The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Why You Feel the Way You Do: Understand and Heal the Source of Stressful Emotions by Reneau Z. Peurifoy M.A.

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Why You Feel the Way You Do: Understand and Heal the Source of Stressful Emotions by Reneau Z. Peurifoy M.A. https://amzn.to/472eR3h It was long ago that Roman poet Catullus (84-54BC) said, “We hate and we love, can one tell me why?” Have you ever wondered . . . Why You Feel the Way You Do? Now is the time for you to discover what’s hiding behind the negative emotions, unhealthy response patterns and distorted thinking that keeps many from living a happier and more fulfilling life. Why You Feel the Way You Do takes you on a journey beyond your personality, your DNA, and your family upbringing, to pinpoint critical issues and self-destructive thought patterns that influence your well-being, followed by practical tools for managing negative emotions in a healthier way. • Learn about the emotional circuits we share with our pets. • Discover ways to quiet destructive emotional triggers. • Understand the role of guilt/shame and ways to manage them. • Reduce the negative effects of social media and devices. • Identify common destructive response patterns and learn how to change them. . . . plus much more! In Why You Feel the Way You Do, author Reneau Z. Peurifoy helps you emerge from those nagging, unhealthy emotional barriers, while providing practical ways to experience more joy in your daily life. Moving beyond emotional problems, Peurifoy also explores what positive psychology has recently learned about the three most important emotional factors that impact personal happiness. Show Notes About The Guest(s): Renaud Purifoy is an internationally known author, therapist, and teacher with over four decades of experience. He has written books that have been translated into multiple languages and has appeared on numerous radio and television programs. Renaud has been invited to speak at 11 national conferences for the Anxiety Disorders Association of America. Summary: Renaud Purifoy joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss his latest book, "Why You Feel the Way You Do: Understand and Heal the Source of Stressful Emotions." Renaud takes listeners on a journey through the seven basic emotions that humans share with animals and explains how these emotions develop into triggers. He also explores the negative and positive core response patterns we have and shares three key factors that contribute to happiness. Renaud provides practical activities at the end of each chapter to help readers apply the concepts in their own lives. Key Takeaways: Renaud explores the seven basic emotions shared by humans and animals: anger, fear, seeking, play, lust, separation anxiety, and caring. Emotions serve as a way for the brain to index information and create associations with memories. Renaud discusses the importance of desensitization to reduce the negative effects of triggers and shares practical strategies for managing anxiety. Social media can have negative effects on mental health, and it's important to set boundaries and limit screen time. Building strong relationships and connections with others is a key factor in happiness and overall well-being. Quotes: "The brain is always making associations, and emotions are the way that your brain indexes information." - Renaud Purifoy "Desensitization is the process of gradually exposing yourself to triggers and managing anxiety to reduce their negative effects." - Renaud Purifoy "People are starved for real relationships, and that's why they're so susceptible to the addictive nature of social media." - Renaud Purifoy

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

It's in acapella today or whatever the hell it's called. So welcome to my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Turns out me and her just do not get along as a voice. So I need to have her do her own thing. Because I just don't have that operatic voice. I'm sorry, folks. There's a lot of things we do on the show.

We have so many brilliant minds and authors on the show. Maybe I need to invite some ballet artists on the show. Ballet. Opera. It's one of those days. Opera artists on the show. So they can teach us to sing opera. If you want that, send the message to me.

Sing author on the show. And we're excited to have him. He's got his latest book out. May 2nd, 2023. Why you feel the way you do. Understand and heal the source of stressful emotions. Renaud Purifoy is on the show with us today, and we're going to be talking to him about his amazing work.

He is an internationally known author, therapist, and teacher. Over his four-decade career, he's written books that have been translated into multiple languages. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs as well as many podcasts. The Anxiety Disorders Association of America, the nation's primary organization for anxiety-related problems, has invited me to speak at 11 of their national conferences. Welcome to the show, Renaud. How are you? I'm doing great.

Thank you for inviting me on. Thank you for coming. It's wonderful to have you as well. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Easiest place is whyemotions.com. So, W-H-Y, whyemotion.com. Whyemotions.com. No, it's singular. Oh, singular. Whyemotion.com. So W H Y Y emotion.com. Why emotions?

No, it's singular, singular. Oh, why emotion.com. Yeah. That's what I always say every time I'm freaking out about just about anything. Why all this darned emotion?

So, uh, I think you've written several books, uh, on anxiety and, uh, anger and emotion. Uh, how are you?

Oh yeah. I, I, like I say, anxiety and anger has been good for me. I'm sorry. I got to laugh at that. You know, when I was a young person,

I was suffering from severe ADHD. And I remember I went into the ER one time and I said, I think I have brain cancer. I think something's going on or something. And they go, no, you have anxiety. And I'm like, yeah, I have fear, happiness, sadness, and everything else. Like, what's your point? They're like, no, anxiety is like a thing.

So there you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside, why you feel the way you do. Well, I take people on a journey. I start off with basically talking about the seven basic emotions that we share with our pets and any other furry little creature out there. And then talk about how they develop into triggers and then some of the negative and positive core response patterns that we have. And then I wrap up with the three things that positive psychology talks about

that make people happy in life. And so it's kind of a interesting journey as we go through all those different things. And each chapter ends with a set of recommended activities that people can do if they want to actually apply some of the ideas in a practical way into their life. That's part of my teaching background. I love it. I love it.

I love it. So you've written several books on this. What made you want to write this one specifically? Well, actually, I had a publisher come to me and ask me to do a book. And so I was thinking about one of the things I've always been fascinated with is just emotions and behavior and all that all my life. So I figured, well, let me take the opportunity to go in and see what the current research has been doing and do a book on emotions. I mean, I had chickens and rabbits and dogs, cats, parrot, you know, all kinds of animals when I was little. My, both my parents came from

farming background, so I had the only trained chickens on the block so that was kind of cool so so there you go you know so i've always been interested in animal behavior and studied in biology that was my major was animal behavior and then i switched over to human behavior and you know i often say it's kind of a step down but you know animals are so easy to understand as humans we do some crazy stuff sometimes even though basically once you understand how we're wired it's not that mysterious you know i i have two huskies and i've had four now and they have really helped me with my anxiety with my emotional issues and stress things over the years it's always funny how they know they know when you feel stressed or when you're worried about something or even if i don't feel well you know like i don't know you know i've it's a taco bell

night and the next morning my i'm in the i'm in the fetal position you know they'll come up in the bed and be like hey it's okay they'll snuggle with me and be cute and yeah yeah you know i usually there's one on one side one of the other laying beside me and and it's kind of funny and then the rest of the time when i'm feeling fine they they're just like, yeah, whatever you, you know, well, you know, they, they read you just like little kids read their parents. You know, we have that ability to read people. It's just, we become so dependent upon language. We tend to start depending upon that, but we still get vibes off of people and all that

nonverbal stuff that goes on. And, uh, you know,verbal stuff that goes on. Animals, that's their primary language, is reading you and working through their emotions. Isn't it so funny? They kind of know. They come up and I wonder if they pick up stuff off my breath because they always come up and they'll smell my breath. Is that one of the ways they tell, maybe by your breathing? Well, body odor. It's like cancer patients and stuff.

Some animals can pick that up from just stuff that we don't know exactly what they're picking up, but they're picking something up off the odor or something. Plus, they read your body language. It's interesting. If you think about it, all mammals, when they know like when they're

angry they kind of grit their teeth you know and then when they're frightened they have a lot of similar stuff uh in terms of expressions which is why you can tell when your dogs are you know frightened or they're happy or they're angry at something uh there's there's a universal non-verbal communication that goes on there so basically what you're saying is my dogs are coming up to me going you need to shower dude i mean we're dogs and you stink sometimes basically what it is so there you go of course they may like the gross stuff you know probably like hey you smell pretty good man you're just like one of us you're just smelly old nasty dog what's with all this perfume stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Why'd you shower? You had such a good funk going on there. So there you go. So let's get into the book. How do we learn about the emotional circuits that we share with our pets? How do we get familiar with them and maybe understand them better?

Because I think sometimes maybe when people aren't feeling well, they'll tend to maybe shun their pets and be like hey leave me alone i'm trying to trying to work through my issues and then maybe that hurts the dog's feelings or something i don't know well it probably does and the dog probably wants to come up and cuddle and give you a little bit of a little comfort there they are they they do that you know you know the two two ones that get talked a lot about are of course anger, anger and fear, and those have to do with threat. You know, if a threat is manageable, then you'll tend to get angry. And I use that in a broad sense because anger can range from just irritation. You're stepping on my toes to rage. But it's just basically threat, and I want to take the threat

out. Fear, the threat seems unmanageable, so I want to get away from it. You know, grizzly bear coming at me, you know, i want to get away from it you know grizzly bear coming at me you know i want to go the other way and of course fear can range from just apprehension to you know panic and those are the two that we know the most of uh two that are kind of interesting there's one called seeking and that's if you look at any baby they want to explore the environment you know they're looking they're chewing they're feeling their way around the environment and we have this desire to kind of want to know what's. You know, they're licking, they're chewing, they're feeling their way around the environment. And we have this desire to kind of want to know what's out there,

which is why if you're sitting in a room and somebody walks in, the first thing everybody does is they glance over there. And it's almost an unconscious kind of an urge to want to do that. In fact, let me back up and just talk about what emotions are. Neuroscientists refer to them as affects. So an affect pushes you to want to do something. So the most basic ones are your sensory affects, like heat, cold, pressure.

You've been sitting too long. I want to move around. If I get cold, I want to get hot. Then you have the homeostatic, the ones that have to do with balancing your body, like hunger and thirst. The thirstier you are are all of the philosophical stuff leaves your mind i just want to find something you know to quench my thirst i need to eat or

someone will die and so emotions are kind of like the next level up and they push you to take care of some kind of a need so again anger fear threat uh this d to want to know what's out there again the basis of our curiosity. And then there's one called play. And it's interesting, the guy that did a lot of the early research in the modern era, Panksepp, he was called the rat ticklers

because he would tickle rats and stuff. But he found that he could turn off the upper part of their brain and they still wanted to play. So it's a very deep seated kind of a need to want to interact with people. And I know like my great granddaughter, her favorite thing is tickle me, you know. And we still want to interact and play, and it's part of how social animals learn limits.

So you can be brainless and still want to play, basically. Exactly. According to the mouse experiment. If you're a mouse, yes. That explains the people I know. Well, that's true. And again, you learn how to do too much by doing too much, right?

Yeah, well, that's true. And then we interact that way. So again, it's part of our social stuff. It turns out there's a second fear circuit, and in babies we call it separation anxiety. Oh, yeah. And it's why we miss people when they're gone, especially once we've bonded with them. And it's why we miss people when they're gone, especially once we bonded with them.

And there's a complementary caring circuit that also later on develops in what they call the secondary emotions like love, pride, you know, those types of things. So those are the seven. Oh, I forgot. The one that comes up during adolescence, which is lust, right? Yeah. So it's not like these are paired with the seven deadly sins or something here.

Well, yeah. They're kind of underneath there somewhere. There you go. Yeah, I know that lust part. I've been having that since I was a teenager, I think. Yeah, that one kicks up with those hormones kind of activate it. They do. They do.

What's that about? So let me ask you this. I saw this really cool experiment where they and i i think it's a famous experiment you may have heard of but they did a thing where they took babies and mothers uh and they they held babies up in front of their mothers like a couple feet away and you know the mothers would play with them hey you know i do the same thing with my dogs but they did a thing where the mothers just went still face and didn't show any expression didn't say anything and just were still

face and they showed how just upset the kids got and freaked out and and how much we need that neurological exchange that probably plays into our emotions and security and everything else. And I mean, the kids would be looking around and freaking out and started screaming and writhing. And it was interesting to see the body language go between those two. Well, and again, it has to do with that nonverbal communication. You know, that's an infant's primary language. They haven't learned language yet. And so they're basically just like your dogs.

They're just picking up from all that nonverbal stuff that's going on. And they want that connection. There is that desire that that caring circuit. And then, so the panic circuit kicks in. So how do I, how do I, when those babies do that with me, you know, and I'm doing the nonverbal communication, how do I communicate, change your own diaper?

Stop going poop on the floor. That's when you hand it to the mother. Oh, okay. That's all right. Or the dad. Note to self, hand off baby to someone else or, yeah, stop putting the hose on them. Child services says you can't do it anymore. I'm just kidding.

Don't do that, people. That's a joke. We do jokes in the show. It's a comedy bit. So there you go. So this is interesting. You know, it took me a long time to kind of realize there was that emotional link and emotional sort of connection between my dogs and stuff.

I think a lot of people maybe struggle with that. Maybe they don't really understand the dog's role or, you know, pet's role in that. Well, you know, they become a substitute for a person in terms of affections. You know, that's why people love their pets so much. You know, they give you unconditional love. Unconditional love. As opposed to everyone else in my life who is like if you have money we give

you love yeah yeah it's very conditional it's very transactional actually in fact it's interesting because out of those three things that make people happy number one by far is relationship having you know a a deep connection with somebody else when you about it, that's one of the things that people are often missing nowadays. You know, I got 500 Facebook friends, but I don't have anybody I can really be real with. Yeah. There's nobody showing up to my funeral from any of that group.

Yeah. My favorite Jewish proverb is I want six people that aren't looking at their watches carrying my casket, right? That's true. My pets will probably be the ones carrying my casket.

They'll just hook them to a sleigh and the huskies will pull them down to the cemetery or something. Although I think I'm set to be cremated because I'm not leaving enough money behind for my inheritance people to get anything. So they're just going to have a bonfire at back, really. Yeah.

Just kind of leave it at that. And it's going to be more like a funeral pyre because they're just going to be like, screw that guy. But hopefully they bring marshmallows. I don't know. That's kind of weird. So discover ways to quiet destructive emotional triggers

is another thing you talk about in the book. Right. Help people with that because, I mean, there's a lot of people getting triggered now on social media. Well, and I'll give some simple examples. But first let me say with people, the answer, I used to tell my clients, the answer is always E. And in multiple choice questions, that's the all of the above, right?

Ah. And everybody's always looking for, tell me the one thing I can do so everything's going to be wonderful. And oftentimes you got to do multiple things to do it wonderful, right? But with simple triggers, like one of the examples I give in the book

is a couple of people that are on a plane that gets hit by lightning. And it's a very scary event. So the next time you get ready to get on a plane, there's some anxiety there. It's kind of a form of PTSD, right? And one person gets to where they can fly. The other person can't.

And the person who can fly does what I call what's happening, what's real, and then you distract yourself. So what's happening is I've got some anxiety because that last fright flight uh nothing really actually happened to me you know they again what's real is i was safe we landed you know and i'll probably never experience this again okay now let me distract myself with what i need to do so it's kind of a thing that you can use for a lot of simple triggers i had one gal who had an employer who resembled her abusive parent. And so she was getting all triggered by him when she'd go to office. And so we use that same idea. You know, what's happening is, you know, he looks like my parent, sounds like my parent.

What's real is he's not. He's just my boss. We're just going to talk about, you know, the weekly schedule. And over time, she was able to desensitize and actually become friends with him. He's not. He's just my boss. We're just going to talk about the weekly schedule. And over time, she was able to desensitize and actually become friends with him. Oh, wow. And that's the thing with negative triggers is you can desensitize to them. And desensitization just simply means getting used to something.

The first job you had, you were nervous. You weren't sure about stuff. But after a while, it's just a job, right? Yeah. You go to your next job. There's a lot of anxiety. You're not sure. But after a while, you desensitize to it, and it's just the next job, right?

Same thing with marriage and all kinds of other stuff, right? You desensitize, and you get used to things. Yeah. You look at things that go on in an operating room or something, things that people get desensitized to, you know, medical personnel, because it's just something they're dealing with every day. So you can learn to do that. And the person who did not desensitize, the big key is the self-talk. I mean, their thoughts were things like, oh, my gosh, what if that happens again? What if a plane crashes?

What if, you know, what if it's the end of my life? Oh, this is terrible. i can't stand it and you know that type of self-talk of course reinforces the trigger and uh finish that probably the emotional aspect of that right they start cycling the well exactly the negative self-talk gets all those emotions going and and it reinforces that association in the brain you brain of danger with planes. And so the trigger gets stronger and stronger. Yeah. One of the interesting things about emotions is they're the way that your brain indexes information.

So the brain is always making associations from the time you're born. And things that are positive get kind of a positive emotional tag to it and things that are negative get a negative tag which is why experiential learning is more valuable than just simple book learning i can read everything there is to know about reading about driving a car and i could be an expert on driving a car but until i get behind the wheel oh my gosh that didn't work oh this feels good. You know, now the brain can start associating that information with some, with the emotional triggers or emotional tags and eventually take it on as an

automatic response pattern. So let me ask you this about what you referenced earlier, where people, you know, start operating in the now and the present. It sounds like that's a very logical approach where you're you're logically telling yourself hey calm down with your emotions here's our present here's what's really happening do you find that both women i mean i men we can deal with logic and reason pretty well especially if we're based in our masculine do you find that women have

have a harder trouble because women are usually based and filter everything through their emotion. Do you find that they have a harder time making that logical recognition or is it a logical sort of? It's pretty similar across board. Whenever you have strong emotion going on, the logical part of your brain shuts down. Okay. Which is why military, medical medical personnel they train so that they don't have to think about it they can just act because of that and that moment when there's all that adrenaline pumping and your emotions are up those frontal lobes aren't working really well

and so you have to have things memorized to do uh and so like if you have a phobia like a gal who has a water phobia right uh? That I was working with. As soon as she saw water, the thoughts just start racing. Oh my gosh, water, I got to get away. You know, the emotions kick up. And so you have to slow that down and reconnect or reactivate that thinking,

that rational part of the brain so that you can go through that desensitization process, you know? So in her case, her brothers used to tell her that they're piranhas in the water, they're going to eat her toes. And so, you know, you know, siblings provide therapists with a lot of work. So.

Oh, is that, is that what the cause of it is? A lot of times. Anyway, so, you know, so we started out with, you know, gave her some relaxation, you know, techniques, gave her, you know, some coping self statements and basically the what's happening, what's real. Okay. What's happening is, you know, this is a condition response pattern from when my brothers told me those stupid things. They were never promised. I was always safe. I'm safe now.

And just start sitting next to the pool. Right. And eventually get where she's, you know, got sitting for some time with her feet in the pool and then sitting next to the pool right and eventually get where she's you know got sitting some for some time with her feet in the pool and eventually getting into the pool all the time managing the anxiety you know in a gradual way and you can actually desensitize to anything through that process i've taken so many people through different types of fears and phobias just through that process of gradual des sensitization, managing the anxiety so that they eventually get comfortable in that situation.

But at some point, some point in time, you gotta, you gotta actually face it. So, so you might as well just face it. And you know, it's a,

is it the, you know, you fall off a horse, you get back on sort of concept. Well, the idea is the only way you know you can do something is by doing it. So, so maybe for hate of snakes, you just need to go play with some, I mean, play with some.

Well, and again, you do it in a gradual way. You might start across the room with a snake in a container and eventually get closer to it. You know, that type of stuff. And probably don't use a rattlesnake, right? Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Note to self, stop using the rattlesnakes to reprogram the employees um there's been some complaints uh and some charges um but uh you know you you mentioned something that's really interesting to me that made me change a paradigm

in my head you said that the the the way we use we use emotions and maybe emotional, I don't have it exactly. Emotional tags on your memories. It's the way your index is information. Index, there you go. We create a library of indexes. And I love that. I never thought of that that way. Boy, I've got a hell of a library going on there.

Well, you see it when you use modalities like eye movement desensitization, where you're dealing with a particular traumatic thing and then the person will have a cascade of memories which logically are very unconnected but on an emotional level they're connected yeah that's interesting how it works up now uh this probably plays into what one of our guests or one of our uh listeners g1 red crypto thanks for the comment you don't really remember things that don't have an emotional charge associated. So I think what he's implying is sometimes we may not remember those emotional things. Maybe we have a trauma that we've kind of buried in our subconscious

because it's too much to deal with or something. Is that possible? Oh, yeah. I mean, people do that all the time. And you see that most often, like with childhood stuff, especially a child is not able to process the emotion like an adult. So a lot of times they'll just stick it over there and get on with life, which is why a lot of times that stuff comes up when you get older

because now the brain is ready to start processing some of that stuff and dealing with it is that why and so that's why it starts to come back to you after you've you've buried it away it doesn't have to but a lot of times i mean sometimes you don't necessarily have to process everything so huh you know that that really explains a lot of things you know you people you know they for they seem to forget about their trauma and then it comes back to them in later life and they're like why is this coming up now and you know they're questioning their sanity and maybe you're questioning their sanity going you know yeah how come this is suddenly appearing now but that that would explain it that maybe you finally reached a point where your mind thinks okay they could maybe deal with this

yeah you know 20s is a very common time because you know when you're grade school you know like i said your brain is just not able to deal with it adolescence you got all that adolescence bs stuff you're dealing with right so and so 20s things are starting to settle down so a lot of times that's when a lot of stuff will come back and when you're a child you i, you'd have no way of processing half the stuff that comes at you, you know, and if your parents are, uh, you know, there's, there's issues in your parents' relationship or there's, um, you know, high toxic environments that, that, you know, you're not feeling secure basically is what I'm trying to say. You're just trying to, you're trying to find some behaviors to survive in that environment. It almost kind of reminds me when, you know, because we've had people on that have talked about toxic environments with their parents, whether it's fighting or divorce or, you know,

maybe they had an alcoholic father and, you know, an abusive mother or, you know, just the two of them were at it. And it kind of reminds me now of that baby that i remember that we talked about on the show who's who's looking at the mother and can't get that security for the mother it's kind of the same sort of situation where the child is still looking for that security and that balance a healthy some sort of environment and they're not getting it because it's toxic and and these emotional circuits they're not exactly the same for every person. And they do get affected by development. And just like some people are better at math, some people are better at throwing a baseball or whatever,

your circuits vary for people. Circuits in a social path are different from the average person. So some people might get impacted from a trauma experience more so than other people. Yeah, so like loss. Some people take loss more strongly than others, you know, or some people have a higher level of curiosity than others, you know? Yeah.

Some people like to play more than others. That's true. Yeah. I've seen those people there. I'm trying to get them to go to work and do their job. I know. Yeah. We have this around the office.

There's an interesting experiment with, uh, babies that came out of Eastern Europe where they were never touched or held. You know, the bottle would be changed. And so they had what are called attachment disorder. And it's like those carrying circuits shut down. In fact, one of the ways that they measured that or got an indication is oxytocin

is one of the hormones that seems to be associated with that network and so you take a mother who has a birth child and they play this as a toddler who's watching a little video game and the oxytocin levels just go through the roof with these babies that would just stay flat huh so it's kind of sounds like something my uh girlfriend's accused me of um do you find that contributes to narcissism well you know a lot of the stuff we talk we talk like we know what's going on but we don't know wait you're the doctor who wrote the book well you know it's we use these computer analogies all this other stuff and there's so much we don't know about the brain you know even these circuits you know we know that they're there the details on it are very fuzzy right now well i can agree with you there's so much we don't know about the brain sometimes i

just sit and look at people and go yeah what the fuck you're giving me so stupid um so there you go but no this is really interesting you give me a couple new paradigms to think about. I had just barely seen that baby video, I don't know, about a month or two ago or something. And it really, like, I was just like, holy crap, just watching the baby really start losing it. And it's just a baby, you know, and you're like, wow, they really are more advanced than they should, than I guess I thought they were. And they're working on that kind of that nonverbal level. And again, their emotions are driving them to take care of needs, you know, threat, loss, connection, social interaction, you know, all that stuff is kind of going on.

But there's not the mental process, you know, the mental higher thinking processes to manage it. Because over time, your thinking part of your brain is supposed to be kind of the executor overseeing that emotional network. Although if they have a very strong association or trigger, it can overwhelm your thoughts. Wow. Anybody who's in love can tell you that that's right yeah that's true six months later you look and say who is this person or in lust for that matter yeah i've seen that movie too um so now people that uh one thing that people have that have

trauma whether they recognize or not or know it or not you know some of that subconscious we talked about they tend to react to different things overreact to different things like right uh gaslighting because you know if they if it's a trust trauma if you gaslight them if people lie to them um they tend to highly overreact um and uh and and have trouble dealing with it. Sometimes they don't understand why. I guess that's another way that they can try and identify why they're overreacting. And again, there's a couple parts of that. Again, some of that sometimes is the triggers we were talking about. There's things in the other person that trigger associations.

And people who come from a really dysfunctional background, they tend to go into relationships with the blinders on. It's interesting. You can take, let's say, a lady, and you can put her in a room with 15 guys within 15 minutes or so. She's talking to the guys from dysfunctional backgrounds, even though everybody is presenting well at that moment the reason is again this unconscious subconscious communication she gets around the people from

positive you know healthy backgrounds they have appropriate limits you know they appropriate emotion that's like they feel funny she gets around the people that come from similar backgrounds oh it feels familiar and again everybody's presenting well at that moment, right? Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. They're still somehow picking up on the toxic subconscious. Well, it's not so much the toxic, the healthy feels funny. It's kind of like when I was working with panic disorder,

I would routinely give people a relaxation response program to listen to. And a lot of times it would make them anxious at first because the feeling of anxiety or relaxation was just so foreign to them. And I know when I've worked with people from dysfunctional backgrounds and, you know, one of the things I try to get them to do is, okay, you need to find one or two healthy people and hang around them for a while

because all their friends usually come from the same type of background, right? We surround our people, ourself with people that usually feel similar to what we're familiar with, right? Yeah. And so can you learn to disassociate? Let's say you're, the one challenge that I know especially women have is if they go to what they know. So they will, if they're used to abusive relationships, usually from a father relationship, they'll stick to those relationships.

I've been guilty of the same thing. My mom said to me one time, she's like, why do you always pick these awful women that are just messed up? And I'm like, I don't know. Well, you're picking with the wrong emotional circuit. There you go. There you go. It's that lust circuit, right? Sometimes trauma or the lust circuit yeah there's that too um but uh so you can disassociate that by just

it's more you you learn to desensitize to healthy and so i would have them identify one or two people that are come from healthy backgrounds and just hang around them. And of course, the first complaint they would have is these people are so boring. Yeah, they're boring. There's actually no drama. A lot of them are like, I want to go have fun. There's no drama in their life, right? There's no drama. You don't have the ups and downs, the roller coaster, right?

But if they hang around them for six months or so, what they find is that comfort feels really good because they're not used to feeling safe and comfortable yeah and so once you start to experience like with the relaxation response wow this feels pretty nice i like this now isn't there a dopamine trigger though to the drama the high ups and downs well yeah kind of a drug addiction to that well yeah i mean we we are certainly into excitement in our modern life yeah because i know there's some people they're they're so hooked on the excitement or for the attention and validation from men they can't get off it especially with social media now you know these instagram mentality now the only fans mentality you see a lot of the attention and

validation desperation in the market. See, and that gets back to what we're talking about with happiness, that relationships, having those deep connections with another human being, that's really what gives you satisfaction long-term. And we don't understand that as a culture very well. That's not what our media, our movies and stuff don't show that you know the indiana jones guy you know that's kind of the ideal right but he always he always leaves him at the end right it's true james bond yeah all those characters right that's my dating life um there's something uh g1 red crypto came in uh as we were talking this is kind of a fallback

sometimes they're defense mechanisms they put in order to shield themselves from whatever gave them the trauma they begin with. Defense mechanisms sometimes have a bad name because they get overused, but defense mechanisms are there for the very purpose to defend ourselves from being overwhelmed. So if I'm in an operating room, I need to be able to suppress my emotions and stuff so I can focus on what I'm doing. But I need to also be able to then tune in later on

and process whatever's going on in my life. And that's the thing where defense mechanisms can sometimes be problematic. We live in such a comfortable area of the world, and you look around, most people still live in such a comfortable area of the world, and you look around, most people still live in pretty harsh circumstances. So they need to have fairly rigid should-must rules. They need to have fairly strong defense mechanisms just in order to survive.

I mean, you look at what's going on in the Middle East. You look at what's going on in parts of Africa. You look at what's going on in Kiev and stuff. You don't have time to sit around and have a lot of touchy-feely feelings. You need to basically protect yourself. And so. Total survival mode. Yeah.

You need, you need to get pretty crusty. The problem again is when you get into an environment where you don't need that anymore, but you're still acting that way. And that's, that's the problem. Do you think that's a kind of the generational thing we've been going on from, you know, um, part of it is. Yeah. I mean, my parents, my dad, he was world war two.

He was in, you know, uh, oh yeah. Well, he was over in before the war. Then he was in, uh, Pearl Harbor and throughout the Pacific and stuff. And I, I remember, uh, when I was in my counseling program, you know, and I was learning all this stuff, I was working on myself, you know, get more in touch with my feelings and stuff. And I sat down with him at a table and I said, you know, dad, I know we never talked this way. I just want to let you know, you know, I really love you. And he looks at me, he says, what are you trying to say? I don't know what I

said. You know, so I go through it a second time. Then it hits me. It's a level of communication. He's just not capable. Although he was just so generous. You know, he did so much stuff for me, you know, and he'd give you the shirt off his back. But that was just a level of communication that he didn't do.

Yeah. That explains the generational sort of thing. You know, now we're almost too touchy-feely where, oh, God, the kid might fall down and scar his knee. Let's build a, let's arm him with, you know, the helicopter parenting thing going on. Well, and I was reading an article on resilience the other day that was interesting. It was talking about how one of the big crisis right now is our kids don't have much resilience and part of that is because you know i used to go out riding my bike i could ride for 20 miles and come back home and you know do stuff and you know yeah in our in our in our day they actually had to have a commercial that would tell parents uh at 10 o'clock do you know where

your parents your kids are and their parents to be be sitting there, I don't know, drinking and smoking. And they'd be like, well, we have kids? We have kids? We need to go find them. Evidently, TV says so. But kids don't have a lot of those opportunities a lot of times. It's an interesting... We're latchkey kids.

I mean, we know... I mean, we could survive sustenance off of garden hoses. Oh, yeah. I started paper route in the fifth grade. I worked paper routes for a long time. If I wanted to eat, I just went through people's garden because they had them back then. And, you know, sometimes we just stay out.

And, you know, we test how long it would take for mom to come to the door and start screaming at us. You know, we were like, it would take for mom to come to the door and start screaming at us. You know, we were like, hey, the street light's on. I wonder if they're going to see the commercial. Dinner was always a big magnet. Yeah, that was always a thing. Mom was like, you come for dinner. I'm like, no, we've seen your cooking.

So there you go. Now, one thing you talk about in your book that I think is really pertinent, we've touched on a little bit, how to reduce the negative effects of social media and devices. Social media has really become this, this, it started as a Pandora's box where everyone opened it, went, Oh my God, we'll go on world and everyone's going to hug each other and it's going to be wonderful now it's like and uh yeah and we're kind of like adolescents with it right now you know aren't we we're trying to learn what's the what i mean because there's some really positive things about social media my daughter she did her master's over in england and every sunday we get on you know zoom with her and we talk with her and that's great time and yeah i i enjoy the Internet, but at the same time, I don't spend a lot of time on social media other than business-related stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty toxic. They just had Facebook or all the, like, I think about 17 states here in America, they just sued Facebook and Instagram, and they say that it harms children and it's damaging

i've seen a lot of people that are grown people that are so addicted like i said to the dopamine rush of getting attention and validation well it's designed to do that yeah yeah that's that's what even in teaching when i was teaching they said you gotta you gotta shift activities every 15 minutes otherwise you lose their attention you 15 minutes, that even seems long. Well, I mean, that was the matter. You get into a 15-minute exercise or something, you have to move into something else, right? Yeah.

Now it's the TikTok generation where it's 30 seconds. Well, you know, parents have to take control of it. I mean, they have some wonderful tools. They have tools where, you know, the Internet will shut down at certain times and only be active, so kids can't get into it. And then they lose their mind, though. They have tools where the internet will shut down at certain times and only be active so kids can't get into it. And then it loses their mind, though. They learn how to do stuff. My

niece, I remember when her kids were younger, she had a basket. She wanted them to have a phone in case they needed to contact her. As soon as they came home, they had to put the phone in the basket. Oh, really? I just give my kids pagers. i remember those remember those yeah right now the gen z is going what what is it yeah what i guess that no it's a matter you

know the saddest thing for me is to go out to a restaurant and see both parents on their phones and the kids and the device yeah and nobody's. It's a matter of realizing that you've got to take control of this stuff and, you know, you've got to manage it in a wise way. I mean, even with our great granddaughter that I'm watching, you know, we limit how much time she has on stuff.

I mean, she likes to watch and look at the little, the, what do you call it? The tablet. And we, we give her the uh tablet and we give her you know we give her a half hour before nap time and so she's there looking at a little cartoony stuff you know i mean maybe the thing is you've got to give them other stuff to do like my dad would probably have been like turn off the twitter and go mow the lawn and you're like well my thing with

my kids was you know you know they come they say i'm bored i say you know boredom is good because people get wonderfully creative when they're bored now if not i have some chores for you to do ah there you go oh we'll go find something to do then see my my parents you know our latchkey parents would just throw us out in the environment and be like survive motherfucker see you at dinner and uh you know we stand at the door of the world going what do we do with all this crap uh fuck it we'll figure something out um yeah i i did the paper out i had animals to tend to and stuff yeah yeah it's interesting because like farm kids have a much better self-image than non-farm kids.

Really? And it's because they are required in order for the family to survive and do well. So they have a positive role within the family. And this whole self-esteem thing, it's more self-image, right? It's a little piece of your self-image. And the way you learn to have a positive self-image is by being competent. Hmm. And doing things.

Yeah. And that's why chores are so important. Wow. Yeah, chores. Yeah. The average kid has to make their bed and take the garbage out and they don't do those two things, right? God, the horror. Dude, I've seen some of these helicopter parents.

They would wipe the kid's ass at 19 if they could. It's just extraordinary. Our kids, we had a lot of chores for them. I remember even my daughter, when she wanted a phone in her room. And so I said, okay, let's go take the little wiring off on the phone and see how it's connected.

Now you go in your room, you wire it up. We did things like that. Wow. She was wonderfully competent when she went out to college. She reported to the CPS. it now you go in your room you wire it up and you know we did things like that wow that she was wonderfully competent when she went out to college she reported the cps well nowadays baby i don't know yeah nowadays they might do that hey you abused us how do they abuse you they they made us use a wired phone yeah it's like i said earlier like you know if you didn't want to participate in helping with dinner fine we'll see you for the next meal yeah and you know my son only missed one meal that's all you need you you learn really quick they're like hey these people are freaking serious

they're not going to put up with my crap and you can do that without being overly harsh you know yeah i do that with my dates um so there you go. But I like this. You know, more and more parents need to realize how dangerous and addictive it is. The addiction to the dopamine, the attention, the validation, I think it hurts women more. They say young women are suicidal. They're, you know, part of it is the FOMO. They see, you know, there's… Yeah, that fear of missing out and, and especially, you know, they're more sensitive, I think, to the, uh, some of the, how mean kids can be.

Oh yeah. I mean, and women are vicious to each other just on the face of it. I mean, and then, you know, the social media fakeness, the, you know, you, you have these influencers run around that present themselves, you know, they're making millions, billions, and then you find out they've been just running scams they're going to jail but even your friends you know everybody's living a better life than i am oh yeah i mean because that's all you see on the internet right yeah you don't see the bags bad stuff yeah plus you yeah you don't see the you know no one ever my ever, my friend, I remember there was a Foursquare back where we would check in for mayordom. And my friend says, yeah, no one ever checks in on Foursquare at the methadone clinic, at the AA clinic. No one ever checks in at the rehab clinic.

No one ever checks in at the pawn shop or the police station. It's always when you're out to dinner an expensive place or you know you're someplace nice um you know even with social media you know they have like in la they have sets that you can go to that are cutaway sets of a private plane that you their stages you can go pay i think it's like 129 bucks and you can make it look like you can take these photographs like you're in a private plane you're living the life they have champagne there and you can make it look like you can take these photographs like you're in a private plane you're living the life they have champagne there and you can do the whole photo and it's a set it's it's a little you go to some office building and you know it's a cutaway set and you know they're taking the

pictures and and people believe it you know there's people who built whole lives uh i'm wearing all these diamonds here you know this diamond watch and you know that's it's all fake and you know it's interesting and people believe it and then they'll have these cars and you know the expensive cars then turns out they've just been scamming people or running like crypto scams or something uh it's just extraordinary people are starved for real relationship that's what it is you know that's why a lot of these weekend programs and stuff are so successful. I remember back when S first came out way back in the 70s and 80s. You give people an intense experience of intimacy, and man, you got them.

You can drain all the money you want out of them. That explains Tony Robbins then maybe and those firewalk things. I've seen people that are addicted to motivation programs. You give them that connection, that feeling of connection and intimacy and meaning. Man, you can get all kinds of money. Wow. Well, that explains scammers. People have less intimacy now more than ever in the market,

so they're probably more susceptible. Well, yeah. It used to be, you know, you had your village or you had your block, you had your, you know, extended family. You had all kinds of people that you could go to and you could talk to about problems and stuff and connect with. And nowadays people can go through their entire day without a single real connection with another person yeah and people are very isolated now yep um and that isolation is what makes people weird you know quite frankly and you feel like you're not isolated you know you're like i got my wife and my kids well you're you're substituting excitement you're substituting sex you're substituting other things

for what you really want, which is, again, that connection with another human being. Or your dogs. That explains a lot of relationships that I've seen and marriages I've seen, actually, and everything else.

Connection is everything. And I guess if you're in a marriage, you're not looking at each other and you're not looking at each other and you're not having that facial body language sort of interaction. You know, you're ignoring each other. You're like, what do you want, honey? I don't know, whatever you want. You know, you're probably going to have problems.

So this explains a lot of things. Give us your final thoughts as we go out. We've discussed a lot of really cool things that you have in your book and your perspectives, changed the paradigms and way I think about some things. So I love it. Give us your final thoughts and pitch on the book as we go out, we've discussed a lot of really cool things that you have in your book and your perspectives change the paradigms the way I think about some things, so I love it. Give us your final thoughts and pitch on the book as we go out. Well, the book is, like I said, takes you on a journey. If you want to

know about what emotions are, why you have them, and how to manage ones that are causing problems in your life, it's got a lot of good stuff in there that can help you. There you go. Give us your dot coms too, Renaud, so people can find you on the interwebs so why emotions.com uh why emotion dot com uh why emotion.com and you can find my connections to my youtube channel to the books i've got some freebie stuff there uh everything you need to know about me is right there why

emotion.com. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it, man. It's been a great show. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to our audience for tuning in.

I hope you guys learned something as well. If you didn't, go back and watch the damn show already again, because repetition is good. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4.com, LinkedIn.com, order up wherever fine books are sold. Came out May 2nd, 2023.

Why you feel the way you do. Understand and heal the source of stressful emotions. Maybe get enough copies here since it's coming up on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Mail them out to all your family. You're going to be seeing here at your family reunion soon and maybe you can get them to be less psychotic over Thanksgiving dinner as well.

That might help everyone. There you go. Great Christmas present. Great Christmas present. Give it away to everyone you know. Maybe those people that are really high stress. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. Mm-hmm.