TRIGGERnometry - Dr Steve Peters: How to Overcome Anxiety and Build Confidence

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Sponsored by Ridge Wallet: Use Code “TRIGGER ” for 10% off your order at https://www.ridge.com/TRIGGER Professor Steve Peters is a Consultant Psychiatrist who specialises in the functioning of the human mind. His latest book is now available: A Path through the Jungle https://www.amazon.co.uk/Path-through-Jungle-Psychological-bestselling/dp/1998991105/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=a+path+through+the+jungle+steve+peters&qid=1634634518&sr=8-1  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry 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 (@francisjfoster) 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

what we call in Psychopathic, which is Dissocial Personality Disorder, that's common. That's not unusual. The estimate when we look at this is around one in 200 people. Wow. Wow. A hell of a lot of people. Exactly. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a consultant psychiatrist and the author of a number of very influential books, including The Chimp Paradox. He's worked with elite athletes. He's worked with psychopaths. His latest book is called A Path Through the Jungle.

Dr. Steve Peters, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for inviting me. It's a real great pleasure to have you on. As I mentioned, some of the things that you've written in the past have been incredibly influential in our culture, the way we think about personal development, performance, anxiety, all sorts of other things. But before we get into all of that,

for anyone who doesn't know you, have a very big international audience. Who are you? How are you where you are? What has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us. Okay, in a minute. It doesn't have to be a minute.

Take your time. Take your time. I'm a consultant psychiatrist, so I'm a doctor, a medical doctor, and I trained in mental health, having gone through the system, and then eventually ended up doing work with psychopaths, as you would locally call them. But before that, I worked a long time in the NHS as a consultant, and I'd be working with people with anxieties, depressions, many of the common illnesses that we recognize.

and I ended up in forensics. On the back of that, I sort of decided to explain to people how their minds function because what I found a lot of people who came through the door didn't need a doctor, in my opinion. They needed to understand themselves, understand what was going on in their head, certainly didn't need medication. And so that led me to working half the time with medication, half the time, with a model, the chimp model, to try and get people to start managing their minds, emotions, thinking, behaviors.

And it escalated. So I teach at Sheffield University. I'm a professor there. And the students love the model. They're related to it. So they're really behind the Chimp Paradox. They push me to say, you've got to write this and put it in a book. So what is the Chimp Paradox?

Tell everybody. If you look at the brain and try and simplify it, because obviously it's very complex. I'm a neuroscientist. And if you start doing this, you could be all weak trying to just make, you know, something of parts of the brain. So when I looked at, if you look on scanners, functional MRI scanners, simplifying it, you end up with three systems in the brain. So in the fetus, do you want all this science? Yes, yes. In the fetus, what you find is within eight weeks, the orbital frontal cortex just above your eyes, which is like a primitive defense system, a survival system,

starts to develop eight weeks into fetal life. And in the center of the brain, there are lots of areas which support the orbital frontal cortex in making quick decisions for survival. But it does the sort of thinking bit and the final decision making. So you've got a leader and it calls on another team, which is, I called it the computer system because that doesn't make decisions as such. It just feeds back information to a sort of influence a decision. So that was two systems. What we've got as a problem as human beings is the third system came in.

It's there, but it's not developed around two euro. old, which is why we get infuriated with young children who keep saying, why. Everything's why, because that part of the brain has now started to wake up and it's now questioning. So you've now got a separate system. Now, the first system, the quick fire one, impulsivity, really, we share with chimpanzees. We don't actually share the same system with orangutans, gorillas and bonobos, which are all under the hominid great ape group. We don't. So the chimp was peculiar. And that's been published in 2018, but I knew this talking to how many specialists back in the 90s. They said there's something really strange about us and the chimpanzee. So I called it the inner chimp,

because the chimpanzee uses the same behaviors and attitudes and shares the same emotions when we use that common system. So that was where it came from. But the system that came in a bit late to the party, the chimpanzee has it, but tends never to use it. And in fairness, without sounding cruel, a lot of people don't use it. They just work with the chimp. system. So life is very impulsive, instant gratification, no really consequence or planning. But when we get to round two, the other system's got the chance to develop. So if we promote that in two-year-olds, three-year-olds for us, then we see that system starting to battle back. So I called that the human system. And that was it. That was the chimp model. It was saying we have

this inner chimp, which is a machine, which will act and think for us. But we actually have arrived, we start around two-year-old and that's when we start laying our memories down. So we don't actually have memories until we're about four because our system can't do it. So we arrive as a human and it's an alternative system to the chimp. So you have two options. You can either let nature run its course and be impulsive and work with that or you can actually choose to work with a different system which works on rationality, logic, forward planning, consequence, very, very different approach to life. And the computer's just neutral in the middle. So making it simple, chimp, human, and a computer that you can both access that's neutral ground, program it.

But the chimp does have some benefits to it. Like, I'm reading the book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink, and he's talking about the importance of instinct and how a lot of the time your first instinct about something or a situation can often be the correct one. And that's where the chimp comes in. Yeah, it's never negative, and that's the title, The Chimp Paradox. It's your best friend and worst enemy. but if you start delving into it and try to understand what it's doing,

it's always on side. It's never negative. It's just that we don't know how to manage it. So a lot of the work the chimp is doing is trying to say, if we do this, we'll be okay, whereas your job is to say, well, hang on, there's an alternative we're doing it. So the chimp's never negative as such, but if we allow it to run, it's working on jungle principles.

So the chimp will work with dominance behaviours. It won't manage drives well. It'll just fulfil them. and it may be intatiable. So, for example, food is probably the commonest that I use because many people struggle with that. We don't eat the right things and we eat too much generally. So you can see that's an out-of-control drive,

and the chimp's not going to manage it. It's just saying we've got to eat to survive, whereas our job is to say, well, actually, we don't need this much food to survive and manage the drive. But the drive isn't bad. There's nothing bad about the chimp. It just needs managing. It can be destructive if we don't manage it.

And why is it that we're never taught about? Steve, why is it that we're not sat down and having this explained to us? Because I'm someone who struggles with food and in particular anxiety and the two are linked. And it's only when I was reading The Chimp Paradox that a light bulb went off in my head and your current book was like, oh, my anxiety is just the chimp that's being unleashed and I'm not controlling it. And that's why I end up in the situations that I do or I behave the way I do, which are ultimately destructive to leading a happy life. Okay.

Quick therapy now. Yes. One really big thing you said there. No, no, no. You might need to support him. One of the things you just said there is almost like a fatal error. So I'm being a bit severe to try and drive the point home. Of course.

You use the word control. You can't control. So if you keep saying, I can control my chimp, there's an implication. You're failing in somewhere. Once you use that word, I avoid that word like the plague, and I keep pushing that in the new book to say you manage the chimp, is a skill. So you're never going to control your eating and you never control your anxiety. I don't want you to. I want you to manage them. But I think what you're implying immediately is that there's this

battle going on. Well, actually doesn't have to be perceived that way. It can be. The chimp's your best friend. And he's saying to you, I'm getting anxious. Right. You're not getting anxious. It's being imposed upon you. But instead of saying, right, there's this anxiety, you need to step back and say, what is the chimp trying to tell me? Because the chimp sees a jungle. So therefore, like with athletes I work with, if you said they're going out to compete, you expect the chimp to panic.

That's pretty normal and healthy because it doesn't realize it's just a competition. As far as it's concerned, you're going into battle, I could die out here, so they'll get severe feelings of apprehension or anxiety, which the chimp will keep moving with. And if we then muddle ourselves up with a machine

and start saying, I'm an anxious person, then we can't work with it. We can't manage it because we're blaming ourselves. So it brings in lots of feelings of failure and guilt. Instead of saying, right, we know who I am, we know the chimp is meant to be anxious. It's meant to do that. It's doing a great job. And so instead of being concerned or engaging in the emotion, we should be stopping saying,

thank you for the emotion. You've given me an emotion. Let me explain what's happening. So you actually relate to that part of the brain and explain it's just sport. you know and then it depends on your beliefs now because it gets complex and i think one of the key things i'd say is when people listen to this the biggest thing i say to people is you're unique only you can work out what's going in on your head so the anxiety message from the chimp in sport for one sports person may be very different message to another one so when i work with people i've got to work out

what is it that their chimp is trying to tell and what's their brain trying to say so as an example to try and bring it to life. You two could be elite sports people, both doing the same event. Let's say you both. Highly unlikely. We're using our imagination. So if you were elite sports people, say the 800 meters. And you both said, we're getting really too anxious before it. And it's just terrible. And that's making decision making in the race, poor, which is what you'd expect. Because the chimp said, I don't want to be here. So it could go anywhere. But when you say, why is your chimp getting anxious? What's the message? For you, it could be, that this defines you.

Yeah. And if you fail on this, everybody knows that you actually failure. So your chimp, I'm being extremely game to arrive the point. But that's totally different to yours, which may be I'm trying to please my coach, my parents. And you start thinking,

well, hang on, that's very different reason the chimps are getting anxious. So I can't then give you, right, this is what we'll do. I can't do that. Maybe other sports psychologists who the specialist can. What I have to do is try and delve into your mind and work with you and say, what's really going on

and what are the underpinning beliefs here? What's the agenda that your chimp is bringing to the table? So often you'll get sports people trying to prove to themselves, where you may get another group trying to prove to others. And that's very different again. So the work I'd do then would be, well, let's look at self-esteem in the formal one and say, why do you need to use sport to do that?

And in the latter one, you've got to start saying, well, why would you want to prove your valuable, abilities to other people. Why do you want to demonstrate it? What's going on? So you get different approaches and I can't work with a formula. I have to work with the individual. So Steve, we're talking about anxiety and we've got the chimp and the chimp is always anxious because it's there to spot dangers, to spot problems. Hang on, I'll keep correcting you because it's not always anxious. It's getting anxious when it perceives there's something not right. Okay, right. So its perception is something's not right. But that could be because you as the human haven't done your job in tidying the computer

up. So there may be a belief that's prodding the chimp. The chimp may be just sat back, relaxed. And then suddenly, what I'm calling the Gremlins, the destructive beliefs it holds prod it. So for example, let's see we go back to that, which is common. Someone has low self-esteem. They don't feel as good as other people. They're always feeling like vulnerable. Right. So they're The chimp now puts in the computer, you're not actually as good as others, and you will be found out. So in business people, I meet this every day and it'll be imposter syndrome. You know, they wake up in the night often. That's when the chimp said it's most active and the humans asleep.

And then they feel this devastating, emotional, gut-wrenching feeling that I cannot do my job. They're going to find me out. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm fraudulent. I'm an imposter. The chimp is doing its job when it does that. what should be happening is when we wake up, we have to say, right, what are the beliefs in my computer here? You know, one of them can be that people who do this job are perfect, which is

ridiculous and mistakes are things that can't be redeemed, you know, and now I've got to tease out because it could be you've got a boss who says you make a mistake, you're sacked. I'd probably say get another job, but you can see why that belief is in there. But if the belief has come from you and the boss is saying, look, if you make a mistake, we make a mistake. But until you turf that belief out, the chimp's innocent. It's not getting anxious. It's this little gremlin. It's a belief that needs to turfing out.

So I like to tidy computers up in people. And I usually explain that if I've worked here with one of you, I would expect to find a minimum of five quite serious gremlins that you're holding on to which are causing problems. So in your case, if you're saying I struggle at times, my chimp gets anxious and I get this anxiety imposed upon me, that you'll guarantee that you've got probably at least five or six, very powerful beliefs which are really destroying you. And you're probably not aware of them until they get pointed out and you're saying, oh, probably I'm thinking that. And then we turn

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So that being the case, what happens with a panic attack? Is that the anxiety becoming too much? Is that the chimp overriding everything and going into a sense of meltdown? Well, panic attacks have different causes, but probably the commonest cause. is something has happened, an event has happened in your life, which has not been addressed. And you haven't processed the event either practically or mostly emotionally. So I can give you an example of a situation where you might get a panic attack. And this is fairly common.

So I've seen this many times. We do get sudden deaths in people in the 40s, very unexpected, rather tragic. But if you've got a best friend who's in the 40s who die suddenly, and you've never really thought about your own mortality, suddenly it comes to your front of your mind. And if you don't address that and just squash it down, the mind now starts to kick. So this is the mind saying, well, you've not processed this.

So in reality, the computer's behind most of this. Because it's saying this is unprocessed material, so it throws it back, which then creates the chimp, saying there's something wrong here. And we have to look at you, look at your own mortality, look at putting perspective what happened, which is very rare for someone in the 40s to die suddenly. But if you don't process that and your belief is I'm now very vulnerable

and this could happen at any moment and I've never really prepared myself, then you can imagine that every so often you get this sudden a panic attack out of the blue and it's your mind trying to say you need to sort this out. The problem we've got with panic attacks, we get quite technical, is sometimes when you find it, you often can't find what caused them. You can settle the machine down. So the computer chip can be brought down again just by simple technical. But ideally, if you find the problem, the trouble with panic attacks is they have a ripple effect.

So even when we sort the problem out, say it were that, that was a problem, and we sort it out, then what you'll find is you still keep getting panic attacks. So people say, I'm not cured. It's not worked. And you're saying, well, no, the way that a panic attack works, it's like a learned behavior. So it keeps on happening, but it gets less and less. And you just manage them as the brain presents it. And you're trying to remind the brain, we have dealt with this.

So there's ways of disengaging panic attacks and putting them in perspective. So panic attacks are a bit of a peculiar one. They're different and they're different tracks in the brain to anxiety. Anxiety and panic attacks use different pathways. Steve, I spend most of my 20s and early 30s kind of doing all sorts of different personal development stuff and learning to get out of my own way.

And I found out very useful. But I was going to ask you, how much of this is societal? Because, for example, for me, I know that one of the things that I had to get out of my way in relation to was the feeling that I don't want to stand out. I don't want to create a YouTube show because then hundreds of thousands of people are going to see it. And I remember reading something by Desmond Morris many, many, many years ago in which she talks about how the fear of public speaking is a very natural thing. Because historically speaking, if a bunch of your peers were staring at you in silence, that was not usually a good. good position to be in. And I think a lot of people feel some of those things. So if you want to be

successful, if you think that you want to create something that's going to make an impact on the world, that's going to contribute to other people's lives in a positive way, how do you get out of your way so that you don't constantly watch what other people might think or say or do, particularly in the social media world that we live in now? I mean, everyone's unique. So again, I can't give you oh, this is the answer. I don't want to do that. And maybe other people can. I can't do that. So what I'd say is there are different forces coming in here in your brain. So what you've got when I look at the computer system is actually multiple areas offering opinions. So, for example, intuition is a separate part of the brain, which reminds you of what you've experienced and

recognises it. That's very different to the reward pathway, which says that I'm anticipating this is going to be good news. That's very different to your anxiety tracks, which are saying this could all go wrong. So all of these previous experiences and beliefs and opinions and behaviours are all coming together and it depends which are the most powerful. But the fundamentally you're mentioning, which Desmond Morris was a zoologist in the past was looking and saying, are we just the naked ape? That was his stance. And there's truth in that. I'm saying the same thing. It's not new. We know that we are part of the hominids. The troop drive, chimpanzees in the wild must belong to a troop. They cannot be alone.

If they're alone, they're very vulnerable from attacks from other troops or leopards. So that's their main enemies. So they're in trouble. So they must stay in troops. So what nature has done is given us this drive to find and stay with the troop. But if you were the alpha male in the troop, you have to assess whether we're worth keeping. Because if we're weak, we're using up useful resources for food. You will exclude us.

So a weak male would be excluded. And that's a death sense. because another troops don't like to take a male. They might take females, but they won't take males. So if you think about it, there's this instinct that I've got to keep proving myself to you. Otherwise, if you reject me, I die. So it's extremely powerful. So therefore, our chimp brain really wants approval from the people around it.

But we've gone further than that, said, our troops the whole world. So now we're feared of everybody and everything they say. So I'll give them more personal example. When I used to teach the chimp paradox model to students, I was doing that in the 90s. I didn't bring it out until 2012. And that was because I feared, in a sense, my chimp was saying, well, what the academics going to say? You invented a little chimp and a little, you know, how ridiculous it's noddy.

But it got to the point where my human brain was sort of saying, you know, really, you can't not do this because I know how powerful it's been for a lot of people. And that humbles me a lot. And I think, I need to develop this. And those who resonate, brilliant, those who don't find, just throw it out of the rubbish. But when I brought it out, I had a chat with my chimp. And I said, here's the deal. So I'm now overriding the troop.

Because my chimp I've told, not everyone's in your troop, so don't worry about them. So I select my troop. That gives me a protection from the world. So I don't see, with all respect, you to in my troop, I don't know you. So you're given a caution. So your opinion sounds awful, doesn't matter to me. You can't affect me because. That's what I've learned as well. It doesn't sound awful at all.

You can't live your life by worrying of what people... But most people do, and that's why social media is very powerful. But for me, I said to my chimp, if 10 people write to say this book has changed my life, I would be so happy. I'd be so happy. And so my chimp agreed. So I've got 10 people roth. It was like, that's it. I always go back to that.

We knew that there will be people who criticise. And like you're saying, none of us want to be hit by the media of any kind. drag through the mod or attacked or belittle or, because that's something a chimp wouldn't want to do for the reasons I've given you because you're vulnerable suddenly and you want to be in the trope and be loved. But one of the things I've pushed is this to the one in five rule. You know, we know that no matter who you are, somebody won't like you. So, you know, once you've worked that out, why are you worrying? Yeah, it's true. It's about four and five for us, but you're right, Steve. Let me ask you something else because you bring up what I think. I have to say one in five

love you regardless. Yes. People need to know. And there's a lot of really great people around. I'm just kidding. We have absolutely lovely fans. I'm very pleased with. What I was going to ask you is I think you bring up a very profound thing about the world that we live in today, which is the inevitability of tribalism.

Yeah. And we see it in politics. We see it happening right now around the world with all the different conflicts that are kicking off and all of that. We've seen it over the last five years in this country in terms of the political landscape. We've seen it in America. We see it everywhere. That tribalism is a very powerful instinct on human beings

for the reasons that you've just explained. What can we do in the modern world to detribalize ourselves? Can we do anything or do we just need to work with it? I mean, I'm going back to what I said originally, this is the right at the beginning when it was like a lightbulb moment to me back in the early 90s where you're thinking,

oh, wow, these functional scanners are showing me something here. that tribal instinct is not within the human being. It's within the chimp. And that's so important to distinguish. We don't have that. Hence, we have an alternative. That's why I said right at the beginning, when your brain develops, nature's given us for whatever is an alternative.

And that's how we've got out in the jungle. We've decided to work with our humans, which don't have prejudice, which do respect diversity, which are peacemakers in general. You can't have people who have unpleasant humans. We'll talk about them. The chimp's nice.

But in general, the rule is we have an option here. So if I want to go with my chimp brain, it's likely to be divisive because it will form little groups and curry favor. That's what the chimp's meant to do. Again, not everybody's chimp does that, you know? But most are built that way. So we are, yes, we talk about I come from this town or this city. Or football is a good example where, you know, this is my club and it gets very passionate.

You know, you've joined that. and I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm just saying like at beginning with food, the food drives amazingly good. It keeps us alive, but it does need managing. And the same with the joining football clubs or whatever. As long as you manage it and recognize it for what it is, it's brilliant, you know, long may it continue.

But if you get it out of hand, then it becomes tribal and really unhealthy. So my question is concerning social media, because we've touched on it at point, Steve. what do you and look again debunk all the nonsense that i'm speaking if it's nonsense i've got a coffee but it seems to me social media appeals to the very worst of the chimp it appeals to instant gratification you know a state of anxiety constantly wanting to be accepted. How do we live it in this world and keep our chimps calm when we have access to something that is trying to cut out the human and is always trying to activate the chimp in a negative

manner? Again, up to people what they want to do. One is disengage. I don't do social media, so I don't know what it says. I'm happy without it. But I'm an old guy. I think for young people, it's tough, but I think going back to what you said, what do we really want to start instilling in young people. And I think we're not doing this. I'd love it to see it happen is emotional skills to start discerning, well, this is an opinion, it's not a fact. And we will get facts apparently presented, which are inaccurate about us. We'll also get comments made which are unkind because there are unkind people around. There's quite a lot of them. So we're not going to change those people. We've got to learn how do I manage them. So I'm thinking emotional skills to learn

how to manage social media really ought to be in. You know, and it doesn't seem we're doing anything. And that violence, it is a psychological violence on people, can be life-threatening. And as we know it, it does. People can take their lives on the back of social media comments. So we have to accept that many people don't think it out. They're just acting chimp at its worse and just attack people without thinking, what damage am I doing here?

But some people have to accept, enjoy the damage. Some people enjoy going for people. And it's just what they do. So not every human being is pleasant. So you've got to be selective. But I think it's going back to what you're saying is we have to learn that surround yourself with a world that you can live in. Don't try and live in the real world because none of us really belong in it.

Because all you've got are roaming groups of chimps and we're never all going to be on the same page. So take your world with you. Create your world. Create the people you want in it. and then enter the outside world, but don't engage the outside world and think it's going to be kind to you. That doesn't mean roll over and not go into it. I've done that.

I'm going out there, but I will surround myself. So I'm almost in a bubble when I enter. Does that make sense? That's a bit conceptual. No, that makes a lot of sense. It does make a lot of sense. I think it's very important to have those people around you and to create your world and to accept that when you step into the real world,

there's going to be unpleasant people. there's going to be people who try and hurt you. There's going to be, because that's reality. Now, you used to work at Rampton. Now, again, correct me if I'm wrong. There are three high security prison hospitals in the UK. I can't remember, but the other one is Broadmoor, which is the more famous one. What was that like when you were working with these kinds of people?

Are they like us, by and large, or are they very different with the way they see the world, the way they approach things and the way they behave and act? We have to be careful because a bit more education. If you look neuroscientifically at what we're classing as someone who's psychopathic and we've been saying by that, they lack conscience. They write the rules for themselves. They're very little empathy at all. So they see people literally as objects and they'll use people.

That's common. That's not unusual. Not all of them end up in Rampton. Many of them are social psychopaths. and you will have met some. You definitely will, where they will use people, and it doesn't bother them. So they can be socially presenting well,

but they have no compassion and certainly no conscience. So the estimate, when we look at this, is around one in 200 people. That's why I'm saying it's common. A lot of people. Exactly. So you can expect quite a lot of destruction. And we know this.

We know this. So when we look scientifically, the big interest, there's lots of various of the brain, which are different in their brain. The biggest interest came years back when we looked at the connection, which is the chimp thinking brain, the orbiter frontal cortex, going into the amygdala. Now, people have heard the amygdala is a very powerful battery of energy, which does our fight,

flight, freeze, and it has about 17 clusters of neurons in circuitry in there, so it's very complex for a tiny little structure. But one of the big, important parts is it influences our chimp very heavily in giving suggestion what it should do. The track that joins them, technically called the Uncernet Fasiculus, is just a white fibre track, so we don't know how this happens. But if you look at the normal or typical person, I'll call them, then it's quite a big cross-section area. And when you go down, you see little connections. And it appears to be those connections, temper the message from the amygdala and give us conscience, as well as other parts of the brain. When you look at

the psychopathic brain, the cross-section's tiny and there's no interconnections. So there's a structural difference we've found. But you can get individuals who have a normal brain and still have psychopathic traits. And they can sometimes be damaged people. Now, I'm not making excuses, but it's very easy for those who have supported parents or reasonable childhoods to say, well, what's wrong with them? But I think, obviously, the world that I've entered, I meet people who've had really a rough time. And I mean really rough time as young people.

and so the circuitry gets damaged, but they could actually present with what we would say is a normal circuitry or typical, and we can get that to come round, but there can be damage done in young children. We know that the first about five, six years of your life are crucial to get the circuits in a lot of areas functioning fully, and if they don't, you can't recover that.

So these people tend to struggle with emotions, struggle with impulsivity. And it's structure in the brain, so it's not an excuse. They have to learn to do it, but they're a disadvantage to the rest of us. Steve, I'm going to ask you, you're making a lot of sense, and I'm going to ask you a question that is controversial. Okay.

But it seems obvious to me that the consequence of what you're saying is how we deal with crime is going to be affected by that understanding. If there are certain people who commit certain types of genuine evil, heinous crimes, you're not going to educate them out of that, are you? No. You're not going to explain it. to them that this is not in their interest or this is, that's how their brain is wired. Yeah.

Again, I'm just simplifying to try and get the message. So when you mention Rampton, what you're looking for are two people who come into Rampton and then you assess them and you say, why I'm looking for is, has this person got in a conscience that we can wake up or empathy? Have they gone to a rough time in life that we can compensate for it? And what you do eventually, you work with that person's empathy, compassion, conscience, that's what you work with, and you build that up. And yeah, you can't do that.

And then you would move these guys down so they're going to a less secure. And maybe you can get back into society. And don't forget, some people under the influence of drugs when they do these crimes. So you've got to, you know, whereas we mature, people can move ground. Not everyone. Right. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, but the ones do can't.

Yeah. Right. So now we're saying we've removed those who we can wait. What about the ones who don't appear to have a conscience? empathy and we'll repeat behaviors and they do, then we work differently. There's no point in doing a compassionate type program because there's no empathy, so they're not going to ever engage it. And the research shows this, the more psychotherapeutic work you do with them, the worst they get. Really? Yeah, there's no work where at the moment, they're trying to find it. Cognitive analytical

therapy got close, but we found it doesn't do any good. And the answer is, well, you're trying to teach, you know, a dog to speak. Probably a bad example, but. You're now cancelled. But what we're saying and then, you can work with them on a behavioural programme because they won't do things detrimental to themselves. So if you say, right, if you do this, the consequence is as follows, then people will work with consequences, whether they're psychopathic or not. Whereas I hope that, you know, if removing those who haven't got a conscience,

all the rest of us can work about values, our morals, and actually improve them, get them to come to the front of our minds. but yeah, what we're calling psychopathic, which is dissocial personality disorder, that individual, from my opinion, you're not going to do much because the circuitry's not there. Right. So that's why I'm asking the question, because we talk on the show about societal issues, things that happen, things that people talk about, things that happen in the news. And every time there's this terrible crime, for example, a man tragically kills a woman or something like this, the narrative is always, well, we must educate men or we must do this or we must do that.

And I'm sure there's some value to that for sure. But I just always feel like we're missing that one piece, which is there's always going to be people who are going to commit these crimes. And what we need to do is make sure that people are protected from them, that they're not released from prison because we're really compassionate and empathetic and whatever, etc. Like, what is your take on all of that conversation? I think I'd agree that obviously if somebody's repeated offending all the time, then which is what we do. we detain until we think they're safe. And if it never gets safe, they stay. So it's detention for life.

But you've got to demonstrate that there's no change in this person. And you obviously do try all the therapies you can. You don't just decide this is somebody psychopathic will give up. You do try, but if you're thinking, right, it's not getting anywhere. I mean, it's a long process with assessments. But I think most forensic psychs and forensic psychologists would agree that, you know, if you've got somebody who appears to have a brain that just will not function, the way the rest of us do, then it would be unwise to chat to them and do empathy.

And when they don't have possessed that, it's not a sensible thing to use your time doing, where they will respond to consequence. But again, it's a big field base. And I think when you start delving into it, you say, there's a man who's killed a woman. You've got to really delve into this because, you know, yeah, of course it's wrong. And it's heinous, no doubt. But you have to start saying, are they mitigating? circumstances, again, I'm not excusing that. I'm not excusing, but I'm saying I can understand.

Doesn't mean I can't understand it. And again, for a lot of these... What do you mean, Steve? There'll be a lot of people listening to this going, what the hell is you on about? Well, if you've had a really bad childhood, let's see your father beat you to a pulp every night and continue this throughout your first 15 years, you're not going to come away unscathed. No. It's exceptional if you come out of there smiling and saying, I can contribute to society. You're permanently damaged. You may have anger issues because you've been suppressed and suppressed, and so you've got this anger against Dad.

Now, I'm giving it in a very sort of black and white terms here, but then you can see somebody else comes in like the boss who starts representing your father and does it again to you and humiliates you, demeans you. You can see how the anger spills, and then we do get a true emotional hijack, and the person may even know what they're about to do, but as soon as they've committed the act fall apart,

because they realize it, it wasn't the right thing to do. You know, and I know people will say, well, that's just an excuse, but I feel like saying, well, you know, do we all act and behave appropriately every day of our lives? Because we all know when we're doing something wrong. Do we start punishing ourselves for that? You know, it's an extreme, I agree.

So I think I'm compassionate to begin with, but I will draw a line and say, okay, compassionate only goes so far, and it's really bad that maybe get beaten to a put by a dad. It doesn't excuse you killing someone. But it's a fine line. I think you have to take individual cases. And we tend to use a word psychopath and sociopath, and we use them and we interchange them. What is actually the difference between the two?

Generally speaking, what is understood is when we started really looking at the mind, which is probably going to 100 years now, and we started looking at these individuals that was, say, aberrant, and we were recognising features they all possess. the big ones I've given you, and that's the lack of conscience and lack of empathy. So you don't see remorse in them. And repeat behaviors. And initially, the feeling was that society has created these monsters. So there was this thing.

We've created it because of like the backgrounds of these young managers described. So they would be known as social problems. So they were sociopaths. So society was the behind it. As we started taking this on as doctors with scanners and started seeing the brain and saying, oh wow, the neuroscience is actually telling us these are predisposed, not predetermined, but predisposed to acting in a way which lacks compassion and empathy and conscience. Then we started terminology changed to psychopaths. So the sociopath and psychopath is really about the etiology.

You know, what's the cause? Is it society that's created the monster or is it the monster was born and it's just acting out? And then to try and get neutral ground, we classify them as dissocial personality disorders. And that doesn't then give an etiology, it just says this is what the behaviors are demonstrating, the cause we don't know, and that comes back to what one of the functions of Rampton was, to distinguish between the two.

And so if somebody is socially being built, can we undo what society is created? You know, can we take away the anger or whatever it is that they're going through? Or is it that, you know, this appears to be genetic and born this way? I just think you've got to be very careful and not jump to conclusions or judgments

and always assume you're going to help someone and be compassionate until it's proved otherwise and think there's a point where you've got just to, you know, it's... Well, that's the important part. Once you get to that point, then you've got to lift the wool from your eyes if that's what's been there, right? Your question occurred to me as you were talking there.

Evolutionarily speaking, what is the evolution rationale for the existence of psychopaths? Is it that other troop of chimps over there is probably going to get a random... mutation that creates a psychopath and we need some of our own psychopaths to go and defend us against their psych is that some of the kind of evolutionary background to this like what's the what's the point of psychopaths is what I'm outside my field there I'm a doctor but um I think nature doesn't have to have a function it's trying something else yeah and remember that in past the psychopath wouldn't survive

wouldn't they become the alpha male no because they wouldn't be liked by their subordinates yeah so the psychopath won't survive there'll be the the fruit will go for them. So how do we still have psychopaths then? How is evolution not filtered them out? We almost cater now, don't we excuse a lot? Sometimes we allow. And we know if it's genetic, which appears, it's polygenic,

so it means you can't, you're true psychopaths, won't breed psychopaths, but there's genetic loading. So any one of us will carry some of the genes. It depends who you marry. But obviously now, they don't get eliminated, which they would. a thousand years ago, people wouldn't tolerate them. It was far more violent then.

We've eased off. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, by the way, but I'm saying that the problem of that is that there is a bigger pool. Because again, because they will be still sexually driven, they often have three, four, five children randomly, whereas the rest society is moving towards like two children, three children or less. So the pool is genetically, would be getting larger.

Right. The future is bright. The future is psychopath. That's what's happening. They're multiplying. Fantastic. But Steve, and again, please debunkness. I read about psychopaths that, you know, they're more likely to be CEOs.

They're more likely to be successful, high achieving. Well, this is the social psychopath. Because, again, just because you haven't got a conscience and no empathy, it doesn't mean that you don't work to certain society roles. So I say most people won't be ax-wielding maniacs. They're really rare. They're exceptional. But we do meet people who just don't seem to have any empathy or compassion.

That doesn't mean that they would be classed under, if we looked at this tract and say, well, there you go. This is a psychopaths. But that doesn't mean that they necessarily are damaging. It just means they don't have compassion or empathy. So they won't have a problem sacking people and saying, well, they have to get on with their life. You know, they won't have that.

But you can also get people who've got compassion and empathy and still have to sack people. and say, yeah, it's upsetting, it's not pleasant. But isn't it therefore helpful? Like, if you're a surgeon, if you don't have empathy, then you're not going to be worried. I just protect surgeons. They're not psychopathic.

But, you know, if you're in a high-pressure situation and you don't have empathy, isn't it kind of a superpower in a way? Well, not really. I mean, I hope. I've got compassion and empathy, but I still work in, which I do, in settings which are highly most,

charged moon the world of a psychiatrist is not a happy world clearly you know and you meet again with tragedies complete tragedies and messed up lives and people struggling with mental health issues and we're empathic and compassionate people but we learn to manage that so you learn how to manage your emotions rather than saying oh it's best i don't have any yeah i'm not sure that would work so i think you use your empathy to say how is this man struggling or this woman's struggling. I like to, when I teach it, get inside the head of the person you're dealing with, because that's when you see the world as they see it, and it really changes your view. Once you see somebody's world, then you come out of it in order to be able to help them

and give them insights or support. So, yeah, I mean, I was once approached by a boxing coach who said, can you deliver psychopaths because one of the problems boxers have is they don't really want to hurt the opponent. And they said that can sometimes stop a good boxer in their tracks. And I said, well, a psychopath wouldn't be a boxer because they wouldn't comply. They won't comply with the rules and they won't do the training and they want. So, you know, it's not like they can channel themselves in. They're disruptive. They'll work to their own agendas and roles. So you won't do well with the psychopath. They're not compliant. That's really interesting. So what do psychopaths tend to, like, what kind of things do they get into? What kind of jobs do they do?

Well, there can be anything like I say. You may, you may. get doctors who are lacking in compassion and empathy and we've had this in the history of medicine haven't we where you know clearly they've gone through the system and then they're not caring and they just it's a career so you'll get them in any any walk of life it's just a lack of compassionate empathy great they're everywhere and they're multiplying fantastic um the last on a good front just as a positive note it is interesting to show that a society keeps progressing, despite the fact that there may be a proportionate larger, we're actually more passive and peaceful than we ever were. And it's interesting at the moment, it's a bit of

uneasy, but this is the longest time in the history of Great Britain that we've never had a war. There has never been a generation that hasn't suffered a major war, never. So that speaks to itself, that society is becoming a better place. My concern is, what you alluded to earlier, is the psychological damage that's being done, which we've never had before. So the physical may be going down, but for me, the psychological's rising, and that's a great concern.

And I think you've alluded to it, the social media, it's this sniping where we're not really thinking about what we're doing. So it's so easy to criticize someone when you're anonymous or just add another thumbs down or make some really adverse remark that you think's quite witty, but actually could cut somebody in half.

So that's, to me, is the new danger. It's the psychological warfare that's going on. Hey Francis, would you like to learn another language? No, mate. Already know foreign languages perfectly. Oi Gary, who a libbybrioteca? You can't go on holiday, mate, without knowing where the swimming pool is. Le Bibliotech is the library, you idiot. Exactly. You can never be too far away from knowledge and sexually frustrated librarians. For those of you who do want to learn a language and connect with another culture or maybe just brush up in your Spanish for the next holiday.

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promo code Trigger. I use Babel and look at me now. You can't have Spanish absolutely perfect. No what I'm in Gary. Do you ever get worried? Steve, the way that we're talking about mental health in particular, the way that people use something like bipolar, which is a very serious condition. I mean, you know better than anyone, but they almost use it as an identity. Or, you know, being a depressive becomes an identity

that somehow it makes you more interesting that you've got a badge. To me, I find that a worrying symptom of society, really. I mean, you're right. If you look at a spectrum, I'm obviously, depressive illness is absolutely devastating, and people who get it, you know, your heart's got to go out to them because it is crippling. And it's nothing they're doing, by the way. Again, it's not attitude and all. But having said that, yes, you're right.

We're not naive to the fact that somebody might present because it's got gains. You know, if I'm depressed, I can't work and they may not want to work. And, you know, we're not fooled by that. We're saying, obviously, people will mimic. Like you said, they have a label. And then they may, they may, but this is a small number of people. use it as an excuse and that makes it hard for the people who genuinely suffer these illnesses

you know and that that's you know but they're doing it for a reason again you got asked why would you want a label you know what were the games and if it's like you know someone wants to say I'm depressed because they're so vulnerable and they feel by being ill people will not attack them because they feel like they're being under attack in some way you can see that you could work with them to say well hang on there's different ways of perceiving yourself and getting support then to make the illness model so people do use an illness model, you know, but it's a small amount of people. It's not big, but they'll come to the forefront because people see them as being,

well, you're just using this as an excuse to avoid something or gain something. We've become quite negative in this conversation, so let's finish on a positive. You've worked with a lot of elite athletes helping them to achieve better performances to get out of their own way and that. I think a lot of people, the question that they'd be quite curious to know is, are these people who you are seeing on television making millions and millions of pounds playing in front of 100,000 people every week, whatever that might be. Are they mentally different? Are they, have they achieved some kind of higher level of performance mentally? Or are they just

people like us who just happen to physically be able to do stuff that normal people can't do? I believe the people like those. Yeah. Don't make you millions, by the way. Some might, but most of the ones I work with don't make millions. And I work with the boss. It's not very good advertising for you, is it? It's, again, my job is to get people in a good place. So to try and raise the conversation a bit into something lighter is, when I've done this work, what I've found is it's amazing how people, once they start understanding themselves and actually start managing their emotions, the change in the life is fantastic. So I can't count the number of people, and it is humbling that go through this work that I'm doing and say, it's transformational. Once you

understand yourself and you can manage your emotions and your thinking and your behaviours, you just change into the person you really are and suddenly you're free of all this. So all the stuff we've talked about is almost secondary to what I do. So when people come in, whatever's happening, just put even the illness to one side and let's work on you as a person. And I've obviously had a privilege of working with a lot of people that are well known. I can't name names unless they've gone public because obviously I'm a doctor. but the two that did interviews early days with Ronnie and Sullivan in snooker and Vicki Pendleton on the bike, both fantastic people.

And it was interesting. They both did an interview of the press at the same time without knowing they were doing it. And both said the same thing. When Steve Meadows, he didn't go to the snooker table or the track. He came to us as people and said, let's get you in a good place. And when I got them in a good place, then I said, what do you want to do with yourself now? then we'll go and have a look at cycling in a circle or we'll look at knocking a ball around, you know?

Then I'll say, okay, let's apply what you've done now, but let's start in a good place. And all of us, all of us can get in a good place. Again, to give you some healthy, good research, every bit of research shows if you actually work on yourself emotionally, you will improve. You will improve. It's just getting something that resonates with you.

I've put out the chimp model because it's what I find resonates with me and those who resonates with grit. But if you've got people listening and think, it doesn't resonate with me, there's so many other alternatives that are brilliant that you could resonate with. And it's that thing of suddenly believing that you can actually do this

and get out there, maybe get someone to help you and support you. We can all improve. So every bit of research shows emotional skills can be learned. And then you cause your life improves. So again, when I look at the people on the teller, the answer is no. I haven't found this,

but I'm only one man. You have to ask the people who normally do it for life for the sports psychologist, they're the experts. And if you ask them, they may come up with something very different. My experience has been the people I've worked with are just everyday people who happen to be able to either run quickly or kick a ball or, you know, they just have a special physical gift.

But mentally, they're the same as we are. And they struggle with the same things we struggle with. That's really interesting. Yeah, I haven't found the X factor. I haven't found that. Well, this fits nicely with what I've always believed since a pretty young age, which is it's really important to work on yourself, on your mental game as well as all sorts of other things that you do.

And I have always, I've always found that that is a process that you get rewarded for. And I never thought that I'm necessarily destined for some kind of special thing. I just didn't want to live my life knowing that there's something in the way. Exactly. And I think that's something which is where we're going back to the new reception. science, which in the 90s, I had this light bulb moment that I'm talking to these patients think, there's two people talking to me. And it sort of dawned on me, just you talk and then they talk almost like emotional rubbish. And you think, and then suddenly I bring them out and

they talk sensibly, you think, it's a different person suddenly. It's quite severe the difference. And that's where I started looking at the science thinking, let's go with my experience and see, is this born out with neuroscience? And there it was in front of me. You've got these two parts of the brain, almost in a battle if you don't manage them. And exactly what you're saying, what you're really saying to me under the neuroscience is, my computer needed tidying up because it's sabotaging with all these beliefs that are not helping me.

And also this active chimp brain is just jumping me around and it's got its own agenda and ways of working, which I don't actually agree with. So I'm going to slow it down and stop being impulsive. So that's when you explain, I'm getting in the way of myself. That's all I'm saying scientifically is if you start distancing yourself from the chimp and computer and learn who you really are, because most people don't have a clue who they are.

And then you say, right, what you're presenting to the world is you with an influence from the chimp and computer, or even a hijack. When you get that, then you would not say to me, I am an anxious person. What you'd say is, I'm actually a really peaceful, easygoing, very relaxed person, because that's who you'd want to be. but when they bolt on this machine, my machine's crazy, and I need to learn to understand and work with it and get it on board. So we'll always present anxiety. That's not going to stop,

but what you'll learn to do is when you distance from it, is learn what it's trying to tell you, what you need to do to sort your computer out, and then you'll find that sometimes it just doesn't happen. Because it happens so fast in the brain, it's like less than a fifth of a second, that your computer will settle the chimp. all you've got to do is input

and see what resonates with you and then you start saying I'm fine, my chimp's anxious but you start seeing it as a positive that brings up a question for me I said we're going to end on a positive probably not now which is what do you make

of the increasing medicalization of some of these feelings that we experience you've got anxiety here's a tablet you've got depression here's a tablet and we don't say you feel depressed we say you have

this thing called depression. What do you make of that? Because I found, like you say, there's sometimes anxiety is there for a reason. Anxiety is telling you, you're not ready for this. You need to go and train or prepare or learn or not do this because this is a wrong thing for you. Absolutely. Right. But if the answer we have as a society to that is shove it down, here's a tablet to make it all go away, is that going to get in the way of us growing as people? I think so. I think the problem you've got is you think about this. I mean, we're overloaded in the world of mental health and psychs. And so I think you taught to anyone who's counseling, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, were overloaded, therapists are overloaded because all of us could do with this because it's like mental coaching. You know, it's getting us to understand because nobody tells us this. So we're not given a manual at birth that says this is what you're going to have to manage. So we find it. And we don't know what to do with it. So we don't then have healthy behaviours for coping strategies. So it is, the doctors, GPs are overloaded. So they can't sit down and say to you, let's start analysing what you're thinking. Let's see what you believe,

sell it. They can't do that. They've got seven minutes. Exactly. So therefore, it's much as they look, take this tablet, go for a walk, go swimming, do this, because it's a quick fix. And I hope that I'll just calm you down, but it's a sticky plaster. So you're right. We're complex beings and we have to put the effort in, but we also need people who know what they're doing to help us to find out what's going on our heads. And we don't have enough people to do that. Hence I wrote the book to try and say, you can work this out for yourself

and there are things you can do practically that will get you into a good place. But I know where you're coming from, you're sort of like pushing me to say that we're labelling lots of things medical. Now you do agree. You know, sometimes we're labelling teenagers when they're going through a normal hormonal change

which is going to send your emotions everywhere. You're learning to do interpersonal skills and you've got new experience and you've also got this troop drive saying you must be loved by everyone and any comment can destroy you. And so that is normal. So to be a teenager is not a good place for most teenagers.

But, you know, we have to be careful that the small subgroup that have a depressive illness 100%. Don't get lost. 100%. But you're right. We have concerns as psychiatrists about this that we're medicalizing a bit too much

and saying, look, this is not medical. It's normal. What we need to learn, which is why I said at the beginning, my patients have come through the door 50% probably do need medication 50% of referrals that I got from GP did not need that they needed insights and learn how to manage and we know like for example anxiety that you've mentioned that that doesn't respond to medication you can knock it down a bit but it don't it won't be

removed a medication it's removed by actually seeing what's causing anxiety and what your beliefs are so it is a mind problem as opposed to physical illness. So anxiety, yeah, to me it's a lack of management. And we need to look and say, how can we help people to get that management? And then they'll come out of it. So we do a lot of cognitive behavioral type work with that rather than give tablets. I do agree. I do agree with you. Steve, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We're going to do a few quick questions for our locals members. before we do that, we always have one final question,

which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? I think it alludes back to the children in schools. I'm doing a lot of work with schools at the moment and looking at building resilience and robustness in children because we know the research is do it at four-year-old. There are ways we can actually improve resilience in four to five-year-olds, which pay dividends 10 years on.

And the research shows that, that you can get resilient teenagers, which is what we're after, and resilient adults. So for me, the big thing is what I'm doing and that's trying to get people to become psychologically minded and start understanding themselves as a human being and having a better opinion of themselves,

build themselves up, and others. That's where I think I'd like to see society going. We need to be talking much more about positive, not using it as a safety net, but saying how do we get positive and proactive, really get quality life in a good place. That's what I feel we should be talking. talking about. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think we talk so much about mental health and what

we really talk about is mental ill health. What we should be talking about so much more is tuning your brain up to be better, to be more fulfilled, to be more successful, to be happier, to be psychological health. Yeah, exactly. Psychological relationships, communication, dealing with emotion. This kind of stuff I'd like to see much earlier on in school. Well, one of the great things about a path through the jungle and your other work, but particularly this one is you've kind of got very easy to to read, you've got graphs and all sorts of other things are visually engaging that makes them more digestible. So I really recommend you guys check out the Chim Paradox

and a path through the jungle. Dr. Steve, Peter, thanks so much for coming up. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm a massive Ronnie, I was a Sullivan fan and have heard Steve used to be in his dressing room at big tournaments. What did he say to him in the middle of... Used to be.

I'm a reminder of I sports him two days ago.