Tools to Bolster Your Mental Health & Confidence | Dr. Paul Conti

There's far more going right in any of us, in all of us, than there is going wrong if we're here, right? And if we're listening to to educational material, we want to better ourselves. There's so much more that's going right in us. And it's a good place for us to start because it helps us to be able to look at what's not going the way we want it to be, what we where we want to bring change in our lives. But we should start from a position of strength. Welcome to the Hubberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based [music] tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stamford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Paul Ki. Dr. Paul Ki is a medical doctor and psychiatrist and an expert in recovery from trauma. He is also one of the foremost public educators on how anyone can build a greater sense of agency, confidence, and well-being in their life. Today, we discuss the practical aspects of building and maintaining mental health. In particular, how to identify your natural strengths and the often unseen opportunities to improve your reflexive mental framework and relationship with self and others. Dr. Dr. Kanti's approach to building mental health and overcoming challenges with mental health are very different than most of the information that you'll find on the internet and elsewhere. He has decades of clinical experience and he draws on that and data to explain the specific questions that we all need to ask ourselves when we're facing things like lowered motivation, mood or challenges overcoming bad habits. Today we discuss all of that as well as how to balance action and introspection. And this is very important because I think a lot of people think about mental health as merely an introspective process. But as Dr. Ki points out, it's really a balance of thinking and doing and often involves more doing than thinking. So during today's episode, you'll get a specific framework of questions to ask yourself repeatedly, that is every day or every week, and specific action steps to take so that you can truly become the best version of yourself and derive the greatest sense of meaning along the way. I'd like to point out that Dr. Dr. Ki also has a new book coming out which is aptly entitled what's going right a powerful new method for optimizing your mental health and I've read the book from front to back and I have to tell you it's a wonderful resource that includes both information and simple worksheet like prompts that can help anyone through sticking points as well as to build on what the title suggests what's already going right. So, if you're currently suffering or if you're doing well and you want to level up your mental health further, today's conversation is definitely for you. 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. Paul Ki. Dr. Paul Ki, welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. Congratulations on your book, What's Going Right? A Powerful New Method for Optimizing Your Mental Health. It's an amazing book. And you also hold the record, not incidentally, I think, for the most viewed and downloaded episodes of this podcast ever. So, um, you know, you got a lot of Hubman podcast listener fans out there. So, um, they'll be reading if if they're smart and they want to be be better. They want to feel enriched in all the ways. So let let's talk about um let's talk about individuals first and then I also want to talk today about um interactions between people which we probably haven't talked quite as much about. Okay, at least not here. The self, right? We all have a a name, a self-concept. We wake up thinking and knowing essentially who we are, what bothers us, what we're excited about. And um the question I've been living with for a long time is how malleable is our self view, right? And our relationship to oursel and and we can define those, right? If we're not super comfortable or completely happy with our relationship to ourselves, how much flexibility is there on the on that whole picture? I think it's very malleable. I think there's a lot of flexibility, but we have to be willing to look at ourselves. You know, very often we're not looking at ourselves. We're afraid of what we're going to find or um we don't know how to understand or how to bring change. So, so we don't look at ourselves and then we we can see ourselves as inflexible and and and think that we're just stuck in the same place over time. But if we're willing to look at ourselves and we bring this compassionate curiosity to ourselves of hey what what can I learn about myself and what might I be interested in changing in myself or in emphasizing in myself we I think we can bring a lot a lot of change in the title of your book uh what's going right is that a good lens to start uh looking through when we look at oursel like like what what works you know um 10 fingers 10 toes in my case I'm is that a good place to start um you know that I feel some sense of agency over a number of areas of my life. Is that the way to start wading into the questions about self? I think to start off with what's going right, it's not just a way of looking at it because it feels better, but it but it's consistent with truth. I mean, there's far more going right in any of to be. What we where we want to bring from a position of strength. And the mental health system really tells us to look at ourselves in the opposite way. To look at ourselves through what is going wrong and to put labels on ourselves that that often just make us feel worse or or make us feel more helpless or hopeless in understanding. But but if we start with what's going right and we bring curiosity to ourselves, then there are processes we can follow to understand and to bring real change. What are some of those processes that um people could use to explore and if you would what are some questions that people can or thoughts or or landscapes to explore where people can ping themselves with specific questions? So good places to start the looking at your self-t talk. You know, what are you saying to yourself in quiet moments when no one else is listening or when there's there's a pause in the action in your life? What are you saying to yourself? What messages are you giving yourself? And often times we're telling ourselves things that about ourselves that are often negative or often critical and we're not aware that we're we're saying these things over and over to ourselves. So, so that's just one strategy. Another strategy can be to think about the life narrative that we're telling ourselves. So if you just tell yourself about yourself or if you're telling someone else about you, what what is it that you say? What is it that you that you say in a reflexive way and does it match what's real and true about your life? You know, we both all people have these two foundational pillars and and in the first part of the series that we did in 2023, we really sort of hashed this out and it was the first time I really put together, hey, there's a structure of self and we all share this. And I'd, you know, been thinking along these lines, but the our our talk helped me to pull together. Hey, there there's something that applies to all of us. Just because we're human and we have a human brain and a human mind, there is a structure of self and a function of self. And these foundational pillars are where we can look to understand ourselves better and to bring better health. So if if we are aware of where to look and how to look and we're willing to look because we're not afraid of what we're going to find and we have we have a belief that we can bring change and this is how we we bring flexibility and malleability and and we can approach ourselves feeling really good that hey if I do this I am going to be able to make things better. There's so much hopefulness to that and it's it's reasonably grounded hopefulness. I have a question that might seem like a leap somewhere else, but I promise it ties back to what we're talking about. In your experience with psychiatry and the brain and patients and interacting with people in your own life, do you think that there's tremendous variation or little variation in how state dependent people are? Um, you know, some people it seems, um, you know, they're so affiliative that when they're in, uh, relating to somebody else, they they think and feel completely differently than they do when they're on their own. Not not necessarily even extroverted to for that to be true. Um, but that when they're suddenly alone, um, that the internal state is very different, almost like it's two different lives. Mhm. There's a reason why I'm asking this, but I'm wondering about the role of state dependence and how we think and how we feel and how we think about the things around us and think about ourselves. For most of us, life is moving very fast and life has a lot of stressors in it. And what ends up happening is we're kind of rushing just to keep up with ourselves. And and when that happens, we become very state dependent as opposed to being able to observe ourselves. So so to be able to see, okay, I I'm here and this is what I'm doing and this is the people I'm with and how I'm feeling and how I'm behaving. To be able to observe ourselves is how we knit together oneself across situations. So we can be aware I'm different in one situation than another. Right? So, so some of the behavior then and the sense of self is state dependent, but there's a whole self that's riding above all of it. It's observing us and knitting us together. What sometimes gets called an observing ego. And this is how we can both be state dependent, but also have a self that that is true across all of those states. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. 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Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. when somebody sits down to think about their strengths or to think about their self-t talk or um to just think about what they're made of and how they want to change or not change certain things, build on certain strengths, when and how should they do it? Yeah. I think all we need to bring is curiosity. That's all. And and curiosity doesn't have to be overly serious or or worried, right? It doesn't have to have a gravity to it. I mean, it can, but it can also be very light-hearted. You know, there's so many things that we're curious about, so many things we want to learn about. And this is great. It's great for our brains and it's great for our health to be curious and to want to learn. But so often what we leave out of that equation is being curious about ourselves, right? And that can be a sort of high-spirited thing to do of, you know, what is there in me that runs through all the things that I do? How is it that I feel so different doing one thing than another? What are the common threads of me that run throughout my life? You know, this is this a great way to approach what's going right in us, right? To be curious about ourselves. And it's from there that it's easier to see, wow, in in one certain kind of situation, I'm really not doing as well, right? Or I'm not as happy. Like then we can think about that and we don't have to be afraid of it. So bringing curiosity to ourselves, what runs through everything we do, and also how we're different in different situations can help lead us to all sorts of answers about what makes us happy and what doesn't. When are we presenting a true and honest self? When are we presenting a false self that even we know is false. So I think the only crucial ingredient is curiosity. And and then we can approach with seriousness and gravity or we can approach with light-heartedness. We can be alone or we can be thinking with someone else. There's all sorts of good places that curiosity can take us. It's interesting that you talked about true self versus false self. Um I think the more state dependence we have, the more confusing that becomes, right? And and I think perhaps even more so in in this day and age, there seems to be not a complete but at least to me a kind of partial erosion of etiquette. I'm not saying this to encourage people to be more rigid. It just seems to me that I'm 50 now. When I was growing up, seemed like people would dress and act one way in one context and dress and act one way in a different context. And there's some overlap obviously, but now there's this sort of propensity for not just oversharing, but there's information from all corners of the world coming through our devices all the time. And people are putting out information about many facets of their life all the time. Even people I went to high school with who weren't public facing in the traditional sense are putting out pictures of their kids and what they ate and this and the the wins and the losses. And it's a very odd thing to do when in fact we evolved for so long just kind of experiencing oursel separate from all the other activities that we were doing and certainly that other people are doing in your clinical practice. Are you seeing more challenges with people creating separation between kind of aspects of self and aspects of life because of all the the the information coming at them and and maybe even that they're putting in the world. I think it can be different depending upon what the person is doing, how they're using that information. And so so if you think of falseeness of of self, you know, it's possible a person can be engaged in something that that even they themselves know isn't real, right? So so wanting everyone to see what's what's best in my life and to and to think that, you know, I'm doing really well, you know, and and maybe I'm doing that to hide something or why am I doing that, right? If if I want to appear externally differently than than how I am, there's a good place for curiosity about the falseness of that. What am I trying to protect against? You know, why is it that I want people to see me in a certain way that might be different from how my life actually is if it has, you know, not just all winds in it, right? But but, you know, stressors too that might not be as glamorous. So, so that's one way we can use those resources. Another way can be to engage in ways that are more true to self. So someone who has an interest or a passion that it's hard to find people, you know, right around them. Uh but they can find that more distantly or or people who have a lot of sensibility and compassion for for some of the difficult things in the world who can find kindred spirits through social media. So So I I think we can use or misuse anything around us to to either be we can use it to be closer to ourselves and and to have a stronger sense of self, right? or we can use it to distract from who we really are and to maybe find solace somewhere else or find accolades somewhere outside of us because we're protecting against something. So I I think the the important point is is always to be honest with ourselves. And if we bring compassionate curiosity, then we're not mad at ourselves and that we're not coming at ourselves of what's wrong with me or why why can't I do this thing better or that thing better or why don't people like me more, whatever it may be, right? There are ways that we can, you know, we can guide ourselves away from from honesty and truth. And if we look at ourselves, we don't have to be afraid of what we find. Maybe if we're worried people aren't liking us, we're we're spending time with not a healthy group of people, right? Or or maybe there's something in in myself I need to change if I'm feeling that. So, the key is just bringing honesty and curiosity and not being so afraid or so negative towards ourselves that we're going to hide from what it is that that we can find to knit us together. Yeah. I'm not trying to demonize social media, but we are in a strange new version of humanity where let's say somebody's sitting by themselves. Chances are their experience is vastly different than it would have been 30 years ago because they are most likely getting a lot of information about what other people are doing. could be good information um could be interesting but nonetheless it's very very different alone state and or they are doing things that hopefully they enjoy but there's this additional layer where it's put out into the world this is very unusual so the reason I'm asking about this in the context of addressing the self exploring the self is that I wonder to what extent being really happy with oneself at some level involves being able to be curious and explore different ways of being and ways of thinking without the impulse of sharing that and without the feedback comparison of what other people are doing because [clears throat] the moment we see something else there's more sensory input or the moment that we think what we're doing needs to be shared it changes the experience. It's not truly an alone experience, right? Uh, and I don't think it matters if you put it out to one follower or to a billion followers. It's it's still externalizing this thing that for thousands of years was just us with our thoughts, us with our emotions. And and so processing time alone has become, I believe, a very very different thing altogether. Yeah, I think that's true. I think there's a sweet spot of connectedness to others, right? And we know that it's not good to have too little, right? that that isolation isn't good for us. But but where the modern world has gone is is it is it offers us too much the the opposite, right? Where there's not enough aloneeness where if we're overconnected then in order to to to decide what it is we even like or prefer how we feel about things, we're looking for external cues, right? So that sweet spot of having some external check-ins. How does the world around me feel? How do people I like and trust feel? How do people who seem like me feel? How do people who seem different from me feel? It it's good to have those tests outside, but to have enough aloneeness that I am still thinking about myself and the questions, right, of of life, the questions of my own life, I'm thinking about on my own before I'm pinging outside of me, you know, for information or validation or even guidance. I'm willing to bet that many people will find just the being alone introspective process to be pretty anxietyprovoking. Um, in fact, there's been a little bit of a um semic comedic exchange online recently because uh um actually our mutual uh friend David Senra and David Senra has a podcast with this very podcast production company. Um he sat down with Mark Andre of you know founded Netscape A16Z Investments and Mark made the statement that was very provocative which was you know great men of history didn't uh sit around thinking about their thoughts you know and and of course I knowing Mark um and he's a friend of mine I I think that was a bit tongue-in-cheek I think he was I think he was pointing toward I don't want to speak for him but I think he was pointing toward the idea that too much thinking and not enough doing can be self-destructive. Of course, the media ran with it and in classic Andreian fashion, he uh just doubled down and tripled down on that message, which was fun for a while actually because it got people thinking about the role of introspection versus the role of doing. And I have to say I think what he contributed with those statements, however provocative, um were useful in thinking like how much thinking, how much doing when exploring the self. We don't want to spiral into a tunnel that we can't get out of, but we also want to make sure that we're putting things out into the world. So when you have a patient that is not depressed, is um maybe just struggling, right? Um so no no no clinical issue that needs dealing with first. How much do you encourage them to explore the self through doing versus thinking about their thinking? It depends very much on who is that person right and and where do they need to face to sort of break new ground of self and you know you mentioned that most people would find the idea of just being with themselves to to be anxietyprovoking and I think that that's unfortunate. I think that comes from a lack of leadership in the mental health field and then the stigma of mental health and and our fears, those blackbox fears that we don't understand. So we're afraid of what we don't understand. What we don't understand is ourselves. So so then the idea of being with ourselves becomes very anxietyprovoking and I think that's not good. I think there are ways that we can go about being with ourselves that we don't have to be afraid of and say if I if I do that it's interesting what I'm going to find. Right? and and the reflection and the thoughts and the ideas, the learning that comes from it is going to guide me towards the best balance for me. Right? So there are some people who are very assertive, right? And they want to have high levels of doing in the world, but they still need some reflection, right? There are other people who are going to be very reflective and they're going to be doing less. One, we need to understand what profile works for for one person. It's not one exact place, but we kind of have a profile of reflection and of doing. And if if we are wellbalanced where we're asserting ourselves in the world at levels that work for us and we're finding pleasure and gratification in ways that are healthy, now we're finding balance. If there's too much doing and not enough reflection, not not a lot of good will come from that, right? We we'll find that there's diminishing returns. We feel unsatisfied, right? because we're doing too much and we're maybe taking less pleasure in what we're doing. But if we're doing too little, then you know we can feel idle and there can be a sense of learned helplessness. So it's finding what is the optimal range for a person to be asserting themselves in the world and then finding gratification in what they're doing. And if that's going well, we'll see it there. There's a happy balanced person. And if not, we'll be able to figure it out of what is going on in that person. Is there an issue somewhere say in the unconscious mind, right? Are they asserting more and too much and reflecting too little? Right? So by looking at the person and going through these steps, we can figure out what what serves that person best and how might they adjust from where they are now to get there. Is it true that there are just some people who just don't really think about their thinking very much. They just like do stuff. I mean, I've had friends say that like I I don't I'm not I don't want to speak for me. I I'll speak for them. they they'll say that they don't think about their thinking. They just get up in the morning and they brush their teeth and they use the bathroom and they go about their day and they they're not very introspective. They're not um they're not called to think about their thinking. And in some cases, these are people who are extremely busy. So maybe that's one reason. But in some cases, there are people who just, you know, for whatever reason that that the mirror doesn't pop up in their cortex. it it it's they're busy doing and observing and they seem functional. Are they missing out on a on something fundamental or is that maybe even the goal? I I asked this from a very selfish perspective because growing up I thought how cool would that be to just like go through life just do stuff not think about stuff from the past too much not reflect too much just like get stuff done and I and I'm a get it done kind of person but I I think like most people I also I also forced to think about my thinking from time to time. Mhm. When you say forced, what then forces you? Oh, sorry. It just spontaneously happens. I I reflect like and the reflections usually I'll try and generalize these cuz it's this is not about me. The reflections generally come from like is that something I should explore? Like is that a problem? Is the way I'm thinking about or doing that a problem? Or is the way that they're thinking about and doing something a problem? this US them thing is it it is kind of what it boils down to and it's either positive or negative. I confess I don't really sit around a lot and think about all the things going right. I should I have a gratitude practice. I generally don't sit around and think like oh like the the walls are up and the ceiling's intact and I'm fed and I'm healthy and of course until something bad happens and then we start doing we do our inventory. Right. Right. But yeah, I just kind of wonder whether or not there's a spectrum of of of reflexive self exploration. People have different reflective capacity and people have different reflective interest. So there are people who have more and that could serve them well to be more self-aware but but also people may have less reflective capacity but be more naturally generative and then they're just moving forward. So the question is even though we have different um natural [clears throat] levels of of reflective inclination, right? Are we happy? Are our lives going well? If life is going well and that person is, you know, they're healthy, they have good mental health and secure relationships and and life is going well and they're not reflecting very much like that sounds good. How I would characterize that is they're living through the generative drive, right? They're they're being productive contributo people in the world. They're making the world better. They're learning. They're growing. So, they're making themselves better. And they're just moving forward. That's a great way to be for most of us in order to get there. We do have to be reflective and and some of what will happen is it will come to us. You said you're not kind of planning maybe to sit down and be reflective. But but then it comes to you. Hey, I should think of this possibility at hand and what are other people thinking and if how's that impacting what I'm thinking? So you become reflective because your brain is leading you there, right? Because it's it's saying, "Hey, we need to we do need to stop and and think about things. that's how we're going to make better decisions. So our brains will lead us to reflection. But if we're moving so fast or we're defended against it, right, then we're not reflective and that's not good for us. And that's how you could see, for example, someone who's always busy so they don't have time to reflect. But but the the the big question is, is that person happy? Right? If that person is not happy and they're complaining and they feel like they're working and never getting anything out of it or never getting any reward, then it's it's not good that they're not reflective, right? blocking themselves from something that they need. There are spectrums that that apply differently to different people and we all reside on different parts of the spectrum whether it's reflective capacity or it's assertion or it's pleasure but in terms of what we're doing and whether it's healthy for us is it's different for for we're each and all unique. So we have to stop and look at ourselves like hey how's this going for me right how am I functioning and is it working for me right is it am I pausing and thinking enough maybe the answer is yes maybe the answer is no maybe I'm not sure but but if I'm not happy let me go back and revisit that question so this curiosity of self can lead us to oh how am I built to function am I functioning in a way that really works for me if not why not what change might I bring and and here again we're using the ability to understand and to go through a process us to to make our lives better. I realize these aren't clinical terms, but someone recently said uh about themselves that they are an external processor. They need to talk things through in order to understand what's going on for them and make decisions. And that implies that some people are internal processors. Is that true? Do you see that in your practice that some people do best by like thinking, sitting and thinking, walking and thinking, driving and thinking, kind of working things through, and other people actually work it out by talking either to you or to um to their friends or family, some trusted person. Is that really are those two probably not completely separate, but at least semi separate bins of people? I don't know that they're separate bins of people. I I I think that the ability to think and and to be objective in our thinking differs among people. What happens often is we get stuck in our own minds. So then we're thinking but we're not thinking productively, right? Because we get stuck in our own loops. And and when we take the thought process outside of us, so if we write the words down or if we say the words, we say the words to another person, then we're bringing different brain processes online, different error checking processes online. So some of us can do more of this inside and say, "Hey, you know, I've been thinking about this for a while and nothing's different or nothing's going better. Like, is there a different way? Is there a way I could think about it that's new or that's different?" Right? Sometimes we can do that, but a lot of times we just get stuck inside of ourselves and we have to bring different brain processes online. Like making words and putting those words out there in in writing or in speech is different. It sort of holds the brain more accountable. That's why sometimes we'll just say something out loud or we'll say something to someone else and say, "Oh, I figured that out." Or, "Thanks for helping me figure it out." And he might realize all you did was listen. Right? Because just by being there, the other person is forming words. you know, we we do more due diligence inside of ourselves that way. I must confess I'm I'm fascinated by this notion of uh people differing in their tendency to work things out internally and then bring that forward into the world maybe for more help or you know some additional solutions. Um or maybe just they've made they've figured it out. So they're bringing the a version of self into the world that is um vetted by them. Yes. I I I notice I tend to respect that picture, but I realize that's not necessarily the way it always works. I had a conversation with my sister this morning and um I love my sister. we're we're quite close and and it was there was no friction but the direction she was taking what we were talking about and the direction I was taking it they weren't aligned and so we kind of did a little bit of our brother sister push back and this kind and then at some point we both realized that we we weren't aligned with the other person and we kind of arrived at this overlap in the vin diagram and that's when it was like okay there was some real clarity that came to something important and I thought like how cool is that right she has her way of doing things I have my way of doing things. I don't think I could have gotten there without that conversation. Mhm. And yet for the twothirds, sorry I won't say her name for her own privacy, but for twothirds of the conversation, I'm thinking myself like, "Oh god, this is like this is an already difficult thing made more difficult by the fact that there's this other picture of it and a version of it that she's exter but then boom, you hit this convergence and that's real synergy, right? I certainly couldn't have come up with that on my own." So while I say I place value on the internal processor, I I know with certainty I could not have gotten there if I hadn't actually felt and met the friction of what she was bringing forward and her willingness to bend a bit and my willingness to accept a bit. Right? Because you doing something together, right? You were doing something together that that involved real and open communication. So you had to be able to say, "This is how I think and feel." And put that out there and test it and bounce it off the other person and take inside what the other person thinks and said. There's a really complicated process there which is how human beings come to understand one another or come to agree or come to a place where where there's um a way forward even if there isn't complete agreement. Right? We have to do these things outside of us. Most often if we're going to be at our healthiest, we do want to be able to do some of it inside. Right? It's a good place to start and we can do that alone with ourselves. and and you know we've we're talking about reflective capacity and inclination but none of us knows how to do something we haven't been taught to do right so so very often we haven't had a a way of going inside of saying well I'm going to think about myself and I want to do that productively and and part of what I'm trying to bring to the four is that there are ways of going about being with yourself thinking about yourself thinking within yourself that can lead us towards progress at least and sometimes answers. And if we're doing that, we can probably all do more of that than we're doing. And if we're given a way to do it where we think, okay, this works for me. I'm actually learning about myself while I'm doing this. And I'm bringing a vetted self. I'm bringing my best self to what I'm going to find outside of me. And and that may be collaboration with another person, right? It may be talking with another person and coming to some middle ground when there isn't agreement. So if we start with ourselves and we're able to to reflect and to bring self-standing to the four, we're much much stronger, right? In a good way. Not stronger in that we're going to force our way through things, but we're much stronger in terms of both self-nowledge and ability to be flexible when we're out in the real world meeting other people. Yeah. I think it to me um the picture of internal processing um people is one that and maybe I've seen too many movies um and shows from my childhood but that the picture is one of okay people who internally process bring the best version of themselves forward they don't burden other people but I think by now we understand as a culture that that person while traditionally was kind of revered. This is a kind of a male ccentric phenotype here picture that I'm drawing. It could be about a woman as well. There's also this idea that they're a little bit disconnected from all the chatter. Mhm. But in my mind, I have this belief like if people are externally processing a lot that they're also revealing their uncertainty and that that's not a good thing to reveal to the world. And again, this probably reflects my age and the times when I was raised and a bit about the culture and my family, etc. But um but I think in general that's that's like we never really talk about like strong silent type but lazy, [laughter] right? Like we're thinking strong silent and therefore getting stuff done, right? Like the the the the tacit message there is strong and silent so they're not burdening other people with their internal stuff. We also assume that people who process internally are actually processing that they're not just sitting there. I used to joke, you know, what's my bulldog Costello thinking about? And I I know this isn't true, but I used to think it was white noise. Like maybe he was just sitting there white noising, white experiencing the world as white noise. I mean, I don't know what he was thinking about. So could have been quantum physics. Could have been quantum physics. Um I doubt that, but it could have been qu And if it was, you know, he was good at keeping a secret. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And and the picture actually works because he he was a big kind of stoic dog. He had his joyful expression. But there's something about this notion of somebody that processes internally that gets a lot done and maybe even serves others although uh more than somebody who's processing externally. And it's hard to probe this area without kind of setting up natural gender stereotypes here. You know, I think the stereotype is that women externally process more than men. I don't know that that's actually true. It just might be that men process less overall. I mean, who knows? Who the hell knows what anyone else is thinking half the time? I don't know what I'm thinking. So, do you think that people who hold it in more are coming to a greater understanding and get more done in the world than those that externally process? No, I think not not necessarily. I think what's best for us is a balance. And again, it's going to be different for each person, but there has to be a balance of things that I know and understand inside of myself that u that aren't up for question that I am sure of and resolved about. So, it might be a a line not to cross because because it's a certain moral boundary. I know how I feel about it and I know where I am. Uh I know how I feel and I know where I stand. So, it's just one one example. There are issues of self that we want to feel very resolved. you know how I want to treat people in the world and how I want to be treated you know for example it's good to know those things inside of us but it is good to then test externally about how we're interfacing with the world if too much internal processing can be too self-reerential and now I may think that how I think it should be is actually how it should be because I haven't tested outside of me and I haven't done enough of that testing to see oh a lot of other people feel differently than me and and this isn't a moral point where I feel sure about how I feel. There's actually more gray in it that I than I might have thought as an example. So there there has to be a balance. I mean it's always been this way for humans. A balance of what we we discern and know inside but bringing that vetted self to the world means that the vetted self also knows that it doesn't know everything right and it's testing in the outside world to learn what is it that other people are thinking. Can I learn from that? So, so bringing in openness is also very important about a lot of things. So, I think that no one way of being is better. I think we all need a balance. That balance is going to differ. And it involves knowing things about ourselves and feeling resolute and also having the humility to face the world with openness and realizing there's a lot of things I may think I know or think I know exactly how something is or how something should be. But but let me hold on for a second and kind of check that with the outside world so that I don't become too self-reerential where we can become, you know, we can become bigoted or prejudiced. 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It has a collection of different things in it that has dramatically improved my sleep, both my slowwave deep sleep, and my rapid eye movement sleep. And I absolutely love it. Again, that's drinkagg.com/huberman to get a week supply of AGZ and a bottle of D3K2 with your subscription. veering towards some questions about physiology and how it relates to all this. But um I want to just peel back one more layer on this kind of you know admittedly you know extreme example of kind of uh I don't want to use strong silent I want to be internal internal processor external processors um and and I actually right now I'll try and disintegrate the the strong silent type because people immediately default to male and I'm not doing that for political correctness but I think about my graduate adviser uh Barbara Chapman um incredibly smart person and our chair of department years ago, my chair of department years ago described her perfectly when he said she's quiet but not shy. So she could sit and be in a room and observe and pay attention when she spoke. You really did get the sense that it counted high signal the noise because she wasn't one to chatter much. Right? There does seem to be this assumption that if people are talking a lot that there's a lot going on in there all the time and some of it's just getting out and that if people are quiet that it's either more regulated or there's not a whole lot going on in there, right? And I think my chairman's mention about my graduate advisor really woke me up. I thought, you're right. She's really quiet, but she's not shy. She's not afraid to speak. She's very organized and and deliberate in what she says. Mhm. And it I can't say it was always of value. Forgive me, Barbara. You know, she's passed away, but like sometimes it was just, you know, casual talk, but you did get the sense like she's a thinker. It's not white noise in there. And you do sometimes get the sense that people who are constantly, you know, sending words out into the world that it has an anxiety component. It doesn't necessarily seem that organized. But you and I have both met. I'm sure many people know people who are hyperverbal but very structured. In their hyperverbaless, right? So I I I guess I'm asking this because I I want to kind of break down the the notions of quiet versus verbal. Introspective necessarily means um calm like I mean so many assumptions around all this. None of none of it is necessarily true. And the reason I'm I want to I'm so genuinely curious about this is I think that most of the world is confronted with this Mark Andrees provocative question like how much time should we spend in here and how does it serve us when we're out here in the in the rest of the world and vice versa. Like like [clears throat] if we're just talking talking doing all day maybe we are processing and we can be peaceful inside lay our head down and that's it. It's all out there for better or worse. But for us it's great. Yeah. But there's this assumption that there's we're constant whatever we see is also happening internally. Yeah. I think we have to just be very very wary of of either mapping some stereotype of this is good and that's not good and applying some value system to it when we're outside of looking at a person in a context. Right? Because all of those things, you know, being internalized, speaking less or being hyperverbal, they could mean anything. you know, anything under the sun, it has to be who is the person and what is the context. So, if you're describing Barbara Chapman in meetings, right? I I interpret that as she's she's communicating judiciously, right? She's in a place where maybe sometimes people say excess things because they're self aggrandizing or they want to bring something up or they, you know, they're trying to guide a conversation one way or another. And you think, no, that that's a place for where less is more, right? We're not doing that. And just communicating about something that matters when it matters. say, "Wow, that's speaking judiciously." I mean, that's what it tells me about her. I don't know if her mind was going a mile a minute inside or if there was, you know, a calm and equinimity, but but I think who that person was and what that situation was was very was adaptive, right? Same thing if there's someone who's speaking a lot, but you know, they just have a lot of ideas and they're really constructive ideas and they're talking to people about those ideas and they're enthusiastic and it's helpful. Well, that sounds good to me, right? that sounds very different than someone who's hyperverbal and they're talking but you, you know, you can tell they're saying the same thing but coming from a different angle and they're anxious and they may want validation, right? So, so the person in the context makes all the difference. I mean, we we want to be able to identify, you know, when a person might fit a certain profile, right? You know, there are people who are quiet because they said they're strong and they're silent and there's not a lot going on inside, but they're resolute. Okay, that's a kind of person, right? But we shouldn't assume that that someone is that way until we've looked at who is that person and what is the context in which we're assessing them. We're human, so we fit patterns, right? But we're all unique. So you won't know what pattern we may be fitting until you really look at us. One thing I love about your book is you have probe questions. You you have questions for people to ask themselves. Thank you. To explore the self. And I think for me that was a is a huge gift of of the book and and the work in it. You know, when I got to see an advanced copy, I was like, you know, obviously you understand the theory and the science and you're a clinician, but for me, um like, okay, what do I ask myself and how do I go about doing that? how do I figure out what's going right as a at least as a stepping stone to maybe exploring what's not going right? But certainly to really understand where my strengths might lie. And I think that's a it's a really unique gift because I think that um we don't have enough of that. I think we have a lot of what's going wrong, where are the friction points, what's wrong with me kind of stuff and what's wrong with the world. And I think starting from that place of really knowing what the questions are to ask oneself is uh I just personally found immensely useful. Yeah. And I realize we're we're mainly discussing theory and and um at up until now, although I'm about to ask you a very practical question, which is assuming no pathology, no um life crippling anxiety or depression or panic, how much do you think people should try and adjust their what I call the autonomic set point? Like some people are just more, you know, expressive with their hands, with their words. They they want to move a lot more. And if they don't, it makes them anxious, Other people are more still. And we again assume that if they're physically still that things are probably a bit more still internally and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a lot of emphasis, including on this podcast, on learning to sit with stress, learning to sit with anxiety, and not just letting it out or experiencing it. And sometimes I wonder despite knowing the immense value of those tools. I mean I've benefited so much from things like non-sleep deep rest and meditation and things like that and I know others have as well. But I mean how much should we be trying to control our states? I I do wonder if it's good for us um to think that there's something wrong for us if we feel a certain way. Period. I think controlling our states in order to help us be at our best is different from trying to control our states so that we change ourselves, right? So, so if you you're finding um you know a deep state of peace that's not sleep, right? You find oh that helps you be a better you, right? That finding that peace just it gives you some groundedness and you feel healthier for it and you're better able to solve problems. So, you know, you're learning something and doing something because it serves you well and it helps you be at your best, right? That's different than thinking, oh, I need to be different, right? If a person thinks, well, I need to be different and I need to be calmer or more more peaceful. What does that what does that mean? And is that person imposing something external on themselves? So, there are people who are very active and and yes, you could they can sit quietly sometimes, right? But they're not really built for it, right? They're active people and it works for them to be active and they may be quite meditative when they don't seem to be quite meditative, right? They can be doing something and you know we see a lot of movement in them but but inside they can be in a meditative state. So it's it's so easy for for us to we're it's well-meaning in that we're trying to understand, right? We're trying to understand ourselves and we're trying to understand others and we're trying to find patterns, but but it's so tempting to think that we know something, right? Because we're just observing someone in a certain state or we're observing someone talking or not talking, right? To go, what does that mean? And we have to ask the right questions, right, in order to get there. So, so the only way we really know the answers for a person is we have to understand that person and we have to understand their context. So, we must ask the right questions. You know, you had talked about trying to write practical routes of approach to ourselves in the book, right? I'm I'm doing that because, you know, think of if someone wanted to learn physics, would you say, well, just stop, go somewhere and think about physics, right? Like, no. There there has to be a route of approach of saying, well, well, here's some of the basic knowledge, you know, think about this, approach that way. um read from this book and then that book, right? Like there are ways that we're guided in how to learn things. And it's interesting that we don't have these guides for what's most important, which is learning about ourselves. So it brings us back to why it can make us so uncomfortable, so anxious to say, "Okay, we're going to sit with oursel." It's like saying, "Well, sit with yourself and and you know, learn horiculture." It's like, I don't know, like I'll sit with myself, but but you have to help me. you have to help me figure out how to learn that or I'm going to feel anxious about sitting there if I don't know how to go about it. Right? So, so if we have the prompts to look at ourselves now, what we're doing is we're making it real. We're asking the right questions of ourselves to think, oh, what how do I function? What does work well for me? You know, how do I think of myself? How do others think of me? Am I introverted or extroverted? Am I a combination of both? Do I sometimes feel in one state and sometimes in another? Is it working for me? Right? Is it working for me in the big picture? Are there parts of the small picture that work for me or things I really don't like or things where I really don't feel uncomfortable? Now, we're bringing curiosity. And yes, we we want to learn from patterns and and learn from all the knowledge we have of the world, but we're taking that and saying, "Hey, none of that actually means anything until it's directed towards me. If I'm the person reflecting about myself or if it's a helping process, we're helping a friend or or you know, we're in a a therapy process." you know, we have to take everything that we know and then it's all seen through the lens of that person. We have to do it that way or we'll lead ourselves astray. If you're willing, um I'm curious about uh throwing out a sort of a generic clinical session example. Let's assume you know something about the family background of a patient and there's nothing glaringly obvious in the background about trauma or maybe there is but you know that there's nothing really to dig into there just yet and the person comes to you and says yeah I don't know I'm like I'm like work is okay but this and so and so at work at that and I guess this is good and you know and they're I don't know they're dating and they're in their life and I swear I'm not trying to get a free therapy session Here I'm I'm just trying to imagine. So someone says, you know, and then like the news is really bothering me and that, you know, and just kind of reporting, You observe human patterns. I mean, your pattern recognition is presumably oriented towards where there's emotion, where there's patterns in them, how it matches to templates that only you could harbor. The same way that a really amazing neurosurgeon would look into the brain and see a pattern of ep epileptic seizure and would be like okay this is even without remembering those specific cases I know which direction to go at this to explore when you hear all that stuff and the stuff I'm talking about here is deliberately meant to reflect what you see a lot of on social media upset about that political team upset about that politically in my life is this but this but this but what does that tell you and what does it tell you specifically about where that person should invest effort into thinking or doing. I realize it's impossible to give a a pan prescriptive here, but like what does that mean when somebody's just really absorbed by all the things going on around them and things feel good, but where do you start to probe and where do you start to um encourage them at least until the next session? The way to probe is to encourage reflection, right? Because with what you said, I think, well, I'm hearing somebody reporting, right? It's like they're just telling me the news, right, of what went on. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. Mom did this, dad did that. It's kind of an inventory or a laundry list, right? So, what it makes me think is, huh, I wonder how much of that you're really choosing, right? Or how much of that is is intentional or how much of that is just a reflex? The behaviors that in their life, how much of it they're choosing or how or the reporting? No, the the behaviors. How much of what they're reporting? Like how much of that are you really choosing, right? How much of that is what you want to be doing? How much of that is working for you? Right? What we're trying to do then or what I want to do then is is encourage like to have some interest in examination of like, well, why am I doing all of this? Right? Maybe some of this I really like and I am interested in and others of it I'm just doing because it's habit or it's routine. I don't even know why I'm doing it or you know if I'm dating what who am I dating? Why why am I dating? How am I choosing? Is that is that also just something that I do? How much am I just kind of along for the ride of what I'm doing that just has forward momentum versus what am I really choosing? Now, if we stop and we look at it that way, what are you really choosing? And and also what's working for you. Now, we're we're off to the races of an examined life. And you know, we see this as I know you know, we do a lot of intensive work. We do it with individuals. We do it with couples where we try and move this process forward very very very um rapidly of looking at one's own life and it's very interesting that sometimes you know by midway through the second day of an intensive process the person wants to revisit almost everything they realize you know 10 20% of of of all those things I just said I this is what I do right I really I really value and and I want to be doing more of the others I'm not so sure of right I don't know why I'm doing some of those things now And we we are we're really along the process of change because we're looking at ourselves. And it may seem strange that someone would see the 80% of what I just told you I do. I don't know if I want to do or if it's working for me. But that happens all the time when when we're not examining our lives. They just kind of run forward and we accumulate what we accumulate, right? And and it's like, well, this is what we we are because this is what I've accumulated by, you know, grabbing and carrying with me as I'm moving through life. And there's not an organization to it. So, so this idea that we must examine our our lives is at the the heart of all of this. That's how we we keep mental health and our structure of self and our function of self. We keep our our drives in balance. We set ourselves on a path where where we are in a place to to meet future challenges from the best health we can have and also to to meet future opportunities. So, just like we want to do with our physical health, right? We want to build good physical health. Likewise, we want to build good mental health when that's the best way to be when life throws us whatever curveballs are going to come our way. And it's also the best way to have a good life to be on the front foot of life. But we need to examine ourselves and we need a process and a structure in order to build good mental health the way we build good physical health. And ultimately that's how we build good health. So what I'm hearing is in order to gain more agency over any areas of our life, we have to ask the why question. Why am I doing what I'm doing now? And why aren't I doing this other thing that perhaps would serve me better? Like the it starts with questions of self. What do you do? And this must be incredibly frustrating. At least it would be to me. What do you do if somebody you say, "Well, why aren't you the person, well, I know I should work out, but I don't." And you say, "Well, why not?" You know, they say, "Well, I don't know. I'm tired. I know I should." you then you say, "Well, you know, um, why do you still hang out with Sharon when you always come back from it feeling totally exhausted and feeling like you've just had all this stuff done?" Oh, you know, I don't know. Like, what do you how do you work past the the person who's just like, "This is just life. This is just this is just what life requires. I got to work. I got my friends. Like, what am I going to do? Overhaul?" you know, and uh and and I this probably varies by region and by generation, the extent to which people are willing to like look at things and think and and kind of spin them around like rotate the cube as I like to call it and look at it from underneath a bit and just as a practice like to some people that's okay cool you know I'll I'll you know play the no one listens to albums anymore but uh the same way they used to but I'll play the album in reverse for a bit maybe it'll give me something different maybe people are like ah that's the album like that's just how I do So, how do you get somebody to do this? And of course, I'm not asking you to tell us this so that people can uh play therapist with others even though they they naturally do. I'm asking this because hopefully this is what people will do for themselves. Well, if someone is talking in the way of the person you described, right, saying, "Well, this is just what I do." And and they're describing I think you said every time they go out with Sharon, they come home and they feel kind of drained and they don't feel good. then they move on to something else and to something else and they might talk about their job and you know something that's frustrating them all the time and and they just keep going forward. Then I might say, well, what you're what you're doing is you're showing both of us where the X's are. You know, the X's mark the spot, right, to dig, right? So you you're showing us, hey, here's where there's some treasure, right? Let's dig where this X is. So, so if you're going out with someone and and every time you see that person, you come home and you feel a sense of lethargy and you feel a sense of time wasn't well spent and you kind of feel hopeless. Well, it's really important to to think about why you're doing that, right? And I would link it to something else. So, I might say, "So, you know, you had said earlier on or a couple of sessions ago that you really want to find a partner and you really want to find a good relationship. So, so that's important to you. You told me that it was and now you're telling me that you you keep seeing this person where you know every time you go out the front door that nothing good is going to come of it and you're going to come back feeling worse than than when you left. Like we should look at why. And and we don't have to be scared to look at why because this is where the fear comes in. Like oh my gosh, what is wrong with me? Why would I be doing that? Right? Somewhere inside of them that person knows that's not working for me but I'm still doing it. So there's some fear of looking at that. So if we say hey no harm no foul like let's just let's think about why you know it may be that that person really wants that that person in this case I can think it's Sharon wants Sharon to like them right and and maybe they they feel a need to be liked so they don't like this person but they think they need this person to like them maybe maybe they're a person who always takes too too much care of others versus themselves and they don't like Sharon but Sharon likes them right so they don't really want to end that relationship there's something going on there because the person is saying, "Hey, I'm doing this thing that absolutely won't get me what I want and I'll keep doing it." You say, "Well, that's not really what what you want. If if you if you are doing it over and over again, you think you're going to keep doing it. It's just because, you know, you haven't felt empowered enough that, hey, I can understand myself and I can bring some change so that so that my behaviors, my my choices are actually in line with my wishes, you know, with my strivings." So now we get that person interested, right? We tell them that there is an X. Let's understand why it is that you're still going out with Sharon, right? There's got to be something to learn there. And and there always is. If if we dig where the X's are, we do get some treasure. It might be a little, it might be a lot, but we learn from that and and we bring that learning to life. The rubber hits the road as that leads to real life change. That makes really good sense. And and thank you for the clarity of that answer. It brings us back to asking why to develop more agency around possibly making different choices. It's not always I mean one I guess one could realize like they really um they want that kind of relationship but with someone else or they want um a completely different kind of relationship with the same person. Right. Right. And and to work on that but it starts with asking questions. Yes. I realize I'm going backwards into this, but it goes from um inventories are a start toward informing what questions are useful. Useful questions probe understanding that hopefully develops more agency. Do you encourage people once they get to a point of oh yeah like maybe I want a different sort of relationship to this person or thing or activity in life do you give them specific act action directives like yeah like how about between this session and next session like you go to the gym twice you do whatever there maybe watch TV and just like pedal you know uh on the bike and or maybe you go and you like really take a course or or a class rather do you tend to give people clear directives about what could really help if you sense that that could really help sometimes but I think it's much more effective if it's arrived at collaboratively so so if we decide hey you know would be really really good and we both agree we we've talked back and forth now and if if you can get to the gym once before you come back next week right and then we talk about that back and forth like maybe that person wants to go to the gym five times you know before they come back but each time they do that they get frustrated with themselves and they don't go at all. Right? So, we might say, look, we've been talking about this and maybe I'll say it and maybe the other maybe the patient will say it, right? And to say, look, I do I do want to be going to the gym. I want to be getting exercise and I see I go between too much and too little, right? I go between taking on too much and I get frustrated. I don't do anything. How about something that's more measured? Okay, maybe I'll try and go on Monday and Friday. I make that maybe decide, yeah, you know what? Maybe twice is twice is okay. Or should it be once, right? because if you get once under your belt, you can get twice under your belt the next week. So, we're we're just trying to understand so there's no mystery to it and we we know what we're doing. So, someone who wants to have a a different relationship and says, "Well, maybe I could have a good relationship with Sharon, but I'd have to talk to her about A, B, and C that isn't really going well. Okay, how might you do that?" Right? Like, let's think about it, right? Because that communication isn't going to happen unless you bring it. And what's keeping you from that? How might you approach her in a way that you could really talk? what's what's holding you back? So, we're we're trying to problem solve, but we're doing so in a way that's that's open where we know what we're doing and we're not bringing some magic or mystery to it. We're trying to move ahead and we understand it's one step at a time and we want to take those steps. So, we don't want someone to think often we want a process of change to occur so fast that we it can't possibly occur as fast as we want it to and then we get frustrated in two weeks, right? So, we have to set reasonable expectations of, hey, it might be you could really get somewhere with this in a couple of months. It seems like that from our conversations. What do you think? Or we we make sure we're on the same page. And then we say, well, one week after another, like we could put one foot in front of the other and we can get ourselves there. And it's not easy. So, it might not be easy to say, broach that first conversation with Sharon or or get yourself to the gym that first time, right? But we can help you bolster yourself so all your arrows are going in the same direction. You set yourself up for success. you know, you're not going to try to go to to go the morning after a long night out. And, you know, we set you up for success and you get a win and small wins empower and embolden us to to to to take a little bit more chances and get bigger wins. And, you know, if our if our structure of self and our function of self are in good places, then what rests on top of that is empowerment. There's a sense of empowerment in us and also a sense of humility that that lets us accept that we're human, that things aren't perfect. and maybe I have been making the same mistake over and over again. Like it's it's all okay. I'm I'm human. And if I have the humility to accept that and I have empowerment, then I can meet the world through agency and this active gratitude. You know, I'm I'm grateful that Sharon's still here and I can I can talk to her, right? I'm grateful that there's a gym for me to go to. I'm healthy enough for me to get myself there and I've got enough agency inside of myself that I'm going to do these things that I've decided to do. This is how we we make life change, whether it be small or big. And how do we get to big life change? It starts with small steps. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function. Function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health. This snapshot gives you insights into your heart health, your hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans. function not only provides testing of over 160 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, it also analyzes these results and provides recommendations for improving your health from top doctors. For example, in a recent test with function, I learned that some of my blood lipids were slightly out of range. As a result, I decided to start supplementing with nattokinise, which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol. And it did. In a follow-up test, I could confirm that this strategy worked. My blood lipids are now back exactly where I want them. Comprehensive lab testing of the sort that function offers is just so important for health. I mean, how else are you going to know what's going on under the hood? And while I've been doing blood work for years, it used to be timeconuming, complicated, and expensive. In fact, I used to spend thousands of dollars per year trying to get this kind of data. And the data, frankly, were not all that good. But now with Function, it's extremely easy and affordable. A function membership is only a dollar a day, $365 a year. And if you think about the information it provides and the health challenges it helps you avoid and the proactive things that it can do for you to enhance your health, I truly look at it as a savings. To learn more, visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code hubberman for a $50 credit towards your membership. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman. Okay, so once again, we're talking about asking the right questions. There's no doubt that our the families were born into and uh the families we grew up around and the people we grew up around impact us tremendously. At what point does it make sense to try and think about the patterns that you were exposed to as a way to have more agency to ask better questions about why you know I think right now in addition to this you know little not so little debate about the value of introspection versus just doing and clearly it's both there's also a debate going on about how much to think about the past and traumas etc. I won't go into why this is really of the times right now, but the the dilemma seems to be do you look at your life as something that's happening now and focus on the why questions so you do what you need to do to make your life better or is there real value in identifying patterns that you observed or were forced to participate in as a kid as a way of having more agency. In other words, if someone sees or just verbally hears a pattern, does it actually help them make change? Yes, it does. Yes. It's it's insight that sets us free and it's insight that puts us in the driver's seat of our lives. Otherwise, we're just reacting. So So in the example that you gave, so imagine a a person who had a very overcontrolling parent. So So they don't have insight and they become overcontrolling themselves. They they they associate that high level of control with being powerful. They feel less vulnerable when they're being powerful. So they end up being overcontrolling with their own children just like their parents were. We say, "Okay, we we can recognize that and we'll say it's pattern repetition or whatever words we want to put to it and we go, "Oh gosh, that person doesn't have insight." Right? But but when the person is doing the opposite, that's not necessarily good either. So So a person could say, "Well, my parent was overcontrolling. I'm going to be easygoing, right? I'm going to be more easygoing. But if that person doesn't have insight, then they can become too permissive, right? So now they're not they're not controlling things in a way that does make sense. They're not exercising the healthy control of a parent. So they could they could identify with what the parent did and do the same thing. Or they could push away with from it and do the opposite. But but the opposite isn't good either, right? It's insight that lets us say, "Oh, no. my my parent or parents were were overcontrolling and and maybe that even it got to a place where was very very difficult and maybe even abusive and and I don't want to be like that right and I'm not going to be like that but I'm not going to rush to the opposite pole either right and now I have to I get to I both have to and get to figure out what's a healthy level of control right how much control does it make sense to exert to to keep the child safe for example but also to then allow the child enough latit itude to be growing and making their own decisions. So it's insight that says, "Oh, I I see I see what that was in my past and often we do need to do that. Often early childhood experiences, especially experiences within family units have a great impact upon us and often will guide our behaviors and then kind of like automatons. We're acting one way or we're acting another and we don't know why." But it's insight that lets us gain the understanding. Here's how it was when I was growing up. I can look at that. I can see it. good, bad or otherwise, right? And then I can decide how do I want to integrate that information, how the whole me is going to be in the driver's seat of being a good parent. So there seems to be something fundamentally valuable about insights where we realize I want to push away from something a pattern or I want to get more like someone or something that that is uh you know would serve me better. Um, and and I realize that might just be a giant duh based on what you said, but I'm trying to think about what that means about the mind, about the human mind. I can imagine that there are instances where people are in patterns of behavior and they're struggling with them. They're not working for them and they know it and they want to make the change. This is this is the thing I hear all the time. I want to make I know I should do it. I know I should do it, but they don't do it. What you're saying is when they when we can know that that pattern was something we observed or we're doing the opposite of something we observed doesn't matter which suddenly we have agency what do you think that is this is this is a different kind of question than I've been asking up until now like what is that because my clinician can tell me hey you know what you should really start to eat better and get to sleep on time because we both No, this isn't serving you well. And the version comes back and they're not doing the behaviors. They're not changing their behaviors. They're not chang. And then you ask them, hey, like what is this about? And you get to a place where it reflects something in childhood. They're either going against or they're going with that pattern. You're telling me that that realization gives them a sense of agency. Aha. It's it's comes from me, but I didn't program that in like what is the insight? Like what allows that? What is the wedge that lets people change their behavior simply by understanding that some or all of it is inherited from a pattern? When we realize that there's something whether it's external or internal controlling us, right, it it diffuses that tension and part of why it diffuses the tension and and lets us see clearly and gives us control is because we don't like it. You know, none of us want to be like in the the Manurion candidate, right? where there's a sound and then we behave in a certain way and you know we're triggered in a certain way and then we just do something and we do it automatically like we don't like that and and if we realize oh that's happening in me so if I realize gosh I've been programmed right and and if someone is disagreeing with me like it makes me feel so bad or so vulnerable or insecure you know it makes me feel like I felt when I was a kid right so now what I'm doing is I'm being just like the parent was I'm not giving my child a chance to have his or her own opinion and now because I won't let myself tolerate that feeling. So, so what's happened is it's just been automatic from when I was a kid and it felt so bad and now I'm in the position of trying to make myself feel good by imposing that on my own child. I don't want to do that, right? Wow. I I…

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