Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why Your Mind and Brain Are Different & Understanding Insecurity

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Starting point is 00:00:32 Today on Something You Should Know, when you travel, it's often hard to sleep well the first night. I'll tell you why and what you can do about that. Then, how your brain and your mind work together to make you who you are. Some people like to say the mind is the software of the brain, kind of thinking of the brain like a computer. But even that is wrong. The mind is something that comes from the interaction between our brains and our bodies and the environment around us. Also, some common mistakes people make when they serve and drink cocktails.

Starting point is 00:01:05 And understanding insecurity. What does it mean to be an insecure person? It has to do with having a lot of self-doubt. They're often called thin-skinned, very sensitive to criticism. And insecure people are burdened with sort of a chronic, low-grade, what I call free-floating anxiety. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

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Starting point is 00:01:55 Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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 carothers you know back a few years ago when this podcast first started getting really successful i would frequently ask people to email me and let me know how you discovered it,

Starting point is 00:02:26 where you found it, how you found it. And I haven't done that lately, so I'm doing it right now. If you have a moment and you recently discovered this podcast, I would love to know how you did that. And you can email me at mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net or you can go to the somethingyoushould know dot net website and there's a contact form and those messages come straight to me. First up today, have you ever found that when you travel you don't sleep especially well the first night? Well it turns out there's an interesting and scientific reason for that. It's called the first night effect. It screws up your sleep so much that researchers typically ignore the data called the first night effect. It screws up your sleep so much that researchers

Starting point is 00:03:05 typically ignore the data from the first night when they're testing subjects in a sleep lab. According to research from Brown University, when you're sleeping in a new environment, half your brain stays just slightly more awake than the other half in order to keep tabs on your safety in this new environment. The result of that vigilance is that you are more tired the next day. What is known is that frequent travelers don't have this problem as much, presumably because their brains are used to sleeping in new places all the time. Researchers suggest that bringing your own pillow or staying in the same hotel chain wherever you go might help your brain to relax a little more and help you sleep better on

Starting point is 00:03:51 that first night. And that is something you should know. Oh, before we get to my first guest, I forgot to mention this, but the last episode of Something You Should Know was our 600th episode, which in the podcast world, that's a really big milestone. If you would like to do something to help us celebrate, I have just the thing. You see, Something You Should Know is one of the few independent podcasts that has managed to really break through and do pretty well. Even though we're not owned by one of the big media companies, we're just a couple of folks passionate about putting out a great podcast. And our audience has grown quite sizably, mostly through word of mouth.

Starting point is 00:04:33 But the competition in podcasting is pretty stiff, and it's getting stronger. So, to help us celebrate the 600th episode of Something You Should Know, I've got just the thing. If you would just tell one person you know about this podcast and ask them to listen, or send them a text or an email with the link, that, that one little thing would be spectacular. And it would really help us beef up the audience in face of all the competition.

Starting point is 00:05:00 You can also post it on social media. In fact, if you email me, I can send you a graphic to post that looks really cool. My email address is mike at somethingyoushouldknow.net. Look, I know you're busy, you've got plenty to do, but this would be such a big help. Thanks. Sitting up there in your head is your brain, and it is from that brain and how it works with your body that makes you who you are and think the way you think

Starting point is 00:05:32 and behave the way you behave. Much of how all this works is a mystery, but not all of it. And in fact, what we do know about how your brain works is really interesting. Here to reveal some of that is Alan Jasonoff. Alan is a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and he is author of the book, The Biological Mind, How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are. Hi, James. Welcome.

Starting point is 00:06:02 Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me on. So I imagine that a lot of what people assume about the brain and how it works and how it interacts with the body and all that is probably not accurate. So how does this all work, as best we know? So a lot of people think of the brain as the command center of our bodies, as the thing that sort of gives us our individuality and the thing where our memories are stored, the place in us that controls what we do. And I actually argue against that view of the brain, which I think is actually increasingly dominant. is a really important part of our body that integrates, that takes in stimuli from around us, the things we experience in the world and also what's going on in our body. And it kind of governs or guides our behavior based on that input. But it's almost like a very complex form of thermostat, something that reacts to what's going on around us.

Starting point is 00:07:03 And so then what is the mind? How is that different from the brain? Is the mind part of the brain? Is the mind, well, are they the same thing? No. So back in classical times, several hundred years ago, people were coming to the realization that the body and the mind had to work together in some way, but they really didn't know how that happened. And so a famous philosopher called

Starting point is 00:07:33 Rene Descartes gave us this idea that, well, the mind interacts with the body through the brain. It kind of pulls strings, as it were, on the body, acting through the brain, but that it's distinct from the brain. Now, more recently, we've come to the realization that, well, there's no mind outside the brain that's pulling strings. There's only physical matter. There's only the stuff that comes into us and the stuff that comes out to us. And many people have responded to that realization by suggesting that, well, our minds are the same as our brains. Or some people like to say the mind is the software of the brain, kind of thinking of the brain like a computer. But even that is wrong. The mind is something that comes from the interaction between our brains and our bodies and the environment around us. So that is a different thing, because I think we often think of the brain

Starting point is 00:08:28 as operating kind of by itself up in our head, and it's controlling everything like this mad scientist. There isn't a lot of back and forth and interaction with the rest of the body. It's a one-way street, and you're saying that's not so. That's right. Our bodies and our environments actually influence the way that we behave in really subtle ways that we're not always aware of, also in very important ways that we're sometimes not aware of. One example is, I think many people probably know about the influence of light and colors in our environment on our moods.

Starting point is 00:09:05 It's part of what keeps interior decorators going. But it's also something that can influence how we behave. So, you know, you and I, many people tend to be more likely to be depressed when it's dark, more likely to be aggressive, strangely enough, when it's warmer outside. People respond differently to colors in the environment. And there are also all kinds of things that happen to us on a much faster scale. You know, those are examples where our moods are affected by the environment around us. But, you know, we often get our, you know, our attention

Starting point is 00:09:37 gets stolen by stimuli that are coming from around us. You know, the bark of a dog or the smell of pizza. When we look at something, our eyes kind of dart around in an unconscious and actually almost deterministic way because of the shapes and the things that we see. So the environment is actually making us do things. It's not just our brains deciding what to do based on what's out there. But when we do decide what to do or we think brains deciding what to do based on what's out there. But when we do decide what to do, or we think we decide what to do, then what's going on there? Do we know what goes on in the brain that says, okay, I'm going to raise my hand up and wave? Absolutely not. We don't know what's going on.

Starting point is 00:10:22 There were some very famous psychologists from the middle of the 20th century who actually wanted to deny the possibility that there was really anything important going on inside of us. These were people called behaviorists. And the behaviorists thought, okay, well, the environment is making us do everything, and there's nothing internal going on within us. In fact, we know that actually, well, there's actually some very complicated brain dynamics that are going on. There are all these neurons and neurotransmitters, the chemicals in the brain, that are all working together to kind of relate what comes into us to what we then do, what goes back out. And we do have rich

Starting point is 00:11:06 internal lives. What I'm arguing really is that these things can't be separated. You know, the classical view of the mind is that, okay, well, we have these minds that are kind of doing their own thing. You know, I think therefore I am is the classic, you know, utterance that describes this. But actually, that part's not true either, because, you know, even though there are minds, they come about by this intimate interaction, the stuff that's going on inside us coupled to the stuff going on outside. My conversation today is with Alan Jasonoff. Alan is a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and author of the book The Biological Mind,

Starting point is 00:11:49 How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are. Mama, look at me. Vroom, vroom. I'm going really fast. I just got my license. Can I borrow the car, please, Mom? Kids go from 0 to 18 in no time.

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Starting point is 00:12:25 Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So Alan, if you were to take people's brains out of their head and put them on a shelf, they'd all look more or less the same. So what is it in there that makes individuals who they are when, from a distance anyway, they all look like we all should be the same? Well, you've hit on part of why I'm actually arguing that, you know, that we can't be reduced

Starting point is 00:13:16 to our brains. Because, in fact, you know, a lot of what our brains do is actually pretty similar from person to person. One of the things that's different is the way that our brains store memories. So, you know, as we, you know, as we go through life, well, our brains change through something called plasticity and we learn new things. But actually taking our brains out of our bodies would not result in just, you know, supposing I took your brain out of your head and put it in a vat. It's not like that would be you in the vat. It would be your brain. If I took your brain and I put it in the body of a different person who was having a different life, who had different experiences,

Starting point is 00:13:55 was living in a different environment and had a different body, that person would be not you anymore. It would be part you and part something else. And even if some aspects of your memory, your personality were still part of that entity, well, it would be living a different life that depends on its environment. An example that I like to give is the case of the great wars of the 20th century. So World War I, for instance, 60 million young men were uprooted from their ordinary lives and sent out into battle. And many of them, most of them became aggressive fighters, killers. They had the same brains. They had the same history, actually, the same bodies,

Starting point is 00:14:45 but they were trained to do different things. They would have been unrecognizable to the people who loved them and who lived with them if witnessed on the battlefield. But when they came home, I would imagine that many of them went back the other way. They may not have been exactly who they were before the war, but they probably went back to some extent to who they were. That's right. And that's in large part because they were returned to their original environments. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:15:16 So even in that population of soldiers that you just discussed, they're all individuals, though. They all have very different things going on in their head. And yet, again, it's a similar experience, a similar brain. So there's got to be something else. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so there's a tremendous amount of individuality that comes from our brains. And as I say, you know, memories are probably the most, you know, important aspect of, you know, of what makes us individuals that's, you know, that's largely encoded in our brains, largely kind of given to us or held within our brains. But where that breaks down is where our

Starting point is 00:16:01 brains and our bodies start needing to be coupled. So when you think about, you know, let's say your childhood, what you remember best from your childhood, but they're often the emotional experiences, the things that, you know, gave you great pleasure or potentially great pain. And those reactions that you had and the way that you experience those memories even now depend on your ability to relate the emotions to the kind of episodes that took place. You know, for instance, I remember when I was a kid

Starting point is 00:16:32 in my gym class, I was trying to jump over a beam and I tripped and I fell and the entire class was laughing at me and I was just horribly embarrassed. And it was a very emotional experience for me, and I probably wouldn't remember it if it weren't for the engagement of my body in that. And key to that is the fact that, well, all of our emotional experiences involve what our bodies do. That's a very old observation, actually. Many people attribute it to Darwin from the 19th century, who observed that when humans or animals feel things, well, their whole bodies kind of throw themselves into a posture for dealing with whatever the situation is. For instance, if we're angry, our bodies kind of get flushed with blood. We tense

Starting point is 00:17:26 up. We're ready to fight. When we're sad, we often kind of curl up. We're ready to retreat. And part of our conscious experience of emotions is being aware of those bodily changes, or at least feeling them, even if we're not, you know, aware of the blood itself coursing through our veins. Do we know enough about the brain to know whether or not the phrase, you know, you can do whatever you want, you can be all you can be, you can become whatever you want to become, is a true statement? That is a great question. And actually, I think it really cuts to the heart of why it's important to have a realistic view of your brains. Because, you know, there is all that individuality

Starting point is 00:18:12 in your brain, but it is not uncoupled from your surroundings ever. Not during your upbringing and not during your adulthood. And so phrases like, you know, be all you can be, you know, be yourself, all those things, they sound good. But, well, we actually do know enough about the brain to know that they're not possible. You can't be all you can be because who you are and what you can do depends critically on where you are, what you're given. You know, if you were someone who is growing up in a really poor country or, you know, a really poor part of our country, you won't have the same opportunities. And no matter what brain you have, no matter what body you have, you won't be able to get around that, or at least your struggle will be different. So people like to think that the brain is what makes us who we are, but actually that

Starting point is 00:19:12 can't be true. Now, I think it's not a surprise to many people to know that, okay, well, the possibilities they have come in part from their environment. But even the way that they're perceived, for instance, mental illnesses, the perception of mental illnesses, even those things come from, you know, your context, often from your body as well. You know, a lot of people these days like to say that, well, mental illness comes from the brain, that mental illness is brain disease. But, you know, that's simply not true.

Starting point is 00:19:53 And there are a few ways that we can look at it. So one is historically. Actually, as it turned out, even as recently as the early 20th century, a huge number of people in mental asylums were actually there not because of anything wrong with their brains, or at least not directly wrong with their brains, but because they had a bacterial disease, something that today could be cured with antibiotics. It was syphilis that sent people to the asylums because it does ultimately act on the brain and cause mental disorders. Even more recently, we can think about mental disorders like schizophrenia or autism. Some people like to think of those things as brain disorders, but actually, they are not simply the result of stuff going on in the brain. Schizophrenia, for instance, let's take that as an example. There are all kinds of correlations that people have found between schizophrenia, the time of year that you're born, where you come from, your ethnicity, these types of things that are not fully explained, but that don't have direct

Starting point is 00:20:56 connections to brain function. Even outside that, the whole concept of a mental illness actually owes itself to our society. And it really emphasizes, I think, to the extent to which the whole context of a person is part of how they, you know, how they're perceived and who they are, even in something as, you know, kind of apparently objective as a mental illness. Well, I would imagine, too, that even more common mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, people who have that, given other circumstances, might not have that. Exactly, yes. And that's, you know, depression is one of the easiest ones to relate to the environment for a couple of reasons. One is that nobody's been able to find

Starting point is 00:21:46 genes that explain depression. So in other words, we don't have a firm basis for tying depression to a biological basis, even though we know there are, of course, biological relationships that matter. Depression also, I think we all know, can be brought about by life circumstances, and that's simply a reality. The environment is part of that. Well, it's interesting. There is so much talk in the self-help movement, and you can hear podcasts all over the place that talk about being your authentic self and how to be your authentic self. And I see a lot of books come across my desk of people who want to come on this podcast and talk about being your authentic self. And I see a lot of books come across my desk of people who want to come on this podcast and talk about being your authentic self. But what you're saying is that there really is no authentic you, that there's no such thing. Exactly. And so, you know, one of the things why

Starting point is 00:22:38 I think it's important to, one of the reasons why I think it's pretty important to think about, you know, sort of what is the brain's role in us and in our lives is because, you know, I think a lot of people still want to hang on to this idea that, okay, that we basically have souls, that we have things, that we have kind of an essence of ourselves that can be encapsulated, that whether it's kind of ethereal, something that floats in the air, or something that lives in our heads, that it divides us from our surroundings, and that, you know, there's this kind of essential you in there. And I think that neuroscience can teach us that that's not true, or at least teach us the limits of that view. Is this all spectator sport? In other words, knowing what you know, can you now do something with that? Or is it just interesting to look at? Yeah, I think one of the really important practical consequences is actually about empathy. You know, you asked me a moment ago, well, what would happen if I took my brain out of my body?

Starting point is 00:23:42 Or, you know, would that be me there? And I think the realization that the brain removed from its body, your brain removed from its body, is very much like my brain removed from its body. That these two kind of biological entities are almost interchangeable, that they're physical things that interact with their surroundings, I think that realization can help us be more understanding of what it would be like to be in another person's context. The second really practical consequence, I think, is about the understanding of mental illness, the understanding that, well, mental illnesses are not just brain disorders. People who have mental illnesses

Starting point is 00:24:25 are not people with broken brains. They're people who experienced things that, you know, probably they didn't want to experience because of the interaction of their bodies, their biology, including their brains, and what was going on around them. It's a much more kind of expansive view of what can go wrong in a person's mental life. And I think it can help us be, A, more understanding of people with mental illnesses, and also it can help us remove some of the stigma by understanding that, well, that actually could have been us if our brains were in those bodies or if our bodies were in those places. Well, I have to say, I've never thought about my brain this much before or in this way before.

Starting point is 00:25:15 It's really interesting to have that view of it. Professor Alan Jasonoff is my guest. He is a professor at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and he's author of the book, The Biological Mind, How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are. You will find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Professor. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings

Starting point is 00:25:50 and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. 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.

Starting point is 00:26:22 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. 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,

Starting point is 00:26:52 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. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought of yourself as insecure? A lot of people do,

Starting point is 00:27:29 and I suspect we've all felt insecure at some time and in some situations. I imagine most insecure people don't like being insecure because it means you're constantly doubting yourself. And since we've all heard that confidence is a very attractive quality in another person, it's probably safe to say that insecurity is not especially attractive. So what is insecurity? Are you born that way? Is it a character flaw? And can someone who is insecure do something about it so they can become more secure? That's what we're about to discuss with Joseph Nowinski. Joe is a clinical psychologist, a former educator,

Starting point is 00:28:13 having taught at the University of California at San Francisco and at the University of Connecticut. He's author of a book called The Tender Heart, Conquering Your Insecurity. Hi, Joe. So what does it mean from where you sit? What does it mean to be insecure? Well, insecurity is kind of a personality trait. It has to do with having a lot of self-doubt. It could be appearance, how I look.

Starting point is 00:28:42 It could be intelligence, how smart I am or skill, how good I am at something. They're often called thin-skinned, very sensitive to criticism. They absorb criticism like a sponge instead of having it bounce off of them. They're often second-guessing themselves about decisions they make. Was that the right thing to do or not, so they're often obsessed about that. And insecure people are burdened with sort of a chronic low-grade, what I call free-floating anxiety. They feel anxious a lot, they can't necessarily name what they're anxious about, but they're anxious. And I imagine it's somewhat of a sliding scale, and not every insecure person is the same insecure, has the same insecurity. Exactly. That's exactly right. And there can be

Starting point is 00:29:33 the opposite, you know, of insecurity, which is kind of what I call a tough-hearted disposition. But you're absolutely right that, you know, people, it's not just a kind of either or, you know, diagnosis. Either you have it 100% or you don't. It can vary a great deal in intensity. And, you know, it's also possible to work on becoming, you know, less insecure. You said that insecure people aren't born that way, but it does seem that how secure or insecure someone is, is part of their nature. Well, here's what's part of their nature, the kind of disposition that we're born with.

Starting point is 00:30:11 One is where insecure people start off with what I call a tender-hearted disposition. Tender-hearted people tend to be very empathic. You know, they're very in touch with other people's feelings. They tend to form strong attachments to people, places, and even things. Tenderhearted persons often kind of also they get attached. They don't like change as much. And finally, they really don't like confrontation. They prefer cooperation or collaboration.

Starting point is 00:30:43 And that's the kind of personality that can set somebody up, if they have a certain kind of experience growing up, to become what we call insecure. What do you do about it? I mean, are you destined, if you're insecure, are you destined to be insecure, and you just live with it? Well, no, not at all. But what happens if you're born tenderhearted, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:05 and you tend to be empathic, and if you have certain kind of experience growing up, and typically what I find most often leads to insecurity is having, say, parents who are emotionally detached, and you can't really connect with them very well. And that leads the tender-hearted person to kind of become, you know, more insecure, less confident about themselves, more self-doubting. The other possibility, the other pathway is having parents whose love is very conditional. The tender-hearted person perceives that parental love and affection is very much conditional on what they do, okay? And so the parents can be very critical, for example. I've seen that in my practice a lot, parents who are very critical, and the tender-hearted person, again, absorbs. It doesn't

Starting point is 00:31:58 bounce off of them like, say, a tough-hearted person. The very tender-hearted person, it kind of absorbs all that and then starts self-doubting themselves as they get to be an adult. Just one quick example, the insecure guy may have a date and tell me that it went very well and he thinks that they both had a good time. And then two days later, he starts to kind of comb over the date, looking for things that went wrong, looking for things why the woman wouldn't like him. And then he starts to self doubt about whether he should call and ask for a second date. So that's an example of how that insecurity operates. When I listened to your description of insecure people, it seems this

Starting point is 00:32:41 anxiety that there's kind of this fear of something, but of what? What is the... That's exactly right. See, that's why we call it free-floating anxiety, because it's that self-doubt. The insecure person is very self-conscious. They can't walk into a room full of people without feeling very self-conscious that everyone's looking at them. And what do they fear? It's sometimes hard for them to name. It's that maybe the way I look, maybe I'm saying something stupid, you know, that sort of thing. But they have that self-consciousness about themselves,

Starting point is 00:33:18 and that's because they're always vigilant for rejection. They'll be looking around the room and thinking, I don't think that person, that person, like, I don't think that person likes me, or I think that person looked at me and frowned. So you see what I'm saying? They kind of bring that into the situation, you know, with them. Does it tend to be situational? Can insecure people be in situations where they're very secure, but in other situations, they're very insecure? but in other situations they're very insecure? Yes, the answer to that is yes, depending on exactly on that situation. I've worked with

Starting point is 00:33:51 insecure people who, for example, may be very smart and talented, and in a work environment they can function best of all, okay? And they can, you know, do very well, say, in a work environment, but in a social relationship environment, they may not do very well at all. That said, the fact that they are insecure usually means that even if they function well in the work environment, if they don't have insight into their insecurity and they don't try to work on it, then they still might not achieve as much as they possibly could. And to work on it means to do what? First, it begins with insight.

Starting point is 00:34:32 I think, first of all, try to understand your native disposition. How tender-hearted are you? And that's not a bad thing, okay? Sometimes people feel like it's a bad thing to be thin-sk or, I mean, to be tenderhearted, to be empathic. But it isn't. It isn't at all. But then you need to take a look at what's your native disposition that you're born with. And then what was your experience growing up? You know, looking at those two things together, you know, how insecure do you think that might have made you growing up?

Starting point is 00:35:02 Do you think that you were sort of moderately insecure, like you really had trouble in high school connecting with people, you really didn't date because you had a lot of insecurity about yourself? So it begins with insight, okay? And once you sort of have that insight, you can start to backpedal, if you will. You can start to sort of reevaluate yourself in social situations. One thing that I tell people, for example, is that if they're insecure and they go into a social situation, I tell them, you're very self-conscious about yourself, but other people don't have x-ray vision. Nobody in the room has x-ray vision. They don't know that you're anxious.

Starting point is 00:35:41 They don't know that you worry about how you look. They only see what they see. So one of the ways to work on the insecurity is to kind of try on, if you will, a different role. Smile a little bit more. Again, you know, start a little bit of a conversation, keeping in mind that those people have no idea that you may be secretly anxious or worried about yourself. And that often has an effect of freeing people up a little bit because they think that everyone else sees what they feel. You know what I mean? They, everyone else knows that they doubt the way they look or doubt how smart they

Starting point is 00:36:16 are or how good they can have a conversation and so forth. It's one thing to know that intellectually, that people can't see inside your head and know you're anxious and all that. It's one thing to know that as a fact, but it's quite another thing to incorporate that into your mind and make that part of who you are and truly believe it. Well, you're right. And as a therapist, I always tell my insecure patients, it is easy for me to say it's going to be hard for you to do. But we work on it. And we work on it. And, you know, a person can work on it by themselves without a therapist. Sometimes it helps to have a therapist or counselor, though, because then you can process these experiences. But, you know, my experience,

Starting point is 00:37:03 you can work on it successfully. People can make major gains in overcoming their insecurity by, again, taking this position that the world sees what they see. They don't see what you feel. And so we work on it, one situation at a time, one experience at a time. But people can make amazing progress if they do that. I love that. The world sees what they see, not what you feel. That's it. That's right there.

Starting point is 00:37:33 Exactly. They don't see that you're anxious, you're self-conscious. There's a person, just as I said, walks into a room and they immediately want to run out of the room because they're so anxious. But the rest of the world, I say, only sees you walking into the room. Okay? And, you know, if you, you know, look in the mirror before you go into that room and you look like pretty much like everybody else does, that's what they're, it looks, that's how they're going to, that's what they're seeing.

Starting point is 00:38:00 So, you know, your free-floating anxiety is in your head. And as you say, it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to do it. It takes a lot of work. But I've had a lot of success. People have had a lot of success in working through this. And again, it depends on just how insecure you are, how hard it's going to be. Is there a difference between being generally insecure and, well, I'm insecure about my teeth because I don't like the way my teeth look,

Starting point is 00:38:32 or I'm insecure about my hair or my height or my weight. Is there a difference? Oh, sure. There are normal variations in what you're just saying, in insecurity. And most people, you know, very few of us are totally free of any insecurity about, you know, my teeth or about my hair or about my height. But that's what you might call normal, kind of, you know, run-of-the-mill normal insecurity that everybody has. It's not necessarily debilitating.

Starting point is 00:39:03 If it becomes debilitating, then that's another matter, something that maybe really needs to be looked at in terms of where, again, where the roots of that come from. But nobody's perfectly secure, and that's okay. And that's just something that somebody can work on, for example, by doing something about their teeth or doing something about their physical conditioning. Right. Well, right, because that's a thing where if you're insecure about something that's changeable, then I guess the answer is to change that. Right. Work on changing it. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:39:38 But that's sort of in the realm of normal insecurity. Have you ever seen, though, someone who was really insecure go through this process of working on it and come out the other end as like super duper secure? Or are you always going to have some of that? Is it always going to be tugging at you a little bit? Well, I don't know about super duper secure, but I have had clients who, you know, for example, one another aspect of insecurity is not like letting people see who you really are. Insecure people often try to second guess what other people want to see, you know what I'm saying, or want to hear. So they tend to be not authentic. But I've seen some insecure people make major strides on becoming more authentic,

Starting point is 00:40:26 on letting people see who they really are, what they really think about something, what they really feel about something. And once they start to make a little bit of change in that direction, it can become a really major breakthrough, and they can come back and talk to me about how much better they feel about themselves now that they go to work and they, you know, let people know, you know, how they really feel about something, what they really think about something. And so, you know, they can make major, major strides. It can also

Starting point is 00:40:56 affect that second guessing about themselves. Once they start to feel that they can reveal who they are, they can start to make some major decisions about their career, for example, or, you know, how they want to live their lives, what kind of things they want to get involved in, things that they were just too insecure to try before. It's always interested me that when people have a behavior like that, or a way of thinking, you know, often in evolution, these things serve a purpose, if you dig deep back enough. What purpose could being insecure serve? Because it seems to be a problem more than it's a solution. Well, I'm not sure that insecurity serves a purpose, but being tenderhearted, as we talked about, does. It's good to be empathic.

Starting point is 00:41:49 It's good to be able to be in touch with other people's feelings as opposed to a real tough-hearted person who's only in touch with their own feelings. They only know how they feel. They don't know how you feel. So tenderhearted people tend to be empathic. They are often very thoughtful and reflective. They often tend to be somewhat artistic and creative. So that is very functional in society, so being a tender-hearted person.

Starting point is 00:42:15 But when it gets converted into insecurity at that point, you know, it's not really very functional. Right, yeah. Well, and there is, as we said in the beginning, there is that scale. Some people are a little insecure, and some people are really insecure. Exactly. And some people are extraordinarily kind of hard and extraordinarily empathic, and so they could be vulnerable. I mean, it's because they could also, if they're in an environment that's where love is very conditional or they're constantly, if they're in an environment that's where love is very conditional or they're constantly criticized, they're very vulnerable to becoming insecure, self-doubting. But some people are sort of moderately tender-hearted,

Starting point is 00:42:55 and in that case they may be less affected by that. But again, being tender-hearted itself serves a function in society, but when it turns into insecurity, it isn't. Can you be tenderhearted and secure? Absolutely. I mean, I've seen tenderhearted people who are raised in a very loving, emotionally available family where they are accepted and where it's valued to be empathic, for example, it's valued to be thoughtful and reflective, they can turn out to be, you know, very, very functional people who can contribute a great deal to society. They're the artists, a lot of them, you know, sometimes writers, you know, sometimes they can be very, very effective leaders. And I would imagine that there are, in some cases, like if you're really insecure because you've lost your job and you're very insecure about money, well, getting another job, the insecurity should theoretically go away if the money comes back, right?

Starting point is 00:44:00 Yeah, exactly. That's why I said no one here is no one of us is immune to insecurity and losing a job, for example, or losing a relationship can stir, you know, insecurity and self-doubt in all of us. But the person who is not really, you know, intensely insecure can can can work their way out of that. They're the person who gets it, gets it together and starts looking for another job. They're the person who grieves the loss of a relationship, but who doesn't feel like they're hopeless. And those people kind of move on. But the person who's really insecure can often really spiral downward in response to that kind of an experience.

Starting point is 00:44:44 I would suspect for insecure people, hearing what you have to say is very encouraging, because I imagine living with, I don't know, chronic insecurity, I guess you could call it, it has to be stressful, because as you say, it's this just low-grade anxiety all the time, and the fact that there are things people can do, I think, is really great news. Joseph Nowinski has been my guest. He is a clinical psychologist, and he's author of the book, The Tender Heart, Conquering Your Insecurity. There is a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Joe. Oh, you're very welcome. It's a pleasure talking to you. If you like to have a drink now and again,

Starting point is 00:45:26 you should be aware that there are some common myths when it comes to serving alcohol. The first is that you're not putting your red wine in the refrigerator. Karen McNeil, author of The Wine Bible, says you should put red wine in the refrigerator. The colder you chill the wine, the more it will show its freshness, whereas the warmer the wine, the more it will show its freshness, whereas the warmer the wine, the more it will show its alcohol. The rule of thumb is red wine tastes best at about the temperature of an air-conditioned movie theater, or about 60 degrees. Another thing you might be doing wrong is opening champagne incorrectly. A lot of people hold the bottle and twist the cork.

Starting point is 00:46:05 You're supposed to do it the other way. You hold the cork and then twist the bottle to get the cork out. If you're drinking your beer in a bottle, that can be a problem. Jeff Alworth, author of The Beer Bible, says, sun and even artificial light will skunk a beer. That means as soon as your beer is exposed to light, a chemical process converts compounds in the beer into an aroma that smells exactly like skunk. And once a beer is

Starting point is 00:46:32 skunked, it can't be unskunked. If you buy cheap vodka, it's a good idea to run it through a water filtration system first, like a Brita filter. In a test by America's Test Kitchen, filtered vodka showed an improvement in flavor. The rule of thumb is you have to run it through the filter four or five times, or just buy better vodka. And another mistake people make is they chase their tequila. Tequila is actually meant to be sipped, not taken with a shot and chased with salt and lime. If you're drinking good quality tequila, you won't need to chase it with anything at all. It should taste great all by itself. And do you know the proper way to chill wine or champagne in a bucket?

Starting point is 00:47:18 What you do is fill the bucket with equal parts ice and water, add a handful of coarse salt, and place the bottle in the bucket, making sure the ice goes all the way up to the bottle's neck. But if you do it properly for 10 to 20 minutes, your alcohol will be just as cold as it would have been after two hours in the fridge. And that is something you should know. If you're enjoying this podcast, chances are your friends would too. So please use the share button and share this episode with someone you know. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:47:55 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. 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 between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

Starting point is 00:48:33 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. Contained herein are the heresies of Redolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues

Starting point is 00:49:03 and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine wherever podcasts are available.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Why Your Mind and Brain Are Different & Understanding Insecurity

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