WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Healing Hour: Assume That the Person You are Listening to Might Know Something You Don't

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Today, Adriana and Erika discuss Rule Nine of Jordan Peterson's Twelve Rules for Life: Assume That the Person You are Listening to Might Know Something You Don't. They discuss the importance of truly listening before giving someone advice, and how Jordan Peterson proposes that we listen to people when we disagree with them.

Hello and welcome to the Healing Hour on Radio Free Hillsdale, where we bring you your weekly dose of healing. I'm your host, Adriana Azarian. I'm your co-host, Erica Kaiba. And we're here once again to help you become your happiest, healthiest, fullest self. Today we're going to be talking about chapter nine of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, which just so happens to be. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't. in the words of Selena Gomez, tell me something I don't know. So true.

Yes. Selena Gomez really said it before Dr. Peterson did. I was expecting a citation at the end of this chapter, and I didn't see one, and I was really disappointed. Yeah, no, it's true. She probably is one of the greatest intellectuals of our generation, if you think about it. That's really true. But before we do that, we just came from the gym. Yes, our healing activity of the week, we went to the gym that is right next to.

the recording studio. So if we sound more muscular, that's why. Yes. And if I sound more congested, and if you were writhing on the floor in pain because you didn't have your healing hour episode last week, it's because I was sick. There is an illness going around Hillsdale.

Well, what's the tail end of it now, but it was pretty bad for a while. Yes. Take your vitamins, people. Take your vitamins, get your vitamin D, go walk in the sunlight. Yes. And sleep.

That's an important. important and drink liquids. All right, now that we've told you something you don't know, we're going to get into things that you don't know. And that we didn't know until we read this chapter. And now we know. So just to give you a brief roadmap, we're going to be first discussing what Jordan Peterson has to say about psychotherapy and advice. And I think it applies broadly to how to approach people who want to discuss their problems with you, something they're going through, and kind of how you face that situation. Then he talked to about how you should listen and what the appropriate attitude is. And then finally we're going

to talk about his section on conversation and how it's a mutual exploration if both parties approach it in good faith. But first, overall impressions of the chapter, thoughts, comments, concerns, personal problems. I think he's spot on once again. I think that the way that we talk reveals who we are at our deepest level. And so that's something I've been really thinking about a lot lately in the way that I speak. And I think that he, when he talks about his patience, particularly the one that we'll get into later, who had a lot of issues, he was talking to him. She knew a lot.

She was very smart, but she was very much out of touch with, like, the reality of who she was and the reality of how the world works, you know? So yeah, I don't want to give too much away right now. But overall, I thought it was very well done and made me really think about my conversations differently when I'm trying to understand other people to the way they talk. Yeah, I agree. And I think that that episode that you brought up, and of course we're going to get into it, but it shows how much we need each other because we don't exist as Adams. Like we're in a network. We're noted a network.

And so we're depending on other people all the time to tell us what we don't know. So, talking about advice. Jordan Peterson opens up the chapter by saying psychotherapy is not advice. Advice is what you get when the person you're talking with about something horrible and complicated, wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence. If you weren't so stupid after all, you wouldn't have your stupid problems. So we got a really harsh paragraph coming right out of the gate there. Yeah.

I have to say, I thought it was a little harsh when I first read it, but his overall point in this section of the chapter is that when somebody comes to you with a problem, basically the idea of psychotherapy, and I think the idea of being supportive is that you have to let them talk it through and figure it out for themselves instead of immediately imposing what you think they should do, because then it's a way of getting rid of them, basically. Well, it's simple. Here, I have a solution. that you could use? What was your reaction to? Well, I was frustrated at that part because a lot of times,

okay, if I'm talking about my problems, it's because I want an answer to them. And if someone just starts, you know, making me think about it, I'm like, no, I've thought about it long enough and I just want an answer. But I've also found counterintuitively that when I am talking to my friends and they want my advice,

I'll just ask them questions. And for some reason, that actually seems to help them more than me just telling them things. So maybe I should change the way I think about that. and actually be open to like asking myself more questions that they might have for me. Interesting. I don't know.

What do you think? What do I think that? Well, I think that it's a little harsh to say that advice is just what you give someone when you want them to go away because I think that a lot of the times it comes from a good place. And I think that it's natural to feel to sorrow with the people that you love that are sorrowing and to what to fix that, you know, and make it stop. But I think that you're right. and then it's oftentimes more helpful if you elicit questions from people and help them figure out what matters to them. Because I find that like a lot of the times, if I call someone like you, I just want advice. I want a solution to the problem.

And then somebody says, well, what's important to you? What do you want to have happened after this? Or like what matters most really and helps me work it through that way. I think that that can oftentimes be more helpful because it helps you kind of process, you know. So I think that there's a lot of value to that. But I do think that there's a certain point where if somebody says I need advice, just giving them advice and saying, well, in my experience, this tends to work out better. Right.

Like when I'm going to my dad for financial advice, I don't want them to ask me more questions. Like, well, what do you see? What's more important? Boba or Barnes & Noble expenditure? Sorry, that was really specific to like. Definitely Barnes & Noble. Okay, here's the thing is I've tried to get into Boba, but I'm just, it hasn't, I don't know, I'm more of a coffee girl.

Anyhow. And if you're just tuning in, you're listening to The Healing Hour on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM with Adriana Azarian, your host. And Eric Kekiba, your co-host. And we are talking about rule nine of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, which is, assume the person that you're talking to might know something that you need to know. And so we're talking about the principle of advice and how you should, avoid that basically and Jordan Peterson's view and really just help someone talk to someone,

ask them questions, help them understand their situation for themselves. And we're talking about how that's often been helpful to us in many situations. There are caveats, of course. But something that we both thought was interesting, an episode that Dr. Peterson brought up in a book, in the book, was a client that he had who had something very terrible happened to her. And Adriana, you were brought her up in the beginning of the episode, how she was very intelligent, but she didn't understand a lot about the world, right? Yeah. And he brings up this episode where he basically,

she basically thought that a CV was like a chronicle of her dreams and books that she'd read and stuff like that. Because she hadn't really had somebody to explain that to her. You know, she just didn't know. And her lack of understanding and lack of direction kind of in her life, led her to a very dark situation. Basically, what she told him one day is that, and trigger warning, this is very sensitive subject, she comes to him and she says that she thought that she was raped five times. And Jordan Peterson's reaction was, the first sentence was awful enough, but the second produced something unfathomable.

Five times. What could that possibly mean? My client told me that she would go to a bar and have a few drinks. Someone would start to talk with her. She would end up at his place or her place with him. The evening would proceed inevitably to its sexual climax. The next day she would wake up uncertain about what had happened. Uncertain about her motives.

Uncertain about his motives and uncertain about the world. Miss S, we'll call her, was vague to the point of non-existence. She was a ghost of a person. She dressed, however, like a professional. She knew how to present herself for first appearances. Then that he goes on to describe how, on the surface, she's able to present herself as somebody that's competent and understanding and gain people's trust professionally in that way,

but that she... Is not a very deep person. Exactly. And so she gets... So he pinpoints how this is a very, very tenuous situation. Because on the one hand, obviously the men that she's been with have not... acted in a toward manner. I mean, she is not in the position to consent if she's under the influence of alcohol.

And clearly, it's just, it's not, they're taking advantage of her. And that's clear. Yes. But at the same time, she's putting herself in a dangerous position. It's not her fault that they did that to her. But she needs to avoid doing that in the future, you know, and going to these bars by herself and getting intoxicated and leaving with these people. And he said that he could basically present her with either vision that she was taking advantage

of and she needs to do X, Y, and Z in response to that. Or no, he could say to her, you are just a mess and you need to sort this stuff out. And he said, both would have been true. But that's just advice. That's not real therapy. So what he did was actually let her process. And by the end, when she had to like cut the sessions off, she still wasn't. sure, but she had gained more clarity and more self-understanding.

And that's what actually matters. Okay. It's interesting to me that that's his point, is not finding out what actually happened. It's trying to help her solve her own problem. Because I always thought that the role of a psychologist was to solve your problems for you. And this kind of turned my opinion around that the point wasn't to know what actually happened. it was to not to know what happened in fact, but to know what happened in truth, if that makes sense. Like, she may never know the exact facts of what happened,

but the truth is that she was taken advantage of, that she is too trusting of people that, now that this is not her fault, to be very clear. But that, you know, going forward, she needs to be more in touch with herself and within reality. Yeah, 100%. And he talks about also, He uses a line that I think is interesting how he doesn't want to steal his client's experiences from them.

Because, I mean, he wasn't there and he doesn't live in her head. He didn't see what happened and he doesn't know what motivated her or him, the men that she was with. So the best that he can do is actually help her understand for herself. You know, I think that's the best that we can do for other people as well. Because he couldn't just not having lived through that impose his vision on top of, her, you know, view of things, that would not be the charitable thing to do. And I think that in a lot of cases, hopefully we'll never be in the situation where someone comes to us with a problem like that, God forbid. But I think that no matter what it is that people come to us with, I think that's just

generally a good approach, not trying to steal their experiences from them, but helping them work through it. Erica, I have a question for you. Yes. And without like giving out too many details, has there been a time where when you come to someone with a problem and they've made you really think it through and what was your experience like? Well, I know that every time that I come to, well, generally when I come to my parents with something, they'll help me talk it through. You know, if I'm, whether I'm worried about something or, you know, something bad happened and I just want to process, they're very good about, you know, asking me questions and helping me work it through myself. And then of course, sometimes there's advice because I think that it's very natural if somebody just has more experience than you

and doesn't want to see you make the same mistakes that they made to just like give you that advice I think that that's actually really appropriate so I don't think that the psychotherapy approach is always a good one but yeah definitely I think that like with my parents and that a lot of the times with my sister yeah yeah I've also noticed that asking myself a lot of questions has been really transformative yeah tell me about that um so I was talking with a friend the other day about like just kind of negative assumptions that we all make about ourselves. And like how the, basically the whole point of the conversation was like you have to live with the voice in your head. So like stop bullying yourself because chances are you would never deal with another person talking to you, the way that you talk to yourself.

That was like the context. And then ever since then, whenever I have a negative thought about myself with the way other people perceive me, I thought, why do I think that? Like, why do I think that? And then I realized how baseless my beliefs are in, like, how people perceive me. And this is true for, like, many levels of beliefs. Like, that can be beliefs of, like, politics, religion, philosophy, whatever, too. Why do I believe that? And then, like, believe working through that.

And sometimes you realize that you're wrong. And that's, you don't even have to talk to other people. Sometimes yourself can be a good guide. Yeah. And, yeah, because I think it's interesting. There's different sides to us. Because we think of ourselves as, as what. cohesive unit, but then it's like, there's the emotive side of us, and then there's the

rational side of us, and then there's the moral side of us, and those things can work together, but they can also be in opposition to each other. So if our just instinctive gut response to something is to, is negative. I think I especially relate to that, you know, with just like, assuming the worst possible thing and just going into a panic response, like, oh, now I have to protect myself in this situation, I think it's important to just lead into the rational side of you and set that in conversation with the emotional or instinctive side. Saying, like, hey, let's think this through. Is this a logical thing that we're, is this a logical interpretation of the situation or not?

So I think that's a really interesting concept, having a conversation with yourself. Yes. I used to joke, you know, I always talk to myself because I always agree with myself. but I've realized as of like that I don't always agree with myself. Yeah. And if you're just tuning in, you are listening to The Healing Hour on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Adriana, your host.

And I'm Erica Kaiba, your co-host. And we are discussing Rule 9 of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. Assume the person that you're talking to might know something that you need to know. And so with the time that we have left, I was thinking maybe we could talk about how we should listen or how Jordan Peterson formulates that. Because it's not just about listening to people who are bringing their problems to you. It could also involve listening to people who you disagree with. So he quotes Carl

Rogers, who he describes as one of the 20th century's greatest psychotherapists, as saying the great majority of us cannot listen. We find ourselves compelled to evaluate because listening is too dangerous. The first requirement is courage, and we do not always have it. And then Peterson says that Rogers knew that listening could transform people. On that, Rogers commented, some of you may be feeling that you listen well to people and that you have never seen such results. The chances are very great indeed that you're listening has not been of the type I have described. And then he talks about how when you're having an argument or disagreement with someone, you should always stop and then reiterate to them exactly what they said

to their satisfaction and only then allow yourself to respond. That is such so interesting. Good advice. Yeah. And people talk about that with like conflict resolution. And marriage. This is so important. Yeah.

Yes. So what do you make of that? I think that's really good because when I think about pretty much every conflict I've ever had in my entire life, a lot of it has been based on misunderstanding. Yep. And I think we like just naturally in our heads twist things around the way that we think that we're supposed to understand them, but we also, all of our brains are structured very differently. And sometimes you really have to ask people a lot of questions before you fully understand

what they're saying and where they come from. So I think that is phenomenal advice. Just be like, just so I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying this, you know, and then have them, you know, make their corrections or, you know, it's just you have to understand what the person actually means before your brain twists it around. So that's just going to cause way more conflict than is necessary. Exactly. Yeah, because I think in the level of conflict, we could bring a lot of assumptions into it or just, like, projecting our personal thoughts onto what someone is saying, and what's really important is to actually reach a level of understanding.

Like, are they saying what I think that they're saying or not? Because then, you know, you have the problem and you have the misunderstanding of the problem, and the other person can get frustrated because not only is there a problem, they're misunderstood, and they're taken the problem, and then, you know, they're getting... And that it amplifies. Right. So it's always good to clarify things. I think this principle is also really helpful if you're disagreeing with someone in maybe a political

situation or a theological situation maybe. I found that I think a lot of the times in polarizing conversations, somebody says something we disagree with and we're like, oh, so basically you're saying, you're evil and we should kill babies. Like, for example, the abortion conversations that I would have at high school with people. and I found that it's really important to try to slow it down, you know, like the gut reaction you have to an issue and actually understand where people are coming from. Because nobody, well, very few people, unless somebody is totally like off their rocker. They don't approach a political issue thinking how can it cause as much damage as possible.

They identify a problem and they want to provide a compassionate solution. So what I found with people who were on the more, when they took a pro-abortion stance, was that they really, they saw justice being done to a lot of women and women in difficult situations and they believed that the remedy for that was abortion and they had their reasons for thinking that. And I think that it's really important when we're having conversations like that to understand the good that the other side is seeing. So that good could be protecting the woman financially or responding to her pain if she's undergone some type of trauma.

And addressing that when we make our arguments, or at least factoring that in, you know, instead of projecting everything we hate onto that person. Because I think that we're all in agreement with that sort of thing. Like, none of us want pro-lifers and pro-abortion people like, like we don't want to see women suffering, you know, from the mental trauma of like the situation that got them pregnant. Or like, we don't want any, you know, women to have any health issues resulting from

or as a side effect of their pregnancy or struggle financially or have family issues or be abused because of like no one wants that. And like we both have our own responses to that. Like let's meet there first before we talk about the issue.

Which is why I really love the love them both movement that's happening in the pro-life community as opposed to people saying like oh women are so selfish for choosing abortion. I think that there can be situations in which it's selfish of course. But I think that if you look at the story of women who are coming out and saying this was the situation in which I had an abortion

and I cannot tell you how much I regret it. A lot of the times, it is tough. A lot of the times they were pressured into it and I think that we need to understand that. I think we need to understand what is actually going on and what values both sides are bringing to the discussion.

Absolutely. And with that, we close yet another episode of the Healing Hour. We have upcoming chapter 10. 10, which is, be precise in your speech. Now, this I think, relates back to Rule 9, does it not? It does. So Rule 9 is understanding what other people are saying.

Rule 10 is understanding what you're saying, which half the time, I do not. Just kidding. Well, thank you for joining us today. We look forward to speaking to you next time and we'll be precise in what we say to you next time. We'll be precise as we can possibly be. Yes. Sayonara. Catch you later.