TRIGGERnometry - Dr Linda Papadopoulos on Trigger Warnings, Social Media & Mental Health

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos (@DrLinda_P) discusses trigger warnings, social media, social media addiction, mental health, intellectual dishonesty, diversity, diversity of thought, men & women, CBT, psychology, personal development, meditation, stress, depression and a lot more with the guys at TRIGGERnometry. Find us on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Picture this. Me, Reese Witherspoon in London. Ordering fish and chips so often, they might start wrapping me in paper. I'm traveling with my Wells Fargo Autograph Journey card, so I earn rewards wherever I book travel. Five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Imagine getting rewarded for eating a toad in the hole. Wait, what is a toad in a hole? Visit Wells Fargo.com slash autograph journey. Terms apply. And welcome to Trigonometry.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you're sick of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our fantastic expert guest this week is a psychologist and author, Dr. Linda Papadopoulos. Welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you here. And before we get started, what we always like to do is ask the guest to tell the viewers a little bit about how they are, where they are, just a little bit of background to. to get them to know you.

Sure. Well, I'm a psychologist. I've, I guess, I've been really lucky in that I got into psychology. Very young age and I've been able to kind of follow sort of several passions around. My interests range from the mind-body connection. So I did a lot of work on kind of psycho-neurroimmunology in skin in the early days. And I went off and I did a lot of work kind of Jason's out on body image, the way that we look, how it affects how we feel.

That then led me into things like objectification, sexualization. So I did a lot of work and policy work as well, kind of advising how the way that we portray each other and understand those portrayals affects our judgments, the way that we behave. And then I've also gotten to do, I guess, some really kind of perhaps less high-brow, but really interesting stuff.

I've done a lot of media work where I think it's been really lovely being able to kind of take these concepts that you normally write about in academic journals to the public. So I've had several TV shows. I've written for popular magazines. And as well as my academic books, I've written lots of self-help books as well. And you have your own podcast as well as well, which we'll talk about.

Actually, before we started the interview, we sat down, we hadn't met before, we started chatting, and it very quickly became apparent that we are quite aligned in terms of what we often talk about with you. And so let's just get straight into it. First of all, one of the things, you know, this is called trigonometry. and we briefly mentioned that I was telling you the study that I saw that giving people trigger warnings actually primes them

to have a negative experience of whatever it is. And you're like, yeah, please ask me about that on the show. So what do you want to say to us as a psychologist about that? If you think of one of the things that we do in cognitive therapy, right, when someone comes in and says, look, this is happening to me and it's really bothering me. One of the things that we do is we look at erroneous thinking. So if I've come in and I've said, you know, oh, you know, I don't like stripes.

It may be that you hear, well, Linda doesn't like me. We'll talk about it later. And, you know, or she's being offensive and she's being directly offensive. Now, if you were having therapy, they'd be like, well, maybe it's just that Linda had a bad experience with stripes. I mean, it's nothing personal. Maybe before you kind of personalize this and become triggered by it, maybe you need to check out with Linda why she said that. So in a lot of ways, these trigger warnings, a lot of ways kind of press. priming people to be offended is the exact opposite of what we do in CBT,

which is take a step back and reevaluate that thought, right? If I'm going out of my way to find something to be offended about, then I will be. And there's a value in being offended, because if I'm offended, I can put myself in the role of someone who's a victim, then they need to take care of me. I can get sort of some sort of, I can get social points because I've called you out for being whatever, being unthoughtful,

I'm caring. So there's a reason why this happens. And I think one of the things that I think we see a lot of these days with regards to people feeling that vulnerability is precisely because I think a lot of young people grew up in a culture where their parents got rid of obstacles. They were like snowplows. So they had a problem with a teacher.

They went and they spoke to a teacher on their behalf. They didn't like not being invited to a kid's party. They'd complain and they'd speak to the mother and they'd invited to the party. A big part of dealing with life is having the resilience to come back and realize it's sometimes shit happens not because someone's out to get me, but because things happen. And I have to find the strength to overcome these things. So I just kind of feel that a lot of the way that we're talking about trigger warnings

and language being dangerous basically de-skills people from being able to cope with these things. And I certainly wouldn't want that, you know, for my child or any of the young people that I work with. And do you think this behavior is addictive that once you start and you cast yourself in the role of victim, you get this attention, you think to yourself, hang on, I quite enjoy this, whether consciously or subconsciously. Well, there's, I think there's a power in being seen and being heard. And look, I think there are some genuine people that are victimized out there. And I think it's important that we say that. And I think they should be able to speak up and talk about it. But I think intense importance, right?

If I bump into you and I didn't mean to bump into you, then surely that matters. Right? Now, the amount you hurt, you know, if you're really hurt that, yeah, that matters too. But the intent has to come into it. And I kind of fear that it's very rarely about intent. It's very rarely that I didn't notice you had the striped shirt on before I said I don't like striped shirt. I keep going on here on. I'm sorry. I always enjoy it when your fashion sense gets destroyed.

That's always the best. I did show this to my girlfriend yesterday and she just looked at it and then walked out the room. You know when you're trying to pet a cat and it's like, no, I'm out. So there we go. The moral of the stories listen to your girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, and listen to her disapproval. Right. Do you think social media has made this worse, the fact that, you know, we're all constantly logged in, we're all looking for approval, we're all looking for likes, etc, etc, etc? I think it's a huge part of it. I think, yes, they're looking for approval and likes, but I think also kind of the distillation of one's ideology down to their, you know, most thoughtless tweet, right?

So, you know, surely we're an amalgam of all of, you know, the ways that we interact, our interactions, our opinions, everything else, but because I can look into your background and come up with the one time that you used, you know, whatever, you know, a word in the wrong way, or you re-liked something you didn't think about and you retweeted it, I think these things mean that we're walking on ink shells. We're constantly so anxious of being misunderstood, because they're, like we said earlier, there's something in calling out people for being wrong.

So we've got this very weird situation where we want to be seen. So we're constantly kind of saying, this is what I feel about this and I have an opinion about that. But at the same time, the rest of us are kind of looking to call each other out because there's a value in that as well. So like the kind of the discourse isn't the healthiest. We're not kind of talking to get to a better place of understanding. We're talking to kind of call each other out and see, well, hold on. Maybe you didn't see that in the right way, and then that, you know, those kind of Twitter wars start. And do you think it's sort of increases people's narcissism using the social media?

I think it's inevitable that something that makes you think about how you're seen in such a nuanced way increases narcissism. And I don't mean that, I mean, it's actually really kind of heartbreaking. So I've been a psychologist for many, many years, and sort of even things that I see a lot of, the way they're depicted to me of change, I do a lot with eating disorders. And, you know, for many years, the big thing was a number, right? So I want to be this weight, I want to be this size.

And then more recently, people are bringing in sort of pictures from Instagram with sort of hashtags like bikini bridge or thigh gap or box gap, which means we're kind of standing outside ourselves and looking in, we're kind of, you know, self-objectifying. Now, this self-objectification, while there's an understanding, narcissistic element, there's also an element that kind of belies incredibly dangerous, low self-esteem. Because, you know, not only am I looking myself through my eyes, but through the eyes of, you know,

everyone else that I feel is looking at me and through their values and through the way that they're going to assess me. So, yeah, I always say if I was going to create an exercise for poor self-esteem, I tell people to take a bunch of pictures of themselves, look through the ones that are like the least awful, then find that one and then spend, you know, 20 minutes filtering it, thinking of a great hashtag, then put it up on social media, then sit back and wait for the likes, and if 50 don't come in the first 20 minutes, take it down and start over again. That is literally an exercise in, you know, and poor self-esteem. Yet, you know, so many people do it day in, day out. And this idea of not being able to live up to your selfie, you know, this discrepancy between who I am and who I'm projecting, I think is having a significant effect

on mental health because there's no ability to rest from what does everybody else think about me. That's constantly there. There's no ability to just say, this is who I am and maybe this can be okay. And I've always thought as well that part of your job as a human being as you mature is to start to get to a point where your self-esteem is driven by what you think about yourself, like a kind of sense of who you are. And it seems like social media is taking that away from us. and kind of almost exploring our vulnerabilities as human beings. Would you say that we're particularly vulnerable to social media as humans? Well, this is such an interesting point.

So, again, if you look at sort of human evolution, we've not evolved to kind of absorb the opinions of thousands and thousands of people on ourselves, right? We tend to live in sort of in groups, and there's some research that attest the fact that even the amount of forensic we have should be no more than about 100. We just can't handle anymore. That's how we've evolved. It works well.

So social media is all about the numbers, like you say. And so, you know, being able to assimilate this kind of, I mean, there's like bathroom doors. Anyone can write whatever it is on the back. But because they're not in a little cubicle with a smelly toilet, they're there for everyone to see, it matters. Whatever's written matters. And if thousands and thousands of people's opinions and the diversity of them matter, again, that's a recipe for disaster. because not only do you not rest from it, but you're never, like you say, able to say, do you know what, this is who I am? This is the imperfect version of who I am.

And while I think we all want to, you know, self-actualize and reach our potential, you know, part of that is saying, I'll never play in the MBA if I'm a certain height, or I'll never have a singing career if I can, or whatever it is. And being okay with that. And I think that's harder when, you know, those goalposts are always, you know, sort of changing about who you ought to be and everyone's telling you, well, you're not there yet. What do you think about, what do you think makes social media so addictive? Is it specifically, has they designed it that way?

Why do we buy into it so much? Like, even I do it, even I do it. The first thing I do, when I wake up in the morning, is check Instagram. Yeah. Because, okay, this is very interesting, again. So up until relatively recently, psychology has been used to help people, right? So you have a problem, you go to psychologists, you help them. In the last sort of 20, 30 years, psychology is slowly being used to persuade people.

There's places called sort of persuasive technology labs, usually where, you know, places where tech exists, right, so like Silicon Valley, where our psychology is being used against us. So, for example, I don't know, you guys obviously Netflix, right? I love Netflix. I can't watch one show anymore. I rarely, if I'm watching a series, I can rarely turn off and watch them. Now, the reason for that is they know that if they start the next one right away, like they do, I'm more likely to stay.

They take away a barrier. If I can skip the intro, I'm more likely to stay. They take away another barrier because the metric for the success of social media sites is time spent online. So they ensure, and not because they're evil. I don't think anyone of these social media companies is bad or evil. They're just trying to maximize their profit, maximize how successful they are. So if time spent online is what they want, when I'm devising whatever, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, I'm going to ensure, well, what will make you more likely to say?

Well, I know that notifications will. Why? Do you know, there's something called variable reward system. You know, like slot machines? Yeah. You know why they're addictive. If every time you pulled it, you know, something would come out, there'd be not much to it. You'd get it when you wanted it. But the fact that sometimes it comes out every three times you pull it, sometimes it comes out every five times, means you're much more likely to go back. We know that. That's very basic human behavior. Now, that variable reward system exists on all social media sites. It exists in when you see that little notification at the bottom. It exists when you're going to get some sort of validation.

When you get the retweet, it exists when someone likes something. We know that. Now also, there's gender differences here, right? So if we look at the way that boys and girls react differently, we know that boys tend to be much more apt to gaming addiction. Why is that? Because from an evolutionary perspective, men have evolved to see. seek out competency, especially during those teen years young boys.

Now, what does that mean? That means I want to feel like I'm getting good at something. Now what better thing than if I give you a game that I kind of, ding, ding, ding, give you a reward every little while, every little increments, so I feel better, and I get that dopamine rush, and I play more, so I get more of a dopamine rush. So that becomes quite addictive. For girls, we're taught to seek out kind of that social equity, right? Do you like me?

Am I, you know, do I have that equity? Do you enjoy, you know, being with me? And as a consequence, again, those hearts, those likes are going to be very validating and rewarding. So, you know, behind your phone, this is not just a platform. There's dozens of people with PhDs in psychology, you know, way smarter than, you know, than the average person in terms of how they understand human behavior, how they understand themselves, all, you know, ensuring that you spend as much time as possible on these platforms. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world,

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their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. And do you think that there's anything that can be done or what's going to be the impact, first of all, of this, if you project it into the future? And is there anything we can do as a society, maybe legislatively, to start to curb some of these things? Yeah. I mean, I think it will, I think we're already beginning to see. So sort of gaming addictions already accepted in places like Japan, not yet in the States, but I think it's happening. We know that.

We know that, again, even from a psychological point of view, you know, self-harm, which we tend to see. Quite a lot of it, especially with sort of adolescence and adults, we're beginning to see that in the digital form. So digital self-harm where young people are bullying themselves online anonymously. Now, this is a new thing. What? Yeah. You've got to tell us more about it.

I've never heard of this. So there's been cases where young people have been horrifically bullied online. And as we know, there's been horrific cases where they've taken their own lives or attempted to. And what we find now is in some cases, certainly, certainly. not all, but in some cases, these young people will actually be in such a low place that they create another profile and they bully themselves. They call themselves stupid or ugly or horrible. And the premise we believe, because this is very new, this is not something we know, you know, we don't have much data on, but we believe it's the same thing. It's about

it's about showing the pain, showing the pain I feel inside and externalizing it and being able to deal with it. So, you know, all of these things, are affecting us. And this is just mental health. Cognitive health is being affected as well. We know that millennials now, there's some studies to attest to the fact that millennials have worse memories than seniors. And we know that because when you consolidate a memory, if you keep being interrupted, you're never going to consolidate that memory. So try and remember something when I keep, you know, you keep hearing buzzing or pinging or you're having to re-answer that email. There's a reason for this. Sleep disorders, huge problem. They're

on the rise. Why? Because this blue light that we're constantly on, affects us. Sleep's really important. We believe that sleep is one of the factors that is implicated in depression. So there's so much going on. And I think kind of our tech has outpaced our social evolution, our physiological evolution, and we're trying to play catch-up. And what responsibility do the social media companies have for our mental health? I mean, is it simply the fact that, you know, we're all individuals and, you know, we need to be responsible for ourselves, or do they need to take some responsibility for essentially manipulating us and getting us to engage in this addictive behavior? I think, you know, they do need to take some

responsibility. You know, it can't be that everywhere else we have regulation, like the ads that kids see, you know, the watershed. Do you remember the watershed? That was a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely irrelevant now, but there was a reason we had the watershed, right? So, yeah, some responsibility needs to be taken. I think the problem is, is that the way that our governments are set up to kind of regulate these things often doesn't apply because of the way that these companies are set up, not just where they're domicile, but what they actually do? Well, I'm a publishing company. I just let people put videos on my site. So it's all this kind of, well, what do you actually do, though? If you're not taking, you know, if these videos are dangerous, whose responsibility is it?

Is it you for providing the platform? Or is it the person putting up? So we need to have some serious conversations about this. I think government needs to come in with some sort of better guidelines about usage for young people, especially for kids. And we are slowly getting more information. But again, you guys need to remember sort of, you know, Facebook's a teenager, you know, Snapchat's what, seven, eight years old, Instagram, 9, 10, you know, these are all new, so we're kind of trying to figure it out. But I don't think it's good enough saying, you know, well, you know, the internet's the one place where you're allowed to have no legislation or no restrictions. You know, it seems ridiculous to me that in every other area, you

of our lives, we have at least some semblance of guidance. And the one thing that I noticed with social media is, for my days as a teacher, is year on year seeing children being less adept at social interaction. And obviously I've never done a study on it. But I just always thought, and then you saw them, the moment you gave their phones back at the end of the day, because we took the phones off from at the start,

they were 10 and 11, the moment they, first day they do switch on, going, whatever it is. But you saw a lot of the time that arguments would have happen in a playground, not because there was antagonism, not because they, you know, there was a bullying issue at times. It was simply because they didn't know how to articulate their thoughts and listen to one another. And I found that terrifying. Yeah, yeah. Because it's practice, right? You know, that's how we learn, you know, and we learn to read each other and speak and we, you know, the nuances of voice inflection and everything. It's practice. When you don't have that, you know,

of course it's going to be anxiety provoking. And we know that with anything in life, the more you avoid, the bigger the problem becomes. If I'm afraid of social gatherings and I stop going to them, eventually, you know, it's hard to get out of my front door at some point because I've avoided and avoided. And likewise with communication, so I think we definitely need to foster that. And I think the other thing that you speak about young people, I have such an issue with kind of the age segregation that happens, right? So that, you know, the 14-year-olds just speak with other 14-year-olds.

the millennials, just with the millennials. There's something important with, you know, the quirky aunt or the funny grandma that you hung out with, you know, where we had that. And I think now, again, because of these connections, which are wonderful in a lot of ways, that we can have friends around the world. But I can literally, you know, be so isolated and have these, quote-unquote echo chambers, not just in terms of political views, but also in terms of the uniformity of the people I choose to speak with.

And that in and of itself is dangerous, because the young people you're worried about are speaking about other young people who are absolutely fine talking like that. So you're the one that's kind of a bit odd. What are you worried about? Everyone else I speak to is fine, right? This suddenly reminds me my own school days. Thank you. Well, Lindy, you mentioned a little bit about boys and girls

and how they think differently and focus on different things. There's no difference, mate. Stop it. There we go. That's exactly where I was going to take this because even the concept now that there's a difference between men and women is becoming a triggering issue for a certain group of society. You're someone who's worked in helping couples and things like that, right? So can you tell us a little bit about what are the main differences

between men and women psychologically and how that manifests, particularly with respect to relationships? I think we're still, look, there's physiological differences, right? So the fact that there's a Y chromosome means something. We know that men are significantly overrepresented in prisons, right? We know sort of that, you know, aggression tends to, you know, or the display of it. We know that men commit suicide more than women, even though women present with depression more. Now, that might be the way that men are socialized.

Again, one of my biggest pet peeves is that we still, I think we're getting somewhere, you know, somewhat better, but I think we still make more space for, you know, women's mental health than men's mental health. I think men still feel more stigmatized. It's easier to show anger than sadness. think the social norms around what's expected of men and women, although we're trying to battle some of them, still remain. I've got a, you know, a wonderful friend who decided, his wife makes more money than him, wanted to stay home and take care of the kids. He stayed home. He's always making jokes about, you know, how other dads are afraid of them. Don't know what to say

to him. You're just like this weird guy that stays home. We're not sure. So, you know, there are there differences around biology? Yes, around expectations, yes, around sort of, you know, our chromosomes, you know, our hormones and make us difference. Of course they do. Now, you know, I understand that there's always a fear in talking about difference because immediately once you talk about difference, the fear is, then are you going to use my difference, you know, against me? So I understand, you know, where that comes from.

But I think it's more dangerous to be intellectually dishonest and not talk about difference and not have the conversations that matter to ensure that both men and women are treated as fairly as possible, you know, within the realms of what it means to be, you know, a person living in 2018 today, kind of navigating all these things. Well, look, even in relationships, I mean, I've been married for 14 years now. We've had, you know, ups and downs as you always do. And one of the biggest differences in terms of kind of helping our relationship forward was reading men or from Mars and women are from Venus that's book by John Gray.

I'm sure there's different people who have different disagreements about particular things about it. But one of the things that was very helpful in is helping me understand my wife, but also in helping me understand my wife. but also in helping me understand myself and understand why I'm doing certain things or why I'm feeling certain things. And I think that's a potentially very big danger. If you tell people there's no difference between men and women when there actually are differences,

then that makes relationships more difficult, doesn't it? Well, yeah, I mean, look, I think self-awareness and, you know, is key, right, understanding why you behave the way you behave. And look, psychologists talk about a biosecosocial approach, so we need to look at, you know, Are there biological restraint? Does the fact that you have a different hormonal chemistry

than your wife will that make you process things different? If so, how? Does the fact sociology? Does the fact that you've been socialized differently mean that you're going to view something differently to your wife? Perhaps. If so, how? Psychology.

Now, is this different? Is there something within your psychology? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But again, I think there's something very important. about not being afraid to kind of just sort of look at the good signs that's out there and not fall prey. And again, look, I know it comes from a good place. And, you know, people, you know, absolutely who have been oppressed whatever group sort of, you know, should absolutely be able to fight for their rights and, you know, and we should all support them.

But I think that can't happen to the detriment of what we know for sure. So pretending that, you know, biology doesn't matter is, I think, it's not a fair, our accurate statement. Do you think there's, in intellectual circles, there's a lot, there's this dishonesty happening where people feel that they have to parrot a certain viewpoint. Because if they don't, they, you know, they could be seen to be, in inverted commas, you know, a bigot or whatever else. Or have you ever felt that pressure? or in your career?

Look, I try and be honest with what I believe. I do. I try and substantiate what I say. I think that's very important because I think when you have science behind you and you say then it's easier, having said that, I think people will often hear what they want to hear.

And, you know, one worries if... I think, again, because of social media, because of, you know, this kind of caricaturization of each other. and we don't believe in each other, right? So I take this one thing you've said, and I've turned you into this caricature of the one thing, it doesn't help.

And I think people become afraid, because unless you have a forum where you can sit down and discuss, you sort of long form what you mean, then it becomes dangerous. And I think that's precisely why podcasts like this do quite well, because I think you have enough time to have a proper detailed discussion about what you mean. Whereas I think the rest of the time,

we're trying to do this in 160 characters or less, and you simply can't. You can't get to the essence. and the nuance and the difficulties with these discussions in forums like that. And even something like this actually, I mean, YouTube, if you go on the YouTube after when we put this episode out, you will see that there are some people who absolutely go for it in that way, they will listen to the hour, they will go, well, 40 minutes was really interesting, but this thing I really didn't agree with or whatever, which is great, right? But there will also be people now, I think, who are so trained in that kind of Twitter mentality

that they will go, they will listen to one minute, and then they will pick something, they don't like and then comment about that and not watch the rest of the conversation. I think that's scary. Well, it's not only scary. It's, again, it's intellectually dishonest. It's bad science. You can't take, you know, something out of context. You know, and again, I kind of go back sort of the way that you see people clinically.

You know, one of the things when I work with someone that's depressed, I say one of the things that a depressive mind does is it looks for things to be sad about. So you're going to look at news stories that are sad. You're going to look at something that's going on in the street that makes you sad. you selectively find it. If you're looking for something to be offended by, if you're looking, that's again, that's not the healthiest way to relate to the world around you. You know, you need to look at things in, you know, in the wider context,

look at what was being discussed and then make, you know, make that assumption. And where do you think this comes from? Sorry, Francis. What do you think this increased vulnerability, increased kind of pursuit of victimhood, where do you think that comes from? I think partly because so many obstacles I think were kind of taken away from young people I think there is this fear I think there's a genuine fear that I won't be able to cope if you say something I don't like I won't be able to cope because I've not had to before so I think people aren't used to it I think also that there's there's value in it that they get something so you you know being being in the sick role whatever that means means that you know you're going to be taken care or there's going to be special things put around I also think that, again, if we look at the research on this, so there's all this research that this is increasing

in university campuses, actually, it's not so much, it hasn't really increased. What's happened is that people are pandering to the minority more. That's what's happened. So on university campuses where we see, since I think, about 2013, we've been seeing this whole kind of trigger warning. I know we can't have free speech. I think what's happened is you've seen sort of university administrators

kind of take over and pander to the loudest, most offended voice. So, you know, I think sometimes we're misrepresenting sort of younger people in millennials, you know, as being this kind of, they're these terrible snowflakes. I just think what's, you know, what's happening is that the minorities that get offended extremely easily and want to shut down conversation, have that, have been given, you know, much bigger forms to be able to do this. And there's some literature to attest to that. But there's actually a reason for that, which is that the faculty has become far more culturally left-leaning over the years. So the ratio used to be in the 60s, it would be like one conservative for like 10 liberals. And now it's like one for 300.

Yeah. We have a guy coming in to speak to us called Eric Kaufman, who's a professor of politics later. And there's something he talks about in his book that just how that has changed over time. And also universities, they're self-selective as well. It's something that people, Jonathan Hyde talks about this, is people who go to university are liberal anyway. And then if you've got basically all very liberal professors, that will happen and that minority is being pandered to. And I think one of the things that Jonathan Haidt speaks about a lot as well is this idea that we need some diversity of thought. You know, this is heterogeneity because, you know, if we're just bouncing off and saying the same things over and over again, you know, obviously it's going to amplify that one, you know, one idea or one notion.

We all seem to want diversity in more and more from what I can see. And we're just, we're talking about diversity, but we don't seem to want diversity of thought, especially diversity that challenges our own opinions. Because what seems to happen at this point is shutting down, no, you're wrong, let's smear you as whatever X, Y and Z. Yeah, yeah. And it's something to be really rightfully afraid of. You know, I think a lot of people fear that because it's just easier to not do your homework

and assume that that person said that thing. and because these ideas spread so quickly, people are much more likely, as you said earlier, to kind of think, well, do you know what? Maybe it's better if we don't. But then you have to ask yourself the question, well, what happens if we continue not to? Isn't it precisely the thing that we fear the most?

This idea of, you know, big brother of someone watching you, we're watching each other now. This is like, you know, and that's kind of the really worrying thing, that we're watching each other to catch each other out, to tell on each other. That doesn't make for like a happy situation. society, right? And it's fine if you're, you know, if we disagree, if you're like, well, you know, you know, you got this wrong, do you know about this? But I need to, you know, to

enter into it with the idea that we're not all coming from a place of being bad people. You know, we're all trying to, trying to get to a better place of understanding. You know, when I work with couples, I always say, look, if you have an argument, you know, move it from between you and put it in front of you and sit down and try and figure it out together. It's one of the best techniques, you know, to do that. And the whole point of an argument is not to win it. It's to get to a better place of understanding. If we approach these political, you know, we approach these politics, arguments like that, that I'm not trying to, you know, turning into left and right and,

you know, Democrat and Republican. Yeah. I'm not sure, a bit of orange face popped into my head there and I got all confused. You know, instead of we sort of trying to have, you know, proper discussions about understanding each other better without calling each other names and vilifying each other, then maybe we'd get somewhere. But, you know, very sadly, I think, you know, you see too many times it turns into this name calling and that just doesn't help.

I think that's where the social media comes into because so many times I can, I used to have arguments with people on Facebook all the time about politics and all this kind of thing. And I've really stopped. But when I used to, I'd talk to that person online and we'd have a disagreement and they wouldn't go anywhere. And the next time I saw that person in person, we could have a conversation. And sometimes you find out you don't even have a disagreement. And that to me is as a big indication. but I mean we're increasingly that's how we communicate. But what Constan is trying to say with that is that he's a massive troll, Linda. Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. But that face-to-face communication,

what is it about face-to-face communication that makes us more able to have the conversation? Because face-to-face is not, you know, people think that verbal communication is about what's being said. That's a small proportion of it. It's about body language.

It's about inflection of voice. It's about, you know, I know when you're ready to speak. it's, you know, think about when we're speaking, right? You know when I'm about to finish and you know when to come in. We don't say it to each other, but we just, it's that rhythm. Now, all of this together, right, the context, the body language, the inflection, all these nuances means that you get a lot more. So if you were to say to me, don't be ridiculous, Linda, looking at me and speaking, I could

take it as a joke. If you tweet me, you're being ridiculous or don't be ridiculous, I don't see you kind of smiling. I don't see that in the backdrop of we've had this great conversation. So automatically, we know, without all that context, I can take. it differently. And again, we've had, you know, I have this great slide that I show this talk that I do this about kind of, there's something called ultimate, I think, is it ultimate social penetration, something like that. So it's about 50 million users, right? When something

reaches 50 million users. I think the radio took something like 38 years and I think the TV took 20 years. And I think, you know, you go lower and lower. So the, you know, the internet took, you know, it's five years and mobile phones took three years. And Angry Birds took 35 days. You've got to remember that, you know, these are all different ways of communicating. So through the radio we had this great big span of time, the TV, phones, you know, all of a sudden, not only am I not seeing you, I'm trying to figure out, you know, what these emojis mean. You know, you're sending me various, you know, faces and I'm trying to figure those out. It's not something that happens, you know, overnight, and yet it feels like it has.

And I think we're still playing catch-up. And so that's why communication is so much harder in some ways. I also think it's about threat of force. If you're talking to someone face to face, some of the stuff that people will say to us online, they would never say that to your face because they'd probably get punched in their face. Well, it's like being inside a car.

You scream at people all the time when you're inside your car. You would never, someone like bumped into you on the road. You wouldn't be like, what the hell are you doing? You'd be like, oh, sorry. Go ahead. By all means. Why do we do it? It's the same thing.

We feel protected. We feel so, yeah. But isn't it also as well that we carry around this late, latent anger with us about... Speak for yourself, mate. You two can have a session of psychotherapy just right now. I'll just sit and watch. Late and anger, go on.

Yeah, but, you know, we get frustrated at things that happen to our lives. We get resentments. We get... And all of a sudden, somebody says something online. You're like, or in your car. And it's just a way of venting, of projecting... It's a release valve, isn't it, really? Yeah, yeah, it's a release valve.

I don't have to see how much I've upset you. I can then turn it off and go make a cup of tea and forget it. about it, you know, and it becomes, you know, a way of lashing out with no consequence or potentially no consequence. So, yeah, I think it is, I think it's a really ineffective one. I don't think, you know, people should construe that as an effective way because, you know, these things, you know, thoughts aren't intangible things. You know, you think enough negative stuff, of course it affects you. We know now psychophysiologically it affects you. So I think, you know, people that carry around that much anger and hurt and stuff, you know, kind of venting it and

putting it out there is not a way of properly dealing with it. While it might, in the short term, feel like, huh, event, you know, it's the stuff's still there. So on a serious note, you know, if people, you know, people really need to look at themselves if they're doing that. All right. Well, let's wrap up the social media section with a positive message. So if you were to give some advice to people who feel like maybe social media usage is starting to become a problem for them, what can people do to kind of win themselves off that?

You know, I think you need to understand social media is a press release, right? It's sort of their press releases about our lives, and we all do it. So there's all this really interesting research that we post when we're on a high and we surf when we're on a low, right? So we post when we're out in Michelin Star Restaurant and we surf when we're eating leftovers. So remember that. So, you know, read it as a press release. These are the superlatives of each other's lives. Try and use it to connect, but also remember that the proper connections that you made.

actually you know they don't care you know about what you're reading what you're wearing what's going on so kind of this you know these proper the things that nourish us nourish us the most you know in terms of humor interactions don't have to do with people liking us if they have to do with people liking us because just because right so posture those relationships use it you know you know for fun but I certainly wouldn't say don't base yourself esteem on it and certainly don't base you know the sense of self-worth on it either You've done a lot of work, Linda, moving on, with how our mental health is reflected in our skin

and the way we are. Would you be able to expand on that a little bit? Sure. So the skin and the central nervous system are actually really closely related. They develop out of the same stuff embryologically the actogen, which means that many times we see that our stress levels, the way that we feel, kind of manifest in skin conditions if we have a predisposition to them. And this is something that I studied for quite a while. And I looked at the extent to which our emotions affect the onset and progression of different conditions. And we found that they very much do.

I kind of think that, you know, again, going back, you know, our thoughts aren't intangible things. If I sit around feeling very stressed and very anxious, a lot of things are going to happen in my body physiologically. So, I don't know, let's get the example of a pimple, right? You get a pimple right before the big day that you're waiting for, right before the date or right before the, you know, the big interview. What happens? We know that when you get stressed, your cortisol rises. We also know that testosterone is likely to rise when you get stressed.

When testosterone rises, we know that sebum production rises. We know when sebum production rises, you're much more likely to get a clogged, poor, and boom, you get a pimple on the big day. So there's a way of understanding how your skin reacts to stress. And if you can clock it, if you can clock how your stress affects the way that your skin develops and the health of your skin, then you can work towards making it better. So we did a study years ago. I actually got into this because my cousin had Vidaligo and she struggled with it for years.

And we looked at Vidaligo and we were able to have significant reduction through talking therapies. Right. So either it would cease or there would be a reduction. And these talking therapies, it was CBT, it was a CBT. protocol that basically looked at how to deal with stressful life situations. And since then, some of my amazing doctoral students who now have positions in dermatology units are doing brilliantly waiting times of dermatology units are falling because so much of the way that our skin, the way that it functions has to do with what's going on in our minds, but also what goes on in our

minds has to do with how our skin looks. Remember, if you have a skin disease, people feel that they're able to ask. If you're walking around, with an ulcer, no one can see it. If you're walking around with some eczema, people will ask you, what's that, or they'll look at it, or they'll be kind of anxious to take something from your hand. That has an effect on you. So being able to mitigate those effects by using good, you know, techniques, psychological techniques, really helps, we've found. Why do, why is it that whenever I get stressed, I get eczema? Immediately, that's the first thing, and it's always the same place. It's always the back of the legs, and it's just a disc, and I can feel it. The moment I get

anxious, it starts with the itching, and then before I know there's a flare-up. And again, so you have, you're born with a predisposition to ex-ma, and the stress ensures that the kind of the mechanisms through which that ex-ma comes about are triggered, right? So what would be really useful for you is if you know that something is coming on. So, you know, if you can understand why that stress is coming on, is it work, is it, you know, too much on your plate? Constantin. Is it constant?

I know when I'm succeeding, when he's got ex-mo. We have to Hoover after the interview. But, you know, what would be really great, rather than waiting until it gets there, on a serious note, is to kind of say, okay, I know these next three weeks are going to be really tough, right? So what am I going to do? What are the things that allow me to feel better?

And, you know, it's different things for different people. Some people meditate, some people exercise. Some people just speak to friends, you know, but do it. It's, you know, I always say to my patients, it's amazing how much time, you know, we make in our diaries from work, but we very rarely put in time for our physical health.

And you need to take it as seriously as that. I know this is a crazy next three weeks, and this is what's going to happen. I'm going to take some time out to ensure that I'm okay. And hopefully you'll find that kind of helps with that. Just self-cares. Huge, yeah. It was a Gandhi that said,

normally I meditate once a day when I'm busy, I meditate twice a day. Is how he said? I love that. I think it was kind of someone, someone wise and old. Do you guys meditate? I do, do you know,

these light and sound machines? They have, like, binaural sounds. and like light vision goggles that kind of they simulate the experience of meditation so I do that every now again which is why I'm healthy

I go to the gym though and it's amazing going to the gym how actually your mental and physical health have they're completely changed and it's weird it's almost like a therapy session and suddenly you come out and your sense of perspective about your problems

in inverted commas whatever there may be suddenly they don't seem as insurmountable absolutely Well, I think there's something meditative, even in working out, right? You have to focus, but it's running and focusing on your breathing or lifting or whatever it is. So you're in there now. So all this noise. And I think that's the other thing, you know.

There's so much going around. You know, you need to curate your consciousness, right? There's a lot of junk out there, right? Whether it's the trolls online or whether it's the worry that you're not doing enough or whatever it is. So having a place, whether it's meditating or the gym where it's just about that, I think, is, yeah, hugely beneficial. Actually, you made me think about something. I played basketball regularly, and something I've noticed, basketball is very physical, very competitive sport. You know, you hit people, you get hit.

It's very like that. And one of the things I noticed, every time I'm driving to the core, I find like, and this is maybe a man thing, or maybe it's just a constant thing, I wanted to ask you what that's about. It's like, I feel myself, like, when I'm at home with my wife, I'm very gentle, I'm very calm, et cetera. But when I'm driving to basketball, I feel like almost like a hard shell that I'm kind of closing up ready for that fight. What is that about? Is there a theory that explains this? Well, look, so much of our behavior is situation specific, right? So, you know, the idea that we're different people in different situations, of course you're going to be different at home than you are there.

So clearly, whatever those kind of expectations, those triggers are have to do with kind of being competitive, with kind of being hypermasculine. And that works for you in that situation. So what you're doing is you're kind of preparing for that. I remember a friend of mine that worked in addiction for a long time saying to me that the vast majority of overdoses tend to happen in places where people aren't used to shooting up. And she said because the minute that you shoot up in a different place, you don't have those visual cues, right? So you're having the visual cues of, I'm in the car, I've got my shorts on, I've got the music.

So it's Pavlovian, right? And it's the same thing. when you don't have those visual cues, you know, you act differently. I've got a little toxic masculinity as I'm driving to this. Listen, I was going to ask you about you talk about skin, but I imagine that this psychosomatic effect goes way beyond skin. I'm sure it affects everything. What about things like cancer and things like that,

is that something that's affected by your mental state? There's a huge amount of research to suggest that even things like wound healing are affected by your mental state. Recovery after, my dad had a heart operation years ago And I remember that some amazing work being done at UCL around journaling and wound healing recovery and just kind of the ability just to kind of say, this is what I did today and this was good about the day or bad. Some amazing results. So we know absolutely in almost every realm, this idea that the mind's, you know, here and the body's here, it's not true. You know, the two are connected, you know, and it's not mumbo-jumbo.

It's not kind of think yourself better and it'll be great. It's much deeper than that. We're trying to, you know, now we're kind of finding the mechanisms. that actually translate into what it means, into how your immune system works or is compromised, into how differing levels of hormones affect the way that your body repairs itself or inflammation or whatnot.

One, two, a one, two, three, four. Give me a break, give me a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. To wrap up, I wanted to move because onto depression. So I end it on a high.

But because I talk to a lot of people about mental health, especially because I'm in comedy and everybody seems to have a mental health issue in comedy. Otherwise, why would you be on a stage telling jokes to people? What if you're just funny, naturally funny about me? Yeah. But you wouldn't feel the need to get up on stage seeking affirmation from strangers.

I hate to break it to you. What is a difference between being a bit down and having depression and at what point should you seek help from somebody? I'm so glad you asked that. I think we kind of, in our society, we use words like, I'm anxious or I'm depressed

and we think it means depression and anxiety. Actually, you know, depression is, there's a quantitative difference. So yeah, we all know what it feels like to be low. But when you speak to someone who's going through sort of serious depression, there's a huge sense of overwhelming hopelessness and helplessness. The basics, you know, I'm going to get up in the morning and take a shower,

feel like I'm going to, you know, climb a mountain. You begin to isolate socially. It affects your sleep. It affects the way that you eat. It affects your libido. So it's like an all-encompassing thing. So this idea that people are like, oh, if you're depressed, just, you know, snap out of it. And thank goodness we're kind of moving away from that.

But, you know, I think part of that's happened because we all know what it feels like to be down, right? And to be down, you know, even when you're really down, you kind of know that this will pass. There's a part of you that knows. When you're seriously depressed, there's a big part of you that thinks that this will never pass. Not only won't it pass, that somehow this is a character flaw in me that won't pass.

I think that's one of the saddest things about depression, that there's no sense of entitlement over it in the way that there would be over any other illness, you know? So, you know, God forbid someone has, you know, cancer or MS. There's like a sense of, you know, I have this and I'm going to fight it and it's going to be... With depression, it's like, yeah, but really everyone's depressed. You know, is it just me? And, you know, I think if people hear nothing else, they need to feel a sense of entitlement over their mental health,

the way that they do over their physical health, because that's the only way to get the support that you need. And we know that it's a very big killer the way that a lot of physical illnesses are. Well, as a slight counterpoint that, to that. I know for myself, right, that I can very, and maybe I'm misusing the word depression, but I can create for myself an experience of depression, whatever that is, very easily. I just need to not go out the house, not do any exercise, not do anything, hang out with me, hang out with Francis, that always helps, not do any exercise, right, not go out the

house, not spend any time with my wife, not spend time with friends, play too many computer games, maybe drink too much alcohol, right? If I do five or six things for a period of two weeks, I will be feeling like you just described, guaranteed. And how much of it is within our control? There is the possibility of the self-care that you've talked about to make ourselves better. Sure. Look, I think that there's definitely things that you can do to make yourself better and make yourself feel worse, right? We know that depression has a genetic element, right? So now we say you can win with a losing card and lose with a winning card, right? So even if you have a winning card, If you're like you're saying, you're kind of socially isolating and drinking and not kind of, you know, exercising, you can very easily feel awful.

The difference is, is that for people who experience sort of kind of serious depression is that it's a lot harder and they need some support to get there. So there's a qualitative difference to it and we believe that it's just it's harder to shift. So it's not to say, and I want people listening again, there's absolutely things you can do. But if they're not working for you and they're working for everyone else, doesn't mean that you're doing them wrong. It just means you have a more serious form of depression. Yeah, and you need help. And you need help. Well, on that note, you all need help. That's it. That's the whole point in the show. Listen, Linda, it's been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. The question we always like to ask our guests at the end is, is there one issue that we, no one talks about that we ought to be talking about, or maybe just something we haven't

covered in the interview that you think is important to talk about? I guess, I think for me at the moment, I think we need to be talking about how the development of artificial intelligence is going to affect not just what we're going to do economically, but sort of socially as a group, because I think it's going to come perhaps a lot quicker than people expect. It's already starting to have some effect on us, and I think we just need to have more serious conversations about how to protect our kids and ourselves. And what kind of thing are you talking about when you say that specifically, when you talk about AI and things like that?

Well, I think already it's affecting the job market. So you've got kids who are looking for jobs that won't exist by the time that they're out of high school and university who are in their teens now. So I think that's going to be a really big obstacle for governments when you have a lot of joblessness. We know that joblessness and poor mental health go hand in hand. We know that it's already an issue and I think with the advent of automation which is happening more and more it's going to get worse

and I just think we need to really think about it not just in terms of economics but in terms of our societies or society's mental health or kind of collective subconscious what does this mean? Because a sense of purpose is very important and I don't think necessarily you have to

make X amount of money to have a sense of purpose but you need to kind of figure out what you have to offer and where you belong and you know I think that before that sneaks up on us we just need to have the right conversations and you have a podcast which is called the psychology behind that's right and then you cover different topics and it's all very kind of positive change focused I think from what I've seen it's really about how do you be happy how do you do this right tell us a little bit about that yeah so it's basically we take to the recent research it's a very short podcast 15 20 minutes we take a study out

about you know how do I deal with shyness how do I deal with failure how to be become happier. All good for you, mate. And we analyze the research and we kind of use it into actionable tips. One of the five things you can do today to help you. I've already subscribed. Perfect. And you're on Twitter at?

Dr. Linda underscore P. Perfect. We'll put that in the video as well. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. If you've enjoyed it, guys, subscribe as always, click that bill button next to subscribe button. We are on Twitter on Instagram, on Facebook, all these terrible social media platforms that please

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