Unlearn Negative Thoughts & Behaviors Patterns | Dr. Alok Kanojia

Everyone's focused on changing behavior.

Everyone's focused on increasing willpower to overcome this tendency.

And it's like, why not just change the tendency?

That sounds so simple, but that's literally what we do in psychotherapy every day.

When we come in and someone has a narcissistic personality disorder,

this is personality.

This is who they are.

And we can psychotherapize them to be someone else

for their natural thoughts to change,

for the way that they see the world to change,

for their behaviors to change on its own.

It doesn't require willpower is necessary

when you are trying to not be narcissistic.

It is not necessary when you are no longer narcissistic.

So we've done it in psychotherapy.

We know that if your self-esteem changes,

if your sense of being changes,

treatment refractory depression will change.

Trauma, PTSD will change.

Welcome to the Uberman Lab podcast.

We'll discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

My guest today is Dr. Alok Kanogia, also known as Dr. K.

Dr. K is a psychiatrist and online mental health educator.

He has a very unique background,

having trained and earned his medical degree in the United States,

but also having studied as a monk for seven years.

Today we discuss powerful tools

for increasing your self-understanding and mental health,

and for rewiring your nervous system,

specifically how you can unlearn unhealthy thought patterns and behaviors,

and replace them with ones that truly serve you and those around you.

Much of today's discussion centers around differences between

eastern and western concepts of things like the ego

and what makes up our self-concept.

That portion of the conversation will no doubt have you rethinking

why you do what you do in virtually everything,

and he provides a roadmap for clearly defining your best goals,

and for increasing things like your energy and drive,

not through hacks, but by tapping into deep intrinsic motivation.

In fact, throughout today's episode,

Dr. K explains specific practices that you can use

to help rewire your nervous system, resolve traumas,

and come to a much clearer understanding of how best to apply your efforts

in work, school, and relationships.

We also discuss social media, dating, and relationships,

addiction, and pornography, so there are a lot of topics covered.

And I have to say, this is a conversation unlike any other that I've had

on or off the podcast.

Dr. K offers a completely new perspective on how to resolve common struggles

that we all face.

And in doing so, he offers a lot of practical tools,

so this should be a very valuable conversation for anyone wishing

to better understand themselves at the theoretical and psychological level,

but also who wishes to implement specific tools to improve some

or all aspects of their life.

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate

from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost

to consumer information about science and science-related tools

to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors.

And now for my discussion with Dr. Alok Kanogia.

Dr. K, welcome.

Andrew Huberman, thank you for having me.

So interested in you and the knowledge you hold.

Today, we're going to talk about a number of things.

I mean, Ayurveda and East West Medicine,

motivation and dopamine.

But I want to start with the internet.

Okay.

You had an interesting upbringing, so very different than mine,

not just because of our age difference.

But you grew up on the internet.

Like, yeah.

And so you really have an empathy for people on the internet,

on social media.

Now everyone's on the internet.

What was it that drew you to screens and that interface

with such a degree of magnetism?

You know, I was like a gifted kid growing up.

And I think that one of the things that we don't really appreciate

is how school moves at the pace of the slowest kid.

So school was incredibly boring for me.

And then I was also young, so I was a year ahead.

And so I was like early on when I was a five-year-old

in first grade and I was competing against seven-year-olds,

like on the playground or in gym class.

I sucked at sports.

So the one thing that I really got addicted to

was this idea of like a computer game

where like when you beat level one, like level two is there.

You know, and then if you beat level two, like level three is there.

If you fail at level three, you get to try level three again.

So it was the only activity that was like cognitively to my pacing.

And so that really drew me in.

And I didn't realize that until years later.

You know, my parents were big fans of putting us into school

like young.

And if you can skip grades, like that's great, right?

Because life is a race.

And the faster you finish, the better things are.

But I didn't realize how developmentally challenging it is

to be like a five-year-old or a six-year-old

in school with like seven-year-olds or eight-year-olds.

So I think that's what originally drew me in.

If you don't mind me asking.

So you were first generation immigrant parents from India.

Yep.

I mean, I grew up in the South Bay in Palo Alto.

So I'm familiar with intense academic environments.

Sure. Yeah.

Increasingly so in the last, you know, 10, 20 years.

But even when I was there, it was intense.

Did you feel that as pressure?

Absolutely.

I mean, my earliest memories of my grandmother telling me

I'm going to make a great doctor one day.

And when I was like 15 years old, people would ask me

like I'd go to like a party, right, with my parents

and their friends and people would ask me,

what do you want to be when you grow up?

And so I was like, I'm going to be a doctor.

And everyone was like, wow, impressive.

You know, so my 15-year-old brain was like looking at this,

this like amazing idea of what a doctor was.

And both my parents are doctors.

My dad was an amazing doctor.

I suppose my mom is too.

But my dad was one of the seminal researchers

and like graft versus host disease.

It's how he landed his job at MD Anderson.

So he like came from India and like wasn't oncologist.

And so I also remember like he used to back then,

HIPAA wasn't, I think there wasn't even a HIPAA law.

So he would have, you know, patients over to our house

and stuff like that.

He would throw a Thanksgiving party every year

where like he would invite all of his patients,

all cancer survivors and things like that.

And so my dad was really like a mythical figure,

incredibly charismatic.

And so I, I was like, yeah, I'm going to be that.

And so it became a huge part of my ego.

And then it turns out that ego is not a great way to motive,

well, it can be a great way to motivate yourself.

But then I ran into trouble when I hit college

because I never learned how to study.

So either I like absorbed everything and did well on the test.

So I went straight from like A's to F's.

And then got addicted to video games, failed out of college.

But your original question was, was I into computers and why?

And that's probably something to do with that.

Well, it sounds like you were so into computers,

you eventually went over the cliff of computers with this addiction.

I want to talk about the addiction, but I think this is a perfect frame

and maybe we'll jump back and forth as we move forward.

This is a perfect frame for what I have heard and wonder about a lot,

which is, you know, I'm Gen X.

Okay.

You're a millennial.

Yeah.

And I'm told that the generations right behind Gen X,

perhaps had more love and encouragement

to feel their feelings, notions of what trauma and addiction were,

but maybe that there wasn't this universally high standards

except for all of them.

That's the narrative that you see in the news right now.

Oh, you know, this coddled generation, et cetera.

You had high standards set for you.

When you look out on your peers and you look out on the internet

for millennials and younger,

do you think that we can make a general statement about,

oh, yeah, you know, all this appreciation and understanding

about what addiction and trauma and feelings are, you know,

that just was foreign to my generation, frankly,

that it helped or hurt to have this awareness of kind of self

and what one needs and all of that.

Do you think that it, yeah, do you think it helped or it hurt development?

Well, so Andrew, I'm delighted to be speaking to a scientist

because I think it helped and hurt, right?

So this is, as you know, things are multifactorial.

It's rarely one thing or another thing.

So I think a lot of people picked up ground with awareness of feelings

as a psychiatrist, you know, I work with people

who were unaware of the family dynamics going on in their life

in their household, unaware of their emotions,

growing up with things like avoidant attachment

and having difficulty forming connections.

So I think it is always good to be more aware.

I think actually awareness is probably the single factor

that correlates the most with like success and happiness.

The challenge, the really subtle thing is that talking about emotions

isn't the same as actually being aware of them.

So I think what started to happen is a lot of this dialogue around trauma,

a lot of this dialogue around feelings has actually been hijacked

in very subtle ways by other parts of our mind,

other parts like, for example, our ego.

And so it's kind of like this therapy speak has like,

in this happens, you can look at any population.

And if you have someone who's like sociopathic

or if you have someone who's histrionic or narcissistic

and everyone is talking feelings, they will do that too,

but in a sociopathic way.

Feelings have now started to be used as a form of manipulation.

So people will use, like I see this all the time,

speaking of the internet in its modern incarnation.

We all talk about boundaries, but people have started to use boundaries

as a form of control for other human beings.

You know, my boundary is that you don't text anyone after 8 p.m.

My boundary is that, you know, every time I call you,

you need to answer the phone.

So it's really bizarre how like the basic, like psychological stuff

can hijack, like our psychological patterns can hijack,

like all this mental health speak.

Another really good example of this is,

so I remember I was seeing an assault victim in the emergency,

in the emergency room at Mass General Hospital many years ago.

And so the MIT chief of security was there.

And so I was talking to them a little bit about, you know,

because there were other students with the student who had been assaulted

and they were kind of talking to me about safety.

And I remember something that the MIT chief told me that I've never forgotten.

We were talking about safety and he's like,

my job is not to make people feel safe.

My job is to make people safe.

And there's actually a big difference.

And so something interesting has happened.

We have all become more narcissistic,

because that's what the internet does to us.

And so now if I am hurt, that is no longer my responsibility.

That is because you did something wrong.

Does that make sense?

Like fundamentally, if I feel hurt,

that is oftentimes tied to you doing something wrong.

So there's this tendency towards victimization,

where you'll see even people who are like playing the victim card,

which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be believing victims.

I think that's exactly what happens is we started to realize

that we're not taking victims seriously.

But then all the chameleons in our society

were looking at this pattern and they were realizing,

okay, the fastest way for me to get ahead

is to claim to be a victim.

So there are all kinds of weird permutations

that are happening right now with this sort of emphasis on feeling.

One more evidence-based example of this is we're seeing

the prevalence of mood disorders, anxiety disorders,

addictions, body dysmorphia,

basically everything is getting worse.

And so one weird thing that started to happen

is as we've talked more about feelings,

there is something called a transdiagnostic factor,

which we can get into.

I don't know if you're familiar with these or not.

But so if you look at all of the mental illnesses,

there are certain attributes

that are a risk factor for multiple mental illnesses.

So a good example of transdiagnostic factors are perfectionism

and rumination.

So rumination doesn't make you depressed,

doesn't necessarily make you anxious.

But if you have a high index of rumination,

you are more likely to have a major depressive disorder,

you're more likely to have an anxiety disorder,

does that kind of make sense?

If you are perfectionistic, you are more likely to be depressed,

you are more likely to be anxious.

So there's one interesting transdiagnostic factor,

which has gotten way worse,

which is something called distressed tolerance.

So human beings capacity to sit with things

and tolerate things that they do not find comfortable

is starting to tank.

And as that starts to tank,

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The moment you said that we're seeing a reduction

in distress tolerance,

I heard in my head voices on the internet saying,

oh, so we're just supposed to push our feelings aside,

like we're just supposed to accept everything that happens to us,

we're supposed to, you know.

And of course, I don't actually believe that,

but I can empathize a bit with that notion, right?

Like, these things are always on a continuum.

It's a push pull, right?

I mean, I was going to raise the same thing

around the standards that were set for you.

Some people who grew up with very high standards set

for them by parents, teachers or coaches,

might internalize that as, oh, that must mean I'm very capable.

In fact, one of my favorite books, The Last Lecture by Randy Posh,

he talks about, he was a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon,

and he eventually died and he gave this last lecture,

which is an incredible lecture.

And he said, the moment that your parents,

coaches, and teachers stop pushing you,

is the moment you should worry because they've given up on you.

If you're pushed, people believe in you,

that there's a chance you might actually accomplish something.

They believe in you.

But you could also internalize it as, over well.

Yeah.

And so I think this notion of distress tolerance,

like, what are the standards?

What are the standards for distress tolerance,

for performance, for being a, quote, unquote,

functional member of society,

while also, quote, unquote, honoring one's feelings.

About feeling one feelings, there's no roadmap, I believe,

to how to navigate that.

What you said, there is no roadmap.

That happens to be true, and it happens to be wrong.

So I know it's confusing, so let me explain.

So here's the first thing to understand.

The way that we collect information,

this is why I love being a clinician.

So like, you know, you talked about the last lecture.

So this person was saying, if people don't push you,

that means that they don't, you know,

care about you, they're not invested in you.

They don't, the moment that you give up on someone

is the moment that you stop pushing them, right?

Makes perfect sense.

And then there are also people who have been pushed

to the point where they like crack under pressure.

That's actually way more common.

And so generally speaking, pressure, you know,

just like any other part of biology,

if I exert pressure on some part, on some joint,

on some part of soft tissue will develop a callus.

It'll become tough.

So this is where the reason there's no roadmap

is because people aren't the same, right?

So we all have unique genetics.

We all have unique experiences.

We all have a unique internal dialogue.

And so the whole point of personality,

and we can define personality by the technical terms,

which is it is the way that you interpret information,

the way you perceive the world,

your internal reactions,

and the behaviors that you engage in.

So you can take literally, you know,

two different human beings in the exact same situation.

I've worked with a couple of survivors

of like genocidal conflicts.

And the really interesting thing about that

is not everybody gets PTSD,

which is like really weird, right?

Like if you think about,

this is like a genocidal conflict.

So we have tons of people who all experience the same thing,

but their reactions to them are really different.

That's what's fun about being a clinician,

what I try to focus on,

and what I learned, I looked for a roadmap.

And what I found is that there's not a roadmap.

There are thousands of roadmaps.

And those roadmaps come down to,

and this is I think a huge problem

in the information-based world we live in.

So everyone has problems, right?

And they're looking for solutions, which is great.

The problem, the biggest mistake that I see people make,

especially high performers,

is a problem of misdiagnosis.

So really good example of this.

I had a patient come into my office,

worked in finance,

was it a very, very successful firm,

came in and was like,

I have really bad anxiety,

like it's really starting,

like I can't eat,

like I can't sleep.

My wife is really worried about me.

So he's like, I've got really bad anxiety.

So we start talking about it,

and he's like, you know,

I'm afraid I'm going to get fired.

And we work together for about 12 months,

and then he realizes

this environment is not where he's happy.

And the reason he's going to get fired

is because he doesn't fit in,

and he decides to quit.

So what's really interesting is if we had just solved that,

if we'd made his anxiety go away,

he would have perpetuated

in an unhealthy system.

And this is the thing that I think we forget

when we're talking about our emotions.

Like Andrew,

which part of the brain does anxiety come from?

It's a circuit wide phenomenon.

Sure.

If we had, how is it taught?

If you had to teach someone

who's taking an undergraduate neuroscience class,

and maybe you wouldn't teach it this way,

but if you had to localize it to somewhere,

where would you localize it?

To one structure.

Yeah, one structure.

Everyone would say a major lie.

I teach your anatomy to medical students.

Right.

Or I didn't tell everybody recently.

So I'm totally with the limit system as a whole,

right, but the amygdala.

Sure.

And the really interesting thing is like,

crocodiles have amygdala.

Right?

So we sometimes forget that these negative emotions

are actually really important for us.

They're really healthy for us.

One other really interesting example of this is,

you know, I work with a lot of like gamers on the internet.

So sometimes they'll try to engage in mating behaviors.

And they'll creep people out.

And one of the really interesting things that I realized

is embarrassment is the best way to not creep someone out.

So if I violate one of your boundaries,

and then I express embarrassment,

that signals to you that I realize I did something wrong.

So if I violate one of your boundaries

and then I express embarrassment,

that's a really important empathic signal.

And now we have all of this like content on the internet

telling people to be relentlessly confident.

And when they become relentlessly confident,

they no longer express embarrassment.

Embarrassment is a really important signal to send.

In the example you gave,

it's very clear that somebody violated somebody's boundary.

They felt embarrassment.

Showing that embarrassment shows that they have

some sort of empathic attunement or awareness

that makes them perhaps a little less creepy

and a little bit safer,

as opposed to if they just kept going forward.

However, if it was a bit vague,

like let's say that they did something of flirtation

and it wasn't really clear what it was.

And the other person said,

hey, that doesn't feel good to me.

And then they acted very embarrassed.

And the person who said it didn't feel good to them

would quite understandably think,

oh, it must have been really bad.

Oftentimes, the dynamics are subtle

where people don't really know

how they should feel about something.

At the extremes, we know.

So I'm going to reverse Russian dollos

because I was all over the place.

So you asked about a road map.

Then I gave the example of anxiety.

Then I gave the example of embarrassment

as another emotion that's helpful.

And now you're asking a question.

So we're going to do it in reverse order.

Sure.

But I want to get back to that road map

because I think it's a beautiful question.

I wrote it down.

So we haven't forgotten.

Great. Let's talk about the ambiguous interactions.

This is fascinating.

So I saw a really cool study

where when two people are flirting

and that's taped,

and a neutral observer is watching it,

they accurately detect flirting only about 30% of the time.

Different studies show 24 to 42%.

You're saying ambiguity is a problem.

No, ambiguity is exactly what's supposed to happen.

So if you think about what flirting is,

flirting is a way to preserve plausible deniability.

It's a way to make you feel safe.

So if I am really an angel,

I'm really interested in your body, bro.

But if I say that,

unless you are matching that energy,

it's not going to be safe.

It's not going to be good.

It'll ruin our relationship.

So flirting by nature is supposed to be missed.

So this is another thing where you're saying,

yes, there's ambiguity.

It could be interpreted this way.

And it could be interpreted this way.

That's not bad. That's good.

That's how human beings actually interact.

So when it caught, you know,

described this beautifully

because flirting is a form of play.

That's literally what it is.

And play is about a potential space.

When I'm playing like dolls with my daughter,

it's not defined.

And the whole point is for it to be not defined.

So in that absence of definition,

which now everyone is sort of like,

we're seeing a social skills atrophy.

So, you know, the parts of our brain,

that interpret tone, body language, things like that,

like people are becoming like, you know,

we're seeing a rise of like ADHD

and everyone also feels subjectively like they're autistic.

It's because they're losing some degree of social skills

because we text back and forth.

And our brains don't, our occipital cortex

is not interpreting visual information

of people's facial expressions.

So that part of our brain like literally kind of shuts off.

So people are having a lot of difficulty with ambiguity.

You know, people are saying like,

oh, this person is sending mixed signals.

Like, that's the point.

In a relationship, you are going to have mixed signals.

In a friendship, you will have mixed signals.

We all have ambivalence within us.

I want to eat a healthy lean protein during lunch

and I also want to eat a fried protein during lunch.

Right? So ambiguity is actually not something to be avoided.

The really interesting thing,

another transdiagnostic factor,

really important one,

the intolerance of uncertainty.

So human beings who are capable of tolerating uncertainty,

better mental health outcomes,

more resilient, improved quality of life, right?

So everyone needs defined answers.

So I'll pause there for a moment,

just to address your flirtation example.

But you're spot on.

We can tell what the signals are at either end.

The point of human interaction

is that way we can adapt to each other.

You know, if I put my arm around you,

then how do you respond to that?

Do you get up and go to the bathroom?

Or do you lean in?

So these are how human interactions actually happen.

There's a lot of back and forth.

Fascinating.

A lot of younger guys talk to me about their challenges

in the dating scene.

Yeah, right.

And one of the things that they seem very challenged with

is the fact that they feel like whatever happens on a date

is shared on the internet.

Yeah.

And this is, of course, not related to, you know,

assault or them acting highly inappropriate.

Or, you know, this is really like,

they're reported as a good or bad kisser.

They're reported as a,

they pay or they don't pay.

And, and, you know,

and so I think that the room to explore ambiguity

to them, this is what I hear,

feels very dangerous.

It feels like a slippery slope

where they have to perform perfectly on every measure.

And I'm sure women feel the same way, right?

I just hear from more men.

Yeah, it's very tricky.

So I think what we're seeing in the dating world

and, and I guess what we're talking about,

maybe it's top of mind for me because I just

did a bunch of content on it.

But, so what's interesting in the dating world

is that now we're sort of adding the internet

to the equation, right?

Which you'd sort of talked about.

So let's just understand a couple of things about the internet.

So the first is what the internet, in my opinion,

this is sort of like a clinician's perspective

having read about 200 papers on various aspects

of how the internet affects our brains and our psychology.

First thing to understand is that the internet

selects for emotional activation.

It's not even dopamine, in my opinion.

So if you look at like internet, right?

So it's not just fun in games.

Actually, the most engaging content is emotionally engaging.

Arousal.

Arousal.

Absolute adrenaline.

And then the other interesting thing is that

in order to maintain arousal,

you need a dichotomy of emotions.

So I need to scare you.

And then I need to make you angry.

And then I need to show you a cat video.

And then I need to scare you again.

And then I need to tell you how AI is going to steal your job.

And then I want to show you this birthday party

where this baby did the cutest thing.

So this is literally how they maintain engagement.

And so what's really interesting about this is

as our, as our limbic system is like hyperactive

over and over and over again,

that's one of the biggest cognitive drains that we have.

So like I think the top three cognitive,

the things that drain or will power the most,

suppressing emotion, repressing emotion,

even just feeling emotion is like very exhausting.

The internet is selecting for the most emotionally activating things.

So which tweets get engaged with?

The ones that are the most polarizing.

So then what happens is, is people are dating

and now you've got a problem because,

and here's the real tragedy,

is people will have a perception

that if I don't say the right thing,

this will get posted online.

That is not what happens most of the time.

Right, but this is where we as human beings

have certain cognitive biases

where the extreme example,

like we get trained in this,

in medical school is, you know,

once you miss a cancer diagnosis once,

it doesn't mean that every patient

after that has cancer.

But that's what the brain is designed to do.

Our brain is designed for survival,

which means that if we get food poisoning

from a restaurant even once,

our brain doesn't look at that probabilistically.

It takes the worst examples,

and that's what we have to base our behavior on.

Right, like if I'm at work

and I want to, if I'm attracted to a coworker,

even though there's a 90% chance

that if I express some romantic interest in them,

I'm going to be fine.

I can't make a strategy based on that.

I have to base my strategy

on the worst possible outcome.

That's what we're seeing in data.

You said that suppressing emotion is cognitively draining.

Did I also understand correctly

that being in constant arousal

through different emotions

is also cognitively draining?

I don't know if I would use the word cognitive there,

but it's absolutely draining, right?

There are periods of extended arousal,

and this is where, like, when I mean cognitive draining,

I'm referring to a paper

that's looking at the interiors singulate cortex.

And that's where when the interiors singulate cortex

and your frontal lobes are suppressing your limbic system,

that's very draining.

But I think high levels of arousal

through the particular activating formation

and things like that,

just being on emotionally,

hyperactivation of your limbic system

is absolutely exhausting as the word that I would use.

As I mentioned, distressed tolerance

is a valuable skill to have.

It feels appropriate to say,

okay, distressed tolerance, I totally agree,

great to be able to tolerate distress to a point.

But that sounds like it's very cognitively

and generally draining.

So how would you encourage someone to develop

healthy levels of distressed tolerance?

But if that involves, you know,

a constant suppression of an impulse to shout,

to react, that sounds like it could get very unhealthy.

So I realize we're sort of staying on this tangent,

but I feel like what defines healthy distressed tolerance

if pushing back an emotional reaction

or pushing down an emotional reaction

is not good for us.

So distressed tolerance

doesn't only include emotional suppression.

Right? So what's really interesting

about distressed tolerance

is a key feature of distressed tolerance

is not even suppressing is the opposite,

is accepting your emotions.

It's actually moving in the opposite direction.

Feeling your feelings.

Feeling your feelings, right?

Recognizing that you feel your feelings.

What if somebody feels extremely angry

and they want to feel their feelings?

What is a healthy way for them to do that?

Three things.

Okay, so if you want to learn how to control your emotions,

you want to be tranquil in the face of your emotions

is what I would say.

Three things you can do.

The first thing is putting words to your emotion.

So the moment that, so right now,

I don't know if this kind of makes sense,

the more angry you are, right?

The more your amygdala is like hyperactive,

it is drowning out every other part of your brain.

So the first thing that you have to do

is put words to it.

And when you put words to it,

you can't put words to,

ah, there's no word there.

So the moment that you try to put words to it,

it has to calm down.

In order for your linguistic centers,

broke as area and all these,

in order for them to like articulate it,

you have to understand it.

So Freud understood this like over a hundred years ago,

and there's something powerful about processing emotions

by putting them into words.

In order to put words to it,

we have to tone it down some.

So that's the first thing.

The problem is that people oftentimes think that

that is sufficient, right?

So people will say,

journal, go see a therapist and talk about your feelings.

Man, the number of times that I've had,

like I had this patient who came in,

if I can tell a story.

Please.

You know, and so like,

I was a third year resident.

I'd done maybe like a hundred hours,

two hundred hours of psychotherapy.

So I had a guy come in,

he'd been in the clinic for eight years,

had depression, was a dude in his 40s.

He came in and he would tell me about why.

He was sad every day.

Like every week he'd come in is like,

I got, I got written up at work.

People are complaining because I snapped at them.

You know, one of the patients is complaining

because I didn't give them benzos.

And so he'd come in every week.

He'd talk about why he was depressed.

I'd be like, why are you depressed, bro?

And he'd like tell me some story about something

bad that happened in his life.

And then we did this for six months.

And like, I didn't know,

because I'm like learning psychotherapy, right?

So I'm like, I'm supposed to be supportive

and I'm supposed to be like,

okay, like that must be hard for you.

How does that make you feel?

That must be so hard for you.

How does that make you feel?

That must be so hard for you.

We do this dance for like six months.

And one day he comes in and I'm kind of getting frustrated.

And I'm like, hey, is this helping?

And he's like, what do you mean is that helping?

I'm like, is it helping?

Do you feel any better than when you came in six months ago?

And he's like, I thought this was what we're supposed to do.

I'm just supposed to come in every week.

I tell you about how I'm sad.

And then you tell me it must be like,

is it that what psychotherapy is?

It was a huge light bulb moment for me

because talking about your feelings, especially for men,

is not enough a much of the time.

Fascinating neuroscience and endocrinology behind that.

Putting words to it is just step one.

Second thing, this is a really important skill.

Cultivating additional emotions.

So if you look at people who are resilient,

if you tunnel down into the internal dialogue of people who are resilient,

you'll notice that they do something else,

some interesting things.

So my patients who are very severely ill, right?

And literally what I try to do with them over the course of weeks

is this thing happened.

And I feel overwhelming shame.

The moment that you start cultivating additional emotions.

So I've been dumped by my boyfriend or my girlfriend.

I'm really, really depressed.

I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.

They start to catastrophize.

They have a lot of negative emotion.

And it's really easy in that moment to forget that,

okay, I had three years of wonderful experiences with this person

before things went downhill.

It's really easy to forget all of the positives.

It's really easy to realize that three years of experience,

followed by let's say one year of a toxic relationship,

is going to actually protect you from the next toxic relationship.

So cultivating additional emotions is a huge fundamental part of EQ.

And you don't just have to tolerate it or suppress it.

These are the additional things that you can do.

And this is really important.

It's not just cultivating positive emotions

when you're feeling negative emotions.

It's the other way around as well.

And more relationships ruined by falling in love than anything else.

And you just fall in love with the wrong person.

You're in a relationship and you fall in love with somebody else.

So many people I've worked with, you know,

I have this great business idea.

And I get so excited about it.

And like, I'm going to start this AI company.

That's the time that you actually want to cultivate negative emotion.

Cultivate a little bit of anxiety.

What could go wrong?

Make sure you ask yourself that question.

Like literally in addiction psychiatry,

we have a cool technique that we use with people where it doesn't really work so much anymore.

But we tell people to play the tape through to the end.

You're really excited right now and you want to do this thing.

But play the tape through the end.

What are all of the negative things that could happen?

So that cognitive flexibility,

that emotional flexibility is really important.

We have to understand what emotions are.

So a lot of times, you know, this is going around on the internet

where like feel your feelings, right?

Like I'm just going to authentically, I'm going to be authentic with my feelings today,

which means that you're an asshole Andrew.

And I'm just, this is my truth, right?

So we've started like speaking our truths as excuses to being assholes.

Like that's what's happening on the internet.

It's what's happening in real relationships because people are watching social media

and they're like, I should speak my truth, right?

So the other thing that's really important is to understand that an emotion is not a behavior.

An emotion is literally from an evolutionary perspective

and you may know this better than I do,

is information and is motivation.

That's what emotions are for.

So when you feel fear, when you're walking outside,

go into the, walk into the outhouse in the middle of the night.

And you feel fear.

That is all this, all this sensory input is being processed in parts of your brain

that you have no conscious awareness of.

The first thing that happens is that you feel emotion before you have any logical idea of

what are you even scared of.

That is your brain telling you something.

The other thing is it's motivation, right?

I feel like running away.

And this is where unfortunately our brain evolved for a world that we don't live in anymore.

So, you know, back when I used to feel fear because I was being hunted by a tiger,

the natural impulses that our fear encourage us to do don't work when you've got to pay rent

at the end of the month or you've got to pay your mortgage or you've got to do well

on your performance review.

So oftentimes what we do is we think that feeling authentically means letting our emotion

run the show.

We don't want to do that.

We want to ask ourselves,

what is this emotion telling me?

Why do I feel fear?

What am I, you know, what am I afraid of?

And I don't even think what am I afraid of is the right question.

It's way too like self-help.

It's way too psychotherapy for me.

It's what is my fear telling me?

What is the information and motivation that it's significant?

Yeah.

And then what is it telling me to do?

Like your client who was feeling very anxious all the time by exploring that emotion

eventually, it sounds like him to the understanding that it wasn't a job for him.

Perfect.

Right?

That this is not there.

And so he's trying so hard, right?

So the anxiety is like clinging on to his job.

But actually once you understand the emotion, it's actually walking away.

And so once you have mastery over your emotions in this way,

and I think mastery is maybe a better word,

it makes life like so much better.

Right?

That's when we talk about distress tolerance, like that's what I'm talking about.

It's not just suppression.

Wonderful.

I so appreciate your answer.

The thoroughness of it, the clarity of it,

distress tolerance is putting words to emotion, adding additional language to it

and exploring the reverse context as well,

the negative aspects of positive emotions, the positive aspects.

So it sounds like it's broadening the time domain by thinking about this

and going forward.

What is this represent in the past, present, and future?

And then really thinking about what the emotion is signaling.

What a beautiful description of distress tolerance,

because it's also operational.

People can put this to work.

Thank you.

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The road map.

If we could go back to the road map.

Yeah.

If you could spell out for us,

what do you think of as the road map to navigate this very complex landscape

that we exist in now?

Okay.

And this could be relationship with this person.

It could be be a doctor or go to an Ivy League school versus be an artist

or, you know, any number of different examples

where we have to make the distinction of what's wished for us

and expected of us versus what is true to us on the inside.

Okay.

That seems to be worth to me where the friction of life exists.

Absolutely.

That to me is the most interesting question in life, frankly.

Let me just make sure I understand your question.

The friction and joy of life is the rest of the world

wants me to do all of these things.

And sometimes this

doesn't want to do those things.

Sometimes it does want to do those things.

When do I listen to this?

And when do I listen to everything?

That.

Yes.

Right?

Okay.

Beautiful question.

So this is where I'm going to lean into the eastern stuff for a second.

So I spent seven years studying to become a monk.

And then I went to medical school and I became a psychiatrist.

And the really interesting,

I had a really weird experience of training in psychiatry.

It's teaching me how the mind works.

Okay.

And this is like good teachers like the Harvard Medical School.

And they're like,

here's how the mind works.

And this is what the subconscious is.

And like there's cognitive behavioral therapy, right?

So the like Aaron back taught us that there's like thoughts, emotions,

and behaviors,

and all these things connect.

And the really fascinating thing,

my most instinctive response when people would tell me how it is,

is no, it's not.

So in the east,

they have a completely different conception of mind.

And here's the big problem with the western conception of mind.

You're a scientist, right?

How do you learn about something, Andrew?

You have a question.

Okay, good.

You pose a hypothesis.

Excellent.

You design an experiment.

Good.

Where you isolate variables.

Okay.

And you either refute or you,

in some sense,

support your hypothesis.

Okay.

And then you design another experiment.

Great.

And ask another question.

You just keep going.

And then you get tenure.

And then you start a podcast.

Beautiful.

Right?

Just kidding.

No, no.

So let me ask you this.

How do you study the mind?

Yeah.

Yeah, I do not know.

Right?

So here's what's really fascinating.

Like, do we have any scientific evidence of the existence of thought?

We could define thoughts as some pattern of network activity.

What I mean is like,

if we literally look at it,

we have no instrument that can detect a thought.

That's right.

Right?

So we have no proof.

We cannot measure a thought.

Like, it is like literally impossible.

We can measure blood flow to the brain.

We can measure electrical activity in the brain.

We can induce thoughts.

Right?

We can do that.

But we have no idea that a thought exists.

So like, psychiatry is weird.

Because every other part of medicine and science,

we can measure what we are studying.

In psychiatry, we can't do that.

So long came Freud and he made a fascinating discovery,

which is when a human being speaks,

we understand something about what's in their mind.

And the whole reason we get trained,

and the reason that we can measure mental,

we can measure your mind.

Right?

So we have validated scientific instruments,

using things like factor analysis and stuff like that,

where we can use the back depression inventory,

which will tell you how depressed you are.

We have good ways to measure stuff.

There's a lot of science in psychiatry.

The basic problem, though, is that we have a fundamental problem.

We have no insight into what is in someone's mind.

We have insight into someone's mind,

but we can't detect the mind.

That is a fundamental problem with science.

Okay?

Here's the cool thing.

We have no scientific measurement of thought.

But we as human beings have measurement of thoughts.

Can I ever know what you were thinking?

Using any instrument of science?

You're the psychiatrist, so I'm tempted to say yes, but no.

No.

Right?

Can you know what you're thinking?

I would like to think so, but I'm guessing yes.

Yes.

I mean, I can ask myself what's going on in there,

but I don't necessarily have the ability to put language to it

in a way that captures what I'm thinking.

But you are capable of observing your thoughts.

You are capable of, I'm not capable of observing your thoughts.

But whether you detect all of them, whether they're right or wrong,

that's question is separate.

Just the fundamental idea of like you can measure an ax on.

You can detect your thought, right?

We all live in this way, right?

So we can get to the edge cases later.

So here's the cool thing.

So when I went to Indiana and I studied for seven years,

the difference between the psychology that was developed

from the contemplative traditions is its foundation

is internal observation.

So yogis are capable.

We're all, it's not like some special ability,

but they based their theory of mind on what they could observe.

Whereas in the West, that is not something we have access to.

So their theory of mind is very different.

So when I was training to become a psychiatrist,

people were like, this is how the mind works.

And I'm like, no, that's not true, right?

There is a different way.

So here's one example getting to the road map.

So the biggest thing that I think is different is the ego.

So in the East, they have the concept of a part of our mind

that is the ego.

And in the West, we use the word ego, Freud defined it in some way.

We all have this intuitive sense of identity,

but in the same way that logic and emotions interact

in a very mechanistic and defined way,

in the West, our model does not include this piece.

And the road map that you're talking about has to do with that piece.

So if the rest of the world, because things get complicated, right?

That's why it's so exciting for you and so challenging.

Things get complicated as everyone wants you to be something.

And then we make a big mistake because we do this thing called internalize.

And the moment that you internalize, now is it coming from the outside

or is it coming from you?

Is this something that I've been conditioned to want?

Or is it something that I truly want?

Which then begs the question, what the hell is truly want?

Is there a difference between want from over here and want from over there?

And the yogis will say that the answer is yes.

So once you understand the ego,

and the ego functions in a couple of ways.

If I ask you, Andrew, who are you?

What would you say?

Andrew.

Okay. Is that it?

I mean, I have a list of roles that I occupy in this.

Very good.

Are those you?

They're facets of me.

Okay. Right.

So anything that you can use to describe,

tenured professor, it's Stanford.

Right.

I wouldn't put that first, but that happens to be true.

I'm a brother.

Brother.

I'm a boyfriend.

Skater.

Once a skater, always a skater, but yes.

Right.

I'm a public educator.

Great.

I'm a son, a friend.

All of that stuff is ego.

Okay.

So ego is anything.

When you say I am dot, dot, dot, dot,

anything that defines you after that is actually part of your ego.

And the interesting thing is that it's not that the ego is bad.

This is a common misconception.

But like ego, we all need ego to function in the world.

If you are okay not functioning in the world,

and you're moving towards enlightenment, then you no longer need ego.

But generally speaking, we need ego.

So, you know, if you're looking for a road map of what you truly want in life,

and what is healthy for you and not healthy for you,

when you say you're Andrew, right,

there's a lot of other people who can claim to be Andrew,

but they're not you.

You're talking about a fundamental internal experience of the self.

And you were Andrew before you were a boyfriend.

You were Andrew.

You've always been a son.

But you actually you were Andrew before you even knew you were a son.

Right.

Right.

You were still Andrew.

So there's a fundamental like bundle of experience.

That's really what you are.

And I think that the best road map,

if you're trying to figure out what to do in life,

try to peel away the layers of your ego.

And I know that's getting complicated.

But if we sort of think about like, you know,

what is it that like practically gets us jammed up in life?

Is when I try to be something.

I know this is going to sound weird.

I'm sure you have ambition.

But I don't think you are where you are because of your ambition.

I think you are where you are because you listen to this internal voice,

not try to live up to external expectations.

100%.

I can truly say that every choice I've made to get into, you know,

fish and animals when I was a kid obsessed with birds and fish

and then skateboarding and then biology and science and where I'm at now

has been some sense of an internal passion

and something pulling me from the outside.

And it's just a, I just go.

Right.

Those choices were always made because I knew in my heart's heart,

there was no other option in the positive sense.

Yes.

I'm going.

Yes.

I'm pulled toward it and I'm driven and I'm driven toward it.

Right.

So you are listening to a part of you, right?

So it is an internal thing that the world then meets you halfway.

So it makes it possible or there's a whole thing about that.

For me, it's a physical energy.

Fine.

If I feel physical energy coming up in my body

and I want to move towards something and for some reason

I feel it mourned my left arm than anywhere else.

There's always been true.

I'll have a thought and I know.

And that's when I go, oh my goodness, I'm going to do this thing.

I know I'm going to do it.

And there's no backing out because it has to happen.

That's how it feels.

Yeah.

Right.

So any desire that you have that comes from the sense organs

is probably not this thing.

So the sense organs can trigger something within you

but if we look at social media,

half the problem is that the hardest problem I have is psychiatrist

is convincing people that they don't really want the things

that they say they want.

It's like so crazy, right?

Like we're being programmed.

We're being conditioned.

And I realized this the other day when like I was like,

man, like I wish I talked to my agent about like doing more talks.

Like I want to go someplace and like get paid speaking engagements.

And I realized I actually hate that.

I don't like that.

It's just what I thought people like us do.

And I've done a couple of them which have been really fantastic

and I really enjoy that but I like sitting with people.

Right.

So we're trained and just think about it.

Like anyone who's listening to this, think about all the shit that you've seen

that you think you want.

But you don't really want.

You just like look at other people and you're like, yeah, I want that thing.

It can be a particular kind of relationship.

It can be a particular job.

You know, we all want like all this random stuff.

It's all coming from our sense organs, right?

This is why advertising is a thing.

So stepping away from sense organs is really important for that road map.

Second thing is anything that you want that is a comparison.

That is born of the ego.

The ego is what defines you, right?

So we can say tenured professor.

We can say associate part time instructor.

And so any comparison requires a definition, does that kind of make sense?

Like so all of the gold medalist, silver medalist, bronze medalist,

that's a comparative thing.

If I say I'm a silver medalist, then my desire for the gold medal can come out of the ego.

Does that kind of make sense?

Yes, it makes the reason I'm sort of with my hand below my lip is because I'm so struck by this

because I've had this feeling for a while now that most of the danger in life

comes from the need, the feeling that we need to prove something to others or to ourselves.

Yep.

And yet I know it's healthy to prove things to myself.

Like it's felt good to be able to accomplish certain things.

I did that.

I could do other difficult things.

But the origin of all of that work for, in my mind, it's only healthy, at least for me,

if it's not by virtue of trying to prove something.

There's a difference between a genuine heart's desire for lack of a better way to put it

and what you're calling a pursuit of trying to win at some game in one's head.

It's like a video game that isn't real.

Yeah.

It's not that it's not real, right?

So I agree with you 100%, and I think there's a couple of important things.

So proving yourself is not wholly wrong.

But understand that it is the ego.

That's what it's going to gratify.

Right?

So if you have an ego of, I am a loser by all means.

So this is part of the process.

I have people in my office who are losers for lack of a better term.

29 years old, living at home, playing video games all day, watching pornography,

no job, dropped out of college.

And so what they want more than anything else is to be a winner.

And so my work involves two steps.

First, let's help you go from loser to winner.

And then let's abandon the whole paradigm.

Because I've also had people in my office who are billionaires.

And finally get to retire at the age of 52 after having sold their amazing third company.

And then after retirement, it's not enough.

They want to make another billion.

They want to do something else.

Like, you know, that loser to winner, like your mind will continually move the goalposts.

If you were hungry before you got it, the thing won't fulfill your hunger.

It may for a little while.

And then you have to take another step of like, okay, losing and winning is now done.

Right?

And I think you've gone through that.

I can hear it in your words.

And people can probably hear it too.

Like the way that probably at some point in your life, being a tenured, I don't know why.

That's just the thing that, that is the thing that people are the lustiest for.

Right?

In the world that I think we come from.

It felt good to get.

Right.

And I won't lie.

It felt good to get at a place like Stanford.

Yeah.

You know, there are many fantastic and extremely challenging places to achieve that.

It felt like the culmination of, you know, 20 years of very hard work that I enjoyed.

But that, you know, it represented an important milestone for me.

Yeah.

But I knew I would just say, and of course we're just, we're talking about this example,

but hopefully people are thinking about examples in their own lives.

But I knew, for instance, I never want to be a department chair.

Yeah.

Tons of work doing administrative stuff.

I remember when they told me, you'll be vice chair in the end of like, oh my goodness.

What do I have to do to avoid that?

Yeah.

I also knew that I didn't care about being a member of the National Academy.

A close childhood friend of mine was just elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

We've been friends since we were seven and I was, I'm so happy for him because he's doing exactly what he loves.

But I never aspired to be a member of the National Academy ever.

Why?

Because what came after tenure in order to go there was a divergence from what I really wanted to do.

Yeah.

So I think this is the key thing about the roadmap, right?

So like, we get conditioned by our sense organs.

So like, just to keep it super practical, if you're trying to figure out what you should do.

Is this coming from my sense organs?

If your sense organ triggers something that's always been within you, right?

So if you see like a frog and like, like you really want to be interested, like you want to figure out how the frog works.

But the interesting thing about the difference between the sense organ thing and an internal drive,

is your internal drive will find multiple objects in the outside world, right?

So first it was biology, then it was frogs.

Now it's neural ophthalmology.

Now it's this.

So I don't know if that this kind of makes sense.

This is always the same and it'll encounter different things in the world.

Yes.

What is that drive?

We'll get to that in a second.

Okay.

So first thing for practically is like, if you're trying to figure out what should I do?

First, ask yourself, how have you been conditioned by social media?

Move away from that.

Second thing is be careful about any comparisons you make.

Any motivation that you have to, because of a comparison, it can lead to success.

You can be successful, but you won't be happy.

Because this is so annoying, right?

So when I want, like, I work with a lot of influencers and YouTubers and stuff.

And so it's like, oh, we want our first million.

And if you're not careful, the moment that you get your first million, like you want a second million.

And then you want a third million.

And then it's even scarier, right?

So like, oh, I got three million subscribers.

That's awesome.

But then you know what's really terrifying, Andrew?

Is a guy who started after me is getting followers faster than I'm getting them.

Right?

And so the ego is never going to be satisfied.

The ego by its nature is comparative.

And even if you're number one, people think the most anxious people I've ever worked with.

That's not actually true.

But the most important thing is people who get to the top.

And you think that you're done.

You're not done.

Then you're looking behind you at all of the people who are younger, harder working,

have the benefit of AI tools, have the benefit of the path that you have carved

who are catching up on you and will overtake you soon enough.

So one good example of why we get why we compare is the more you are judged

to the more your ego grows and the more you will compare.

Right?

So this is almost like we're taught how to, when people judge us, we judge ourselves

and we get judged based on ranking.

And so, you know, this is what we see on the internet as social media

as we start to get judged more and more and more.

We become more and more narcissistic.

This is the narcissistic defense that tries to protect us from judgment.

And so, it's happening to everybody and it's escalating.

The rate at which it's happening, people are more egotistical than they've ever been.

Do you think that's especially true for people who have large followings on social media?

Absolutely.

I mean, so I work with influencers and was so curious about the work that I was doing

that I tried to develop a program.

So we now have like a creator coaching program where we're like collecting data about

whether it's effective or not.

And so, the really interesting thing is I think it's a unique like effect on our psychology.

The closest thing is like, you know, a lot of celebrities are like really messed up.

And that's because they have so many eyes on them.

And people don't realize just as a simple example, the brain just doesn't think

that they're probably holistically.

So you can have a thousand people love the work that you do.

But all it takes is one person who's really nasty.

That is what your brain is going to focus on.

It's going to highlight, it's amazing.

I can be looking at like chat that is scrolling during live streaming.

There are messages that are faster than I can read.

But if someone says something that is dangerous, my mind will flag it.

Wow.

It's like a predator on the horizon.

Absolutely.

We're designed to look at a jungle and see a single pairs of tiger's eyes.

And so the danger scanning mechanism makes it so that the bigger that you get

and the more eyes that are on you, the more paranoid you have to be.

The more narcissistic you will have to become.

Because when someone turns to you and says you were ugly, you were stupid.

In order to defend against that, you have to say, no, I'm not.

I am beautiful.

I am intelligent.

And the more times that you say that to yourself, it's, this is where things get complicated.

But you don't, that doesn't result in confidence.

So I don't know if this makes sense.

But if you are confident, you don't need to say that I'm smart.

Or that I'm beautiful.

Does that kind of make sense?

What about the, you know, to each their own mindset?

Like some people will like the content.

I tell myself this, you know, some people will like the content and the way I frame it.

And we'll look at it on the whole that, you know, some episodes more than others.

It's, you know, certain things.

And others won't.

They'll, they'll hate it for whatever reason or hate me for whatever reason.

And I'm okay with that.

Yeah.

So I think you're doing a really important thing, which is like a key takeaway.

So when someone dislikes what you do, you think about them and not you.

That's the opposite of ego, right?

So if we take someone who's very narcissistic and they receive a criticism,

they say, no, no, no, I'm great, right?

So this is where like literally, I don't know if this is too abstract,

but I'll give kind of like maybe a simpler example of this.

So, you know, I trained in Boston and there was a lot of K2 use.

So K2 is like synthetic marijuana.

And so like sometimes like you walk into the emergency room.

There's, there's a dude who's like high on math or like high on K2.

Like, you know, he's just saying all kinds of terrible things.

That has nothing to do with me.

Right?

In the way that you framed, some people are going to like what you do.

And some people are not going to like what you do.

That's on them.

So if we want to step away from the ego, we have to understand that don't take it personally.

Like literally, that's the colloquial phrase, right?

But it's hard to do.

So if you're someone at home trying to figure out, okay, how do I connect with my true self?

How do I step away from my ego?

Notice your reaction to criticism.

Is your reaction of criticism?

Are you considering, are you actually being empathic?

Right?

So what empathic really means is are you putting yourself in someone else's shoes?

And the other person, hey, maybe not everybody likes pineapple on pizza.

Or are you taking it personally?

Do their insults determine your value as a human being?

And the moment that that starts to happen, the friction that you're talking about,

which can be so fun, becomes torture.

Because now you have to make them happy.

In order to feel good about yourself, you have to make the people around you happy.

So interesting.

I think some of us grew up or somehow internalized the idea that if somebody is angry or is criticizing us,

and it's being delivered in a certain way, that it must be true,

versus the ability to just really step back and assess, you know,

no, it could very well be there in a bad mood.

They didn't sleep well.

You know, I grew up in a community of academics.

Some athletes mostly academics.

So everyone around me, it wasn't necessarily hyperverbal.

But you know this from training in Boston.

There was a way of delivering a criticism that felt like a poison dart.

Yeah.

That would get right to the heart of it without calling somebody a name.

This is actually a very prized skill in academia and medicine.

I think it's one of the more sinister aspects of higher education in medicine.

But it exists in every field.

But people aren't going to say, oh, dude, you know, like that was stupid.

They're going to find a way to kind of thread that that heat seeking missile, right?

And I think that sometimes getting to this thing about emotion versus language,

the more primitive the expression.

I hate you.

It's easier, like you said, with the person in the clinic on K2,

it's easier to say like, they're crazy.

They're on drugs.

They are ill.

But when something is delivered in a way that's very articulate or calm,

we tend to give it more credit as likely to be true.

So on the internet, I see most of what comes at me that's negative.

I like to think there's also learning there.

But if the way it's delivered, the way I've noticed things get past my force field is,

I go, oh, wait, wait, wait, they'll say like a PubMed ID.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Like, give me a PubMed.

Then I'll go to the paper.

I'm like, that actually doesn't say that.

But in my mind, I thought, oh my goodness, I must have screwed up, right?

They're not just telling me I'm wrong.

They're telling me that I'm wrong because of something on the Library of Congress PubMed.

So do you see what I'm saying?

Knowing what our, what our fences are good at filtering and not good at filtering is hard.

It takes time.

It takes years to cultivate.

I would hope that it could be quicker.

But it took me, excuse me, it took me many years to cultivate.

Yeah, let's just understand.

So it's, it's hard to cultivate.

It took years for you to cultivate because you didn't have a teacher.

Right.

Right.

So let's be, let's be a bit precise here.

So like, and this is the key thing.

So I think, I hope people are following this because this is how you develop.

Like, so one of my, you know, colleagues in residency talked about this concept of a Teflon Buddha.

Right.

Like, you know, like this idea of like being like impervious.

So how do you become like psychologically impervious?

And what you're talking about when you say a heat-seeking missile,

your linguistic cortex is doing wonders because it, what, a poison dart, right?

What they're doing, the reason it's so effective, Andrew, it is not just because of the anger.

We'll get to the anger in a second, but they're figuring out where your weak point is.

And they're, they're attacking that weak point.

It's not about the size of the missile.

It's about the precision.

Even in your language, you are talking about a precise attack.

So that precision is in academia.

People are really good at detecting other people's vulnerabilities.

And they, they go for the nuts, right?

That's what they do.

Like psychologically, they go for the nuts.

And there's, there's all kinds of other things going on here, but let's, let's be simple.

So it is when someone has a high anger attack, okay?

This means their amygdala is through the roof.

So they are thinking in black and white.

Their attack isn't black and white.

A black and white attack is easier to repel because it's not nuanced, okay?

So like when someone is angry, you're right.

It is easier to dismiss their anger.

And you are also correct that, but it's, it's almost like a, not a, everything you said is correct.

But I'd say the model that you're assuming is that these are two opposite things.

They're not.

The other thing is, so when someone is not angry, they're not black and white.

If they're not black and white, it is not easy to dismiss.

Just because it's not black and white, that doesn't activate your anger.

It doesn't activate your black and white thinking, right?

So when someone is coming at me angry, my empathic circuits are going to activate my own amygdala.

I'm going to get angry back.

You did this. No, I didn't, right?

So the most psychotic denial, psychotic or delusional denial, that's a better word.

The most delusional denial that you'll ever hear is when someone's angry.

No, I didn't do that. I never did that.

I never did that. I never did that.

And they can believe it because that's what happens.

The amygdala makes your thinking black and white.

When we have adrenaline collapsing or running through our system, it collapses peripheral vision down to a 30 degree cone.

So we can only see this thing.

So this is the first element of why heat seeking missiles work.

When they come at you, angry, you're going to get angry.

If you're going to get angry, it doesn't matter if they're right, it doesn't matter if they're wrong.

You're going to say, no, it's incorrect.

It doesn't matter the truth of it.

So this is the first element of it, right?

So is that they don't approach you in an articulate way.

When they approach you in an articulate way, it doesn't activate your amygdala.

It doesn't differently.

But then the issue is their finesse.

And you set a poison dark, really interesting imagery.

It's something that hurts a little bit and then flows through your veins.

So I can even imagine when they said that problem, my ID, your first thought was not a big deal.

I know my shit.

And then the poison goes into your mind, well, maybe I don't know my stuff.

Oh my God.

What if there is a paper that I missed?

What if there is something that I, and then that, that injury will grow in your mind.

And so all of your, and this is the stuff, right?

Like the stuff that hurts us, when people insult us, what hurts are the things we believe about ourselves.

You know, we all have these doubts because we're not perfect human beings because we make mistakes.

And when someone figures out, oh my God, this is, this is this person's weak point.

The only scary thing is that humans have evolved to do this.

All you have to do is go to any recess in the fifth grade.

And kids will figure out what hurts and then they will say it to you again and again and again and again and again.

But I think it's really important to remember, you know, if something hurts, that's your own insecurity.

And insecurity, remember, if you say, I am a loser, I am fat, I am ugly.

Those are all part of your ego.

There are certain things that you can do and this goes back to the, what is that voice on the inside?

So that this is where, you know, in the eastern system, there is a self beyond the mind.

So the mind is not what you are, the mind is an organ that you can observe in the same way that you can observe your hand.

In the same way that your hand can change, your mind can change, your mind changes every day.

What's the best way to learn to observe one's mind? Is it meditation?

Probably the best way to observe your mind is actually psychotherapy.

You get better inside into your mind there. But if you want to move beyond mind, and I don't mean that in like,

oh, let's move beyond mind, what I mean is that if you look at your experience of existence, there is more to you than thoughts, emotions and ego.

And so if you want to get to that and step outside of your ego, meditation is the best thing for that.

And there are lots of studies that suggest that meditation shuts off the default mode network.

The default mode network is our sense of like self. There are also many studies that show that you can predict the therapeutic benefit of a psychedelic trip based on an ego death experience.

So if someone has an ego death experience when they're using psychedelics, there is a greater likelihood that they heal from it, which has to do with deactivation of the default mode network.

When you say psychedelics, are there particular psychedelics that tend to promote ego death more than others?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I would say that most of the studies that I've seen are in psilocybin, but that that's just because there are more studies on psilocybin, I think.

Arguably, you know, MDMA will do it too because MDMA is an empathogen and will help people form bonds and kind of changes their perception of the self, right.

So meditation is the best way to dissolve your ego like that, I believe.

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Meditation potentially in a safe clinical setting may be exploring ego dissolution through psychedelics, although there's still schedule one drug.

So we have to have to be thoughtful and how to communicate this, not just to protect myself, but I normally say that.

I always just raise it just to be clear what we're talking about.

I understood your position on that.

The thing inside that we know is our true hearts desire that allows us to navigate the external pressures and the roles, these ego labels that we've given ourselves and that others have given us.

Do you know any practices to help cultivate being in touch with that?

Absolutely. So the meditation that I like the most for this kind of thing is meditations around something called shunya.

Shunya means void.

So if you really look at like all of the attributes of you, right?

So I'm a man, I'm a husband, I'm a son, whatever, boyfriend.

All of those things are like qualities.

Even a loser is like that presence of something, right?

I'm a loser. I'm pathetic. That is the existence of a negative thing, a negative valence thing.

So if you really look at what you are, imagine Andrew for a moment.

This is going to be hard, but imagine that you only existed for 10 seconds.

What would you be?

Like you'd be almost nothing, right?

You just get this flash of experience, but you have no narrative identity.

You have no sense of self.

All you are is just a raw receiver of an experience.

And like I sometimes empathize with a child when they're first being born,

that first shock of awareness.

And you don't know what the hell is going on and you start crying, right?

You have no idea who you are, what you are.

You're just a chunk of receiving.

So there are shunya practices which allow you to connect with the void within you.

And the void within us is actually the most basic part of what we are.

It's actually what's at the bottom.

And so there are some ways to sort of understand what this is.

Like so if you think about watching a beautiful sunset,

and you cease to exist, you're just soaking in the sunset.

You don't have any thoughts, you don't have any worries.

It feels incredibly peaceful, right?

And you are there, you're not comatose,

but you don't have a personhood in that moment.

Another really great example of this is like,

if you really need to pee,

and you're like waiting to use the bathroom,

and then finally you get your turn,

the moment you start peeing.

You cease to exist whether you've got mortgages,

or you need to get a Valentine's Day present,

or you have to do this,

you have to do this, you have all those thoughts,

you were just there, isn't nothing.

So these junior practices are a little bit,

you have to do them with a little bit more caution,

there are some like introductory practices.

One example is if you close your eyes for a moment,

this is going to sound kind of weird,

but like, where do you feel your body?

Like so think about proprioception, right?

So like pay attention to your arms, your head, your nose.

So what I want you to do is focus on the area of the solar plexus,

and look for like an absence of feeling there.

Like as you breathe in and out,

like you can feel your rib cage expands,

maybe you can feel your heartbeat,

but if you really pay attention to just the area of solar plexus,

there's going to be a feeling of emptiness.

And so as you meditate upon that,

you'll get closer to Shunya.

The other really interesting, easy way to get taste of Shunya

is close your eyes.

I want you to breathe in,

and then breathe out,

and then when you're ready, breathe in again,

and when you're ready, breathe out, just breathe nice and slow.

And now what I want you to do is pay attention

to the time between breaths.

Between your breaths, you will have stillness.

Not during the breathing, during the breathing you exist.

Inhalation, exhalation.

But in between exhalation and inhalation,

there's a very beautiful stillness.

For people who are having trouble feeling that,

I love this, because there's an interesting cognitive technique.

Catch the moment where inhalation becomes exhalation,

and your normal breathing, not absence of breathing,

because you're normally breathing in and out, in and out,

catch the moment where one becomes the other.

That'll help you find Shunya.

Shunya is defined as the void.

Void, it's also zero, emptiness.

Yeah, there's no thought of roles or anything else.

But here's the beautiful thing.

Once you find Shunya, you can go into it.

So it's like, as you practice this,

so I'm sure that there's some neuroplasticity going on

where your brain is wiring.

And then when bad things happen to you,

it's happening to my body, it's happening to my mind.

In here, there's nothing.

So I tested this when my dad passed away.

So I remember going to the funeral and seeing his body.

I remember touching his skin, like his face,

and shocked at how cold he was.

Like it was like my dad, but he's like, he's like ice.

And so I was grieving, and I was sad, and I was crying.

But I was like, is that thing still there?

And I found that thing was there, and I felt at peace.

Like it is the mind that is sad, but I'm not sad.

You know, the body is grieving, but I'm not grieving.

That's really what I am. It's just, that's just emotion.

It's not really me.

When we become identified with our emotion, right?

When we were going through a breakup and we're like, oh my God,

I become sadness. I become sadness incarnate.

But then when you step away from sadness,

when you are watching sadness from the outside,

it can actually be wonderful.

And that's why we like sad movies.

We feel sad, but we feel great.

The differences, are you the sadness?

Or are you watching the sadness?

And what is doing the watching?

Because the sadness is in the mind.

There's something outside of the mind observing it.

That Shunya will help you find that thing.

And that's how you become, I mean, that's the core of resilience.

So when I work with these influencers who are being stalked,

and you know, just no matter what they do,

someone is there unhappy with it, right?

Because you're talking about the internet,

where they're literally people out there who are delusional,

who are projecting all kinds of stuff onto you.

They've never met you, Andrew.

And then they say that you're the incarnate of evil.

And like, how are they making that,

they're living in a corner of the internet.

And so in order to withstand that,

in order to withstand the judgment,

in order to withstand the poison darts, right?

The interesting thing, if you want to be impervious to the poison dart,

is you are inside.

The poison dart hits your ego.

It hits your body.

And the poison flows through you, and it hurts.

But you are actually even beyond that.

He seems to come up almost every episode,

but my good friend, Rick Rubin,

who you would absolutely enjoy spending time with,

and he with you.

I'm certain of that, just talking with you today

and knowing him very well,

has talked a lot and written a lot about how this,

getting beyond or outside or separate from the ego

is the essence of really the work he does with creative artists.

It's really getting them outside of the perceptions of others.

It's one of the reasons why,

when he's worked with artists,

when they're not yet famous.

They're in there.

Yeah.

They might be ambitious.

They might want some of that,

but they're just doing their art.

They're not filtering it through feedback.

And there's something so beautiful about that.

Then it gets contaminated.

And then the work over time is to ask

whether or not people can get beyond that.

But you're talking about Shunya,

is that how he pronounced it?

Accessing this void,

getting away from the ego,

as a practice for everyone,

every day life.

Not just people, not just influencers,

and on the internet.

You're talking about the kid on the playground.

The person on social media,

going with comparison,

or at the game,

looking at what the other kids' moms or dads have,

or are doing, wearing, etc.

Yeah.

I'm talking about the older sister,

whose younger sister is getting married first.

I'm talking about the sibling,

whose older sibling got admitted to an Ivy League University,

and they didn't.

I'm talking about the two of you all

that started the job at the same time,

and your friend gets promoted,

and you don't.

And all that stuff hurts.

Right?

And the real tragedy here,

I work with so many people who are incredibly successful,

is sometimes when we get that hurt,

we adapt.

We become ambitious.

We say, I'm going to be that thing.

And it leads us to success,

but we pay the price of happiness.

And the real tragedy is that some people believe

that you get one or the other.

You can be ambitious,

or you can be happy.

But I think you are a great living,

breathing, walking example of when you tap into what really drives you,

then you can be successful.

I don't know if you're happy.

I actually am very happy and very peaceful at the stage of my life.

I am.

I mean, I struggle like everyone else with having to do work

to clear the contaminants in my own,

and working on myself.

Certainly, one thing that I've done,

that I wonder,

I'd love your thoughts on it,

because perhaps it offers a useful tool

for people,

is whenever I feel I'm not as in touch with that part of myself,

as I would like,

I feel like I've drifted from it,

or I'm just kind of caught in the current of whatever it is I've signed up for in life,

which I enjoy,

but now it's contaminated,

and there's sewage floating next to me,

so to speak,

I find some way to bring things into my home environment

that remind me of that feeling when I was a kid.

So recently, for instance,

I converted a art gallery into a living space.

This is something that I can now do in my life

that I certainly couldn't do some years ago,

and I love fish tanks,

so I brought in Aquaria,

and I've got my fish tanks,

and I've got a pet octopus,

and my girlfriend brought for Valentine's Day,

I got her flowers.

I said,

oh, they're the flowers we got back from dinner,

they were there,

and she goes,

I got you some plants,

and I turned around,

and the place was filled with plants,

and I love animals and plants.

I was like, oh, my God,

so she clearly gets me,

and I was like, oh, my goodness,

and now when I wake up in the morning,

I love those plants.

I need her to take care of them,

because I walk near a plant and it dies.

Fish and animals, I'm good.

But when I'm surrounded by things

that just feel really good and wholesome,

and just kind of basic to who I know myself to be

at a certain level,

then I feel like I can take that energy into everything I do,

and it serves as a filter.

Like bullshit shows up as bullshit at that point.

People's issues show up as their issues.

Real criticism that I need to internalize,

I like to think still gets signal above the noise.

So I tend to put things outside me to reawaken that,

but I love,

love, love, love that you're offering tools

that have nothing to do with building something, buying something,

because those things are still external to me.

This meditation is really about accessing it from within first.

So anyway, that's just a reflection.

Yeah, so I want to point out,

I think that this is,

it's such a masculine thing.

So if I can,

so you know, men are really interesting.

So we're trained to not manage our internal environment internally.

So I had a patient who was,

I saw in a jail, he was 19,

and he'd been, he'd been jailed like three or four times.

And so I was talking to him about, you know,

how he like wound up here, because he's like 19.

And so he was, you know, telling me that when he was 12,

his dad passed away,

he's got three sisters,

all older and a mom.

And what they told him is like,

you're the man at the house and you have to provide.

Heavy.

And, and so he was like,

okay, this is what I have to do.

Like so, so men do this thing.

It's really interesting.

We do emotional regulation through our environment.

So if my environment makes me feel a certain way,

if my mom, dad,

brother, sister, boss make is upset with me

and makes me feel bad.

If I make them happy,

they will no longer be upset with me.

And if they're no longer upset with me,

I will be content.

We shape our internal emotional environment

through our external environment

and the scariest place I see this is when,

when men I work with,

and it's not that women,

this doesn't happen to women as well.

This is more the way we're socialized

and there's an effective testosterone

and estrogen here as well.

This is a biological element to this.

But then they,

they fall into this trap of like their emotions

are determined by the environment.

So men are just,

just the way that they solve

their internal emotional problems

is by interacting with their environment.

That's just very common.

So it doesn't mean that we shouldn't utilize

the outside space.

Right?

So I'm not suggesting,

I mean, if you really want to be,

if you're pursuing enlightenment,

then don't get a query.

But like most of us aren't doing that.

So I think we should utilize

shape our external environment.