oh, no, it's actually a biochemical disorder. In the 1960s, if you had a kid who wasn't learning well at school, there were all sorts of technical terms that might be invoked. They were lazy. They were unmotivated. And then biology taught us that sometimes there's little cortical malformations in the brains of some kids, and they reverse letters or they invert them, and we now call this dyslexia. Oh, they're not choosing to be unmotivated. It's because of some subtle screwy biology we had never heard of before 10 years ago. And all that's happened is we learn more and more of that stuff. But I think the flaw in your argument, though, is that, yes, we were wrong about epilepsy and schizophrenia and dyslexia. You can't make the jump that because

Starting point is 00:22:01 we were wrong about those things, we must be wrong about everything else. You've got to prove those individual things. And for you to say that because we were wrong about dyslexia, that we must be wrong about murder, bank robbery, and kidnapping, you can't make that claim. I mean, that's going to take a big leap of faith to get people to believe that. It's going to be a huge leap. And what we often have to remember is people who were no less smart and no less empathic and no less subtle and concerned and all these great things we attribute to ourselves, at some point in the past, had a completely different interpretation. It's heartbreaking, but that damn kid,

Starting point is 00:22:52 just as lazy as hell, and if they just got it together, they would learn to read. It's heartbreaking to have to take their mother away and burn her at the stake, but she chose to become a witch and be demonic. And, you know, people 500 years from now and probably 50 years from now will look back at us these days and say, my God, the things they didn't know about then, and the decisions that they made based on that, and the damage that they caused. So let me take another stab or two at this.

Starting point is 00:23:25 There are cultures in this world that don't tolerate behavior that we tolerate here. And consequently, people from this country, say, going to Indonesia, where they're much stricter about drugs and things like that, somehow they develop the self-restraint on their own. It has nothing to do with biology to behave themselves and not break the law, whereas here they might. And don't you think that it's possible that someone could just not have learned empathy and things like that growing up? That it's not biological, it's just they haven't learned what it takes to be a good citizen. Absolutely. But the one thing I disagree with there is, absolutely, it is biological. How? Okay, an example. So when you're a kid, you don't have a very good frontal cortex. It doesn't

Starting point is 00:24:21 fully mature until you're about 25, which is kind of amazing. So you're a kid, you're a three-year-old, you don't have a very good frontal cortex, and you were put through a training process by which certain frontal neurons become stronger, stronger at regulating your behavior. As this training occurs, your parents sit you down, and every time you go on the potty, instead of peeing in your diapers, they give you some M&Ms. They're toilet training you, and as we all know, when kids are around three or so, that's like great training. And on a mechanical level, your frontal cortical neurons have learned to talk to the neurons that control your bladder and say,

Starting point is 00:25:06 don't do that right now, don't do that right now, wait until you get to the bathroom. And an environmental intervention, an aspect of your upbringing, your training, your acculturation has given your frontal cortex the capacity to control your bladder. Okay, that one does not seem very shocking when it's sort of stated that way. And it's the exact same thing on a much, much more subtle level when we train kids to do things like share, or how would it feel if someone did that to you, or, and so on. And what you see is people who were raised under circumstances of tremendous adversity, neglect, abuse, things of that sort, not only are they less capable of empathy as adults, not only are they more likely to do all sorts of damaging antisocial behaviors,

Starting point is 00:25:59 but you can show by the time they're five years old, their frontal cortexes are not developing as well as in other people. You can show the mediating biological steps. So you're absolutely right that how we are raised and what values and what cultural mores and thus what kind of ecosystems our ancestors were living in when they invented those cultural mores centuries ago. All of that stuff matters. All of that stuff matters because it's shaping the kind of brain you're constructing. And that's biological. Well, as I listen to this, I mean, this is pretty hard to get your head around. And as I said earlier, I think it's not only hard for people to believe this,

Starting point is 00:26:43 but I think people don't want to believe what you're saying, whether you're right or not. Robert Sapolsky has been my guest. He is a professor at Stanford University of Biology and Neurology. And his book is Behave, the Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thank you, Professor. Thanks. You too. Take care. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks.

Starting point is 00:27:09 And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Starting point is 00:27:48 Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for

Starting point is 00:28:05 rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Nobody likes rejection. Rejection hurts. But why? Why do we care if someone else doesn't like us or doesn't want to go out with us or do business with us? There are probably plenty of other people who do. But you could have 99 people tell you how wonderful you are, and one person tells you they think you suck, and who do you focus on? The one who tells you you suck. So for most of us, rejection can be a big deal. And here to discuss

Starting point is 00:28:55 why that is and how to better handle rejection is psychologist Leslie Becker Phelps, who has authored several books, including Bouncing Back from Rejection. Hi, Leslie. Welcome. Hi. Thanks for inviting me. So I don't know anybody who likes rejection, but it does seem that some people are more bulletproof to it than others. Why is rejection so hard for us to take? Because by nature, we are social beings. So we need to be able to interact and do well with people. And so to do that, we have to care about how we're perceived by others and how we can

Starting point is 00:29:35 develop our relationships. In terms of what makes some people more sensitive to rejection than others, for a lot of people, this goes back, honestly, all the way back to childhood and how we developed in learning who we are and who we are in relationship with other people. So if you learn early on that you're not okay or that you have to perform in some way to be perceived as okay, then you're going to be a lot more sensitive to rejection than someone who feels just strong in themselves, feels good about who they are. So if they get rejected, they feel rejected about the thing that they're putting out there. They don't feel rejected as a human being. Well, that makes sense because yeah, the more you feel rejected as a

Starting point is 00:30:22 human being, the more it's going to hurt, the more it's going to feel bad. But I would imagine, too, that it also depends on what's being rejected, even if you don't feel necessarily rejected as a human being. I mean, take this podcast, for instance. I mean, if you go to Apple Podcasts, you will see reviews of this podcast, thousands of them, five-star ratings and reviews of this podcast. But every once in a while, we get a negative review. Somebody doesn't like something they heard. They have some complaint about me. And those really bother me because this podcast is, you know, it's my baby. I host it.

Starting point is 00:31:03 I'm the voice of it. So those feel bad, even though the overwhelming majority of reviews of this podcast are spectacular. Right. That's a hard one. And that's, I think, as human beings, we tend to also be problem solvers. We look for where there's a problem problem and then we focus in on that. That said, you've probably done enough of these interviews that you get a strong sense of, you know, this is something you're good at. So while it may not feel good to get the negative feedback, you may be better able to put it in perspective now and not have it be so hurtful as it was maybe in the beginning when you started.

Starting point is 00:31:47 So is rejection one of those things that the more you get rejected, the easier it is to take, or the more you get rejected, the more beat up you get? Yes. Yes to both. Especially, I mean, it can change over time, but if you get a foundation of, you know, I am a solid human being. I feel good about who I am. And I also feel like people in my life who I trust, who I would look to, that they're people I can rely on as emotional supports to be caring and positive towards me. If that is what you carry in the world, right? The sense, positive sense of yourself, positive sense of others, then when you get rejected, it won't go as deeply. It won't hit you as deeply as if you grow up with a sense of I'm not okay. I'm

Starting point is 00:32:39 somehow flawed. There's something wrong with me. And I expect other people to reject me in some way or to not be there for me. If that's what you carry, then each rejection is going to be really painful. And then it's going to feed, there'll be like a feedback loop in your head that just reinforces what you already believe. So in that circumstance, each rejection can actually be more hurtful because it's about how you're responding to it. Whereas if you feel better about yourself, I don't know that it ever feels good to get rejected, but you can overcome it. You can move forward. You can learn to pull the positive out of it. So we're using rejection pretty broadly. But if somebody is giving you some, say, is being critical or some corrective feedback, it doesn't necessarily feel good,

Starting point is 00:33:31 but you can focus on, oh, wow, yeah, there is something here I can do better at. It's not a rejection of you as a human being. It's like, oh, I can improve from this. And so you can get stronger from the experience. And so if you don't have that feeling of self that you're talking about, how do you get it if you don't have it? That is a very good question. So the way I look at it is that you need to develop what I would call compassionate self-awareness. That is an awareness of yourself, what's going on from you, but from a compassionate perspective. So as you become more self-aware, you can be aware of whatever your different emotions are, rejection, feeling rejected or abandoned or hurt or whatever.

Starting point is 00:34:19 And then you can learn to respond to that in a caring way. So the way that looks like if we were interacting with another human being, and often it's helpful to think maybe even in terms of a child, if you see a child who's feeling really upset, like very hurt, very rejected, chances are you would approach the child and you say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. What's going on? And you're very supportive. You look, no, you know, it's going to be okay. You'll get through this. And you support the child so they feel cared about, they feel stronger, and they find they can get through the situation. That's how we want to learn to approach ourselves. When people are rejected, it's very easy for other people to come along and say if it's a romantic rejection

Starting point is 00:35:07 ah she was no good that would have never worked out or if you didn't get the job you'll find something else those kind of that kind of flip responses to the the problem is there any reason to think they help or hurt or what if you're someone who's just been rejected and you really feel like a reject it's not just the other person rejected you If you're someone who's just been rejected and you really feel like a reject, it's not just the other person rejected, but you feel like there's something wrong with you. Those responses don't help at all because they're just, it doesn't, doesn't mesh with what you feel about yourself. You know, by contrast, if you can relate to how the person is feeling and start there, like, wow, I know that it really hurts. You really

Starting point is 00:35:45 cared about them. I can understand how hurtful this would be. I really get it, but you're going to get through this. And then you provide support. What you're doing is you're joining with the person at first. You're letting them know that you hear them, you get them, you get what they're going through, and you still feel caring towards them. And you can kind of guide them in that way towards a more positive outlook of themselves or of the situation. So we're kind of talking about rejection in a vacuum in the sense that, you know, often when people get rejected, they get angry, they want revenge. All these other things come into play that really kind of make the water kind of murky. You're right. With rejection come other emotions, other reactions. It doesn't just happen all by itself. Let's say, let's make a specific example.

Starting point is 00:36:38 You're at work and you get a really bad review by your boss and you get angry with your boss, now it's important to understand where the anger is coming from. Do you feel like they were giving you the sense that everything was going well and now you feel kind of undermined? Do you feel like they were unfair? Do you think that your boss has a really good point and so now you're feeling angry with yourself? So depending on the feelings, depending on your thoughts around the feelings, then you can kind of mobilize how you want to go forward. Right? So if your boss has a good point, you realize first you were angry with him, but when you really pay attention, you're angry with yourself. Now you could be like, okay, well, let me take a breath. Maybe try to get some of that compassionate self-awareness. Okay. I understand I didn't do well because this is a new job. I've never done

Starting point is 00:37:30 these things before. This is understandable. And as you do that, you bring down the intensity and then you can say, okay, so my plan is I need to learn more, right? I'm going to do better. So there's this whole processing that goes on with first becoming more self-aware and then being able to get like a positive perspective on that and in doing that then you can kind of mobilize yourself to go forward in a positive way and so how do we know that all this self-examination and self-awareness is more effective than just sucking it up and moving on? If sucking it up and moving on works for you, I think that's great.

Starting point is 00:38:12 And sometimes in a particular moment, maybe it will, just to get through a particular moment. But I think a lot of people find that they can't shake the sense of rejection or they can't shake the anger or the fear. It just, it stays with them. So how do you know? Because it's your experience.

Starting point is 00:38:31 Because you feel it and you feel like there's something not okay. You're not getting up and moving forward the way you would like. And that's, I think that's the best way to know. And you had said that a lot of this has to do with childhood and how you were brought up and how you feel about yourself as a kid. Is there any evidence that this is also just wiring, that it really wouldn't matter how you were brought up, that you're just a particularly sensitive to rejection kind of person? We do know that people are born into the world with different temperaments. So some people are more reactive to their environment than others, or some people just have a little bit more anxiety around that. But what we're talking about is people who can't

Starting point is 00:39:17 move past it. So it's not just you're feeling the environment, you're feeling rejected, but how are you responding to it? So if you learn to respond to it in a way where you are, again, compassionate towards yourself, then you're able to help yourself move forward. And if you are harsh towards yourself, then you're going to feel very stuck and be emotionally distressed. That part, there's no reason to think that that is biologically inborn. And there's actually a lot of research and support on the idea of how we are raised affecting our relationships. There's something called attachment theory that has been researched a lot. When we're born into the world, we need someone kind of older and wiser to take care of us, right? So if you're an infant,

Starting point is 00:40:09 you can't take care of yourself. Somebody's got to take care of you and not only keep you safe physically, but emotionally. And over time in your relationships, in your family relationships, and with people who are older and wiser, you develop a sense of yourself, like how lovable am I? And then you develop a sense of others, how emotionally available are they? And it's the combination of those two things that have such a powerful effect on how you feel about yourself, how you feel in relationships with others, and how you will respond to rejection. But if you're feeling rejected, you know, two weeks after the rejection, I mean, how do you know if you're in the green zone or the red zone? This is a good question. I'll often say to my patients when they come in, like they want a vent,

Starting point is 00:41:03 I'll say, you know, vents, get it out. I, but there comes a point, and this is in my experience in talking with a lot of people over time, there comes a point when people know if they're just venting and it's cathartic and helpful, or if they're digging themselves in a deeper hole, you have a sense of I'm making myself worse. And I think it's important to listen to that voice. And if you're not sure, if you're really not sure, hopefully you have relationships with people who are caring towards you and you talk with them and you get a sense of support. They can accept where you are.

Starting point is 00:41:37 Maybe you're hurting and you're having a difficult time, but they're also supporting you to move in a healthier direction. If you're not moving, chances are you're moving in some direction. And if it's not forward, you may find yourself digging in deeper to the negativity that you're feeling. It does seem, I mean, I can only speak from personal experience, but I mean, I've been rejected many, many times in my life, but I don't feel like I'm carrying it around with me so much that, that those rejections, some I got over faster than others, but that they, they feel like they're gone now. Are they gone? Are they gone? Um, I guess to the degree that you feel it,

Starting point is 00:42:20 my guess, you know, all of our experiences build up to who we are. So I don't know that they're fully gone. They're part of how you've become who you are. And maybe part of what you feel is gone is just the really hurtful part, but perhaps they were part of your growth and your learning over time that, okay, yes, I got rejected, but I've been rejected before and now I've gotten through this. And so it's another experience of rejection that you got through. So you have a sense of you feeling like you're bigger than any particular rejection. There have been plenty of times that I got upset about being rejected. I didn't get the job or, you know, romance or whatever. And I've almost universally, I think, look back on those and wonder, what was that all about? Why did I get so angry about it or so upset about it?

Starting point is 00:43:12 Because it just seems so inconsequential now. What was that? I suspect, and we're not going to do therapy here with you, Mike, but... Well, I guess the question is how universal is that, that when people look back on their rejections, that they don't take that big place on the mantle that they seem to take at the time? What I would do, what I suggest people do, but what I do in therapy when I talk with people, when something like this comes up, is I encourage them to go back.

Starting point is 00:43:43 So if you were to go back and you were to think about the circumstance from the perspective you were in at the time, you're looking back and you're missing a whole bunch of the circumstance of the situational awareness you had back then. But if you put yourself back there, if you're really back there, in your mind, in your imagination, you can get a sense of the feeling of distress that bubbled up. And then you can get a sense of where that was coming from. In your mind, imagine being there. And imagine what it felt like in your body so you can have that sense of it, right?

Starting point is 00:44:16 And then from there, you might have your emotions that kind of are in it. And then you can remember the thoughts that went with it. And you kind of pull this together and you can see how you reacted. And the story starts making sense, but you need to get a little closer to it. What is your advice when rejection happens, in that moment when somebody says no,

Starting point is 00:44:40 or they tell you to go away, or this is all over, or you're fired, or whatever the rejection is, and it feels real horrible in that moment, what do you do with that? I think it's really important to know, and if it's just, if it's rejection or any of the other feelings we've talked about, that emotions, if you can tolerate them, you can learn to tolerate them, they rise up and they go down on their own. So even in a moment where something feels so big, you're never going to get through it, to just know that you will get through it. They will subside because emotions do that. They go up, they go down. And so that you can ride it out

Starting point is 00:45:24 and then you can kind of help yourself in moving forward, even in those darkest moments to know that. But as you point out, eventually it will go away. And how fast it goes away is determined in part by how you deal with it and whether or not you wallow in it. Leslie Becker Phelps has been my guest. Her book is called Bouncing Back from Rejection. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Leslie. All right. Thanks, Leslie. All right. Thanks, Mike. The number of only children has been increasing in the United States. For many years, there has been this, I guess it's kind of a vague sense that something's wrong with children who grow up without siblings. The idea was first put forth by a psychologist in the late 1800s. But modern researchers can't seem to find anything

Starting point is 00:46:31 that supports that idea that only children are somehow flawed. According to Psychology Today magazine, a lot of studies have attempted to show this, but none have succeeded. The assumption has been that a child who grows up alone doesn't develop the social skills like a child who has siblings. But when children are compared to those with siblings, there really doesn't seem to be any difference in social ability at all. And that is something you should know. A great way to support this podcast is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you listen to.

Starting point is 00:47:10 There's usually a place to leave a review. Take a moment, leave a review. Five stars are preferred. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community.

Starting point is 00:47:33 Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn

Starting point is 00:47:54 between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network.

Starting point is 00:48:18 At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today.

Starting point is 00:49:02 Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - Do We Really Have Free Will? & How to Handle Rejection Better

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